Last fall, four Iowa State University graduate students and one undergraduate student collaborated with Catt Center director Karen M. Kedrowski to create content for a SHE MATTERS 2026 report. Essentially a “status of women in Iowa” report, previous SHE MATTERS reports were published in 2012, 2015, and 2016.
Kedrowski was approached by a group of women’s organizations in the summer of 2025 to collaborate on the new report, and the Catt Center agreed to take on the responsibility for researching and writing the report’s content.
Kedrowski advertised for student research assistants in Fall 2025, and five students joined the project: Emma Allen, a junior in English; Miranda Hills, graduate student in anthropology; and Meenakshi, Thomas Boakye, and Tanusree Bhattacharjee, all graduate students in political science.
“It means a great deal to me to get involved in work that brings attention to such crucial issues,” Hills said. “Working on the report alongside similarly committed people has been an invigorating experience.”
The report will cover some topics that were excluded from earlier reports, due to space constraints. This includes sections on grassroots participation, women in agriculture, and food insecurity. In addition, Meenakshi was involved with Iowa State’s Data Science for the Public Good (DSPG) Young Scholars program and had access to a large dataset with county-by-county data, which led to unique analyses and conclusions. Whenever possible, the students also provided comparisons between Iowa and Iowa’s surrounding states and the nation.
“Working with these students has been a joy,” Kedrowski said. “They really dove into the material and showed a passion for the issues.”
All students will receive authorship credit, allowing them to list a publication on their resumes.