April 19, 2007
Basu on front lines of social justice fight
For Sutapa Basu, fighting for social justice has been a constant refrain ever since her childhood in India. “I saw all kinds of discrimination then, and even as a child I would speak up in my own way,” she said. “I didn’t even know the word feminist. I just knew that what I saw was not right.”
Basu has spent the past 12 years creating programs that promote social justice as director of the UW Women’s Center, which is now the largest university-based women’s center in the country, serving more than 10,000 people — both on campus and off — each year.
Basu doesn’t like to talk much about herself, preferring instead to expound on what the center has to offer. There’s “Making Connections,” a grant-funded program that reaches out to young girls of color and girls from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, with the goal of encouraging them to pursue higher education. The girls are brought to campus and exposed to math, science and technology careers, but Basu says the bottom line is getting them to go to college, which 80 percent of them ultimately do. That’s higher than the national average of 60 percent of high school seniors going to college.
The center is also a haven for women who are returning to school after a time away. Many, Basu says, are going through difficult life transitions such as divorce, so there is counseling and advising offered, as well as support groups where they can get to know others like themselves.
“It’s very intimidating to come back to school among so many young people,” Basu says. “For me it’s a joy, to see women of all ages come in, often worried and confused, and know that we act as a catalyst to their success.”
Violence prevention is another cause the center works on. Basu notes that many students come to the UW having experienced violence in their lives. The center works with other campus organizations to support these women and to provide educational programs on campus specifically targeting men. “We have brought in men speakers. We have men’s groups from the community come and work with us and we go into the Greek system and residence halls,” Basu says. “Two years ago we had a forum on a football Saturday and we had over 300 men come to it.”
The goal, of course, is to reduce violence against women, which Basu says has not significantly decreased despite many new laws designed to improve the situation. Her own research focuses on human trafficking — the ultimate violence in which women are brought into a country and stripped of documents so that they become little more than slaves. When they wanted to learn more about trafficking, state legislators sought out the Women’s Center for research in the field, and later passed the first state legislation against human trafficking, which has become a model across the U.S.
In addition to all these activist programs, the center offers about 250 continuing education classes, serving 3,000 people a year.
Basu says the thing that really set her on the activist path was when she came to this country as an 18-year-old and entered Evergreen State College in the 1970s.
“In those days it was such an active campus, it just opened up my eyes to things,” she says. “That’s where my activism began. Before that, I was thinking more about what my parents wanted me to be. In India there’s a lot of pressure to get an education, to be a success, but you also have to do the traditional things laid out for women. At Evergreen I really got into social justice issues. That was my beginning and I never looked back.”
She says she is “totally committed” to the issues she’s been working on for years. “I want to see more women and especially more women of color become strong leaders, sitting at tables where decisions are being made and working for equity and social justice,” she says. “I hope my work is contributing to that.”
