Phenomenon of the Seventies: The Women's Caucuses

Abstract

Though whatever may be written now concerning women's caucuses will be out of date by the time of publication, it is still useful to mention their origins, evolution, and mission. Before there were women's caucuses, there were scientific societies. As in Europe, the learned scientific societies in the United States began as fraternities of men in a particular discipline, who joined them to present their discoveries and data to their peers, to mingle in a special world, and to acquire reputation and prestige. As women entered the scientific professions, a few were elected to membership, but they remained outside the inner echelons of the executive councils, standing committees, and editorial boards of the societies. The activist women's caucuses emerged in the seventies as an outgrowth of the women's movement of the sixties (see table 1). One might argue that the women's caucus predated the seventies, because the American Chemical Society has had a Women Chemists Committee for just over fifty years. However, before the seventies, this committee did not resemble a women's advocacy caucus in the modern feminist sense but described itself as a women's service committee, with limited objectives largely determined by the parent organization. Similarly, the Society of Women Engineers (1950) and the Society of Women Geographers (1925) brought women scientists together but did not address the problems causing their isolation. One of the first of the scientific women's activist organizations was the Association for Women in Science (AWIS). From the start, it de-