Chancellor Masaki Takabayashi addressed KCC graduates at the commencement ceremony last year. (Photo courtesy of Kapiʻolani Community College)

By Sarah Burchard | Staff Writer

March is Women’s History Month. This is a time to acknowledge our country’s history of gender inequality and all of the women who have persevered and triumphed despite it. Today, women continue to face challenges. Title IX – a policy prohibiting sex-based discrimination in federally funded institutions, such as colleges and universities – and a woman’s right to have an abortion have both been threatened under the Trump administration. In 20 years, women’s pay compared to men’s has only nominally increased, according to Pew Research Center. In 2003 women earned 81% of what men earned. In 2024, it was 85%. Despite these figures, there are more college-educated women than men – 51% of adults 25 and over, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey. If as many, or more, women are college-educated than men why are they still earning less? 

This month, let us remember the strong wahine that helped make Hawaiʻi such a prosperous place for women. 

Haunani Kay Trask (1949-2021)

In 1986, Haunani Kay Trask became the first tenured professor in Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, after a five-year battle, largely based on racism, with the school. Trask was a scholar, author, poet and leader in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement who fought tirelessly for Native Hawaiian rights. In 1987, she created the Ka Lāhui Hawai‘i self-governance initiative and founded the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at UH Mānoa. Her 1993 book, “From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai‘i,” is fundamental to indigenous studies in Hawaiʻi. 

Alice Augusta Ball (1892-1916)

According to the University of Hawai‘i, Alice Augusta Ball was the first woman and first African-American woman to earn a master’s degree at UH. Ball earned her degree in 1915 – studying the active chemical in ‘awa (a medicinal canoe crop) roots – where she went on to become the first female instructor in the chemistry department. In 1916, she found the first injectable treatment for relieving pain from leprosy by tinkering with chaulmoogra tee oil extract. UH Mānoa offers the Alice Augusta Ball Scholarship to support students pursuing a degree in chemistry, biochemistry, biology or microbiology.

Patsy T. Mink (1927-2002)

Patsy T. Mink was born in Paia on Maui in 1927. According to the National Women’s History Museum, she was the first woman of color elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1964 and the first Asian-American woman to serve in Congress, practice law in Hawaiʻi and run for U.S. president. She was an advocate of the Early Childhood Education Act, the Women’s Educational Equity Act to promote gender equity in schools and Title IX (renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act), which gave women equal access to academic programs and sports. Thanks to her leadership and efforts, women’s collegiate sports flourished. 

Misaki Takabayashi

In 2023, Misaki Takabayashi became KCC’s latest chancellor. In a Kapiʻo News interview, the same year,  Takabayashi said one of the reasons she wanted to work in a community college was because she wanted to work in a higher education setting where she could work with students and the community on a more intimate level. Prior to coming to KCC, Takabayashi was a marine science professor and dean of Arts and Aciences and associate vice chancellor for Academic Affairs at UH Hilo, where she created the Kuʻula: Hawaiʻi Marine Resource Management course, which integrates Native Hawaiian knowledge with modern science. On Nov. 19, 2024, the chancellor shared an email to students and staff to reiterate KCC’s core values. These values, rooted in Hawaiian tradition, promote integrity, inclusivity, collective responsibility and care – for each other and the land we are on.