Committee on the Status of Women: minutes of meeting

2006 Annual Meeting (Los Angeles)
Saturday, November 4, 2006
7 - 8:45 a.m.
Members in attendance
Heather Hadlock (Stanford U), chair
Nadine Hubbs (U of Michigan)
Bethany Kissell (Indiana University), student representative
Honey Meconi (Eastman School of Music, U of Rochester)
Kimberlyn Montford (Trinity College)
Giulio Ongaro (USC)
James Parakilas (Bates College)
Richard Will (UVA)

Welcome and Introductions

New, continuing, and outgoing members introduced themselves.
The chair heartily thanked outgoing members Honey Meconi and James Parakilas. We especially appreciated James’ active participation in the 2005 and 2006 open meetings and panel discussions, and Honey’s work as liaison to the Board.

I.  Mission
Because we have an entirely new committee this year, it seemed timely to discuss some ambiguities in the Committee’s evolving mission.  At our Open Meeting on “Job Searches and Interviews,” it became clear that it’s hard to draw the line between the Status of Women in musicology and in academia: many issues that women encounter in their musicological careers are actually issues for female scholars across the academy. (For example, hiring process, hiring practices; career track; tenure; sexual harassment; bias; family and work/life issues).  It also became clear that the CSW has concerns that overlap with other committees, including the Committee on Career-Related Issues and the Committee on Membership and Professional Development. Nadine Hubbs noted that the current name of the Committee does not reflect its stated mission of supporting/fostering feminist musicological scholarship

The Committee talked about this at length, and decided that it would like to focus its activities more specifically on the needs female and feminist scholars in musicology:

            graduate training (women as students, teachers, advisors, mentors)
            women in leadership roles in the AMS
            support for scholarly publishing
            women as gatekeepers in the discipline
presence on musicological awards/prize committees
involvement in planning national meetings (program committee)
status of gender studies and scholarship on women
the relative prestige of different subjects
selection/shaping/prestige of dissertation topics

II. Long-term plan for Open Meetings
As a result of the discussion of our mission, the Committee decided on a three-year plan for Open Meetings, as follows:
           
2007 Feminist Scholarship
                        Themes: gendered valuation of subject areas; authority; prestige
NEED person to organize
                        timeline (see attached)
                        possible panelists:
Program Chair from 1990 AMS (Oakland)
somebody involved with the Feminist Theory and Music conferences
somebody from LGB study group
                       
2008: joint session with SMT?
            Theme: the impact of feminism/feminist theory on the discipline of musicology and music theory
Contact their new chair, Brenda Ravenscroft

2009: AMS 75th anniversary.
Theme: History of women in the Society. Where we are, where we were, where we’re going

III.  Status of AMS survey
It was frustrating to learn that progress on the AMS demographic survey seems to have stalled out after the “pilot” stage, as we had identified a number of questions that we hoped the survey would answer (see 2005 Minutes).
The Committee will stay in touch with the MPD committee re: further developments.

The Committee left open the question of whether we should/could do our own survey, and whether there would be budget for design/implementation.

Respectfully submitted,
Heather Hadlock