Spotlight: Gender and Feminisms Caucus
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We write this article during a period of crisis for people marginalized by gender around the world. Women and their allies in Iran face state-sanctioned violence in protests that respond to the killing of Mahsa Amini by morality police.[1] In Afghanistan, the Taliban has banned women and girls from accessing high school and university education.[2] Last year, scores of Indigenous women activists, including Sandra Liliana Peña Chocué, were murdered by political opponents in South and Central America.[3] The Supreme Court of the United States has overturned the federal right to access medical abortion. In the UK, police officers commit gender-based violence with impunity, refugees are denied safe passage, and a quarter of women live in poverty.[4] The fierce backlash against the #MeToo movement—#WoYeShi in China, #ArewaMeToo in Nigeria—has been felt around the globe.
Moreover, as scholars and practitioners of media, it’s impossible for us to ignore the intersectional oppressions that erase women’s voices in the industries that we study, the texts that we analyze, and the places that we work. Shabana, a journalism student in Afghanistan, described how her “heart was shattered” on being denied a career as a newscaster.[5] India Willoughby has spoken about the threats she faces as the UK’s first publicly trans newscaster.[6] Heads of department in India’s film industry are 90 percent male.[7] Only 24 percent of creatives in major roles in Hollywood are women.[8] Of the 22,000 professors in UK universities, only forty-one are Black women; 68 percent of researchers are on fixed-term contracts.[9] These are the outcomes of divisive and cruel systems. These are not conditions in which solidarity is meant to thrive between people of different gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, disability, age, immigration status, language, or culture.
Yet across our scholarly and industry networks, solidarity persists. Within the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), many of us have found a home in the Gender and Feminisms Caucus (formerly the Women’s Caucus), which fosters community and encourages us to enact care. As one of the first SCMS caucuses, it has played a significant role in supporting members marginalized by gender. At a critical moment in our collective fight for a more just world, we reflect on the caucus’s past achievements and look to its future.
The Women’s Caucus: Building a Foundation
The caucus was originally founded in 1994 “to promote parity for women’s intellectual and practical work in film, TV, and video.”[10] Over the years, the Women’s Caucus made many achievements. Co-chairs set up an innovative mentorship program that provided graduate students and early career faculty with opportunities to learn from more experienced colleagues. It was (as far as we can tell) the first caucus to offer an annual graduate student writing prize, established in 2015 by Shelley Stamp and Jennifer Bean of Feminist Media Histories to celebrate emerging voices in the field. Thanks to the efforts of Chris Holmlund, Grrrls’ Night Out became a long-running social and networking event that brought members together beyond the more formal discussions of the SCMS annual conference.
The caucus sought to [welcome] people and [make] supportive spaces where one could meet and connect with others, especially at [SCMS] itself, in an environment that can easily feel overwhelming or impersonal. —Deborah Jermyn, co-chair, 2005–2007
Members’ activism both on and off campuses has been championed, too, in a series of panel discussions held during the annual caucus meeting. Contributors so far have included Jennifer Moorman, Christine Acham, and Philana Payton. A long-running commitment to labor equity has also sparked initiatives like the introduction of a Junior Faculty Representative position on the caucus board and conference fee waiver raffles that prioritize early career researchers, graduate students, and underemployed faculty.
I was personally very heartened by the caucus’s commitment to labor equity, among other forms of equity, and I saw the formation of the Junior Faculty Representative as a powerful first step in that regard. —Jennifer Moorman, first junior faculty rep
Another recent development for the caucus has been the updating of its name. Following months of discussions at meetings and via online surveys, the membership voted decisively in 2021 to become the Gender and Feminisms Caucus, which was ratified by the SCMS board in 2022. The significance of this undertaking was amplified by the deeply felt impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the absence of in-person caucus meetings during this period. “The will to change the name [is] continuous with the important work the Caucus has always done to challenge gender inequity in all its forms,” reads the official caucus statement on the matter. “We hope that...the Gender and Feminisms Caucus will continue to honor the legacy of its founders.”[11]
In retrospect, it’s quite remarkable that we managed something so meaningful and lasting [as the name change] during those difficult years. —Shilyh Warren, co-chair, 2020–2022
Gender and Feminisms: Looking to the Future
According to Ann Braithwaite, former president of the Women’s and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes (previously the Canadian Women’s Studies Association), “[a] name which is identity-based runs the risk of being tied to that identity.”[12] Consequently, a name that accounts for plurality of experience and opens up space for trans men and nonbinary colleagues—who alongside cis and trans women are forced to struggle against patriarchy—both broadens our community and resists the idea that one descriptor can define us.
With a new caucus board ready to maintain and grow our community in 2023, there are numerous plans emerging to support members. We hope to bring together representatives from all caucuses to discuss strategies for achieving equity (acknowledging the work of former caucus leaders to prepare the “Collaborative Activism in a Moment of Academic Crisis” event at the canceled 2020 conference). We hope to continue our coalitions with both the Queer and Trans Caucus and SCMS’s Precarious Labor Organization. We also plan to address issues of labor inequity and service work and expect members to collaborate on an updated caucus mission statement.
Thus, in this time of crisis, in which uncertainty and conflict are always at the door, the Gender and Feminisms Caucus is committed to collectively imagining and creating a home for its members. Following in the tradition of the feminist organizing that has shaped this field and the caucus from its outset, we look forward to embracing future evolutions while staying true to the principles of inclusion and connection that sparked the caucus’s initial formation nearly thirty years ago—that is, to advocate for “racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation and class equity in SCS [SCMS], in academia, and in the communities in which we live and work.”[13] We stand in solidarity with members as joyfully and tirelessly as we have always done, and we invite you to join us in fighting for lasting change.
The authors would like to thank all former caucus board members and those who have contributed to events, awards, and administration for their work.
Deina Abdelkader, “Hijab Rules Have Nothing to Do with Islamic Tenets and Everything to Do with Repressing Women,” The Conversation, October 2, 2022, https://theconversation.com/hijab-rules-have-nothing-to-do-with-islamic-tenets-and-everything-to-do-with-repressing-women-191475. ↑
Hikmat Noori and agencies in Kabul, “Taliban Ban Afghan Women from University Education,” The Guardian, December 20, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/20/taliban-ban-afghan-women-university-education. ↑
“More than 1,700 Land Activists Murdered in the Past Decade,” Al Jazeera, September 29, 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/29/over-1700-environmental-activists-killed-in-past-decade-report. ↑
Maya Oppenheim, “Women ‘Brutally Exposed’ to Cost-of-Living Crisis after Bearing Brunt of Soaring Poverty,” The Independent, April 28, 2022, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/women-poverty-cost-of-living-crisis-b2067579.html. ↑
Yalda Hakim, “Afghanistan Professor on Girls’ Education: ‘Men Must Stand Up for Women,’” BBC News, January 24, 2023, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-64374606. ↑
Neil Mackay, “India Willoughby: ‘Someone Will End Up Killed if Things Don’t Calm,’” The Herald, January 29, 2023, https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23283606.india-willoughby-someone-will-end-killed-things-dont-calm/. ↑
Owomaniya! Analysing Gender Diversity in Indian Entertainment, 2022, https://owomaniya.org/wp-content/themes/owomaniya/assets/pdf/Owomaniya.pdf. ↑
Martha M. Lauzen, The Celluloid Ceiling: Employment of Behind-the-Scenes Women on Top Grossing U.S. Films in 2022, Celluloid Ceiling, 2023, https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2022-celluloid-ceiling-report.pdf. ↑
“100 Black Women Professors Now,” Women’s Higher Education Network, 2023, 2, https://www.whenequality.org/100; and “Stamp Out Casual Contracts,” University and Colleges Union, 2023, https://www.ucu.org.uk/stampout. ↑
“Gender and Feminisms Caucus (Founded 1994, Formerly Women’s Caucus),” Society for Cinema and Media Studies, accessed March 30, 2023, https://www.cmstudies.org/page/groups_women_caucus. ↑
“Gender and Feminisms Caucus.” ↑
Quoted in Amy Bhatt, “Women’s-Gender-Sexuality-Feminist Studies: The Politics of Departmental Naming,” in Persistence Is Resistance: Celebrating 50 Years of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, ed. Julie Shayne (Seattle: University of Washington Libraries, 2020). ↑
“Gender and Feminisms Caucus.” ↑
