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Our Mission
- Foster activism FOR women (related to the scholarship/expertise/skills we can offer)
- Increase organizational inclusiveness and ACTIVE participation
- Build strength, increase influence in the discipline and on campuses for feminist scholarship and activism
- to be feasible and considered an item to vote to spend money on, an interested group or individual will have to volunteer to develop a proposal that outlines:
- who would be eligible to receive the funds and how would they demonstrate merit
- who would be involved in evaluating the merits of the candidates or projects and making awards (and how these evaluators would be chosen)
- how much would it realistically cost (and what comparative data on similar programs might there be that would show that this is a realistic estimate)
- The list of possible projects that could be developed into proposals is not exhaustive, but it represents brainstorming sessions held in Summer 2000 and Winter 2001 meetings
- Each goal area needs a volunteer individual (chair) and group (committee) to serve as an ad hoc coordinator of the various proposals that are being developed within that area and that could present a tentatively ranked list of proposals to the business meeting this August
- This coordinating committee would not necessarily develop any of the specific proposals (but could) but would make sure that there were not multiple groups or individuals working on the same proposal
- funding an intern or fellow to work on a specific policy issue (at Center for Women Policy Studies, Institute for Women’s Policy research or other DC advocacy organization or in a state or federal legislative office)
- set up a “courtwatch” project and do reports on implications of decisions for women
- fund a competition for specific activist/applied research projects or for “translations” of research into policy documents. Competition could be targeted to specific subgroups of members (those who are retired, or grad students or on sabbatical) OR to particular types of opportunities (state or local demonstration projects; statistical translations, etc)
- set up a mechanism to send the Feminist Activist Award winner out to campuses or community organizations in a lecture or workshop tour to talk about her area of activist interest/expertise
- invite a local activist group to be honored at the winter and/or summer meeting banquet and give them some award there
- develop a structure within the organization to develop and distribute position papers on key issues
- fund a curriculum development support effort that would help faculty teach about activism and/or better connect students to activist work and that would distribute curriculum materials that are developed
- find “best practices” in teaching/service learning/activism and find ways to publicize them
- better support for the Executive Office to allow routine management to not consume all its available time, allow innovative efforts in recruiting and outreach
- DONE. Continue program support and attendance subsidies for Winter Meeting; reduce registration to token amount for summer; give away more rewards to members (pins to all, G&S subscriptions for life members, free meeting registration for life members)
- DONE. Use gift memberships selectively to bring in new members. Every 3rd year of continuous paid membership entitles a member to give a one-year gift membership to a friend, colleague or student who has never before been a member of SWS. The membership clock starts now
- develop a networking/mentoring program for international members that would better connect them to feminist academic practices and culture in SWS and in the US generally
- develop a “soft-currency fund” to help subsidize international members from countries with currencies that make even low-income membership in SWS unaffordable
- develop a more formal liaison with ABS or other groups with activist-scholarship goals and invest in joint programming or workshops
- do a more formal outreach project into community colleges to attract new members; subsidize local activities that target community college faculty and involve them with other SWS members in the area
- help students who are in departments without any SWSers to develop connections to SWS and awareness of SWS goals
- Develop a mechanism to send the Mentoring Award winner out to campuses where students and/or faculty feel a need for support either by direct mentoring or in developing better mentoring systems to do workshops or other appropriate activities
- increase SWS support for the Minority Scholar awards given through ASA.
- legitimate teaching and activism on campus via curriculum development projects and awards (see also I.g. above)
- legitimate activist research via local chapter activities and/or links with ASA sections and/or ties to SSSP divisions (see also II.g. above)
- work with re-entry women or others with community involvements to influence campus climate
- help to find ways to network isolated women scholars, both those who are isolated by geography (i.e. in smaller schools in remoter areas) and those who are more organizationally marginalized (i.e. in rural sociology or interdisciplinary programs or non-sociology depts)
- give awards or other recognition to efforts to improve campus climate
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