Consciousness Raising and Symbolic Firsts that Led to the Establishment of the Women’s Caucus (1970–1979)

For women in political science, the 1970s paralleled in many ways the experiences of women that mobilized the second wave feminist movement. Women were making slow gains as members of the professoriate, yet their employment and career advancement were often jeopardized by overt or covert discrimination from male colleagues. It was also a period in which more explicitly feminist scholarship was being conducted, challenging the cannon of the political science discipline.

By the early 1970s only 36 women held fulltime faculty positions in Canadian departments of political science (Brodie et al., Reference Janine, Andrew and Rayside1982) and only a handful ever presented at the annual conference.Footnote ¹ Many faculty or graduate students were the first and only women in their departments, leaving them to seek support from women in other disciplines or institutions as they navigated sometimes hostile environments. The annual meeting of the CPSA and other sister academic associations was one place for these connections to occur.

Although women had been members of the CPSA since its establishment in 1913 (Newton, Reference Newton2017), they were only hired to teach in the discipline several decades later (Everitt, Reference Everitt2021). The rise of the second wave feminist movement and the tabling of the report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada in December 1970 highlighted the challenges that women faced in university environments. As Jane Jenson, an early woman in the discipline and later president of the CPSA (1996–1997) recollects, they were a motivating factor leading to a resolution passed at the 1971 CPSA annual meeting in St. John’s, Newfoundland, requesting that the Association establish a committee to study biases that might be reflected in the structure of the profession. The American Political Science Association (APSA) had set up such a committee in the spring of 1969 (Mitchell, Reference Mitchell1990). There was also an attempt at this conference to set up a women’s caucus for the association; however, the geographic dispersion of the limited number of women in the discipline and the low numbers of conference attendees made this early effort unsuccessful (Black, Reference Black1980).

Despite the historic election of two women, Susan McCorquodale of Memorial and Louise Ouellet of Laval, to the CPSA Board, little action was taken on the 1971 resolution. This led to a follow-up request made at the 1972 McGill annual meeting where Jane Jenson (at Carleton at the time) was elected to serve as a third woman on the Board. This second resolution met with more success. At their June 5, 1972 board meeting, the Association’s directors established a committee chaired by Pauline Jewett (Carleton) to produce a Study of the Profile of the Profession. The objective was to examine the makeup of the political science discipline with a particular focus on the status of women teaching in Canadian universities (Committee on the Profile of the Profession, 1973; Everitt, Reference Everitt2021).

The resulting report found evidence of “very high levels of perceived sex discrimination against women reported by both men and women” (Committee on the Profile of the Profession, 1973). On the basis of a mail survey conducted in December 1972,Footnote ² it noted that 63 per cent of women respondents reported facing sexual discrimination as graduate students and more than 50 per cent felt they were discriminated against in their current academic positions (Table 3 of the report). These perceptions were supported by similarly high levels of male respondents who had witnessed sex discrimination against their female peers. These concerns primarily revolved around unfair treatment in job hirings and in departmental activities. Furthermore, almost two-thirds of the respondents felt that women were discouraged from entering the discipline (Table 4 of the report) and half felt that women had fewer job opportunities in political science than their male colleagues (Table 5 of the report). Sexual harassment was still a common issue on university campuses and recollections from some of the early women political scientists interviewed noted that young graduate students or faculty members were particularly vulnerable. Lax boundaries for romantic relationships meant it was not uncommon to see relationships between male faculty and the graduate students they taught. Women also reported that they experienced harassment from male students in their classes. Other forms of discrimination included attempts by male faculty members to have a junior woman colleague fired for not wearing a dress and for putting an Abortion Caravan poster up in the women’s washroom. Women also related stories about being assigned teaching schedules heavy on night courses with office space in a low-traffic area for nighttime office hours and feeling unable to complain for fear that they would be targeted for additional discriminatory treatment.

More than anything, women worried about surviving and keeping their jobs, particularly if their university was not unionized. After a period of growth, departments were beginning to contract, just as a new cohort of women PhDs were entering the academic job market, leaving many in precarious employment situations (Brodie et al., Reference Janine, Andrew and Rayside1982).Footnote ³ While 22 per cent of PhD students in Canada were women in 1980 versus 13 per cent in 1972–1973, only 12 per cent of the faculty positions were held by women, minimally higher than 10 years prior. Furthermore, more women than men were employed as sessional/contract lecturers (16% to 9%) and 27 per cent of the women, as compared with 8 per cent of the men, were teaching on a parttime basis. In 1971 “fully 91% of the women teaching political science in 1971–72 were assistant professors (58%) or lecturers (33%)”; by 1980 the number of female faculty at the associate level had grown to 47 per cent (Brodie et al., Reference Janine, Andrew and Rayside1982: 4). Still, absolute numbers remained small, since by 1979 the number of women teaching as fulltime political scientists had only increased to 58 (out of 684 faculty members teaching in 47 departments) (Black, Reference Black1979a, Reference Black1979b). Furthermore, salary differentials remained firm, as men at all levels continued to receive higher salaries than their female counterparts.

These more limited opportunities for women might account for the small numbers who were on the program of the CPSA annual conferences over the 1960s and early 1970s (see Figure 1). At the start of the decade, fewer than a dozen women presented at the CPSA conference and even then, those who repeatedly appeared on the program were limited to Mildred Schwartz (Illinois), Janice Gross Stein (McGill), Naomi Black (York), Jane Jenson (Carleton) and Susan McCorquodale (Memorial). Lynda Erickson (UBC) and Virginia McDonald (York) first appeared in 1972 and then reappeared off and on over the next decade, as did Caroline Andrew (Ottawa), who first presented a paper in 1973. By mid-decade, these scholars were joined by Pat Armstrong (Vanier College), Sandra Burt (Waterloo), Patricia Hughes (Toronto/Nippising), Susan Shell (Concordia/McMaster), Pauline Vaillancourt (McGill) and Jill Vickers (Carleton). This list contained women scholars from the liberal and socialist feminist traditions, however, radical feminist academics such as Mary O’Brien and Angela Miles who were trained as political scientists presented their work at meetings of women’s studies groups, published in feminist journals or newsletters and later accepted employment in other disciplines as their work was not considered to be political science (Vickers, Reference Vickers1997a: 16). For this reason, some, such as Vickers,Footnote ⁴ worked with women in other disciplines to create alternative structures for publishing, such as the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW-ICREF) or the journal Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, where their “fugitive” papers were seriously considered. This tension between different streams of feminism was reflective of the debates within the women’s movement more broadly.

Figure 1. Number of Women on the Program of the CPSA Annual Conference.

Numbers Collected from the Program Agendas Available on the CPSA Website (https://cpsa-acsp.ca/past-conference/)

Few women were also involved in organizing the conference. Other than Pauline Jewett (Carleton), who was responsible for local arrangements at the Carleton 1967 conference, it was only in 1973 that Susan McCorquodle (then on the CPSA board) became the first section head, followed by Jane Jenson and Caroline Andrew, appointed to the 1974 conference planning committee. The first dedicated panel on Women in Politics was held in 1974, followed by a panel on Women in Public Policy in 1975. In 1976 and 1978 the conference ran two panels focusing on women, and in 1979, it ran three.

The first scheduled caucus meeting for women appeared on the program in 1979 and it was here that the decision was made to create Women in Political Science and hold yearly caucus meetings. As Naomi Black (founder of both the undergraduate and graduate programs in Women’s Studies at York) acknowledged, political science was one of the last disciplines in Canada or the USA to organize a women’s caucus (Black interview).Footnote ⁵ Black (York) and Marsha Chandler (U of T, Erindale) were tasked with creating a list of all interested women in the discipline (Black Reference Black1980). Caucus organizers sought to provide a network of support for women in the discipline. It also endeavored to enhance the participation of women at the annual conference and provide a space for serious discussion of research relating to women and politics (Black, Reference Black1980: 112). By maintaining a roster of women scholars at all levels of the discipline and holding caucus meetings at the annual conference, the Caucus also aimed to document discrimination and unequal treatment of women in the discipline.

More Than a Token Few: The Early Days of the Women’s Caucus (1980–1992)

In the period after its establishment, the Women’s Caucus maintained an ad hoc, informal structure with a focus on consciousness raising and support and occasionally mobilizing around crises issues within the discipline. The networks established among these early women political scientists were not limited to scholars of women and politics, although these women were often most actively involved in caucus activities. More importantly, in this period of growing public and academic concern about the absence of women’s voices in politics and other decision-making bodies, these relationships were successfully employed to enhance the representation of women (albeit white women) in different aspects of the CPSA.

As Black reported, “The founding of the CPSA Women’s Caucus was modelled after that of the APSA” (Black interview) although the strong sense of nationalism and significant concern for the Americanization of Canadian political science meant that many feminists were wary of modeling things on the APSA (Vickers interview). The APSA’s Women’s Caucus for Political Science (WCPS) had been established in 1969 and individuals such as Black, who had attended the APSA conferences, felt the CPSA’s women’s caucus should be set up in a similar mould. It should be open to women in all areas of political science, providing support and professional networks and advocate for women in the profession by working to increase the participation of women at the annual meeting and provide opportunities for “serious discussion of research relating to women and politics” (Black, Reference Black1980).

However, unlike the APSA WCPS, which from the start had presidents, an executive committee and a federal design to enable the participation of women in their local/regional chapters, the CPSA Women’s Caucus was much less structured. Early participants are vague about the events surrounding the Caucus’s creation. Sandra Burt, an early caucus member and later administrative editor of the Canadian Journal of Political Science, remembers a few key women who were regular early attendees, including Black, Andrew,Footnote ⁶ Vickers and Bashevkin.Footnote ⁷ Burt describes the Caucus as “a very ad hoc group of women who talked about what was going on in their departments” (Burt interview), while Bashevkin described the Caucus from her time as a doctoral student as a small group “that could have met in a phone booth” (Bashevkin interview). Both she and Janice Newton,participated in the Women’s Caucus during their graduate education as a way to become engaged in the discipline (Bashevkin interview, Newton interview). Vickers pointed to Black as the person who recruited her and recalls that “I was participating in other women’s organizations and learned societies. I only rejoined the CPSA and attended the Caucus because of an issue related to gender and they needed a critical mass to come and vote” (Vickers interview).

These recollections from early participants highlight two key characteristics of the Caucus. The first is that there was no formal membership other than to be a woman in political science. As a result, the organization tended to be fluid, without an identifiable steering committee and relying on those who were present at Caucus to set the tone of discussions. In this way the Caucus served more as a consciousness raising session than the APSA Women’s Caucus, which was modelled after traditional institutional formats and organized as an affiliate of the APSA to represent the interests of women to the larger association (Mitchell, Reference Mitchell1990). The second characteristic is that regardless of whether women were tenured professors or early career researchers, they were brought together as part of the Caucus. As Newton reported “The Caucus was about role models, not feeling alone in the discipline and knowing there were other women doing lots of interesting things” (Newton interview).

Despite this different approach, the CPSA’s Women’s Caucus mirrored that of its sister caucus to the south in its ability to take advantage of key women who had become active in the larger association. However, unlike the APSA’s constituted Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession or officially recognized Women’s Caucus, there was never a formal structure on the CPSA Board through which the Women’s Caucus’s interests could be promoted. This lack of formal recognition contributed to the ad hoc nature of the Caucus. Nonetheless, by the early 1980s women such as Black (York), Andrew (Ottawa), McCorquodale (Memorial), Jenson (Carleton), Vaillancourt (UQUAM), Chandler (Toronto), Grace Skogstad (SFX) and Rianne Mahon (Carleton) had sat as members of the Board of Directors of the CPSA and it was through the interventions of these individual women or through motions introduced on the floor of the CPSA annual meeting that the concerns of Canadian women political scientists were raised. Others such as Pauline Vaillancourt (in 1981) or Marsha Chandler (in 1988) took on additional responsibilities as the program committee chair for the annual conference, increasing dramatically the number of women section heads during their terms.

An early mobilizing event for the Women’s Caucus was the publication of an article by Patricia Hughes in the September 1979 edition of the Canadian Journal of Political Science (CJPS) on the work of JS Mills (Hughes, Reference Hughes1979). George Feaver (Feaver, Reference Feaver1979) provided a critical “Comment” on Hughes’s piece, solicited and included without peer review by journal co-editor Kal Holsti, Feaver’s UBC colleague. Feaver’s comments were perceived as an attack on a young, untenured, female academic approaching Mill’s work from a socialist feminist perspective (Black Reference Black and Tomm1989). While others also criticized Hughes’s work (Cameron, Reference Cameron1980), it was Feaver’s ad hominin attack that most concerned women scholars. Feaver accused Hughes of “macrame-and-beads romanticism” (Reference Hughes1979: 549) and of “adopting a ‘trendy’ combination of feminism and Marxism” (Black, Reference Black and Tomm1989: 229).

Hughes’s treatment by the CJPS editor was raised at the 1980 Women’s Caucus meeting, which attendees recalled as having an electric atmosphere (Newton interview). Participants were concerned that Feaver’s comment was sought out by the CJPS co-editor and included in the CPSA’s flagship refereed journal (Black, Reference Black and Tomm1989: 230). The Women’s Caucus challenged the journal’s co-editor at the 1980 Annual General Meeting where Holsti “conceded that he would have been wiser to submit Feaver’s comments to outside review; he promised to do so in similar situations in the future” (Black, Reference Black and Tomm1989: 230). This event demonstrates the Caucus efforts to provide space for female scholars to discuss the discrediting of their work and support for those who experienced discriminatory treatment.

Jenson notes that “one of the consequences of the Feaver controversy was that the CJPS never again had an all male editorial team and Advisory Board” (Jenson email). It also led to greater attention to the need to get women placed in decision-making positions on the CPSA Board, either as board members, members of the executive committee and eventually as president of the association.

In 1981, the CPSA Board set up a second committee to produce a follow-up to the earlier report on the Profile of the Profession. Newly elected board members Janine Brodie (York) and David Rayside (Toronto) were appointed to this committee along with former board member Andrew (CPSA, November 1981). Several other active members of the Caucus including Mahon (Carleton), McCorquodale (Memorial) and Skogstad (SFX) were also serving on the CPSA Board and used their positions to draw attention to the experiences of women political scientists. Along with noting the changes in the status of women, the 1982 report made recommendations to improve women’s situation, notably directing the conference organizers to enhance women’s involvement as section heads, chairpersons and discussants and urging the journal editors to seek out more women as book reviewers (Brodie et al., Reference Janine, Andrew and Rayside1982). Following on this report, several women in the discipline also organized a lobby to get Andrew nominated, first as Vice President (that is president elect) in 1982–1983, and then as the second woman president of the CPSA, serving in 1983–1984.Footnote ⁸ Sharon Sutherland also became the Secretary Treasurer (a nonelected position) on the Board in 1983, serving until 1986.

Caucus members recognized that if female academics were to have their work taken seriously within the CPSA, they would need to carve out a space for themselves at CPSA meetings. Sylvia Bashevkin remembers the time as “a small group focused on getting just a couple of panels on the CPSA program” (Bashevkin interview). By 1990, 23 per cent (61 out of 269) of the papers at the annual meeting were presented by women, many of them touching on the themes of feminism, women in political life or women in the university (Andrew, Reference Andrew1990: 13). However, the small number of scholars who researched women and politics meant panels tended to contain the same women chairing, presenting and discussing each other’s and their students’ papers. While this pattern enhanced the sense of community for these scholars, it meant it was having limited impact on the broader discipline (Andrew, Reference Andrew1990; Everitt, Reference Everitt2021; Vickers, Reference Vickers2016). Furthermore, this resulted in women scholars whose work was not explicitly feminist feeling less represented by the goals of the caucus.

Caucus activists raised additional concerns about the lack of space for the publication of women’s work, especially if it focused on women in politics or other feminist themes. Sandra Burt recalls “two older male professors in the discipline trying to publish a book about women in politics that had no female authors period, let alone feminists” (Burt interview). The Caucus drafted a letter to the publisher arguing that the book should not be released and successfully stopped its publication.

Despite these efforts to make a space for work by women about women, the Caucus served primarily as a social network. Its informal structure and lack of official recognition in the constitution of the CPSA meant that it did not have the impact of the APSA’s WCPS. It had no dues-paying membership, elected chair or executive committee or formalized committees to complete work between conferences. Instead, meetings were run in an ad hoc manner, with the most senior woman in the room (or at least one who had attended previous caucus meetings) stepping in to guide the discussions or commit to write a letter to the CPSA board on the Caucus’s behalf. For many, it was seen as a place to go for lunch, reconnect with old friends and make new friends during an empty spot on the program (Carbert, interview). Unfortunately, established women in fields other than women and politics found it less valuable than the women and politics scholars and younger women who relied on it for making connections. Many stopped participating after they had secured a job and built their own networks. Socialist feminists continued to find greater commonality in women’s studies or political economy meetings and seldom attended Caucus meetings unless there was a mobilizing event (Vickers interview). In addition, the Caucus became increasingly anglophone and less engaged with French-speaking women scholars from Québec, many of whom gravitated to the Société québécoise de science politique (SQSP) after it formed in 1979 (Vickers, Reference Vickers2016). As a result, little institutional memory exists of the activities of the Caucus in its early years.

Building a Critical Mass: Steps Toward an Institutionalized Caucus (1993–2005)

By the early 1990s, women’s status in the discipline had changed. A 1990 CPSA study of the academic job market for PhD students found that 28 per cent of current doctoral students were female, an increase of 6 percentage points from the earlier Status of Women report (Russell, Vernon and Little, Reference Russell, Vernon and Little1991: 22). More women who were completing graduate school or getting jobs in the 1990s had established networks of female colleagues by the completion of their PhDs, although there were still many, such as Yasmeen Abu-Laban, who never had a political science class with a fulltime woman professor in any of her three degrees (Abu-Laban interview). Some institutions such as York or Carleton had women’s caucuses for graduate students in their departments (Abu-Laban interview), and a new generation of scholars working on women and politics had studied with and were mentored by older generations of feminist scholars such as Black (York), Vickers (Carleton) or Bashevkin (U of Toronto). They were brought into the Women’s Caucus by these supervisors, where they built wider and stronger networks (Carbert interview; Everitt recollections; Findlay interview). Lisa Young acknowledged being conscious that she was “part of a wedge generation, in which white women were becoming equal in the discipline” (Young interview). Racialized women were still very much the minority (Fuji Johnson interview). Yet, because this was a period of a still nascent internet, the caucus remained important as a way to provide young female scholars with information, connections and shared experiences (Abu-Laban interview; Findlay interview).

The transition in the early 1990s from an ad hoc gathering of women academics to a more institutionalized organization that could mobilize for women’s status within the discipline led the Women’s Caucus to push the association to nominate a second woman president to follow the election of Andrew. Bashevkin eventually agreed to be nominated as president elect at the 1992 Annual Meeting in Charlottetown after she learned that the names of several other more senior women suggested by the Caucus had been blocked by “other interests in the profession,” which she took to mean important senior men in the discipline (Bashevkin interview). Ironically, she took over as president of the association just as the Chilly Climate crisis of the early 1990s began to gain momentum.

With the growing presence of women in the discipline came a growing awareness of the systemic sexism and inhospitable work environments faced by women in departments across the country (Caplan, Reference Caplan1993). The term Chilly Climate describes individual practices that appear inconsequential when taken alone, but when taken together, promote a lack of confidence and devaluation that leads to the marginalization of women (Hall and Sandler, Reference Hall and Sandler1982). The first formal complaint against a department of political science occurred in 1993 at the University of Victoria, where Dr. Somer Brodribb and five political science graduate students, who formed the Chilly Climate Committee, identified an anti-woman and anti-feminist sentiment in the department (Brodribb, Reference Brodribb1993).

Following the release of the University of Victoria report in May 1993, the 1993 Women’s Caucus meeting at Carleton University had a higher than usual attendance, with many participants attending for the first time showing solidarity to those involved (Everitt recollection; Newman interview; Trimble interview). Taking note of the room during this meeting, Trimble remembers that few of the women present were tenured (Trimble interview). At that meeting a motion was adopted that was then presented by Andrew to the conference’s Annual General Meeting. Minutes of the AGM indicate that under Other Business Professor Andrew read the following motion, seconded by Jane Jenson:

The minutes recorded that a short discussion followed before the motion was carried. There was then a request for the Board of Directors to decide at its next meeting whether any further action was required (CPSA Bulletin, May 1994: 18).

With Bashevkin as the new CPSA President and Erickson as the 1994 Conference Programme Chair in Calgary, efforts were made to address this issue. A special viewing of the recently produced film titled “The Chilly Climate” was held at noon hour on the first day of the conference and the issue was a key topic at the Women’s Caucus meeting the following day (Abu-Laban interview). Newton also organized the first Women’s Caucus Dinner on the evening before the conference began. Furthermore, Bashevkin recalls reshaping the President’s Dinner, making it less expensive and less formal than in the past, making it more accessible to junior women scholars (Bashevkin interview).

Issues at the University of Manitoba and later the University of British Columbia also arose and working conditions in political science became more widely discussed on campuses across the country, in the national press, in academic articles and even the CPSA Bulletin (Andrew, Reference Andrew1995; Marchak, Reference Marchak1996; Resnick, Reference Resnick1995; Stienstra, Reference Stienstra1995; Vickers, Reference Vickers1997b). Subsequent Caucus discussions revolved around the climate at various institutions, sexual harassment and how seriously women graduate students were taken, with a focus on women in the profession, rather than gender and politics (Bashevkin interview). Burt recalled that the Caucus allowed participants to feel that “they belonged somewhere, and they weren’t the only ones encountering difficulties” (Burt interview). As Margaret Little described it, “it was not a fuzzy group, but a group of no-nonsense women who supported female faculty” (Little interview).

Strengthening this connection was the new electronic network, established in 1995. A notice in the May edition of the CPSA Bulletin announced that the “women-politics network is designed as a forum to discuss women and politics, share information about resources, conferences and jobs, and to discuss issues of importance to women within the discipline” (CPSA, 1995: 64). The listserv was hosted at York University and interested women faculty and graduate students were invited to join. A year later a new listserv for the Caucus more formally connected to the CPSA was established to replace the original woman–politics network (CPSA, 1996: 88).

In the mid-1990s the CPSA Board again responded to Caucus pressure by appointing Diane Lamoureux (Laval), Trimble (Alberta) and Miriam Koene (Alberta) to another committee to review the Status of Women in the Discipline (Trimble interview). In March 1996 the committee conducted a survey of female members of the CPSA and found that sexual harassment, devaluation of gender-related scholarship and discriminatory attitudes toward female academics were still prevalent (Lamoureux and Trimble, Reference Lamoureux and Trimble1997).Footnote ⁹ In its final report, discussed by the Board of Directors in June 1997, the committee made several recommendations, including that the CPSA analyze rates of participation of women scholars at the annual conference as well as their participation as authors, co-authors and reviewers for the Canadian Journal of Political Science.Footnote ¹⁰ The committee also recommended that the organizers of the CPSA annual conference convene panels on such issues as hostility to the presence of women, lack of gender analysis in course content, differential treatment of women and the devaluation of feminist scholarship in their different manifestations (Lamoureux and Trimble, Reference Lamoureux and Trimble1997). The report was referred to the next program committee for consideration. Importantly, the recommendation that the CPSA Board should require at least one representative of the CPSA Women’s Caucus was not acted upon “as the Women’s Caucus is not an official body and a constitutional amendment would have been required to add such a position to the Board” (CPSA Bulletin, 1998 May, 25).

With the recession of the early 1990s, the fiscal crisis of federal and provincial governments in the mid-1990s and changing attitudes about the role of the state, universities faced significant budgetary challenges, leading them to use projected retirements as a lever to cut budgets rather than as an opportunity for renewal. Academic jobs were scarce, and Everitt recalls that for several years in the late 1990s much of the discussion at the Women’s Caucus meetings involved identifying potential future positions. By discussing new job opportunities, Caucus members ensured that the next generation of women were given a leg up in what would be a challenging recruitment environment. In addition, the Caucus actively discussed the number of women chairs and faculty members at universities across the country (Trimble interview). In other words, while the Caucus presented a feminist critique of the discipline through its mobilization around chilly climate issues and a demand to reform the highly gendered institution of political science, it also maintained a liberal feminist approach through its emphasis on numeric representation.

Finally, the Caucus continued to serve as a resource for those working in the still relatively nascent field of women and politics, and subsequently “gender” and politics. Along with creating space for this scholarship at the annual conferences and drawing attention to the opportunities for publishing in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, members of the Caucus shared their course outlines with Newton, who then worked with Wilfrid Laurier Press to publish two editions of Course Outlines on Women and Politics in 1993 and 1998 (Abu-Laban interview; Arscott and Tremblay Reference Arscott and Tremblay1999).

In 2000, the CPSA annual meeting was held in Québec City in July in conjunction with the Société québécoise de science politique (SQSP), followed immediately by the meeting of the International Political Science Association (ISPA). While no Caucus meeting was listed in the conference program, it did introduce a separate section in the program, organized by Sylvie Arend (York/Glendon), focusing on Women and Politics. It is not clear whether this was due to demands from women within the CPSA or the SQSP, or whether it was due to the fact that the ISPA Sex Roles and Politics gender committee hosted a pre-Congress Workshop on Women and Politics at the Millennium. For whatever reason, the CPSA section offered 11 panels that focused on women and has since remained an important venue for the presentation of feminist scholarship in the discipline.

The establishment of this new section, the creation in 2002 of the Jill Vickers Prize for the best paper presented at the annual conference in the field of gender and politics (first awarded in 2004) and then the women’s Caucus dinner in 2003Footnote ¹¹ were all incremental steps toward institutionalizing the role of the Caucus. Interest grew in formalizing the structure, identifying who would take minutes to be circulated on the Caucus listserv and help to organize the dinner in the following year. Despite this trend, as Everitt recalls, the lunch time Caucus meeting, to which everyone brought their own lunch, remained small, regularly attended by roughly 10–15 people, with more women and politics scholars than women in the discipline more generally.

Social Movement Organization versus Institution of the CPSA (2006 to Present)

By the mid-2000s it became clear that the growing diversity of students in the discipline was not reflected in the make-up of the professoriate. Janice Newton (Reference Newton2008) reports that by 2004–2005, women comprised 47.1 per cent of undergraduate degree students in political science, 49.6 per cent of Masters students and 42.5 per cent of PhD students, yet only 29 per cent of faculty members. Women made up 17.1 per cent of full professors, 30.9 per cent of associate professors, 39.4 per cent of assistant professors and 36.4 per cent of other types of faculty.Footnote ¹² Of equal importance was the increased number of racialized or Indigenous members of the discipline and the growing awareness that intersectional identities (including race, sexual orientation, class, religion and ability) limit opportunities for these scholars in the association.

The 2006 CPSA conference at York University was a turning point for the Women’s Caucus in its role as a champion of diversity. Not only was the name of the Women and Politics section changed to Women, Gender and Politics, but for the first time it offered a free lunch, attracting a larger than usual number of attendees at the Caucus meeting, many of whom were graduate students at nearby universities. Unlike previous cohorts who were predominately white, the new cohort of women graduate students was more diverse, less interested in studying politics from institutional or behavioral perspectives and more engaged in questions surrounding race, Indigeneity and sexuality. Importantly, their experiences as racialized, Indigenous or minority scholars were not reflected in the Women’s Caucus’s discussions or in the CPSA more generally.

Abu-Laban recalls making the point at this Caucus that universities across the country had begun to hire new faculty in comparatively large numbers, but there was little attention paid to who was being hired (Abu-Laban interview). Even if white women were being hired, graduate students often looked far different than many of their professors and those active in the CPSA. This led to the Women’s Caucus passing a motion:

The CPSA Board considered this motion and under the urging of its new president Elisabeth Gidengil (McGill), who had attended the Caucus meeting, established a Diversity Task Force. It had the mandate: to identify as best as possible the situation of women; visible minorities; Indigenous peoples; people with disabilities; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people; and other minorities within the discipline; to identify best practices to encourage the representation and participation of a greater diversity of people within the discipline; and to set up a means of tracking the representation of these groups (Everitt, Reference Everitt2007). Despite challenges in gathering information, for the first time the reports provided important data about the changing nature of the political science discipline in Canada that went beyond just questions of sex to address issues such as sexuality, race, Indigeneity and language (Abu-Laban et al., Reference Abu-Laban, Everitt, Johnston and Rayside2010, Reference Abu-Laban, Everitt, Johnston, Papillon and Rayside2012).

In 2008, a confrontation occurred at the UBC conference during a panel on Indigenous Rights that again led the Women’s Caucus to forward recommendations to the CPSA board. In an e-mail sent to the CPSA Board and later circulated on the Caucus listserv, Kathy Brock (Queen’s), Joyce Green (Regina), Kiera Ladner (Manitoba) and Malinda Smith (Alberta) (all well-respected scholars who had been active in different aspects of the association and three of whom had petitioned the previous November for the establishment of a new section on Race, Ethnicity, Indigenous Peoples and Politics) expressed concern about the hostile intellectual environments at the annual meeting. They argued that this limits the participation of Indigenous scholars, and in particular young female Indigenous scholars, within the discipline. Again, the CPSA board, led by President Miriam Smith (York) responded, creating a Professional Ethics Committee to look at hate speech and ethics in research.

Activities such as these appeared to position the Caucus not just as champions of women in Canadian political science, but also of other marginalized groups in ways that mirrored developments in feminist theory and a growing attention to the importance of intersectionality. Green attributes this to the positions of many Caucus members as scholars of the relationships of dominance subordination and erasure (Green interview). As Abu-Laban noted, the Women’s Caucus as an institution sensitive to various points of oppression had the potential to play an important role in representing not just the interests of women, but of all minorities (Abu-Laban interview). Indeed, her work for the International Political Science Association, which monitors gender and diversity in political science associations around the world, found that those associations with women’s caucuses tended to have better policies toward the inclusion of other groups within national political science associations (Abu-Laban, et al., Reference Abu-Laban, Sawer and St.-Laurent.2017). Over the next few years active steps were made by the Caucus in this direction, but they were often driven more by individual initiatives than the Caucus as a whole. An example was the collaborations between the Women, Gender and Politics and the Race, Ethnicity, Indigenous Peoples and Politics (REIPP) section heads to organize the Women’s Caucus reception and joint workshops (Findlay interview) the year the annual meeting was held at Brock University (2014).

However, not all women felt welcomed into the Women’s Caucus. Some felt that it was primarily for those working on topics of women/gender and politics thus attended other association meetings or receptions (Small interview). Others perceived it to be primarily a white liberal feminist caucus that did not provide a sense of home to racialized scholars in the way that the new REIPP section formed in 2009 did (Green interview; Johnson interview). For many, it lacked the transformative agenda that would challenge the institutionalized gendered and racialized hierarchies within the discipline. This perception may have produced an ambivalence toward the Caucus that led racialized women to abandon it after attending one or two meetings (Green interview; Johnson interview).

For years, business meetings have involved identifying volunteers to organize the luncheon and dinner at the next conference and the discussion of a topic for a future mentoring panel. At the end of each meeting decisions are also held concerning who the Chair and the Steering Committee of the Caucus for the next year would be (Newman interview). Minutes of meetings were taken and posted on the Caucus listserv or Facebook page.Footnote ¹³ Occasionally, former chairs of the steering committee such as Newman remember exploring a more official recognition of the Caucus on the CPSA website (2015) and inviting Graham White, as the co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Political Science, to speak about increasing more women’s representation in the journal, a panel that resulted in the Finding Feminisms special edition in 2017 (Newman interview).

Over this period the formal mentoring of younger members of the discipline became a Caucus priority. In 2012, the entire Caucus lunch meeting was dedicated to “Your Brilliant Career,” a meeting that Alana Cattapan attributes to changing how she thought about the job search process (Cattapan interview). Other events involved speed mentoring at receptions and panels at the conference on issues of concern for women in political science. However, many of these sessions were incorporated into the programing of the Women, Gender and Politics or occasionally the REIPP sections of the conference, making it difficult to know whether these were Caucus initiatives, initiatives of individual members of the Caucus or initiatives of women in the discipline. For example, in 2019, Ethel Tungohan (York), section head for REIPP with the support of Cattapan (Saskatchewan, now Waterloo) and Sarah Wiebe (Hawaii, now Victoria) section heads for the Women, Gender and Politics section, and others such as Nisha Nath (Athabasca), Fiona MacDonald (Fraser Valley, now Northern British Columbia) and Stephanie Patterson (Concordia) organized a well-attended full-day preconference workshop entitled “Women in Political Science Leadership Program.” This workshop included topics such as “Gender Issues in the Academy,” “Gender, Race, & the Job Market” and “Mid-Career Mentorship” along with a mentoring lunch. Another example is the 2023 preconference workshop on “Living and Learning EDID” organized by Tungohan, Rebecca Major (Windsor now Yukon U) and Nicole De Silva (Concordia). While Caucus business meetings remained poorly attended, these and other professional development panels have become extremely popular and frequently serve as important venues for critical and interesting conversations about how to make the discipline less hostile to scholars from marginalized communities (Findlay interview). They have also led to collaborative projects such as the special edition of the CJPS and the Feministing in Political Science collective volume (Cattapan et al., Reference Cattapan, Tungohan, Nath, MacDonald and Paterson2024; Cattapan interview). Likewise, the Women’s Caucus dinners or receptions became an important part of the conference for many women attendees, with attendance reaching close to 100 in recent years. More importantly, it has been a space where younger racialized women whose research may have little to do with gender and politics have felt safe to gather, reconnect with grad school colleagues and build their networks. As Tamara Small, current president of the CPSA (2025–2026) noted, she was struck by how diverse the women at the 2025 reception were and how different it was from the room of predominately white scholars who had attended the presidential address of her predecessor (Small interview).

Needless to say, steering committee members still view the caucus as a feminist organization committed to sorting through ideas, mobilizing support and challenging the CPSA to take action (Cattapan interview, Findlay interview, Willis interview). However, they also acknowledge that the lack of a budget, the greater organizing resources of program section heads and the rather ephemeral nature of the Caucus itself can result in an ebb and flow in the activity level of an institution that is part of a larger agenda for social change. In addition, the growing competition with panels or other lunchtime activities at recent annual conferences has likely contributed to the declining attendance at the business meetings (Findlay interview).

However, as it has become more institutionalized, with a focus on mentoring and providing networking opportunities, some have found that less attention is being paid by the Caucus to its earlier social movement goals of striving to build a better space for women in the discipline. Caucus meetings seldom now serve as conscious-raising sessions where women could share their experiences of discrimination and design strategies to counter them, and there has been little discussion at recent business meetings on how to change political science as a gendered or racialized institution. It is the workshops and panels, sometimes supported by the Caucus, but often planned by the Women, Gender and Politics and the REIPP section heads, the CPSA Reconciliation Committee or in venues outside of the CPSA in general, such as the Academic Aunties podcast produced by Tungohan and Nath, that more regularly provide spaces to speak critically about the discipline and the challenges facing marginalized women (Abu-Laban interview).

This apparent lack of critical focus has clearly made it less relevant to many minoritized women within the discipline. As one of the interviewees said, “these days the energy around trying to build a better world seems to be focused within the REIPP section, not the women’s caucus.” As a result, unless a major issue appears, as it did in 2019 with the racial profiling by police of an attendee of the Black Canadian Studies Association at the UBC Congress, the number of participants at the noon hour Caucus business meetings is often fewer than ten.

It was this tension between the role that the Caucus was playing in providing a form of formal institutional support for junior scholars on how to become a professional academic (an add more women and stir liberal feminist approach) and the role of advocating for a new re-envisioned political science along the lines of intersectional feminism that was the catalyst for Caucus discussions about representational mandates that arose at the 2019 Caucus meeting. Many women at that meeting wanted it to do more to champion emerging issues, but because of a lack of institutional memory there was no clear sense of what ability the Caucus had to make recommendations to the CPSA board. At this conference the Caucus stepped up to craft a statement against anti-Black racism and asked the CPSA Board to do the same at that year’s annual meeting. Later that year it used its network to build support for a female political scientist who had been publicly attacked by a provincial premier (Women’s Caucus Facebook page). However, more recent events, such as the demands to boycott McGill University at the 2024 Congress or the opposition of the Reconciliation committee and others to the acceptance of a paper by a controversial writer at the 2025 Congress were not brought to the Caucus’s attention.Footnote ¹⁴ This suggests that the Caucus may no longer be viewed as a useful vehicle to champion emerging issues and create space for other recognition of varying points of discrimination and oppression within the larger structure of the CPSA.

At the 2021 online conference where only a handful of people attended the business meeting, the Steering Committee brought forward three proposals for reconfiguring the Caucus. These included: (1) maintaining the status quo as an informal group that meets at the CPSA annual conference; (2) developing into an enhanced network that would involve a new listserv as well as virtual events between the CPSA conferences; and (3) becoming a formal subcommittee of the Board (Women’s Caucus Face book page July 11, 2022). Since the attendance at the Caucus was small, it was decided to postpone the discussion of any changes to the 2022 meeting (Merolli interview). Attendance was again small in 2022, which reinforced the fact that although Caucus members recognized the value in adding new activities, the lack of volunteers to take on more initiatives would make this difficult (Wills interview). In the end, while the Caucus decided to adopt the second motion involving the development of an enhanced network that would involve virtual events between the CPSA conferences, competing demands put on the steering committee has resulted in it maintaining the status quo, continuing its history of organizing panels relevant to the lives of women and gender diverse individuals, using the Caucus reception as a mentoring event and holding lunchtime Caucus meetings.