Feminist Spaces Facilitate Research Collaboration on Reproductive Justice

Leanna J. Papp, University of Central Florida

Jes L. Matsick, The Pennsylvania State University

Our SPSSI 2025 Conference symposium on “Human Rights, Gender, and Power in the 2024 Election” considered how the general election and corresponding rhetoric shaped Americans’ attitudes about abortion and transgender healthcare access.

Despite the success of measures to protect abortion access in seven states, Harris voters’ perceptions of Americans’ support for abortion decreased following the election of Donald Trump. Voters differed in their intended abortion-related activism and advocacy. Trump voters expressed less intention to engage in activism and advocacy, whereas Harris voters’ intentions were stable, suggesting that they remained committed to their abortion-related work despite a worsened outlook on support for abortion in the U.S.

Two other presentations focused on attitudes among Gen Z students. First, Riley Alvero (undergraduate honors student, Central Florida) argued that young women’s feelings about abortion – characterized by shame, guilt, and fear – were in part influenced by anti-abortion rhetoric that has been legitimized by government actors. Second, Emerson Todd (PhD candidate, Penn State) illustrated that support for transgender healthcare access was associated with factual knowledge about transgender people, suggesting that disinformation about transgender people – particularly virulent leading up to and following the election – contributed to support for transgender people’s autonomy.

Beyond these findings, the symposium’s impact and sustainability are strengthened by our behind-the-scenes interactions and evolution as a research team. The team included ourselves and Drs. Jennifer Chmielewski (Adelphi), Elyssa Klann (Towson), and Laurel Watson (Missouri-Kansas City), and was made possible by the Institute for Academic Feminist Psychologists that preceded the SPSSI 2024 Conference.

It was during the Institute, a two-day retreat focused on faculty development and feminist community building, where we connected at a roundtable discussion about grant funding. Despite our differences – located at teaching- and research-focused institutions, in different departments (i.e., Psychology, Population Health Sciences, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies), and pursuing different research interests (e.g., stigma, violence, sexuality) – we discovered a shared interest in advancing reproductive justice efforts within psychological research. Following the Institute, we met regularly to exchange ideas, develop research initiatives, and deepen our relationships as colleagues. It is hard to imagine any setting other than the Institute that could have fostered this meaningful connection.

What does a new feminist collaboration look like? We pooled resources to pursue several reproductive justice-focused projects, made plans to use existing and collect new data, and collectively established goals and timelines. We conducted several studies by drawing on our diverse skillsets and equitably dividing work; we could not have accomplished all we did without each other. Our primary achievements included a pre-post study about reproductive justice during the 2024 election and two studies examining students’ experiences and perceptions post-election, one of which was designed and led by graduate student Emerson Todd.

Without the feminist space and intentional community-building afforded by the Institute, it is unlikely our paths would have crossed simultaneously, let alone led to a longstanding collaboration. This symposium and its research were not possible without the Institute and illustrate the importance of creating and maintaining feminist spaces in psychology.