[URBANTH-L] Committee on the Status of Women in Anthropology: Discussion Group Invitation

[Tara Hefferan]

Please distribute the following announcement.

The American Anthropological Association's Committee on the Status of Women
in Anthropology (COSWA) is pleased to announce a new discussion group for
individuals interested in gender parity within anthropology. COSWA was
created 25 years ago to monitor gender discrimination within our discipline.
Since that time it has produced surveys, introduced resolutions at AAA
business meetings, set up a system for censuring departments that failed to
make good-faith efforts to hire in gender-neutral ways, and kept the
discipline informed about progress in gender parity within academic
employment. As a recent AAA survey indicated, employment of women at the
level of assistant professor is now approximately equal to that of men, and
proportional to the representation of each in the available PhD pool. At the
same time, however, surveys show that gender parity has not yet been
attained. Discrepancies still exist in such variables as rank, length of
time in rank (i.e., speed of promotion), citation patterns and standard
measures of "productivity" (e.g., publication rates). These indicators of
ongoing gender bias, together with changes in the pattern of anthropological
employment toward more professional and part-time careers, have led the
Committee's members to modify COSWA's mission.

If you are interested in joining, please send a blank email to:
coswa-subscribe at yahoogroups.com. Please note that postings to this group
are by individual members and are not endorsed by COSWA.

If you have a topic that you wish to raise anonymously to the group members,
please contact Keri Brondo, COSWA's Chair, at brondoke at msu.edu, to post on
your behalf.


Tara L. Hefferan, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Alma College
614 W. Superior St.
Alma, MI  48801
Ph:  989-463-7186
Email:  hefferan at alma.edu