The Committee on the Status of Women (CSW) in the American Musicological Society (AMS) became official when it was listed under "AMS Committees, 1974-75," in the AMS Newsletterof 1975, volume V/number 1, page 3 (hereafter V/1, 3). The members of the then "Status of Women in Musicology" included Sarah Fuller, Chair, with Isabelle Cazeaux, Anne Hallmark, George Nugent, and Harold S. Powers. In VIII/1 (1978), Fuller wrote a report on the committee, now called simply, Committee on the Status of Women," which appeared on the front page of the newsletter. There Janet Knapp ("Mrs. G. Huntington Byles" [IV/1]):the first woman to be elected president of the AMS:joined the initial members in her ex-officiocapacity in the Society.

Beyond the obvious force garnered from the second wave of feminism, which helped to propel these landmark events, we might note that some of their momentum came from specific projects forged in the mid-1970s. At AMS Chicago 1973, the first national AMS papers on gender were delivered, with Judith T[ick] Steinberg speaking about women in American musical life (1870-1910) and Bea Friedland about Louise Farrenc. In 1975, Carol Neuls-Bates received an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities for her project on women in American musical life (VI/2, 15), a project in which Adrienne Fried Block took part. By the time that Fuller wrote her 1978 report, she had compiled a set of responses to a questionnaire that had been distributed by the CSW to all women members of the AMS to determine literally their "status" within the society. Having received a "37% response," she listed the concerns, such as interviewing and hiring practices, support from local chapters, and "the need for bibliographic material on serious studies of women in music" (VIII/1, 1).

Jane Bernstein succeeded Fuller as the CSW Chair in 1979, with Joel Lester and Ann B. Scott serving as members. In 1980, Marcia Citron became its Chair, with Carol Neuls-Bates joining the continuing membership of the committee. After 1981-82, the listing of standing committees to the AMS was taken out of the Newsletterand placed in the Directory. In 1983, the CSW, with Citron still chairing, published a questionnaire:now intended for all members of the AMS:"to gain a better perspective on the issues that it might explore" (XIII/1,15). The questionnaire asked for educational and marital information, responses to the impact of family life on one's professional development, and whether the Society should compile a list of women by specialty so as to help them in the hiring process. The questionnaire received 38 responses, which Citron summarized in the 1983 Newsletter (XIII/2, 4):
 

1. The CSW should compile statistical information about women musicologists' salaries, as well as list institutions that have sought to hire them
2. The CSW should support projects on the history of women in music, such as an NEH Summer Seminar, an award for scholarship on women’s studies, and making material available for planning courses on women in music
3. Networking
4. The balance of family and career; discrimination against women who may be more advanced in age than men by the time that they begin their job search
5. The need for women to chair sessions at national meetings, especially those in which women read papers

In 1986, Susan Borwick served as Chair, having joined the CSW as a member in 1982. Joining her on the committee that year were Anne Walters Robertson, David Rosen, and Judith Tick, who became Chair in 1987, with members Julie Cumming, Kay Kaufman Shelemay, and David Rosen. At the national meeting held in Vancouver in 1986, the CSW held an Open Forum, thereby initiating what has become an annual tradition of the committee. For the subsequent Newsletter, Borwick summarized three issues that emerged in Vancouver, distillations of those first gathered by the 1983 questionnaire: communication within the Society; scholarship about women and music; and information about women in the Society (XVI/2, 12). In the same report, she noted the material support given by the AMS for the publication of a compendium of essays edited by Jane Bowers and Judith Tick Women Making Music, The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950,which became an essential source of information to countless women and music classrooms.

In 1987, the CSW invited Ellen Koskoff, the author of Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective, to speak for its open forum at AMS New Orleans. In sum, the mid-eighties paved the way for "the magical year" of 1988, as described in retrospect by Suzanne Cusick to the CSW at AMS Toronto 2000. Judith Tick chaired the CSW in 1988, and in her August report she described specific tasks undertaken by each of the committee’s members: David Rosen on hiring/tenure, Kay Shelemay on membership statistics, and Julie Cumming on work/family issues. To the credit of the 1988 AMS Program Committee, which requested a session on feminist scholarship from the CSW, the Baltimore convention featured a formal session on "The Implications of Feminist Scholarship for Teaching," chaired by Ruth Solie and Susan Cook. What was "magical" about 1988 was that it marked, in the words of Gretchen Wheelock, a "watershed year for the presence of new work that addressed gender and difference" (XXIV/1, 9).

By 1991, feminist musicology had a place of its own; Susan Cook’s report of February of that year announced the first Feminist Theory and Music conference in Minneapolis, which has since met biennially (XXI/1,7). Serving as Chair of the CSW from 1990-1994, Cook assembled important data concerning the female constituency of the AMS, noting that it had reached 38% of the total membership by the early 1990s. While she was never a member of the CSW, the debt of feminist scholarship to Susan McClary was duly noted when she was invited to chair a discussion at AMS Oakland 1990; her path-breaking collection of essays, Feminine Endings, was published in 1991. Linda Austern served as Chair of the CSW from 1995-1999. In her report of February 1996, Austern wrote that "all members of the AMS [should be encouraged] to take younger women under their wings, to let them know when they’ve given an insightful paper or published a useful article, book, or edition" (XXVI/1, 14). She thereby promoted the idea of mentoring that remains at the heart of the committee’s present aims (XXVIII/1, 8), and indeed represents the subject of the open meeting planned for AMS Atlanta 2001. By 1997, the concept of mentoring came to be associated with creating a community of scholars that is culturally diverse and inclusive, which envisions developing systems to accommodate people’s diversity rather than trying to change people themselves.

In honor of the establishment in 1996 of a Committee on the Status of Women in the Society for Ethnomusicology, the AMS CSW chose the topic "Women, Music, and Multi-Culturalism" for its Open Meeting for AMS Baltimore 1996. It was in a similar spirit of uniting forces that Judy Tsou, present Chair of the AMS CSW since 1999, organized the AMS Toronto 2000 panel on the "History of Missions of the Committees on the Status of Women" in collaboration with CSW representatives from the College Music Society, the International Association for Women in Music, the Music Library Association, the Society for American Music, the Society for Ethnomusicology, and the Society for Music Theory.

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Mission Statement

Committee on the Status of Women American Musicological Society

The Committee on the Status of Women of the American Musicological Society promotes gender equity and feminist scholarship in musicology and related fields. The Committee seeks to:

1. Represent the professional needs and concerns of women of the Society
2. Propose strategies and policies to encourage the participation and advancement of women at all levels
3. Inform the membership about the status of women in musicology with special attention given to hiring, tenure, promotion, and full participation in the profession
4. Encourage research about women and gender
5. Provide a forum for issues in feminist scholarship by organizing programs for the annual meeting of the Society, publishing reports in the Society's Newsletter, and maintaining the Committee's web page
6. Maintain a liaison with other organizations concerned with the status of women in the arts and academia
7. Provide resources for informal mentoring of women in the Society
8. Propose to the Board of Directors policies regarding the rights, opportunities, and needs of women in musicology.

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