History

Brief Organizational History

By Mary Hawkesworth in consultation with Jane Mansbridge, Georgia Duerst-Lahti, Susan Carroll, Jane Bayes, and Shauna Shames

Chronology

Major events

Launched by five pioneering women in political science—Katherine Klotzburger, who served as the first Chair of the Caucus, Audrey Wells, who served as first Executive Secretary, Carol Barner-Barry, Berenice Carroll, and Judith Stiehm—at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in 1969 in New York City, the Caucus has grown into a vibrant professional organization. An outgrowth of the feminist movement, the Women’s Caucus was created at a time when women, who constituted barely 5% of the membership of the American Political Science Association, encountered numerous obstacles to their professional advancement.  From the outset, the Caucus sought to eliminate sex as a barrier to full participation in the discipline of political science.  Toward that end, the Caucus conceived its mission in multidimensional terms.  Since its creation, the Caucus has sought and continues to seek to upgrade the status of women in the profession of political science; to promote equal opportunities for women political scientists for graduate school admission, fellowships and financial assistance, and in employment, promotion, and tenure; to promote the development of non-academic professional careers for women political scientists; and to encourage application of the skills of political science to the promotion of equal opportunities for all women.

Preceding the creation of the Caucus by just a few months, in spring 1969, the APSA established the Committee on the Status of Women (CSW).  Appointed annually by the APSA president with the approval of the Executive Council, CSW members serve as “the formal voice of APSA for addressing problems and issues having to do with the status of women within the Association and the broader discipline of political science” (Conover 1990, 440). Although the Caucus and the CSW seek to advance gender equity in the profession and the Caucus president serves ex officio on the CSW, the WCPS chose to organize autonomously.  By affiliating with APSA without becoming a constituent component of the Association, the Caucus preserved its ability to address political issues and engage in political activities.  Historically, the Caucus has worked closely with the CSW and the two groups have co-sponsored numerous panels, programs and initiatives.

Choosing a universalizing rather than a minoritizing discourse (Sedgwick, 1990), Caucus members petitioned the APSA for a “fair share of public goods”—access to convention facilities, equitable representation on panels as paper givers and as chairpersons, access to childcare during annual meetings, and access to employment information through open listings of job opportunities.  After a review of the contributors to the APSR from 1949-1969 revealed that only 1.5% of the articles had been written by women (15 women compared to 1000 men), the Caucus launched a campaign for fair access to the publications network and began organizing workshops at the Annual Meeting of the APSA on “How to Publish in Political Science” (Mitchell, 1990).  In an effort to gain timely information about APSA opportunities and decisions, the Caucus pressured the APSA for the appointment of an APSA staff member to serve as APSA liaison to the Caucus.  In its early years, the Caucus also fought for the abolition of anti-nepotism rules, which not only disadvantaged academic couples but routinely operated to the detriment of women’s employment in academia. During the struggle to ratify the ERA, Caucus members packed the 1976 annual business meeting to force a vote on a resolution that the APSA not hold conventions in states that failed to ratify the ERA. Although the APSA Council had refused to pass this resolution, on the floor of the business meeting it passed with 72% support.

In addition to pursuing a significant issue agenda, the Women’s Caucus for Political Science devoted a good deal of energy to institution building.  Mirroring the structure of the professional organizations within political science, the Caucus developed a regional structure, creating Caucuses in the Midwest, the Northeast,[3] the South, and the West.  Just as the WCPS conducted its business and presented a range of programs in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, the regional caucuses convened and organized sessions at the annual meetings of the regional political science associations.  From the founding five in the fall of 1969, Caucus membership grew to 159 six months later and to 242 by the fall of 1970.  Two decades later, Caucus membership (individual and institutional) surpassed 900.  The WCPS Quarterly, the official newsletter of the Caucus, circulated widely to keep the membership informed of Caucus initiatives, recruit volunteers to staff the Caucus committees, and to provide vital information about job openings in political science.

WCPS performed multiple functions in the years prior to 1986.  It served as a membership organization for all women in political science, regardless of areas of specialization, advocating for women in the profession and pressuring APSA and college/university departments to address problems women faced in the discipline. It also organized panels at national and regional meetings on the academic study of women and politics. Once the APSA began to recognize Organized Research Sections, WCPS members began an intensive discussion about whether to form an Organized Section of women and politics researchers that would be responsible for organizing panels on women and politics at annual meetings. During her presidency, Rita Mae Kelly appointed a committee, chaired by Susan Carroll, to advance the possibility of an Organized Section. Using the APSA Directory, Sue Carroll wrote–by mail in those days–to all scholars who listed women and politics as an interest and sent them a petition to sign, supporting the formation of an Organized Section on Women and Politics Research and pledging that they would join the Section if established. After collecting more than the requisite 100 signatures, the Caucus submitted the petitions to APSA and secured recognition of the Organized Section.

Since its creation the Caucus has worked to make visible the barriers that women face in the profession of political science and to devise creative strategies to eliminate those barriers.  Its most significant contributions include:

  • pressuring the APSA to adopt more open and inclusive procedures;
  • nominating women to serve on the APSA Council and Committees;
  • pressuring APSA to provide childcare at annual conferences;
  • documenting the systemic misrepresentation of women and politics in introductory texts;
  • recognizing texts that incorporate the latest research in women and politics field;
  • developing and securing the adoption of an APSA policy on sexual harassment;
  • organizing workshops on sexual harassment for department chairs;
  • petitioning APSA to recognize the Organized Section on Women and Politics Research;
  • fostering mentoring for women graduate students and junior faculty;
  • recognizing outstanding mentors in the discipline;
  • monitoring women’s progress in the profession;
  • recognizing departments that make the most impressive strides in recruiting and retaining women graduate students and faculty;
  • launching an initiative for women of color in the profession;
  • stimulating the APSA to publish a directory of women of color in political science;
  • bestowing the Alice Paul Award for the best dissertation proposal in political science;
  • monitoring the climate for women in political science;
  • identifying strategies to make the climate less “chilly”;
  • bestowing the Mary Lepper Award to honor women who pursue careers in public service;
  • hosting receptions and pre-conference workshops to facilitate professional networking;
  • creating a legal defense fund to provide resources to women in political science who are experiencing sex discrimination in employment.

To mark its 20th anniversary in 1989, Betty Glad developed a “Chronology: Important Developments of the WCPS, 1969-1979” that was presented at the Annual Meeting of the APSA on a panel sponsored by the Organized Section on Women and Politics Research entitled, “Organizing Academically.” In addition, eminent members of the Caucus published two articles in PS to provide information about the historical context of the discipline at the time of the Caucus’ founding and to discuss the continuing significance of the Women’s Caucus for Political Science.

To celebrate its 30th anniversary, the Executive Committee of the Caucus applied for a Centennial Research Grant from the APSA to provide funds to support preliminary historical research at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliff College, which houses the WCPS archive.  The historical research generated a “Chronology” documenting key issues debated by the Caucus since its creation, the range of stances taken on those issues, the strategies that emerged from Caucus debates, and the key participants in Caucus undertakings. 

By illuminating the multiple barriers that constrain women’s advancement in political science, WCPS members challenged the notion that the absence of women from male-dominant fields was due to the “distinct” preferences, commitments, and choices of men and women, They refuted claims that the underrepresentation of women in a wide range of fields reflected the “natural” aptitudes and interests of the different sexes and demonstrated that the imputed “natural” differences of women and men were the result, rather than the cause of gender segregation and sex discrimination.  Drawing insights from early studies of women’s “failure to progress” in organizations (Kanter 1977; Sandler 1992), Caucus members began to investigate the psychological, sociological, and structural factors that preclude women’s advancement in the discipline and made important contributions to the “theory of gendered organizations,” which posits not only that gender is present in institutional processes, practices, images, ideologies, and distributions of power, but also that organization practices play a central role in recreating gendered opportunities, gender hierarchy, gender symbols, and gendered identities in the late 20th century (Acker 1990, 1992; Cockburn 1991; Duerst-Lahti and Kelly 1995; Kenney 1996; Steinberg 1992). With the theorization of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989), Caucus members helped to illuminate and challenge the complex barriers to advancement in the profession created by the intricate interactions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, and disability.

In the 21st century, the Women’s Caucus championed methodological pluralism both through the Perestroika movement and the contestations over DA-RT (Data Access and Research Transparency). With the advent of information technologies, the Caucus created virtual mentoring programs for graduate students and junior faculty. To encourage media use of women’s political expertise, Caucus members helped organize and publicize an online data base, Women Also Know Stuff. The Caucus launched social media initiatives on Facebook and Twitter to facilitate communication and information sharing and initiated an oral history project to document the significant professional contributions of women in political science.  To deal with persistent sexual harassment and discrimination in the profession, the Caucus organized a preconference short course, #MeTooPoliSci: Addressing Gender Discrimination in Political Science, and worked with the APSA to organize the first “Bystander Training Workshops,” designed to provide strategies and examples of how meeting attendees can help ensure a culture of respect and professionalism, where the free exchange of ideas can flourish.

(Research conducted by Sally A. Stone at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard, which holds the WCPS archive)