International Women's Year Research Articles

Commemoration: “The National Women’s Conference: Taking 1977 into the 21st Century”

Introduction On November 6-7 2017, the University of Houston welcomed a commemorative conference sponsored by the Center for Public History of the University of Houston to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the International Women’s Year (IWY) Conference of 1977: “The National Women’s Conference: Taking 1977 into the 21st Century”. Activists, artists, and researchers from all over the country gathered to foster a discussion on this pivotal 1977 event organized by American feminists at a ti...

Women's World Banking: The Early Years

This case serves multiple teaching purposes. It can be used effectively in an entrepreneurship course or for a discussion of entrepreneurship in the context of nonprofit organizations. Women's World Banking (WWB) is a unique worldwide financial institution that serves as an international model for the delivery of credit and management expertise to microbusinesses in less-developed economies. WWB represents the breakthrough innovation in market creation, product development, and new organizational forms discussed by Joseph Schumpeter (an economist who studied entrepreneurship). The organization is a network that operates with autonomous affiliates connected in a global web. The case focuses on the creation of the organization and its founding entrepreneur. It is a useful tool for discussing the characteristics of entrepreneurial founders, innovation, and growth challenges in the early years. It can be used effectively with the Harvard Business School case on Women's World Banking to discuss leadership succession and further challenges of rapid growth. Excerpt UVA-ENT-0025 WOMEN'S WORLD BANKING: THE EARLY YEARS It was January 1990. Michaela Walsh had to make a major decision, whether to end her tenure as President of Women's World Banking (WWB) or to stay on for a few more years. She had repeatedly talked with members of the board of directors about leaving in the fall of 1990, but no one seemed to believe her. On the one hand, she had accomplished her goalCto establish an internationally respected and innovative financial institution. In many ways, Walsh's vision for WWB had been realized: the organization had grown to 44 affiliates in 35 countries through which $ 11.6 million had flowed to entrepreneurs in less economically developed areas around the world who otherwise might never have started or built their own businesses. On the other hand, was WWB on sufficiently stable foundations? Who should the successor be? Walsh knew the organization's future depended on its capacity to strengthen and expand its management and services. Walsh's thoughts shifted to plans for her next innovative project, the creation of a venture-capital fund. The excitement of this new challenge was as compelling as the demands of WWB in its early years had once been. She knew she had to make a decision because discussion of a successor would need to take place at the upcoming board meeting in April. Beginnings The seeds for WWB were planted in 1975 at the United Nations International Women's Year Conference in Mexico City. The conference, which launched the United Nations Decade for Women stressed the high cost of traditional cultural practices and legal and financial requirements that undermined women's active participation in the economic mainstream. Walsh attended the conference as an observer at the request of her employer at the time, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. A group of fifteen delegates—women from diverse cultures—met to discuss obstacles to women's participation in business and agreed that access to credit and business training were major hurdles all over the world. This group resolved to create a vehicle to support women who had entrepreneurial qualities but who lacked the capital and management skills to build viable businesses. These delegates became the nucleus for Women's World Banking. Start-Up . . .

Women are Transmogrifying: History, Feminism and Australian Museums, 1975–2001

ABSTRACT1975 was United Nations International Women's Year. It was also the year of the Pigott Report, Museums in Australia. This report identified and encouraged the rise of history and its move into museums, which was then facilitated by state sesquicentennials and the Bicentennial of 1988. The period between 1975 and the opening of the National Museum of Australia in 2001 saw a major shift in the place of history in the public culture of Australia. This article traces the relationship between the rise of history, more specifically social history, in museums and the impact of feminism and feminists on those cultural institutions. It documents a period of activism and change, as debate raged about whose history was represented in exhibitions and collections and the field was transformed by the entry of professional history curators. The late 1980s and first half of the 1990s appear to have been a high point of public discourse about women, history and representation within the museum sector. However, feminism and feminists have had a significant impact on the practice of social history curatorship in Australia, and, in turn, on Australian public culture.

TOWARDS AN ISLAMIC FRAMEWORK OF WOMEN EMPOWERMENT

It is worth recalling that the globalization of gender equality started quite recently with the United Nation declaring 1975 as the International Women's Year at the world conference held at Mexico City. Sequel to this the decade 1976-1985, was declared the Decade for Women, during which international agencies as well as some governments focused attention on what came to be popularly referred to as 'women issue." After that the second UN conference on women was held in Copenhagen in 1980. The decade as crowned by Nairobi Conference on Women in 1985. Then, the Cairo International Conference on population and development in 1994 came which seemed to focus on independence and autonomy of women even with a family context. Indeed several conferences, conventions and activities of a host of international agencies took place during the 1985-1994 to prepare the grounds and minds for the famous Beijing Conference in 1995. It was in Beijing, more than anywhere, where the issue of empowerment was focused and made such an indispensable condition for world progress and development.

The Diplomatic History of Global Women's Rights: The British Foreign Office and International Women's Year, 1975

This article explores the British Foreign Office's engagement with International Women's Year (IWY) in 1975, an event which has been viewed as a milestone in histories of transnational feminist activism, and a moment when the status of women became part of mainstream thinking about development, human rights and global security. Much of the existing literature on IWY dwells on the role of non-state actors, especially women's NGOs active at the United Nations (UN). In contrast, this article shifts the lens on to state actors, in order to ask what role diplomats, politicians and ministries of foreign affairs played in the construction of ‘women’ as a global political subject in the late twentieth century. It finds that the Foreign Office's reading of IWY was refracted through the prism of Cold War power politics and postcolonial struggles. Gender politics was conceptualised as essentially a proxy for these larger ideological battles, an approach dating back to Britain's semi-clandestine anti-communist propaganda campaigns after the Second World War. British women's NGOs, by contrast, insisted that women's activism should be accorded an independent dynamic of its own, imagining the possibilities of gender-based solidarities operating across political, social and economic divides. IWY and the subsequent UN Decade for Women tempered this idealism and set the international women's movement on a political learning curve. But, as the article will suggest, the 1970s was also a moment when state elites were forced to confront a new kind of global politics, the repercussions of which for the conduct of foreign policy and diplomatic relations only further fine-grained archival research can fully reveal.

We Intend to Move Together

The story of women's participation in the ecumenical movement can indeed be described as a pilgrimage of justice and peace, as well as a story of mission. From the earliest days of ecumenism--whether in its formal, institutional structures or in the lively work and witness of local communities around the globe--questions about women's role in the churches have been intertwined with questions about the social, economic, and cultural forces that affect women's lives. With changing emphasis shaped by particular time and context, the consistent thread in the journey has been a will to respond to the call to participate in God's mission in the world in ways that contribute to wholeness and fullness of life for all God's people and to the flourishing of creation. While not always named or recognized as such, gender justice has been at the heart of this journey. Consistently, women have been seeking ecumenical space in which the diverse experiences of women, their voices and visions, and the conditions of injustice and oppression that have been the lot of many women around the world can be lifted up and addressed. And in that space, women have claimed their own agency of resistance and transformation. The story of women's work and witness in the World Council of Churches (WCC) is only one facet of this journey. Each church family and world communion could tell its own story and each local context has had times of ecumenical witness and action--often connected with global programs, but also representative of particular local needs and issues. Nevertheless, the WCC has played a key role since its inception in linking ecumenical women in local contexts with international networks and global currents. A review of WCC programmes and structures committed to the journey of gender justice reveals both the rich heritage of ecumenical women's work and the challenges and gaps that continue. Affirming the "service and status of women" In the 1940s, when the WCC was still in the process of formation, Twila Cavert, a Young Women Christian Association (YWCA) leader from the US, together with other women, gained the support of WCC leaders for a pre-assembly women's meeting and a survey of woman leaders worldwide about their vision for the work of women in the whole church. (1) The questionnaire netted detailed replies from women in 58 countries, and prompted the Reformed Church of France to request that the question of women's role be placed on the agenda of the first assembly in Amsterdam in 1948. There, the study report on "The Life and Work of Women in the Church" was received and its recommendation for a permanent commission to undertake ecumenical inquiry into issues related to women's ministry was accepted. Susannah Herzel writes of the significance of these first steps for the participation of women in churches around the world: "So the infiltration had begun. Member churches of the ecumenical movement had agents of change in their midst, and the troubling questions would be increasingly difficult to ignore." (2) The material generated by the study was developed into a book by Kathleen Bliss, published in 1952 as The Service and Status of Women in the Churches, (3) Interpreting the reports through the framework of women's various types of service--voluntary, full-time and professional, ordained, and participation in church governance--Bliss examined the contributions and limitations of each area of endeavour. She asked whether the churches were making the best use of women's gifts, or helping women to participate as Christians in the changes taking place in society as a whole. Writing during a period of flux in women's public and private roles, Bliss urged churches to recognize the implications of changing family and employment patterns. She asserted that "what is needed is ... an imaginative act of understanding ... [of the] ... revolutionary change in the place of women in society." (4) These reports from around the world provided evidence that responses to women's ministries ranged from indifference to active opposition. …

“A Rainbow of Women”: Diversity and Unity at the 1977 U.S. International Women’s Year Conference

The 1977 National Women’s Conference in Observance of International Women’s Year (IWY) was in many ways the zenith of U.S. second-wave feminism, producing a Plan of Action that remains a comprehensive statement of the movement’s ideals. It also played an important role in the growth and visibility of anti-feminist activism. The conference accomplished meaningful inclusion of women of color and lesbians, both as participants and as authors of the Plan. Notably, this diverse group of over 2,000 delegates agreed on twenty-six of twenty-seven proposed planks, presenting the U.S. public with an image of feminist unity. In this article the authors examine the factors that contributed to both the diversity of the conference and its apparent unity. They argue that two factors were particularly important. First, the threat of anti-feminists motivated lesbian participation and contributed to strategies that minimized dissent among supporters of women’s rights. Second, many of the Washington feminists in leadership positions were committed to inclusion and worked to achieve a diverse conference. The article provides important historical detail about the politics of inclusion within second-wave feminism in the late 1970s.

Edna Ryan and Leadership: The Womens Trade Union Commission, 1976

At the end of 1975 my mother, Edna Ryan, along with a small group of trade union women, received funds from the National Advisory Committee of International Womens Year, to establish a Womens Trade Union Commission (WTUC). Edna had developed the idea for the commission while conducting research for her book, Gentle Invaders, published earlier that year. She believed that the WTUC could be a first step towards resolving the long stand-off between feminists and the labour movement. This article draws on Edna's dairies and papers to explore and unravel her contradictory leadership role in the WTUC over its 12 months of life in 1976. She was neither a paid official nor an active trade unionist in the WTUC. Rather, as an active member of the management committee, she relied on her previous experiences as a trade union activist and her membership of the Labor Party and the Womens Electoral Lobby (WEL), to drive the WTUC to become a change agent for trade union women. By the end of 1976, the WTUC had engineered a major shift in trade union attitudes towards women that would have far reaching benefits over the following decade. The article finds that, while Edna did indeed have important skills, she was by no means a one-woman band. She was a catalyst. She seized the opportunities created by second wave feminism to press for change for women trade unionists.

Empires of Information: Media Strategies for the 1975 International Women's Year

The 1975 United Nations International Women's Year (IWY) Conference in Mexico City took place amid heightened attention to media coverage as a human rights issue as feminists highlighted the ways popular cultural representations limited women's opportunities. Third World leaders objected to depictions of postcolonial nations as spaces of endemic violence and ungovernability, and journalists decried efforts to censor their reporting. This article draws on political theorist Nancy Fraser's concept of contestatory counterpublics, particularly her attention to power differentials in spaces of apparent equality. At the IWY meetings, participants and journalists alike deliberated over the relative importance of cultural and structural factors and the proper balance between press freedoms and ethical reporting. Both official organizers and energetic activists endeavored to shape media coverage of IWY, but conflicts arose over where the dividing line lay between politics and women's issues—or between ideological propaganda and disinterested information.

Guest Editorial Note: Human Rights, Global Conferences, and the Making of Postwar Transnational Feminisms

Guest Editorial Note:Human Rights, Global Conferences, and the Making of Postwar Transnational Feminisms Jean H. Quataert and Benita Roth, Special Issue Co-editors This note introduces our special issue on "Human Rights, Global Conferences, and the Making of Postwar Transnational Feminisms." In it we try to capture part of the contentious histories of feminist activism unfolding in the period after World War II. We focus specifically on the meanings for feminist thought and action worldwide of the UN sponsored world conferences on women and related international gatherings. Prodded by international and national women's non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and facilitated through the UN's Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the United Nations General Assembly declared 1975 "International Women's Year" (IWY) and named 1975-1985 as the "Decade for Women." The UN sponsored three large international conferences beginning with Mexico City (1975), followed by Copenhagen (1980), and Nairobi (1985); these gatherings generated so much momentum that a Fourth Women's World Conference was held in Beijing in 1995. Other UN conferences, including the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa in September 2001, also featured in this issue, allowed feminist antiracist activists around the globe to come together to discuss understandings of the intersections of gender and racial oppression.1 These conferences took place against the backdrop of a number of formative geopolitical developments: Cold War tensions and their subsequent easing after 1989; decolonization struggles and emerging nations' insistent drive for equitable economic development amid the continuing inequalities of the global economic and political order; the rise of neo-liberal economic agendas; women's increased participation globally in the formal labor sector; transnational organizing for lesbian and gay rights; and a concomitant, significant rise by the mid-1990s of conservative religious and fundamentalist groups around the world. These geopolitical and cultural factors sometimes sustained and sometimes constrained the ability of diverse feminist [End Page 11] and women's activists to form alliances, set new international and national agendas, and see to their implementation on the ground. Until very recently, much of what has appeared about the UN conferences in journal literature has been in the form of reports on participants' experiences nearly exclusively in women's studies journals.2 Since 1996, it has mainly been feminist sociologists and political scientists charting the effects of the UN conferences on feminist and women's organizing around the globe.3 There also is a vibrant literature assessing the impact of women's [End Page 12] world conferences on feminist contributions to development discourses, particularly those efforts challenging the neo-liberal assumptions that drive the giving of mainstream development aid. These debates stress ongoing unequal macro-economic contexts.4 [End Page 13] The topic of the UN meetings, with a few exceptions, has been left largely unexamined in women's history despite its undeniable importance for shaping the vibrant new patterns of transnational advocacy networks that emerged during the Decade.5 The same time frame saw a huge growth of feminist NGOs worldwide; the invention of innovative gatherings like the World Social Forums, which feature impressive participation by feminist activists; and the creation of UN People's Forums, which gave voice and visibility to NGOs as well as to local leaders and activists generally marginal to governmental authority and power. Strikingly, however, the Journal of Women's History paid scant scholarly attention to these conferences. One short report by Peggy Simpson, "Beijing in Perspective," appeared in the Spring 1996 issue; Simpson was an acclaimed Associated Press journalist whose personal experiences are part of the larger narrative presented here. In 1997, the JWH published Wang Zheng's article "Maoism, Feminism, and the UN Conference on Women: Women's Studies Research in Contemporary China."6 The relative neglect by historians of the more recent interface of global and local feminist organizing lies, perhaps, in the challenges for historical research of engaging contemporary themes and issues. The growing interest among women's historians in human rights histories and comparative studies in women's movements thus reflects a major conceptual shift, which promises a turn to transnational methodologies, interregional connections, and global historical perspectives. As we hope to show through the articles in...

Battling “Big Sister” Government: Hoosier Women and the Politics of International Women’s Year

The national celebration of International Women’s Year (IWY) in 1977 amounted to a showdown between the two grassroots, political behemoths of the late twentieth century, the conservative and the second wave feminist movements. At the state level, IWY events provided the perfect platform for Hoosier women to protest the political direction of their country, specifically gender sameness and the growth of distant governments, which worked in tandem to create a homogenized, global community of which they wanted no part. This article uncovers the voices of grassroots Hoosier women and details their protest of IWY as part of an attempt by the United Nations to institute one-world government.

Shaping a global women's agenda: women's NGOs and global governance, 1925-85

List of photos Acknowledgements Introduction Part I. Women's international organisations and the politics of disarmament, 1925-40 1. World War I and its aftermath 2. Working for disarmament and peace 3. The peace is threatened 4. Hopes dim Part II. Women's international organisations and the politics of war and cold war 5. World War II activism and service 6. Forging a role at the United Nations 7. Allied post-war reconstruction projects 8. The cold war Part III. Women's international organisations and the politics of the UN Decade for Women 9. Transforming the United Nations development agenda 10. International Women's Year 11. Taking 'women' seriously at the United Nations 12. Concluding the UN Decade for Women Conclusion Appendix: International Women's Year tribune schedule of events Select bibliography Index

Cold War Conflicts and Cheap Cabaret: Sexual Politics at the 1975 United Nations International Women's Year Conference

In a widely read memoir, a Bolivian union militant signals the moment of her alienation from the nongovernmental organisation tribune of the United Nations’ 1975 International Women's Year (IWY) conference in Mexico City by describing her dismay when she encountered a group of women clamouring for sexual rights, reiterating a persistent narrative about a trade‐off between sexual rights and other forms of social justice. Drawing on feminist performance theory, this article examines the political performances of three central figures at IWY – Domitila Barrios de Chungara, Betty Friedan and Mexican theatre director Nancy Cárdenas – to explore the ways that political performances rooted in distinct scenarios, or historical contexts, generated a confusion of meanings around campaigns for sexual rights.

Female Participation in Information, Communication and Technological Development in Nigeria: Implications for Early Career Guidance

KEYWORDS Participation. Development. Communication. Information. Career Guidance ABSTRACT The issue of women and their participation in development has been on the international agenda since the Paris peace conference of 1919, sequel to the universal declaration of human rights in 1948 and international women's year in 1975. This study delved into the level of participation of women in the technological development of their country,Nigeria. A cross section of working class women in various establishments in Benin City, South-South Nigeria was sampled. Altogether, two hundred (200) women were randomly selected for the study. A questionnaire tagged Female Participation in Technological Development was administered to the women. Their responses were collated and analyzed using frequency count and simple percentages. In addition, focus group discussions were conducted with selected groups of working class women. Content analysis was used to analyze the data. Data analysis showed that quite a large number of women (80%) were interested in ICT but only 60.67% had access to it. The constraints were time, gender roles, work-life imbalance and inadequate training and empowerment. There is need to develop a training program for the interested women and enlightenment seminars for other women and prospective working class females in the tertiary and secondary educational institutions. This is to ensure full participation of women in ICT, which will in turn ensure improved technological development in Nigeria as a country in a globalize world.

Integration of Women in Industrial Development—the Fate of the Issue in the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, UNIDO

The attitude of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) towards the integration of women in its activities is described, from the International Women's Year in 1975 to the present: the creation of a focal point for women in 1984 and a unit for the integration of women in industrial development in 1986, the unit's range of activities, and its subsequent abolition as a consequence of UNIDO's financial crises and restructuring; finally the situation in early 2009.

Gender in the Malestream—Acceptance of Women and Gender Equality in Different United Nations Organisations

The author outlines changing approaches to women's issues and gender equality in the UN system both before and since the International Women's Year in 1975 and describes how different UN organisations followed up the recommendations made by the large global women's conferences. Besides the UN itself the focus is on the large specialised agencies: FAO, ILO, UNESCO and WHO, two technical agencies in male-dominated areas—IMO and UNIDO—and two funds specifically related to women and children—UNFPA and UNICEF—during the period up to the end of the 20th century. The recommendations adopted by the women's conferences required a rethinking and a reorganisation of work in the UN organisations, but the follow-up encountered bureaucratic problems and resistance to change as well as to gender equality. Although some progress was made—more in some organisations than in others—implementation of the recommendations was slow, cumbersome and incomplete.

‘Ocker Sheilahs’ and ‘Bloody Barmaids’: Caddie, biography and gender history in 1970s Australian historical film

This essay argues for the value of historical analysis for film criticism, and the value of film analysis for historical understanding, through exploration of the popular Australian film ‘Caddie’, released commercially in 1976. It takes issue with the dismissal by film scholars of Caddie as a class narrative of downward mobility transcribed by the politics of International Women's Year. It demonstrates that the film adhered to the original book's insights into gender politics, Australia's drinking culture, and women's economic and social circumstances, and argues that the film was solidly grounded in knowledge of Australian working women's history. It concludes that historical film and film biography—in their subject matter, their own histories of creation, and in their representation of the past to a non‐academic audience—offer historians an opportunity for exploring themes and issues that enrich and deepen historical knowledge. That knowledge in turn enriches film criticism.

Mainstreaming gender, democratizing the state?: institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women

Mainstreaming Gender, Democratizing the State reflects the commitment of the United Nations to promote mechanisms that aim to achieve equality between women and men. It identifies institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women including national machineries as one of twelve critical areas of concern. National machineries are the primary institutional mechanism entrusted with the implementation of the strategic objectives contained in the goals for equity set by the United Nations. The mandate of these national institutions has evolved from promoting women-specific projects to ensuring that equality concerns are integrated into all government legislation, policy, programs, and budgetary processes. National machineries face serious constraints in fulfilling their mandate including; inadequate financial and human resources, relatively powerless locations within government structures, and insufficient linkage with civil societies. This volume illustrates that the ability of UN-member states to subscribe to the agenda of equality between women and men has been significantly enhanced by the creation of these national-level institutions. National machineries for the advancement of women were initially conceived at the World Conference on the International Women's Year held in Mexico City in 1975 and since then have been considered systematically by world conferences on women in Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985), and Beijing (1995), as well as the sessions of the Commission on the Status of Women. The twenty-third special session of the General Assembly in Beijing reiterated the significant role that national machineries play in promoting equality between women and men, gender mainstreaming, and monitoring of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action as well as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. There has been a long-standing need for a volume to bring together discussions on theory and practice as well as comparative analysis and in-depth case studies of national machineries; this book responds to that need.

Moving from the Margin and Dissolving Boundaries: Indian and British Women

The pitfalls and tensions of historicizing one's scholarship and personal life were made dramatically apparent to me a few years ago when my department interviewed a candidate for a position in U.S. women's history whose research examined the ideology of second-wave feminism about sexuality. Listening to an intellectually complex presentation of the central themes and arguments of her forthcoming book which focused on the 1970s and 1980s had me, a self-identified second-wave feminist, saying that while some of her conclusions were valid, others certainly did not reflect what my friends and I were thinking or doing in Cincinnati. The relativity of historical reconstructions and individual memory (as well as the fallibility of human memory) reinforces that the following narrative is only one small tile in a complex mosaic that seeks to portray the evolu-tion of women's and gender history in the context of South Asia. These scattered reflections are meant to stimulate research that will produce multiple narratives—narratives that more precisely and fully document the entangled and diverse nature of the energetic intellectual initiative begun during the 1970s to add women and stir into the mixture of South Asian historiography. When we started to develop a women's studies program at the University of Cincinnati in 1974, Elizabeth Sato and I, with no formal education in women's history, volunteered to develop a course on the history of women in Asia. Finding little published research on Asian women, we assigned many primary sources, including memoirs of Western women in Asia who chronicled their self-proclaimed success to "uplift" Asian women. I was intrigued by the fact that, at the first United Nations International Women's Year Conference in Mexico City in 1975, many women activists from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East expressed a deep distrust of and even outright hostility toward Western feminism. Their main criticism was the irrelevance of many Western feminist goals and ideologies for women living in non-Western countries, many of which had experienced European and American formal or informal colonial rule for centuries or at least decades. Moreover, the emergent field of women's history concentrated on elite white women in the United States and tended to homogenize women from beyond the United States [End Page 179] and Europe as some kind of exotic other. For example, at the Third Berkshire Conference on the History of Women in 1976, there was only one panel on "non-Western" women, which lumped together papers on women in Africa, India, and Latin America.

W(h)ither psychology of women? Current trends and future directions for the section on women and psychology.

Abstract This paper focuses on two areas critical to the reassessment of the Section on Women and Psychology (SWAP). In the first half, the following question is addressed: Is SWAP still needed? Relying on Canadian data where possible, a mixed pattern of gains and impasses is discussed in relation to the following areas: women's curtailed advancement; curricular neglect of psychology of women; the (il)legitimate status of psychology of women and feminism; the rhetoric of equality, progress and individualism; and the (re)scientizing of psychology. The second half of the paper centres on specific pragmatic strategies for increasing SWAP's membership and raising its national and international profile. Strategies discussed include expanding publication outlets, establishing awards to increase public recognition of women's contributions to the discipline, and expanding intradisciplinary efforts through jointly sponsored swAP symposia and institutes. In 1981, Pyke and Stark-Adamec concluded their historical overview of the evolution of Canadian psychology of women as a disciplinary focus and the Canadian Psychological Association's (CPA) recognition and (delimited) integration of a feminist perspective with this provocative interrogative: Has the point been made? Can we now proceed toward the development of a psychology that has relevance for both sexes, that refrains from arbitrarily limiting human potential through the rigid endorsement of sex-role standards, that is free from both androcentric and gynocentric biases, and that deals with its disciples, male and female, in an equitable, non-discriminatory fashion? (p. 50) This paper revisits these questions and asks whether sufficient progress has been made to warrant jettisoning a separate CPA section devoted to promoting research, teaching and practice in psychology of women. I argue that although many inroads have been made since the inception of the Section on Women and Psychology (swAP) in 1976, there are several recent trends that suggest a less than progressive narrative of psychology of women. Five such trends are briefly discussed: women's curtailed advancement; curricular neglect of psychology of women; the (il)legitimate status of psychology of women and feminism; the rhetoric of equality, progress, and individualism; and the (re)scientizing of psychology. Three pragmatic strategies are also proposed for increasing swAP's membership and raising its national and international profile. HISTORICAL MARKERS Comprehensive accounts of the inception of swAP and the development of Canadian feminist psychology have been provided elsewhere (see Pyke, this issue; Pyke & Greenglass, 1997; Pyke & Stark-Adamec, 1981). Briefly, five key events precipitated and surrounded the founding of SWAP. First, in response to a consistent rejection of convention submissions pertaining to psychology of women, six York University feminist psychologists (graduate students and faculty) organized an underground independent symposium in conjunction with the 1972 CPA annual convention. Despite CPA's active opposition, the symposium was extremely well attended and received considerable attention from the media. Second, CPA formed a Task Force on the Status of Women in Canadian Psychology to commemorate the designation of 1975 as International Women's Year by the United Nations. By April 1976, the Task Force submitted almost 100 recommendations to the CPA Board of Directors. Third, the CPA Interest Group on Women and Psychology (IGWAP) was established, prompted by one of the recommendations of the Task Force. Fourth, IGWAP initiated the Institute on Women and Psychology in 1978. This one-- day preconvention conference continues to generate revenue that is re-invested in SWAP's budget. And finally, in 1977, the Coordinating Committee on the Status of Women, later renamed the Status of Women Committee (SWC), became a standing committee of the CPA Board of Directors. …