Celebrating Women's History and Empowerment Month 2026

Every March, we celebrate Women’s History and Empowerment Month, both honoring the historical and ongoing contributions of all who experience life through the lens of woman in body, spirit, and identity (past, present, future, and fluid) as well as empowering women and reducing barriers to their advancement.

Some hurdles include structural barriers like sexism, misogyny, and misogynoir; long-standing gender stereotypes; and a greater burden for caregiving. This is compounded for women of color, women in lower positions of power and influence, and those in untapped communities.

This month also affirms our commitment to advancing equity, leadership, and opportunity by addressing structural barriers that have historically limited women’s full participation and impact. This year’s national theme, “Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future,” highlights the vital role women play in driving innovation, resilience, and positive change for the benefit of society as a whole.

Task Forces/Advisory Bodies

Campus Advisory Committee on Status of Women 

The Campus Advisory Committee on the Status of Women is recruiting for members and invites you to learn more about the committee and apply.

Faculty Profiles

Paola Bacchetta headshot

Paola Bacchetta

Paola Bacchetta is Professor and Chair of the Department of Gender and Women's Studies. She is on the Advisory Boards of Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender, and the Center for Right-Wing Studies. She is a critical theorist whose research focuses on gender, sexuality, colonialism, race, religion, capitalism, Empire, and other relations of power, along with local, translocal to transnational feminist and queer activism, artivism and social movements. She also works on right-wing movements, gender and sexuality. Her main geographic areas of specialization are the U.S., India, France, Brazil and Italy. Dr. Bacchetta’s recent books include: Co-Motion: Re-Thinking Power, Subjects and Feminist and Queer Alliances (Durham: Duke University Press, 2026); Fatema Mernissi for Our Times(co-edited with Minoo Moallem, Syracuse University Press, 2025); and Global Raciality: Empire, Postcoloniality, and Decoloniality(co-edited with Sunaina Maira and Howard Winant, New York: Routledge, 2019). She is contributing co-editor (with Soraya El KahlaouiSigrid Vertommen, winter-spring 2025) of a special issue of the journal Kohl titled A Lexicon for Bridging Decolonial Queer Feminisms and Materialist Feminisms Bacchetta has published over 85 professional journal articles and book chapters on her research. She was the first Chair of the Gender Consortium at Berkeley, which represents all research centers and teaching units on gender across the university. Transnationally she is Co-Director of Decolonizing Sexualities Network.

Minoo Moallem is a professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and director of media studies at UC Berkeley

Minoo Moallem

Minoo Moallem is a cultural theorist who explores transnational feminism, diaspora, and the politics of religion and culture. She is a professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and the director of the Iranian Studies Program at UC Berkeley. She is also an affiliated faculty member in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies; Berkeley Center for New Media; Center for the Study of Race and Gender; Science, Technology and Society Center; Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies; Folklore Graduate Group; and Graduate Group in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is best known for her work on transnational and postcolonial feminism, Iranian cultural politics and diasporas, Islamic nationalism, and the intersections of gender and globalization. Her book Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister (University of California Press, 2025) examines the gendered politics of citizenship in the formation of the Iranian nation-state and its diaspora. Recent works include co-editing Fatema Mernissi for Our Times (Syracuse University Press, 2025) and Persian Carpets: The Nation as a Transnational Commodity (Routledge, 2018). Moallem is the author of numerous articles and book chapters. She is the co-editor of Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and The State (Duke University Press, 1999) and the guest editor of a special issue of Comparative Studies South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East on Iranian Immigrants, Exiles, and Refugees. She has also ventured into digital media. Her digital project, "Nation-on-the Move" (design by Eric Loyer), was published in Vectors—Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular.

Faculty Books

Co-Motion Re-Thinking Power, Subjects, and Feminist and Queer Alliances book cover

Co-Motion: Re-Thinking Power, Subjects, and Feminist and Queer Alliances

Duke University Press (January 2026) by Paola Bacchetta

Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence

Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence

Stanford University Press (June 2025) by Patrice D. Douglass

Fatema Mernissi for Our Times Edited by Minoo Moallem, Paola Bacchetta book cover

Fatema Mernissi for Our Times

Syracuse University Press (March 2025) Edited by Minoo Moallem and Paola Bacchetta

Faculty Profiles

Amy Herr headshot

Amy Herr

Amy E. Herr is the Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Bioengineering.  A major focus of the Herr lab is to advance the "mathematization" of biology & medicine. To do this, her lab designs precision life-sciences measurement tools using microfluidic technologies. Her lab’s tools have opened lines of inquiry from understanding cellular-level development (Assessing heterogeneity among single embryos and single blastomeres using open microfluidic design, Science Advances, 2020) to creating liquid (vs. solid) biopsies (Profiling protein expression in circulating tumour cells using microfluidic western blotting, Nature Communications, 2017). Prof. Herr seeks to accelerate the impact of research outcomes for the good of all humanity. For this reason, she co-founded the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub (now Bakar Labs), an academic spin-out incubator for ‘tough tech’, and the CZ Biohub Network (now part of Biohub), a new way of doing science.

Grace O'Connell headshot

Grace O'Connell

Grace O'Connell is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.  Her research uses experimental and computational methods to understand the effect of injury and degeneration on soft tissues of the musculoskeletal system, such as cartilage and ligaments. Current National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded research is using computational modeling to predict outcomes from surgical treatment for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. Research in collaboration with NASA AMES is focused on understanding how long duration spaceflight alters spine biomechanics and spine health. Recent publications include: The effect of spaceflight on tissues of the spinal column by J Veres, EAC Almeida, J Bailey, GD O'Connell. Bone Reports (2026). Sex-based differences in biomechanical function for chronic low back pain and how it relates to pain experience by E Archibeck, I Strigo, A Scheffler, A Torres-Espin, K Khattab, P Silvestros, GD O'Connell, et al. European Spine Journal (2025).


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Events 

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