Participation by Women in the 1991 APSA Meeting

Abstract

Three years ago, when the IPSA meeting was held in the United States at the time of the APSA meeting, I made a survey of participation by women in the programs of both meetings. Since 1972 I had monitored the participation by women at the American Association meetings. I had also from time to time made surveys of female participation at regional meetings of U.S. political science associations. With the approach of the 1991 IPSA meeting, I was asked by Carole Pateman, IPSA President for 1991-94, whether I'd be interested in undertaking another analysis of the participation of women in the IPSA Congress. I responded affirmatively contingent on my obtaining a copy of the final program. (I would not be at the Buenos Aires meeting.) I'd like to thank three of my colleagues, Ruben de Hoyos, David Chang, and Zillur Khan, for assistance in identifying the gender of IPSA participants. A quarter of the 1991 Fifteenth World Congress' Program Committee members (3 out of 12) were women. One consistent theme in my findings over the years is that the presence of women in gatekeeper positions (program committee members, section chairs, panel chairs) facilitates opportunity for participation by other women. Note that without the opportunities for participation provided by women for other women, the female contribution rate would have been much worse. Sections headed by women provided 70.6% of the female chairs at the IPSA Congress, 43.2% of the female paper givers, and 43.9% of the female discussants. Panels organized by women accounted for 28.9% of the female paper givers and 36.8% of the female discussants. Those panels which dealt with the status of women had 29.5% of the convention's female chairpersons, 26.3% of the female paper givers, and 29.8% of the female discussants. There were high and low points with regard to the visibility of women at the meeting. Only one woman participated (out of 14) in the two plenary sessions. The eight special panels on Latin American Democratization had women as only 13.3% (4 out of 30) paper givers and 16.7% (3 out of 18) discussants. Panels which had a favorable ratio of women to men included Public