The Future of the CCWHP/CGWH

The Future of the CCWHP/CGWH Judith M. Bennett and Nancy A. Hewitt Twenty-five years after its founding, the Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession/Conference Group on Women's History (CCWHP/CGWH) operates in a very different professional context from the one that necessitated its establishment. Thanks in part to critical interventions by the CCWHP, the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) now respond more readily than in the past to the needs and interests of women historians , and thanks in part to promotional efforts undertaken by the CGWH, women's history is now firmly entrenched as a research and teaching field in our profession. We should not be complacent on either score, but to some extent, the original intentions of the founders of CCWHP/CGWH have been met. It is time, therefore, to reassess, to plot new directions and plan new initiatives. Since this is exactly what officers of the two organizations plan to do at a retreat this summer, we cannot—writing in advance of that retreat—provide an agenda for the future.* Instead, we'd like to outline some general issues that concern us as we think about the immediate concerns to be addressed at the retreat and the long-term goals of the organizations. One way to begin rethinking our roles in relation to both women historians and women's history might be to reconsider our name. No one would accuse the CCWHP/CGWH of offering an elegant, or even memorable , series of initials, and at least some members object to the bifurcation of our work into activist (CCWHP) and academic (CGWH) components. Originally both functions feU under the aegis of the CCWHP. Then in 1974 the formation of the CGWH—which shares memberships, newsletters, and many activities with the CCWHP but which, unlike it, is an AHA-affiliated organization—separated the promotion of women's history from advocacy for women in the profession. There are advantages to this dual system, especially the ability to create pressure for change from two seemingly discrete but intertwined organizations. But there are disadvantages as well, particularly the general confusion associated with the distinct but conjoined efforts of two groups with similar names and one long set of initials. Perhaps it is time to remerge the organizations and to develop a more user-friendly name—Coordinating Council for Women in History (CCWH) would be one possibility. Such a merger might more accurately embrace the array of work done by women in our profession, © 1994 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 6 No. 3 (Fall)_____________________ * By the time of publication, the 1994 retreat will have occurred. Summaries of the discussions held there will be published in the CCWHP/CGWH newsletter. 1994 INTL TRENDS: JUDITH M. BENNETT & NANCY A. HEWITT 107 many of whom find it increasingly difficult to draw a clear line between women's history, gender history, and history in general. This blurring of boundaries between women's history and other sorts of history is a result, in part, of the impressive inroads made by the CCWHP/CGWH in promoting institutional change, particularly at the national level. Today the AHA and OAH represent women much more effectively than they did twenty-five years ago: female officers are found throughout all levels of both organizations, the annual meetings of the AHA accommodate the needs of f amilies in terms of both scheduling and child care, and we even have a permanent representative in the AHA offices in the person of Noralee Frankel, who serves as assistant director on women and minorities. Yet institutional change at the local level has been much more piecemeal , and the CCWHP/CGWH must address these enduring local problems . In most departments of history, women still constitute a smaU minority of faculty, clustering in fixed-term or lower-rank appointments and in particular subfields of the discipline. Among women faculty, moreover , African-American, Native American, and Asian-American women and Latinas and Chicanas are so seriously underrepresented that they are most often counted in the aggregate, as women of color; yet as individuals, they are most likely to be isolated in specific subfields. A few departments of history...