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Dear all, Hope all well! We just held our annual PSA Women and Politics Group Meeting at the PSA Annual Conference in Glasgow. Key items to report on: * Our financial health is good, and our membership is thriving (184 PSA members; substantially more on the jiscmail email list) * We have organised and provided financial support or sponsorship to a number of events since our last AGM at Brighton: our international Summit on Women and the Profession (Edinburgh, June 2016), with Jane Mansbridge and Yvonne Galligan as keynote speakers; co-sponsored conference on Rights in Diverse Societies (with PSA SGs on Ethnopolitics and Global Justice & Human Rights) (QUB, November 2016); co-sponsored PSA Early Career Network Workshop on Demistifying Early Career Academia (Manchester, February 2017); support for conference on Black Feminism, Womanism and the Politics of Colour in Europe (Edinburgh, September 2016); multiple panels at PSA 2016 and 2017. * Update on the PSA’s Equality and Diversity agenda – E&D is a central pillar of the PSA’s Strategic Plan, launched at Annual Assembly (read here: http://online.fliphtml5.com/wjwd/pvjz/#p=1) and the PSA has officially established an Equality and Diversity sub-committee of the PSA. Meryl will be chairing this (until her term ends next summer) - so send any PSA E&D concerns or issues her way (more on this front later). * Member concerns on Specialist Group all-male events and sexual harassment at PSA conference have been relayed on multiple fronts – please continue flagging these issues to new team as they arise. And with that, Fran and I have now officially stepped down from PSA WomenPol and are handing over to our new Co-Convening team of Jennifer Thomson (DMU, [log in to unmask]) and Orlanda Ward (UCL, [log in to unmask]). They’ll send out a welcome email shortly. Looking back on the past four years as Convenors, we are particularly proud of what we’ve been able to do as a group in terms of promoting women and gender/feminism in the profession, including the group response to all-male-panels at Sheffield PSA 2015 (and subsequent PSA equality & diversity reforms), our collective response to the exclusion of feminism from the A-Level Politics curriculum, and of course last year’s summit on women and the profession, among many other things. Our membership is growing, we’ve got an active social media presence (particularly through the @PSAWomenPol Twitter feed and the blog), and we’ve been able to do a lot of work - with the help of the former PSA PG Network and the new ECN network – supporting PhD and early career scholars. We’d like to thank you all for your support, participation and friendship over the past four years, and look forward to new directions for the group under Orly and Jennifer’s leadership. (Though for my own part, I reserve the right to still yell at manels from my porch in ‘retirement’, whilst swigging g&ts). All the best, Meryl & Fran ————————————————————————— Dr. Meryl Kenny Lecturer in Gender and Politics University of Edinburgh Rm 4.29, Chrystal Macmillan Building Website: http://www.pol.ed.ac.uk/people/academic_staff/meryl_kenny Twitter: @merylkenny LATEST PUBLICATIONS ‘Pathways to Power: Women’s Representation in the 2014 European Parliament Elections’<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-6765.12144/full>, European Journal of Political Research, 2016, 55 (3) (with Maarja Luhiste) Special Issue, ‘Candidate Selection: Parties and Legislatures in a New Era’,<http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayIssue?jid=GOV&tab=currentissue> Government & Opposition, 2016, 51 (3) (with Tania Verge).