Women's Studies Journals Research Articles

Gender presence on the editorial boards of journals in the Women's Studies subject category

In the scientific journals, being part of the editorial boards, including the journals' members and chief editors, involves holding positions of power and responsibility that affect the running of a journal. Until now, these positions have usually been held by men in most scientific disciplines. In this study, the gender composition in the editorial board members (EBMs) and editor-in-chief (ECs) of the 45 Women's Studies journals classified in the Journal Citation Report (JCR) was analyzed. The following indicators were calculated: the gender distribution of ECs and EBMs by journal, publisher, country, and quartile of the journal in the JCR; the geographical area of the members; and the gender distribution of the authors of papers grouped by journal, and geographical area. The gender distribution of the ECs was 92 % women, while that of the EBMs was 82.2 %. Regarding the articles and reviews published during 2019, a 72.4 % were signed by women. These results display an “inverted truncated pyramid”: the higher the level of decision-making positions is, the higher the percentage of women. On the other hand, the results by geographical area shows an Anglo-Saxon and European bias.

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...

Black Studies Scholarship and Its Coverage in Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science

This study analyzes the coverage of black studies journals as compared to women's studies journals in Web of Science, Academic Search Complete, and ArticleFirst. This study also examines black studies bibliographies and directories to identify journals that are suitable for inclusion in Journal Citation Reports and consequently Web of Science and evaluates seven black studies journals using the Thomson Reuters journal selection process.

Gendering Trans/National Historiographies: Feminists Rewriting Canadian History

address here the issue of gendering national historiographies in Canada by considering national narratives and counter narratives and the efforts to integrate more effectively gender, class, race, and sex in Canadian his- tory. I will accentuate the positive, but then comment on difficulties. Over the last thirty-five years, Canadian feminist historians—whether they have identified primarily as a women's or gender historian or some other type of historian—have been critical to the writing and teaching of far more inclusive, if uneven and contested, Canadian histories. Certainly, in contrast to Central Eastern Europe and Mexico, women's and, more recently, gender history in Canada has enjoyed a degree of on- going institutional support. There is an established and growing literature in Canadian women's history and a rapidly growing number of gendered histories—which include many studies that do not fit a homogenizing postmodern gender history label but are grounded analyses of gender relations and power within different social arenas. Specific figures are not available but qualitatively speaking, there are Canadian feminist historians in history departments, women and/or gender studies, and Canadian stud- ies programs across the country. There is no specific journal in Canadian women's and gender history but the established Canadian women's studies journals and history journals are receptive venues for publication. Faculty teach specific courses in these fields and integrate women and gender into their surveys and other courses. The Canadian Committee on Women's History (CCWH, founded in 1975) is the most successful of the societies affiliated with the Canadian Historical Association. Although the most prestigious awards and endowed chairs still go mostly to men, and men still outnumber women at the full professor rank, the greater influence of feminist historians within the wider profession is evident in their increased presence as journal and book series editors, the many scholarly prizes, the strong presence of women's and gender history on conference programs, and the growing number of their students who are in full-time positions. One can pursue a career in Canadian women's and gender history but most scholars simultaneously train in various fields. We are acutely aware of U.S. scholarly domination and that Canada is a rich but not particularly powerful country, and suspect that many of our U.S. colleagues regard Canada, apart from Quebec, as a similar but less interesting place than their own. My involvement in a transnational project on Italian women

International Network of Women's Studies Journals Members

The International Network of Women's Studies Journals was born during an informal meeting in 2000. The discussion made it clear that editors of women's studies journals faced many of the same challenges and had developed similar principles and priorities for their work. They also often found themselves isolated and badly in need of a forum in which they could discuss matters of common concern. For some months after this meeting we communicated by e-mail, and at the same time, recruited other editors of women's studies journals. In September 2001, we were able to take the project a step further with a workshop held in Halifax, Canada where 33 editors from 22 journals and seventeen countries were able to meet face-to-face and work together to develop their common agendas. From the beginning, we were aware of the imbalance between both the numbers and the resources of journals based in the and the and worked to ensure that the emerging Network would support us all equally. We began to develop various principles of recruitment so that we would not be overwhelmed by northern journals. For the moment we have frozen recruitment partly so that we can establish the network and partly so that we can develop a recruitment policy that achieves a balance between journals in the north and the south as well as between academicand community-based journals, so that the network can truly reflect the diversity of women's studies scholarship around the world. Marilyn Porter Editor, Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal Department of Sociology, Memorial University St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada

Lobbying for Transnational Feminism: Feminist Conversations Make Connections

The last fifty years have been a time of women's prolific academic writing and publishing. Women's publishing houses grew in numbers, as did an emergence of new Women's Studies and feminist journals. This article, based on the discussions held at the first meeting of the International Network of Women's Studies Journals, focuses on several challenges to the future of feminist journals and to feminism itself.

Women's Time, Women's Space: Reflections on the International Network of Women's Studies Journals Workshop, September 6?12, 2001

This article reflects on how globalization affects and transforms the issues of writing relevant to feminist journals. Taking its point of departure in a recent international women's studies journals workshop, the article examines the issues of feminist journal writing and publishing from two perspectives: the global perspective of networking, and the local, Nordic perspective of feminist politics and writing belonging to the author. Using Julia Kristeva's idea of feminist generations as signifying spaces for the understanding of woman, the article argues that the regenerative power of Women's Studies and feminist writing will arise from the diversity and inclusiveness of the women's movement itself. In the global context of feminist networking the generational differences in terms of e.g., the struggle for political rights or for academic recognition will be negotiated and brought to coexist. In this process journal writing can play a central part if it opens up to the diversity of creative, activist and academic writing.

International Network of Women's Studies Journals

International Network of Women's Studies Journals

International Network of Women's Studies Journals Members

International Network of Women's Studies Journals Members

Women's Time, Women's Space: Reflections on the International Network of Women's Studies Journals Workshop, September 6-12, 2001

Women's Time, Women's Space: Reflections on the International Network of Women's Studies Journals Workshop, September 6-12, 2001

ViVa: a bibliography of women's history in historical and women's studies journals

ViVa: a bibliography of women's history in historical and women's studies journals

Sources for Further Reading on Affirmative Action

* Nordquist, Joan, comp. Affirmative Action: A Bibliography. (Contemporary Social Issues, no. 41) Santa Cruz, CA: Reference and Research Services, 1996. This unannotated bibliography lists 753 items published since 1989, arranged in thirteen categories including Effects of A.A., Debate, and A.A., and Race and A.A. The items were chosen from 43 databases and printed indices. Formats include books, book chapters, government reports, theses and dissertations, and magazine and journal articles. They reflect an impressive array of voices and perspectives. Besides the variety of scholarly disciplines and professions, there are items representing southerners, Hispanics, liberals, conservatives, socialists, Amerasians, and women and African Americans in various occupations. * DeCoste, F. C., comp. Feminist Legal Literature: A Selective Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1991. Lists primarily English-language journal articles published between 1980 and 1990 that are of interest to feminists or written from a feminist perspective. See the section on (pages 301-3 10), as well as the many additional listings under in the Topical Index. * United States Law Week. Washington, DC: BNA (Bureau of National Affairs). This weekly survey of legal news, Supreme Court decisions, and context-and-analysis discussions has been published for 65 years. Consult the cumulative nine-month index in back of the binder to follow progress on * Women's Resources International. 1992 to present. Updated twice a year. Found mostly in academic libraries, this subscription-only, Web-based database is produced by NISC (National Information Services Corporation). A subject search on affirmative action conducted in July 1998, yielded more than 500 items: articles in women's studies journals, feminist magazines, and gender studies journals; reviews of new books; book citations; government reports; and more. The database is a composite of nine sources including Women Studies Abstracts (since 1984) and Women's Studies Database (since 1972). It provides detailed abstracts for items published in recent years and makes each item accessible through a large number of

COMMUNITY CARE: GENDER ISSUES

Development and debate within social work around community care have been prom inent since the Barclay Committee introduced the notion of community social work (Barclay, 1982). Commentary which emerged at the time recognized that Barclay's analysis of the role and task of social work depended upon a notion of community care which involved an idealized notion of community and informal carers, who would invariably be female family members (Allan, 1983). In many ways, the recommendations of the Barclay report have had little impact on the delivery of services in the community. Arrangements for community care prescribed in the White Paper (Department of Health, 1989) and implemented follow ing the 1990 National Health Service and Community Care Act were far more radical and far reaching than any envisaged in the Barclay Report, but the themes of commun ity and gender remain central to debates. More accurately, in social policy and soci ology the themes are not only central to debate, they are generating new discourses around citizenship, caring and community. However, social work and social care prac tice and theorizing are paying scant attention to these issues. This may be because the introduction of care management narrowed the focus of social work and social care practice on to individual needs which have to be assessed, codified and responded to. Expectations that needs will be met by 'purchaser' agencies commissioning ser vices from independent sector providers has led to the fragmentation of networks and communities, and to a reframing of the sector into the 'providers' competing for contracts, the conditions of which will be met by ungendered workers responding to the needs of anonymous users or customers who are defined by their packages of care rather than by the sum total of their experiences. Such an analysis might seem unduly harsh on those employed by statutory social services as either social workers or care managers working with community care policies. This critical commentary identifies that an arbitrary overview of journal art icles produces a spectrum of attention to gender in community care debates. At one end, community care is discussed with little or no acknowledgement that the world of service users, carers and providers is inhabited by women and men. At the other end, feminist theorizing in social policy and in the more generic women's studies journals has not only attended to issues of gender, but in doing so has sought to explicate meanings of both community care and constructions of gender. In focusing on three main themes (caring, service delivery and citizenship), it is argued that the initial focus was on, and involved claims making about, the experiences of women as carers. However, attention to the category 'woman' revealed different attention to the © 1998 British Association of Social Workers

Citations to Women's Studies Journals in Dissertations, 1989 and 1994

Citation analysis studies, using dissertations as the bibliographic source material, are often conducted for purposes of collection evaluation, collection management, and serials cancellation. Citations to women's studies journals in dissertations from the years 1989 and 1994 are here analyzed to determine which of these journals are being used for doctoral research and to find out whether their usage has increased, decreased, or remained static. Further study should be conducted to identify reasons for the fluctuation in the usage of particular women's studies journals.

Women's Studies Journals

A subset of the ongoing survey of faculty journal reading behavior at the University of New Hampshire, specifically women's studies, was used to study the journal collection that the library subscribes to and compare it to the titles that faculty say they read but to which the library does not subscribe. The data were further compared to titles listed in the indexes most frequently used by undergraduates, and with interlibrary loan data. The analysis reveals that it would not take a great deal of money to subscribe to the titles that the data indicates would enhance the collection. It is also possible that there are titles on the women's studies subscription lists that could be canceled to make funds for different journals available.

Twenty Years on: "A Literature of Their Own" Revisited

In 1965, when I began to do research for my Ph.D. dissertation on Victorian women writers, feminist criticism did not exist. Virginia Woolf's letters and diaries were scattered and unpublished . Scholars still called Elizabeth Gaskell Mrs. and Frances Burney Fanny. No one edited women's studies journals, or compiled bibliographies of women's writing. At the University of California at Davis, where I was studying, Theory was not even a shadow on the sunny horizon, and the New Criticism, F.R. Leavis, Northrop Frye, and seven kinds of ambiguity marked the boundaries of my critical sophistication. I had chosen my thesis topic in part out of lingering anger at my undergraduate college, Bryn Mawr, where English majors were required to read every tenth-rate male Romantic poet and Elizabethan dramatist, but virtually no women, and in part out of my own devotion to the Victorian women writers. Professional opportunities for academic women seemed so limited in the mid1960s that I felt paradoxically freed to write about the books I liked, rather than the ones most likely to get me a job. Gwendolyn Needham, my thesis adviser at the University of California at Davis, was sympathetic to my ideas and demanding about my scholarship, but my dissertation, The Double Standard: Criticism of Women Writers in Victorian Periodicals 1845-1880, was a hybrid, an attempt to write about women in an outmoded and inadequate critical vocabulary. Princeton University, where I actually wrote most of the dissertation as a faculty wife from 1966 on, did not hire women, but it had the fabulous Parrish collection of Victorian fiction, and all the Victorian journals were still on the open shelves, although only the first volume of the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals was available to help me identify anonymous reviewers. By 1970, when I got my Ph.D. and had my second child during the same month, the mood of the country had changed, and I had become an active member of the women's liberation movement. I had spent the summer of 1968 in Paris with my husband and daughter, living in a communal household of French, English, and American students and professors in the aftermath of the politically transformative ve'nements of May, and I had been involved with the anti-war protests at the MLA that December. In Princeton, a branch of N.O.W. opened in 1969, and I joined immediately. There were only seventeen of us at the beginning, but we were full of energy and organized a daycare center (still running), consciousness-raising groups, a newsletter which I edited, a booklet on sex-stereotyping in children's books, a state conference on women's rights, and trips to meetings with groups in New York and Philadelphia. By 1970, I was president of the group, had started writing for Radical Feminism, had joined the advisory board of the Feminist Press, and was editing an anthology called Women's Liberation and Literature. At Douglass College, the women's college of Rutgers

Indexing Adequacy and Interdisciplinary Journals: The Case of Women's Studies

This paper examines access to women's studies journals through standard indexes and abstracts. Reliability of coverage is important for women's studies scholars and possibly other young interdisciplines. Articles from eighty-six journals were searched in online and print indexes. Access to each journal was evaluated as adequate or inadequate based on fixed criteria. Over 60 percent of the journals were inadequately indexed. These titles should be added to appropriate indexes; a list of specific recommendations is appended (see Appendix A). Parallel research in similar fields may allow librarians to graw generalizations about access to interdisciplinary materials

Women's History and Family History: Fruitful Collaboration or Missed Connection?

Although the intellectual projects of women's history and family his tory have been diverse, there have been some fruitful interrelationships as well as continuing disagreements about conceptualization and method. A systematic exami nation was carried out of the content of articlespublished in the period 1976-1985 in the Journal of Family History, in three self-defined feminist or women's studies journals, and in four general historical journals. Definitions of the two fields were derived from this exercise. These show that women's history, unlike family history, is movement history; it is closer to more central historical fields in the kinds of questions it asks and in method. Because of its role in placing women as a group into a context of family relationships, family history has an important contribution to make to women's history. To the extent that diversity among women, institutions and informal politics become more central to women's history, it will come closer to family history.

Women Studies: A Reference Collection for Public Libraries

The past decade has seen an enormous amount of publication and research focusing on the concerns of women. As feminist scholarship expands, publication about women and women's issues will continue. So much has been produced that it is nearly impossible to keep abreast of it all. And it is equally difficult to adequately evaluate these publications. Because the literature on women now is so vast, a brief list of essential resources of interest to public libraries is needed. Rather than attempt to name many specific titles for a core circulating collection I have concentrated on very basic reference tools. Women's studies journals are not included. See Serials Review 5:4.