Harvard College Women’s Center Kicks Off 2024 Women’s Week With ‘Rooted’ Theme

The Harvard College Women’s Center launched its 18th annual Women’s Week on Monday with the unveiling of a tree sculpture in honor of this year’s theme, “Rooted.”

The Rooted theme is intended to give recognition to women who have paved the way for social movements and change in the past, as well as to encourage people to reflect on their roots. Throughout the week, there will be a total of 20 events, many of which are held in collaboration with various student advocacy and culture groups on campus.

Alejandra Rincon, assistant director of the Women’s Center, explained the motivation behind this year’s theme.

“There’s a lot of invisible labor that goes into building communities and nourishing and nurturing humans, so I thought ‘roots’ was an incredible image and symbol,” they said.

The tree sculpture was the result of a collaboration between the Women’s Center and (snobs), a design duo made up of Pin Sangkaeo and Benson Joseph, students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Nabila I. Chowdhury ’25, an intern at the Women’s Center and co-chair of this year’s Women’s Week, reflected on how the team decided on the sculpture’s final design.

“One image that really stood out to everyone on the team was the shape of a woman’s body moving upward through growth and resilience and strength. That seemed really powerful,” Chowdhury said. “So we incorporated that into the Woman’s Week logo, which also incorporates momentum, movement, and constant growth and change.”

The design of the sculpture allows students and passersby alike to participate, answering questions about womanhood, appreciation, and roots on leaf-shaped cards that they then tie onto the sculpture. The backsides of the leaves were patterned with textiles from cultures around the world, a nod to the intersectional focus of Women’s Week.

Rincon pointed to the prevalence of “the binary or the social construct and how sometimes we grow up feeling like there is a right or wrong way to be.”

But Women’s Week, they said, is about “trying to highlight as much diversity as possible — as many ways of being a woman or gender expansive as possible,” which they added was “really important to increase empathy and community bonding.”

Jana Amin ’25, an intern at the Women’s Center and the other co-chair of this year’s Women’s Week, also emphasized the event’s broad-ranging impacts.

“For so many of the different social or advocacy spaces I’m a part of, women are doing a lot of the labor but not necessarily always getting the credit they deserve for it,” she said. “For me, this is just a way of giving back to those women on Harvard’s campus and beyond.”

Sarita Plata ’27, a student who visited the exhibition, said, it was “really powerful to have the roots as a resemblance for women throughout this week.”

“As a Latina woman, and also a part of one of the clubs that will be hosting one of the events, I feel like it’s really important to understand this intersectionality,” she said. “It dives into a deeper understanding of, ‘What does it mean to be a woman?’”

—Staff writer Anna Feng can be reached at anna.feng@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Nicole L. Guo can be reached at nicole.guo@thecrimson.com.