The mission of the Southwest Women’s Law Center is to create opportunities for women to realize their full economic and personal potential.
We work with the intention to eliminate gender bias, discrimination, and harassment. We lift women and their families out of poverty, and we ensure all women have full control over their reproductive lives through access to comprehensive reproductive health services and information.
We focus on key areas related to workplace rights and security for women, the health and safety of women and abortion, along with reproductive rights and access to those rights. Our goals are to advance the lives of women through advocacy, education, policy changes, and legal work.
Guiding Principles
Through a strategic approach, creative ideas, and community collaborations, we work through a few principles to advocate for women.
We understand there is a significant relationship between gender bias and discrimination, poverty, and reproductive justice. We know that women of color, including migrant women, face additional obstacles and discrimination that are considered in all aspects of our work.
Our agenda arises in part from ideas and information received from community-based service providers and advocates who work on behalf of low-income women and girls in New Mexico. We collaborate at national and local levels to identify and implement the most effective strategies for fulfilling the Center’s mission.
We know that legal advocacy is necessary to create systemic change, and we are active in creating necessary change on behalf of women and girls in New Mexico.“
Southwest Women’s Law Center
Our Long-term Vision
Our work aims to create more education, resources, and empowerment for women and girls in New Mexico.
Whether it’s filing paperwork and self-sufficiency to building individual capacity to access legal services. We work to preserve, support, and expand the legal rights and protections afforded to women and girls in New Mexico under federal and state law.
We advocate for the working poor and survivors of domestic and sexual violence to assure they have sufficient time off to address family and medical issues, and in the case of survivors—to deal with the aftermath of violence.
We advocate for the implementation of Paid Family Medical Leave in New Mexico so that families can have the economic security to bond with newborns, and take care of medically dependent individuals, without being unfairly terminated or suffering severe financial loss.
We work closely with community-based agencies that work with women and girls to increase opportunities for their clients to receive necessary services and attain economic self-sufficiency through legal advocacy.