Several college students in the Triangle have earned research fellowships to study the hardships of women in rural North Carolina. They have been given the opportunity to present their research at the United Nations headquarters in New York City for the fifty-sixth session of the Commission for the Status of Women ( CSW ) next week.
One of those students is Anuja Acharya , a senior in political science and English. Local organization WomenNC maintains the research fellowship.
The United Nations Commission on Status of Women and the United Nations International Treaty Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women were the founders of the organization. The goals of the organization include “attracting and motivating North Carolina college students to be engaged in social justice movement activities with a focus on gender equality,” according to their mission statement.
The 2012 priority theme of the Commission on the Status of Women is ”the empowerment of rural women and their role in poverty and hunger eradication, development and current challenges.”
Acharya chose to study the political participation and involvement of rural women in North Carolina. Her research focuses on women who ran for the North Carolina General Assembly in rural counties.
Acharya first became involved with WomenNC through an advertisement she saw on campus for the research fellowship.
“Women’s rights have always been really important to me, so this was a great idea to be able to study the plight of women in NC and at the same time, experience doing research,” Acharya said.
Her studies in political science have helped guide her research.
“A lot of what we learn in the classroom is a series of how other political science systems develop,” Acharya said. “I definitely wanted to get my feet wet and just really tackle a big research project.”
Besides presenting at the United Nations Headquarters, the research fellowship participants will also publish a leadership paper discussing their investigations.
At a forum at the N.C. State University Club earlier this month, the research fellows presented previews of their research to about 200 people from the Triangle community . Acharya said she feels the event helped to prepare her for her upcoming presentation at the UN.
“The support was tremendous. Now that know I can do that, I feel like I can do a bigger presentation now, and I look forward to presenting my research on a Global level at the UN.”
Acharya credits her motivation to continue her research to several of her peers and advisors. The president of WomenNC, Anita Sivakumar, was one of Achaya’s main motivators. Sivakumar was a research fellow in 2010 and is a graduate from the University.
“She has been super involved with the organization and she is a very good resource to me and the other researchers,” Acharya said. “She had been really helpful.”
Acharya also named some faculty members as positive role models and figures of support and motivation. She said Daniel Figgins with the Political Science department helped prepare her for the upcoming presentation at the United Nations next week. He has been a big help as well throughout her research. She also said Professor Laura McKinney in the Sociology department helped guide her to getting to the UN.
“[Professor Mc Kinney] was actually one of the people who inspired me to run in the first place,” Acharya said.
Her fellow research fellows have also been a very big influence on her motivation.
“We are like sisters already,” Acharya said. “They’ve been really good support.”
