Susan McGee Bailey, Ph.D.
Executive Director
(1985-2010)
Susan McGee Bailey retired at the end of 2010 as the executive director of the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College and a professor of Women's & Gender Studies and Education at Wellesley College, after 25 years leading the premier research-and-action organization.
She was executive director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women from 1985 until 1995, when the Center and the Stone Center for Developmental Studies at Wellesley College merged to become a single organization--the Wellesley Centers for Women.
Dr. Bailey received a B.A. from Wellesley College and M.A. and Ph.D. in Social Science Educational Research from the University of Michigan. She was awarded both a University fellowship and a social science educational training fellowship while in graduate school and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in public health at Johns Hopkins University. Before joining the Wellesley Centers for Women, she directed the Resource Center on Educational Equity at the Council of Chief State School Officers in Washington, D.C., the Policy Research Office on Women's Education at Harvard and Radcliffe, and held various posts at the Connecticut State Education Agency. She has taught elementary and secondary school in the United States, Asia, and Latin America.
Dr. Bailey has written and lectured extensively on issues of gender equitable public policy with a particular emphasis on education. She was the principal author of the 1992 AAUW Report: How Schools Shortchange Girls. Following the NGO Forum at the Fourth World Conference for Women in Beijing, China, she coauthored a guide for junior and senior high school teachers, Shaping a Better World: Global Issues/Gender Issues. Her most recent publication, Unsafe Schools: A Literature Review of School-Related Gender-Based Violence in Developing Countries, is available here in PDF format. Among her honors and awards are the Activist/Policy Award from the Women Educators of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Abigail Adams Award from the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus. She has also received the Award for Leadership from the SIG Research on Women’s Education (AERA) and the Willystine Goodsell Award for contributions to research on women in education (AERA).
Involved in a variety of professional activities, she currently sits on the board of the National Centers on Sexuality at San Francisco State University and has served as a Trustee of Regis College, and as an advisory board member of the National Women's History Project. She was president of the board of the National Council for Research on Women, and chair of the AERA Special Interest Group: Research on Women in Education. She has served in a variety of capacities with community organizations addressing the needs of disabled children.
