The nation’s first comprehensive University research center dedicated to women and public policy, the Center was founded in 1985, at a dynamic moment in the history of feminist activism – both at the University of Minnesota and nationally. This was a moment in which feminist scholars, researchers, students, activists, policymakers, and organizations were demanding equitable inclusion for women in higher education, and creating new intellectual and scholarly paradigms and programs.
The Center was co-founded by Arvonne Fraser, a feminist activist and practitioner, and Barbara J. Nelson, professor and feminist policy scholar. These women found synergy in bridging the academic and policy worlds, setting a publicly-engaged vision that continues to guide the Center’s work today.
We build on this legacy today as we work to provide students, researchers, policymakers, and the broader public with tools to better understand how public policy impacts gender equality in our local communities, throughout the United States, and around the world.
Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO, 9 to 5 National Association of Working Women
The March 1985 memo announcing the official launch of the Center captured the founders’ original, expansive vision for the Center:
The Center will bring together the interests in women and public policy that already exist at the Institute [Humphrey School] and will be a vehicle for increased local, national and international attention to these issues. t will provide bridges among scholars, both inside and outside the University, and among researchers, advocates, scholars and policy makers...The Center’s three components are in the best tradition of land grant universities:
- Education of women and men about the variety of policy issues affecting women, and about the history and theoretical concerns of women’s participation in the public arena
- Policy research, through a series of sustained research projects, with the aim of contributing to policy debates, scholarly research, and agenda setting for the future
- Outreach to the whole community – locally, nationally, and internationally – through publications, meetings, seminars and conferences.