My experience agrees with Marilyn’s.  I think regional SWIPS encourage participation from faculty and graduate students who live and work in parts of the country from which it is both difficult and expensive to travel to the usual sites of national  meetings.  We have hosted ESWIP meetings at USF at least three times that I can remember. Florida is on the outer edges of ESWIP territory (and of every other kind of territory, alas) but having ESWIP in Florida made it possible for people to attend who may be underrepresented at national conferences, as well as well as those who can get inexpensive flights from “hub cities.”  Smaller meetings are both more open and less intimidating to faculty and graduate students who have had little or no experience  presenting at conferences.  I agree with Marilyn that the multiplicity of political bents and practices represented by the different divisions of SWIP enrich feminist philosophy, and that this diversity may be diminished if not lost by a national organization.  (I think that at one time the different divisions of the APA represented such multiple political bents and practices.)  Finally, attending an organizational meeting in the early days of Pacific SWIP in Anne Garry’s living room was an important event for me when women in professional philosophy were few and far between . . . 

Joanne Waugh

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On Mar 14, 2019, at 4:14 PM, Frye, Marilyn <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi all,
I'm not a fan of the idea of consolidating the SWIPs into one national organization.  I'm not so sure a single national organization would rescue whatever should be rescued.  Are members going to be any more eager to be on the board of a national organization than they are to be on the board of a regional organization?  

Also:

    One reason we formed regional organizations, way back when, was accessibility:  we wanted the meetings to be financially accessible to women who couldn't afford to travel cross-country and stay in expensive lodgings, and we wanted to encourage and support both graduate students and undergrads who would find the divisional meetings more socially/professionally accessible that a larger national conference.  In the midwest it has been common for faculty and graduate students to organize rides and provide free housing so that undergrads, grads and those without substantial employment could be engaged as participants and presenters. That kind of access has been an important dimension of the work and mission of SWIP, in some of our manifestations.  I believe that in our present circumstances, nationally, with so many of us holding non-tenure jobs with low pay and uncertain future, travel across the continent is, if anything, even more problematic for even more of us.

Another consideration:  Divisional SWIPs have developed somewhat different practices and mission-conceptions, and hence differently inflected collegial\political cultures. I have very much liked that SWIP has always been multiple in political bents and practices. As I see it, the variety of SWIPs enriches feminist philosophy.  I, for one, would think more may be lost than gained, if we homogenize SWIP into a single national organization. 

Let's do a longer and deeper re-visiting of our situations, our purposes and our needs (in this 21st century) before settling on this or that as a solution to whatever the problem is.

Marilyn Frye
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