Through public events often in partnership with community and national or global organizations, the Center on Women, Gender, and Public Policy (the Center) connects research to practice and advances meaningful change though strong relationships.
Upcoming Events
Past Events
Featured past events are listed below. If you wish to watch a recording of an event please visit our Youtube channel. If you are looking for content based on a particular topic, we encourage you to browse the themed playlist.
Founders & Futures - October 2025
In October 2025, the Center on Women, Gender, and Public Policy celebrated its 40th anniversary. The legacy of the nation’s first comprehensive research and teaching center dedicated to women, gender, and public policy has never been more important. Hear from Center students and alumni about how working with the Center impacted their professional path.
Predatory Data: Feminist Resistance to Eugenics in Big Tech - March 2025
Our annual International Women’s Day event, featuring a talk by Dr. Anita Say Chan about her new book, Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future. Techno-surveillance, algorithmic control, and data-driven discrimination have become routine features of our social landscape. But the age of Big Data has important precedents in earlier eugenicist and anti-immigrant movements, with lasting consequences for how data is collected and used today.
Anita Say Chan is a feminist and decolonial scholar of Science and Technology Studies and Associate Professor of Information Sciences and Media Studies at theUniversity of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Does Women's Empowerment Improve Socioeconomic Outcomes? - December 2024
A webinar discussing the results of a new study by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine about the impact of global women’s empowerment and associated population dynamics on socioeconomic development.
The multi-disciplinary committee was charged with reviewing existing research and developing a comprehensive conceptual framework that describes these dynamics. The committee was also asked to identify research and data collection priorities. Two of the report's authors, Professor Ragui Assaad of the University of Minnesota and Professor Kathryn Yount of Emory University, discussed the committee’s findings and recommendations.