How can women leaders within APA develop feminist collaborations among ourselves and with APA leadership?
How can collaborative leadership within APA reflect the diversity of women leaders in terms of our ethnicity, social class, disability, and sexual orientation, and do we need to develop alternative models of collaboration?
The American Psychological Association, an institution of over a hundred years, has only recently begun to include women in its ranks of leadership. To date, there has been only 5 female presidents. In 1946, there were 18 division with no female presidents. Over the past 38 years, the percentage of female presidents averaged 22.2% with a high of 44% in 2000. The representation of women as leaders of divisions within the American Psychological Association and as leaders of Boards, Committees and on the Board of Directors has slowly been growing; perhaps not as fast as we all would like, but growing nonetheless. As our numbers grow in absolute representation, we begin to have the critical mass to effect change in the way decisions are made. We now have a greater opportunity to "do things differently". This may mean that we are less likely to endorse a hierarchical model of leadership; it may mean that we are more interested in participatory and collaborative models of leadership; or it may mean that we are more interested in working together to solve problems.
This discussion forum is made up of Division presidents of APA. As co-leaders of this forum, Diane Willis and Nadya Fouad have divisional experience as presidents of Division 12 and Division 17 respectively, and within APA governance. Fouad was co-chair of the Committee on APA-Division Relationships (CODAPAR) charged with helping divisions relate to APA and to each other; this experience and perspective will be brought to the discussion.
We have a unique opportunity to use this forum to discuss the possibility and limitations of feminist collaboration across divisions, and within APA. We will first begin by discussing just what is meant by feminist collaboration. What does it look like and how do we know when we do it? Conversely, and perhaps more easily defined, we will also discuss what is non-feminist collaboration? We will also discuss specific models and develop an action agenda on ways to promote feminist collaboration among Division presidents, and ways to collaborate with the larger APA structure which tends to be more hierarchical and zero-sum than feminist in its process. Finally, we will also address ways in which collaboration can and must incorporate issues of diversity.
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