Susan McGee Bailey, Ph.D
Susan’s career has straddled the boundaries of academia and social activism for more than forty years. After graduating from Wellesley College, she traveled the world, taught in Taiwan and the Caribbean, married, earned a PhD at the University of Michigan and held a postdoctoral fellowship in Public Health from Johns Hopkins for work in Bogota, Colombia. There, her daughter, Amy, was born prematurely with physical and developmental challenges.
The marriage faltered. Susan and Amy returned alone to the US where Susan struggled to care for Amy without abandoning her commitment to social justice and a feminist career. In the process she learned important lessons from, and with, Amy on the importance of love, hope, and empathy— lessons she shares in her writing.
After working on women’s and girls’ education at the Connecticut State Education Agency, Harvard University and in Washington, D.C., Susan was appointed director of the Center of Research on Women at Wellesley College. She guided the Wellesley Centers for Women from its original organizational structure as two individual organizations — the Center for Research on Women and the Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies — to its current pre-eminence as the largest gender-focused research and action organization in the U.S.
Susan has numerous publications and awards for research, leadership, and feminist activism, and has lectured on women’s issues in the U.S. and abroad. She was the principal author of How Schools Shortchange Girls, the 1992 report credited with igniting public discussion on girls’ education. She appeared frequently on radio, television, and op ed pages throughout the 1990’s and early 2000’s as a key figure in what became a heated debate about the role of gender in education.
Following her retirement, she continued to consult on the education of girls and women in Asia, the Middle East, and the U.S., and blogged on feminist issues at Second Look before turning her primary attention to creative nonfiction. She completed the Memoir Incubator at Boston’s Grub Street in 2016.
Susan has been active in organizations addressing the needs of special needs children for more than forty years and currently serves as an elected Town Meeting Member in Wellesley, MA.