International
Federation For Research in Women's History
Federation Internationale Pour La Recherche En Histoire Des Femmes
This is the last newsletter for my period as President of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History. It has been an honour to serve in this capacity for an organisation with such significant goals. As I pass the task on to the next President, I am aware of the future possibilities for the Federation, as well as being reflective about its activities to this date.
The Federation owes its existence since 1989 to our respected colleague from Norway, Ida Blom, who had the vision to see the value of international links for scholars in women’s history across the world, and to support their search to find an enduring structure for this. As a senior European academic, Ida Blom was well placed to identify organisational channels within which the newly formed Federation for Research in Women’s History could take its place. It was Ida who facilitated the association of the Federation with CISH (the International Committee for the Historical Sciences), which gave us a firm basis in a major international historical network. Our five yearly conference under the auspices of this `umbrella group’ — the first in Madrid (1990), the second in Montreal (1995) and now the third forthcoming meeting in August in Oslo - have enabled women’s historians from many countries to meet and share ideas. At the same time the presence of women’s historians on the programme has stimulated wider interest about our historical concerns in the discipline as a whole. The conferences which we organised specifically for the Federation, in Bielefeld in 1993 and Melbourne in 1998, have consolidated our links and interchanges. We expect this will continue after this year with a further gathering in 2002 or 2003, possibly in Ireland. This venue will be discussed at our general meeting in Oslo.
In the meantime the Federation newsletters, produced first by Karen Offen (USA) and subsequently Lynn Abrams (Scotland) have served a useful role in bringing us a range of items about national committee activities, about forthcoming local conferences and about women’s history publications. Karen and Lynn, these two stalwart secretaries, have been very much in the hands of the national conveners to provide news, but have always succeeded in gathering interesting material for circulation. As President I undertook to see that the Melbourne conference took place, and the current Vice President, Nancy Hewitt, undertook the major role both in interfacing with CISH and in preparing the programme for our Oslo conference. Mrinalini Sinha and ida Blom assisted with this challenging responsibility, and the resulting schedule of panels looks marvellous.
Since 1990 we have been helped in extending the outreach of the Federation through the proliferation of new technologies, particularly electronic mail or email. Nevertheless large numbers of women’s historians have had no access to computers, nor to reliable fax machines or even mail systems. Over the next decade we can expect computer use to become more common, and hence we should be able to broaden our conversations and widen our ranks, especially in Asia and Africa, where women’s history is often a new but thriving initiative in the history curriculum in tertiary institutions. The development of a Federation Web site would facilitate our communication.
A collection of papers from the Melbourne conference, entitled Women’s Rights and Human Rights : International Historical Perspectives, is in press with Macmillan, London. We expect its publication early next year, with 20 contributions from an interesting range of scholars. The royalties from the book will flow to the Federation’s funds. Meanwhile other publications have emerged that had their origins in the conference, among them Joy Damousi and Kat Ellinghaus’s edition of some 40 of the Australian papers, published by the History Department at the University of Melbourne.
Nancy Hewitt, Lynn Abrams, the members of the Board and I have learned a great deal and enjoyed the chance to serve the Federation for past five years. We offer incoming officers —and all national associations and their conveners—every good wish for the next years.