The following appeared in Volume 98, Number 2 (Spring, 1999) of the APA Newsletters

The Committee on the Status of Women has been proceeding with a number of the projects which I outlined in the previous report. Perhaps most importantly, we have been instrumental in forming projects jointly with other "diversity committees." We have now had a second meeting with a number of committee chairs and representatives from the Committees on the Status of Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Lesbians, Gays and Transsexual Persons in the Profession. Our joint voices have given rise to:

1. A commitment of the Board to carry out a wide-ranging self-study of the profession. It will be accomplished under the auspices of the Committee on the Status and Future of the Profession, with a special task force put in place. (If you have an interest or expertise and wish to participate in such a task force, please contact me by email).

2. Concerted efforts to make diversity within the profession a focal point of the 100th Anniversary celebrations.

3. A proposal for the enhanced use of the web to help locate young scholars in under represented groups in job searches.

4. Discussion concerning the Non-Discrimination Statement of the APA and the inclusion of outreach as part of the Charge of the "diversity committees". (Interestingly, because the different groups face different problems in the profession, the different needs were reflected in our concerns with both statements.)

5. William Lawson and Eric Hoffman have also announced a National Science Foundation grant "Philosophical Explorations of Science, Technology and Diversity" which has been funded. The grant will result in joint projects in which we will cooperate.

A number of other projects are in the making. This is a productive avenue of coalition building. After all the ink that has been spilled in feminist theory on the subject of coalition building, it is satisfying to engage in the practice within our own profession.

At the Eastern APA, I attended a session organized by the APA Board on publishing with the editors of many of the journals in philosophy. I expressed the concern that our Committee had identified: that too few philosophical journals published work in feminist scholarship. While the books by feminist philosophers grow more voluminous each day, this burgeoning area of study is scarcely reflected in the journals. To my surprise, the editors greeted my queries not with a skeptical "feminist philosophy?" but with the response: "We’d be happy to publish feminist philosophy, but we get no (or very few) submissions of that sort." On reflection, that is not startling. Few of us submit to journals that have never carried articles of the sort we write, regardless of the area. Each submission takes time and unless a journal has a track record in publishing feminist work and unless there are feminist scholars on the editorial boards and serving as referees, authors are unwilling to tie up the publication of their paper by unlikely submissions. A number of suggestions were offered. First, encourage authors to submit feminist work (especially if they are not too concerned about losing time in the refereeing process); encourage feminist philosophers to respond to articles or to debates currently published in journals; encourage feminist scholars to volunteer to be on the editorial boards of journals in their specialty and to offer to referee. There was a general concern with encouraging speedier refereeing and finding more referees, especially those who are an mid-phase of their career. I was assured that editors are always looking for referees and potential members of editorial boards and would welcome more women.