Theme Panel: Empowering Women: Special Challenges Gender Poses for Inclusion and Diversity within the Profession

Empowering Women: Special Challenges Gender Poses for Inclusion and Diversity within the Profession

Fri, September 4, 2:30 to 4:00pm, Hilton, Continental Ballroom 5
Session Description

This theme panel will discuss some of the special issues gender poses for academic professional life. These issues begin with the obvious: balancing career and family, sexual harassment and discrimination, changing university cultures and so on. They include more subtle aspects of gender, such as Empowering-Womenhow being accepted can result in extra service for women and the special challenges faced by intersectionality, especially for women of color. These topics strike at the very nature of our discipline, e.g., how the discipline may be co-opting women by allowing us equal space at the table but not addressing the masculinization of the discipline. And finally, we consider the more recent issues growing out of greater sensitivity to issues concerning the LGBT community, such as how transgender and sexuality are dealt with by university administrations – especially women’s colleges — and the profession. This panel is co-sponsored by the Women’s Caucus for Political Science and the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession.