“I’m really proud to be a part of a community that has been around for 50 years that does such amazing things to help not only our community but the world,” says Anika Gupta ’27, a research assistant at the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW). “I know our work is going to reach so many people that need it.”
On the evening of September 28, 175 guests gathered at Cheever House in honor of WCW’s golden anniversary, reflecting on the organization’s remarkable initiatives while celebrating its bright future. Founded in 1974 by Barbara Newell, the College’s 10th president, WCW is a vital research and action institute, one primarily led by women. Last year, Peggy McIntosh, a senior research scientist and former associate director of WCW, was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame for her work, which includes her 1989 essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” just one of the dozens of groundbreaking researchers who have worked at WCW over the past five decades. Since its formation, WCW has sparked change and redefined women-centric research, broadening conversations about issues ranging from gender inequality to social change on a global scale.
Student workers and interns at WCW work alongside researchers on projects relevant to the Wellesley community and beyond. Gupta, a chemistry major and women’s and gender studies minor, is working with Jennifer Grossman, senior research scientist, to create an online program to teach fathers how to navigate conversations with their teenagers about intimacy and relationships. “In the spring, I did a lot of research on how to define gender and sexuality in terms that could be digestible for wide audiences,” Gupta says. “I learned so much from working there.” For example, thanks to her research she had a positive experience talking with a father in her home community about why pronouns are important in a way that made sense to him. To Gupta, it is extremely important that WCW fosters healthy, educational conversations.
When Layli Maparyan, Katherine Stone Kaufmann ’67 Executive Director of WCW, looks to the future, she says, she wants WCW to offer “gold standard research-based evidence on issues that affect the well-being and advancement of women and girls in communities all over the world.” A fundamental goal for the researchers at WCW, she says, is to be “nimble enough” that they can always address the most important issues of the day.
“I’m really proud to be a part of a community that has been around for 50 years that does such amazing things to help not only our community but the world.”
The researchers have investigated many critical global issues over the last 50 years, such as climate change, teen technology use, and child development. In her own research on the intersection of global climate change and gender inequality, Maparyan has expanded into the environmental arena with a project to improve forestry, biodiversity, and conservation education in West Africa, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. “My role on that project is to support gender equality and social inclusion,” Maparyan says. She aims to help women, youth, disabled people, and people from rural areas get involved in Liberia’s conservation efforts. “It is really wonderful to be doing something so practical, to include women in a field where they have been sidelined or been a minority,” she says. The project connects people to a wider community, she adds, which is something feminists and womanists have historically done, and it’s a rewarding way for WCW to be involved in environmental work.
Grossman recounts a collaboration with Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, an organization WCW has worked with several times over the past 20 years. For one project, Grossman and her research team evaluated the effectiveness of Get Real, a middle school sex education program.
“We analyzed data from 24 different middle schools in the Boston area, and we had to go out and recruit these schools for a study about sex education,” Grossman says, which was challenging due to the stigma surrounding the topic. “The study ended up spanning a five-year period, which really gave me the confidence that when working with a team of people who are so incredibly committed to the work and willing to adjust when things go wrong, you can accomplish things you never thought you could.” They found that teens who participated in Planned Parenthood’s Get Real program were more likely to delay sex than teens who received sex education as it was typically taught at their school.
“I think our work with evaluation of sexual education is really important because it’s so impactful on a day-to-day basis,” Grossman says. If a sex education program is shown to be effective, then states can receive federal funding to run it and students across the country can get access to it.
Additionally, a significant impact of WCW has been its importance in allowing people to foster nuanced discussions. Currently, Grossman’s research team is working on engaging fathers in supporting the sexual health and relationships of their teens. “A lot of fathers don’t know how to have these conversations; they don’t know if they should be having them,” Grossman says.
Juliana Juarbe ’23 played a significant role in developing the research for Grossman’s project, working to code and analyze findings of fathers’ roles in communication about relationships. “In my sophomore year, I had already declared my major in sociology and women’s and gender studies and had taken classes with Professor Rosanna Hertz, who was working on a research project,” Juarbe says. “I not only wanted to do research, but research in the same vein of women’s and gender studies, so I asked around and found an open position for an administrative assistant.” Juarbe found several internship opportunities on the website along with what researchers she could work with and how to apply: “I was immediately hooked.”
When Juarbe began working at WCW, she got involved in translating data from interviews with fathers for a research paper, which she presented at Wellesley’s annual Ruhlman Conference. “It was incredible––it was my first time doing anything like that,” she says. She also presented the findings at a conference of the American Psychological Association, and she says it was “indescribable” to see people engaged with research she had worked on. Her time at WCW, Juarbe says, “was such a positive experience. I learned so much, and doing research was incredible.”