Reflections from the Heights

Often called “the feminist missionary,” Hesse-Biber—co-founder and director (1989-1992; 2006-2023) of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program (formerly Women’s Studies Program)—has been internationally recognized for her research on women’s health and body image, women and work, feminist sociology, mixed methods inquiry, and hereditary breast cancer. She conducted research studies on disordered eating and eating disorders among college students and wrote the award-winning book The Cult of Thinness, selected as one of Choice magazine's Outstanding Academic Books.

Her study of the issues of women and work led to the publication of her co-authored books Women at Work and Working Women in America: Split Dreams. Hesse-Biber, who lost her younger sister to breast cancer, has conducted extensive research and published articles on the lived experiences of women and men harboring BRCA1/2 pathogenic variants that predispose them to various cancers. Her book Waiting for Cancer to Come: Genetic Testing and Women’s Medical Decision Making for Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer won an Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award, and she was inducted as a member of the Jesuit Honor Society.

Founder and longtime director of the National Association of Women in Catholic Higher Education (NAWCHE), she created a database and a support network for female administrators and faculty members and hosted 12 biennial conferences. She co-authored Women in Catholic Higher Education: Border Work, Living Experiences, and Social Justice, dedicated to her mother, a single working parent who raised four children with little to no resources.

She is also well known for co-founding a software company, HYPERresearch, that
re-engineered the heavily labor-intensive process of qualitative data analysis.
She co-developed the company’s widely used computer programs that were the
first available automation tools for social scientists and higher education.

“The biggest change I’ve observed at Boston College was the profound shift in gender demographics on campus. When I arrived in 1975, I found a predominantly male campus. Today, women comprise 53 percent of BC undergraduates. The College of Arts and Sciences enrolled its first coed class in 1970, which consisted of 247 women. In 1974, BC purchased Newton College of the Sacred Heart. Many of the Newton College women told me they felt ‘herded’ into what they saw as a male-dominated environment, leaving them little time or space to adjust to their new campus. It was a chilly climate for women, and they felt excluded, undervalued, and invisible, often reluctant to speak up in class.

“In 1982, I co-authored a BC-funded study, the Career and Lifestyle Aspirations of Boston College Undergraduates, which showed that the college environment negatively affected women’s career aspirations. The results of this study got me thinking about forming a Women’s Studies Program that could begin to address the range of needs and concerns expressed by women in the BC-funded study on career aspirations. 

“While BC has made progress toward increasing the racial and ethnic diversity of its student body and faculty, more work needs to be done.  One thing I learned firsthand is the importance of building institutional supports for marginalized students, such as the recent founding of Messina College at BC.

“One thing that has remained the same during my time at BC is its Jesuit mission of cura personalis or care for the whole person.  What also remains is the call for ‘men and women for others’ through service and social justice. My journey at BC has focused on promoting social justice, as reflected in my scholarly work and the organizational structures I co-created and built to address a range of social justice issues.  A focal point of my mission is to make things better. I feel privileged to be here, to live the life I'm living, and to be able to do what I love to do.”