See new website for RC 52 at www.ipsarc52.org.
Submitted by Jane Bayes
bayes@csun.edu
Because the business meetings for all three Research Committees were scheduled at the same time and because many scholars are members of more than one of the three research committees, we decided to hold the business committee meetings together. For those who are new to IPSA gender research committees, RC 7 is Gender and Development; RC 19 is Sex Roles and Politics; and RC 52 (new this year) is Gender, Globalization and Democratization.
Jane Bayes chaired the meeting. Judith Stiehm took notes.
The first task involved setting the Agenda for the meeting. It was MSP (Moved, Seconded and Passed) that the agenda for the meeting should be as follows:
(It should be noted that the pattern for all three research committees is for the current Vice Chair of the RC to become Chair for the next three years. Nominations therefore were for Vice Chair to serve for the next three years to 2006 and then to serve for the next three years 2006-2009 as Chair).
Yolanda Sadie of Rand Africaans University (email: ys@lw.rau.ac.za)was Co-chair of RC 07 from 2000 to 2003. She was confirmed as Chair of RC 07 for 2003-2006.
Laura Guzman Stein of the University of Costa Rica (lguzman@cariari.ucr.ac.cr) was nominated and elected as Vice Chair for 2003-2006. She will become Chair for 2006 – 2009.
Hem Lata Swarup of India (alwsdo@vsnl.net ) was elected newsletter editor for 2003-2006.
Renata Siemienska of Warsaw University in Poland (siemiens@optimus.waw.pl was elected Secretary/Treasurer for 2003-2006.
Marian Sawer of Australia National University (msawer@coombs.anu.edu.au) was elected to be Chair for 2003-2006.
Gunnel Gustafsson of Umea University, Sweden (gunnel.gustafsson@pol.umu.se) was elected Vice Chair for 2003- 2006. (Gunnel Gustafsson was Vice Chair from 2000- 2003. Because of her work schedule, she asked if she could postpone being Chair until 2006 – 2009. She was elected vice chair for 2003-2006.
Haesook Chae of Baldwin Wallace College in the United States (hchae@bw.edu)was elected Secretary
Lenita Friedenvall of Stockholm University in Sweden (lenita.freidenvall@statsvet.su.se) was elected Treasurer.
Marian Simms of the University of Otago in New Zealand (marian.simms@stonebow.otago.ac.nz) was elected Chair
Nancy Kwang Johnson of Windsor University in Canada (nkwangjo@uwindsor.ca) was elected Vice Chair
Lupna Nadvia of the University of Durban – Westville (lubna@mncb.co.29) was elected Secretary
Tsakani Ngomane
(tyn102@psu.edu) of Pennsylvania
State University USA and
Melissa Haussman
(mhaussma@suffolk.edu)
of Suffolk University, USA will share the responsibilities of
Newsletter editor.
Marian Sawer asked for the IPSA Gender and Politics prize (introduced by IPSA in 2000) to be discussed. She suggested that in future the IPSA organization should notify the prize winners that they had received a prize. In 2000, she and Karen Bird had won the prize but neither had been informed officially with a letter or any other sort of formal acknowledgment apart from the mention in the RC 19 newsletter.
Yvonne Galligan (who is on the Executive Council and will be the Program Chair for IPSA 2006 in Japan) noted that the IPSA Awards Committee wanted to encourage:
There is to be a facility for the electronic lodgment of papers presented at the 2003 Congress. Once this has happened everyone is encouraged to nominate themselves and others for the prize by contacting the IPSA Secretary-General, Guy Lachapelle, lachape@alcor.concordia.ca.
The discussion on this agenda item was principally about the lack of information at the IPSA meeting, in the IPSA program, and before the meeting about what was happening and when it was happening. Two elections were at issue – one for the representative of the research committees to the Executive Council, the other was the election of the Executive Council itself.
On Tuesday, 1 July at 5 pm, nominations closed for the representative of the RCs on the Executive Council. Many in the room had not learned about this until Tuesday evening after 5 pm at the reception for the journal. On Wednesday, 2 July, there was a meeting at 4 pm of RC chairs. It was at that meeting that the election for Rep to the Exec. Council from RC Chairs was to be held. Yolanda Cohen of Canada, the chair of RC 43 was at that meeting and offered herself as a candidate. She lost the election by 1 vote. The only reason that the chairs of RC 19, Laura Guzman Stein and RC 52, Jane Bayes heard of this is because Yvonne Galligan told Jane Bayes about it at a reception on Tuesday 1 July. Jane Bayes had made another arrangement at that time and Laura Guzman-Stein, Chair of RC 19 agreed to go to the RC Chairs meetings to represent RC 7, RC 19, and RC 52. The result of the election for RC Rep is that Michael Stein, who has already been the RC rep for one term, was reelected.
Concerning the vote for the Executive Council, Yvonne Galligan told Jane Bayes on Tuesday evening at a reception that she, Bayes had been selected by Dalchoong Kim, the President of IPSA, to be one of several RC chairs that would be eligible to vote for candidates to be on the Executive Council. (To be eligible to be on the Executive Council, one must be an official representative of a national political science association. In addition to members selected by their national associations as representatives, the President of IPSA gets to choose some representatives from the Research Committee Chairs to vote. ) This election was to take place on Thursday morning. In fact, the election didn't take place because there were only 15 candidates for 16 slots.
The general sentiment of the meeting was that IPSA is not very democratic and that a small clique can rule by not providing any information about meetings, deadlines, elections, nominations, and such. Democratising IPSA would be one of the best ways to increase women's participation.
Jane Bayes noted that IPSA has been giving $500 grants to research committees who apply for funds to establish a website. Bayes applied for a grant for RC 52 and was successful. Laura Guzman- Stein, however, also applied for RC 19 and was not successful. We do not think that RC 7 has applied for a website. The address for the RC 52 website is: www.IPSARC52.org. People who wish to join the Research Committee will be able to sign up on the website. Members will also be able to update addresses, phone, fax, and emails on this website. Keeping emails up-to-date is a major organizational problem for the Research Committees. We hope that this device will help. (Right now, the mailing list for all three RCs is combined into one.) This will also be a place where the newsletters can be posted. Marian Sawer and Yolanda Sadie, the new chairs of RC 7 and RC 19, have indicated that they are going to apply again for money to establish websites for RC7 and RC 19. We intend to have all three web pages linked to one another and to the IPSA web page. Until these other websites are established, the www.IPSARC52.org address will post information for all three RCs.
The original plan for panels for RC 7, RC 19, and RC 52 was quite extensive because the Program Chairs allowed RC 52 and RC 19 to schedule many more than the normally alloted two panels per Research Committee. However, the expense of coming to South Africa and the way travel grants were allocated meant that only two of our members received a travel grant. Upon perusing the travel grant awardees, it seemed that while almost all of those who received grants were women, and from the Majority world, those who received the grants were primarily on Main Theme panels. The travel grant fund was $60,000. Most grants were $1000 each, which means that there were about 60 grants given. One of our members received a $1000 grant, was not on a main theme panel, but was unable to come to Durban. We managed to negotiate with IPSA administrators to get $500 of that money to go to one of our African scholars who had applied originally and been denied. One other member of our gender RCs received a travel grant, but she was also on a main theme panel. The chairs of RC 19 and RC 7, one from Costa Rica and the other from India, were not given travel grants nor were any of the other scholars originally accepted for our RC 7, RC19, and RC 52 panels from Asia, Latin America, or Africa. This had an enormous impact on the number, quality, and content of our panels.
The program for the Durban IPSA 2003 Congress had two panels for RC 7. One was on Women and Political Organizations in Developing Countries. The other was on Women, Politics and Public Policies in Developing Countries. Only one of three scheduled panelists were able to attend in both of these panels.
RC 19 had two major themes. One was quotas with three panels and 6 papers and one panel on “Women and Politics: The Global State of the Field” with four papers. These sessions were very lively and well attended.
RC 52 had a major project on Women and Leadership with two panels and 6 papers and another panel on Exploring Transnational Feminisms with 3 papers. These panels were also well attended.