The IPSA Congress in Durban, South Africa went quite well although we missed so many of you who were not able to come. The chairs of the Research Committees on Gender and Development (Pam Rajput), Sex Roles and Politics (Laura Guzman-Stein) and I as chair of RC 52 on Gender, Globalization and Democratization, worked hard to get a wide representation of scholars from around the world only to be thwarted by the lack of funding. IPSA had $60,000 to spend on travel grants. Over half of these went to women scholars from non industrial countries, but our research committees received only two travel grants. This was very disappointing. Nevertheless, we hope that those of you who took the time and effort to apply, but were not able to come, will continue to be interested in the work of our gender oriented research committees. It is for that reason that I am writing this report.
This IPSA Congress was different from previous ones in that space was not a problem. Normally, each research committee is allowed two panels (8 papers maximum). This time we were allowed to have as many panels as we wanted. The problem was that not very many people could get to the meeting. This time, RC 52 had three panels (two on women and leadership around the world and one on exploring transnational feminisms); RC 19 had four panels ( three on quotas and women's representation and one on the state of gender and politics as a field in the discipline), and RC 7 had two panels (women, politics, and public policies in developing countries and women and political organizations in developing countries).
Altogether, we had 15 people present papers on these panels with another 23 who were scheduled to come at one time or another who were unable to make it. Leadership for Women around the World; Quotas and their Consequences, and the State of the Discipline for Gender and Politics were the three major themes where participation was the strongest. We had 58 people attend our sessions. Seventeen were from Africa (of those 9 were from South Africa) ; fourteen were from Western Europe; eleven were from the US; 5 from Canada; three from Australia; three from India; 1 from Poland, 1 from Costa Rica, 1 from Mexico; 2 NA.
Please see the new website at www.ipsarc52.org for more information.