The ASC Division on Women and Crime From 30 Years Out

The Origins of the Division Within the Context of the ASC

The only way to understand the history and origins of the Division on Women and Crime is to understand the history of the larger organization of which it is a part. The ASC is generally understood to have originated in 1941 when a handful of men who were teaching college courses in police science gathered with their colleague and professional policing pioneer August Vollmer at his home in Berkeley, California. The purpose of the gathering was to further “college police training and standardizing police training curricula” (cited in Morris, 1975). Departments of criminology and/or criminal justice, so ubiquitous on college campuses today, were unknown at the time. Indeed, few thought of policing as a college-level discipline. Forming an organization to promote scholarship and professionalism in the field was entirely novel.

As the fledgling organization grew over the next few decades, its name changed several times and its scope grew to embrace all of the fields we now refer to as included in “criminology” and “criminal justice.” However, as one Division historian has noted, “one feature remained constant—it was an all-male group” (Facella, 2000, p. 8). By the time it officially became the “American Society of Criminology” in 1958, there were still no women members.

It was only in the mid-1960s that a very small number of women began to be involved in the Society, finally appearing as presenters on the program for the first time in 1967. It is interesting to note that one of these early female ASC members was Eleanor Glueck, a research partner to her husband Harvard Law School professor Sheldon Glueck (Adler, 1997), who together produced some of the first comprehensive and longitudinal studies of male—and also female—offenders (see Glueck & Glueck, 1934).

The 1960s and 1970s brought changes to women’s role in American society on a wide variety of fronts. Certainly, the anti-war protests of that period and the emergence of a new wave of feminism—along with growing crime rates, violent prison inmate uprisings, and the spectacular growth of a new media (television) to display it all to us—contributed to an interesting but challenging era. Many traditional components of American society were faced with pressure, if not demands, for social change.

So it was with the ASC, as growing numbers of women also began to join its ranks for the first time. Available records show that by 1972, there were 59 women out of 529 members, comprising 11% of the total (Adler, 1997). Two of these pioneers even managed to be elected to the office of Secretary: Christine Schulz in 1970 and Barbara Price in 1973 (American Society of Criminology, n.d.). However, women held no other Society leadership positions for almost a decade until Barbara Price was elected Vice President in 1981. Another almost decade went by before Joan McCord became the first woman to be elected ASC President in 1989. Since that time, seven other women have been elected to the highest office of President, including Joanne Belknap who serves in that role at present (2013-2014), and the president-elect, Candace Kruttschnitt.

Once more women began attending and joining the ASC in the 1970s, their numbers grew rapidly. According to Adler (1997), by 1975 women represented 15% of the membership. Twenty years later in 1996, they were almost a third (31%) of the members. The headcounts that provided these statistics were apparently special events, however, since the ASC has not kept regular records of membership by sex since then. Although the ASC membership form does ask for information on gender (along with age, race, and primary field of employment), this question only appears on the bottom of the second page under “optional” information. Perhaps not surprising, only about two thirds of the 3,645 members submitting such forms in 2012 actually answered the question about their sex. In that year, women comprised 49% (n = 1,125) of members providing that optional information (n = 2,269).

The idea that women might now actually comprise almost half of the total ASC membership is not that unbelievable when we consider that women also comprise 47% of all law degree recipients in the United States (American Bar Association, Commission on Women in the Profession, 2013), 48% of all medical school graduates, 45% of all medical residents (Catalyst, 2013a), and 43% of all persons employed in the professional and technical services in the United States (Catalyst, 2013b). Women, who in 1947 only constituted 29% of all enrollments in degree granting postsecondary educational institutions, today represent the majority (57%) of all college students (National Center for Education Statistics, 2014b). In fact, women have exceeded men in college enrollments since 1988 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2014b). As a result of these and other changes, some of the most male-dominated professions in American society have undergone serious revisions in membership over the past 40 years.

When women began attending ASC conferences in larger numbers in the 1970s, they brought two new concerns with them. First, as Rosabeth Kanter (1977) noted in her groundbreaking analysis of Men and Women of the Corporation, being a female minority in a previously male-dominated organization produces all kinds of strains and stresses on that minority not experienced by those in the majority. Women attending ASC conferences in the early 1970s found themselves in sometimes hostile environments where their presence was either not appreciated at all or appreciated for the wrong reasons. Sexual innuendos and outright harassment were not uncommon. Criminology—and its incorporated areas of policing, corrections, law, courts, public safety, or terrorism—have been traditionally regarded as very “masculine” academic and practice domains. Women found that being taken seriously as educators, researchers, or practitioners in these fields was often problematic, regardless of their personal competence.

Being taken seriously in a traditionally masculine professional association also did not come easily. Wilson (c. 1982) recounts that, at one of the first ASC panels devoted to gender issues in 1977, the topic was women as professionals in criminal justice. During their presentations, some of the women panelists expressed “a fair amount of hostility against the male establishment” as they described the sexism and challenges faced by women attempting to negotiate careers in policing, law, and corrections. Some male audience members heatedly retaliated with comments about the “incapacity of women to serve as police and correctional members” (p. 1). The atmosphere became testy, to say the least. While scholarly controversy and conflict is not new or unknown in the history of the ASC, and more than a few ASC panels have erupted in shouting, women trying to carve out a place for themselves in the Society in the 1970s were keenly aware that their interests and scholarship were regarded as trivial or unimportant by many of their male colleagues, and their mere presence was often not welcome.

A second concern women brought to the ASC with their increased participation in the 1970s were requests to present papers and to organize panel sessions on topics which were novel to the organization. It is interesting to observe that Edith Flynn, who served as the first female ASC Program Chair in 1974, is credited with also being the first to put the topic of “Critical Criminology” on the agenda—a session in which women were also said to have participated (Adler, 1997). The first panel that was actually devoted to the topic of “Women and Crime” appeared on the 1975 program. Frank Scarpitti served as the discussant on that first panel, chaired by Freda Adler. Her groundbreaking book Sisters in Crime (Adler, 1975) had been published earlier that year accompanied by an unprecedented amount of media publicity. Rita Simon’s equally important book on Women and Crime also appeared in 1975. It is important to note that there had been no books published on the broad subject of women and crime since Otto Pollack’s The Criminality of Women in 1950. Now, suddenly there were two books on the subject published in the same year, creating what appeared to be a virtual tidal wave of research on the previously ignored subject. The topic caught the interest of the media at the time, resulting in an explosion of publicity in the popular press.

Despite this, the expectations of the organizers for that first ASC panel on women and crime in 1975 were modest. Aware of the disdain of their colleagues, they hoped only that more audience members than panelists would show up (Adler, 1997). They were unprepared for what happened. Perhaps attendance was stimulated by the publicity attached to Adler’s and Simon’s recent books, or perhaps it was the media attention which had begun to call attention to women’s newly rising arrest rates. Or perhaps it was the fact that some spectacularly gruesome crimes involving women had occurred in recent years. Remember that it was 1969 when the infamous Manson Family murders occurred, and the trial of Manson and his followers dominated the press in 1970-1971. It was 1974 when kidnapped socialite Patty Hearst participated in an armed bank heist with her captors from the revolutionary Symbionese Liberation Army. There seemed to be news stories everywhere about women behaving criminally in new and shocking ways. Whatever the cause for the interest in this first ever ASC panel session on gender and crime, the panelists were surprised when scores of ASC members showed up, requiring a last-minute change to a larger room from which the audience still spilled out into the corridor and back behind the speakers (Adler, 1997).

From that point on, panel sessions and roundtables on various aspects of gender and crime became a fixture on the ASC conference program. So did the participation of women members in panels and roundtables on all kinds of other subjects. Today, the participation of women in the ASC conferences, and the scheduling of sessions devoted to issues on women and crime in one way or another, has dramatically increased. In 2009, the program showed that there were 62 panels, roundtables, or workshops focusing on gender and crime issues; 2 years later in 2011 that number had climbed to 114. By 2012, the total was 133 such sessions.

Clearly, there is no shortage of research and scholarship devoted to this subject area today. Perhaps we should not be surprised, since sex/gender has been called the single most important correlate of criminality—or at least of arrest. It took a long time for the discipline to stop taking this statistic for granted and begin treating it as problematic, but it is clear that the involvement of women in the ASC helped to prompt that change.

The Birth of the Division

As is often the case with social movements that eventually morph into established organizations, the origins of the Division on Women and Crime were informal and grassroots in nature. As noted above, women who attended the ASC conferences in the 1970s found themselves vastly outnumbered by the male attendees and often had their research or interest in participating in the life of the ASC ignored or dismissed. It is easy to forget today how blatant some of the sexism of the 1970s was in male-dominated organizational settings. At the very least, however, women at ASC meetings sometimes found it hard to connect with others who understood the gender issues in which they were interested or the challenges they faced as women in academia.

Thus, the origin of the Division on Women and Crime may be found in the informal relationships that began in the panel sessions and conference banquets or cocktail parties of the 1970s ASC annual meetings (Wilson, c. 1982). However, these supportive connections did not relieve the sexism or isolation women tended to experience in the ASC. In 1977, a small group of frustrated women decided to hold an impromptu meeting in Ann Mahoney’s hotel room. Rafter (2005) and Adler (1997) provide slightly different recollections about exactly who attended this initial meeting, but the list includes Freda Adler, Phyllis Jo (“P. J.”) Baunach, Edyth Flynn, Drew Humphries, Anna Kuhl, Ann Mahoney, Barbara Price, Nicole Hahn Rafter, Chris Rasche, Elizabeth Stanko, and Nanci Koser Wilson. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss “the creation of a forum to address issues concerning women as professionals in the criminal justice system and as researchers on gender and crime” (Adler, 1997). One result of this meeting was the formation of a “Caucus for Women’s Issues in ASC” to pursue these concerns. It soon became known simply as the “Women’s Caucus.”

This action received unexpected backlash from the ASC leadership. Up to that time, the term “Caucus” had traditionally been used to refer to small political meetings. But, it developed some different nuances during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, especially after the Congressional Black Caucus was formed in 1969. The term began to take on a militant or revolutionary connotation in popular discourse. It was eventually appropriated by feminist activists to describe informal feminist groups gathering to plan strategies for dealing with the sexist establishment. Rafter (2005) notes that, in addition to the perhaps incendiary interpretation of this terminology, the environment at the 1977 conference may have already been inadvertently charged by the circulation of a petition by Betsy Stanko and Nicky Rafter calling for the ASC not to hold meetings in non-Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) states. It must be remembered that in the late 1970s, the drive to ratify the ERA, which had passed both houses of Congress in 1972 with high expectations, was beginning to face serious political obstacles. If it was not ratified by at least three fourths of the states by June 30, 1982, the Amendment was due to expire. Feminist advocates everywhere urged corporations and convention planners to boycott non-supportive states, but it is fair to say that the ASC Executive Board did not receive this petition effort kindly. According to Nicky Rafter (2005), the very idea of a Women’s Caucus was “upsetting to the men who dominated the ASC, who accused us of trying to fracture the organization” (p. 1). At that time, there were no subgroups within the ASC, and Society leaders had no intentions of beginning with women as a recognized subgroup.

In this atmosphere, the efforts of the Women’s Caucus to organize an informal meeting the following year at the 1978 ASC conference were met with both open hostility and closet sabotage. Signs posted all around on hotel walls to advertise the Caucus meeting were mysteriously ripped down almost as fast as they could be posted. Nonetheless, Wilson (c. 1982) recalled that about 30 persons showed up and expressed considerable enthusiasm for forming a more official subgroup. By the 1979 conference in Philadelphia, things had “simmered down somewhat” (Wilson, c. 1982, p. 2), and the Caucus held its first formal meeting. It was a breakfast meeting at which about 35 people showed up and a formal agenda was followed. Wilson (c. 1982) recounted that the agenda included a discussion of women’s issues in ASC, a synopsis of a survey of ASC women which Nanci Koser Wilson and Bob Jones had compiled, and a discussion of activities the group might undertake. A steering committee was also created, consisting of P. J. Baunach, Labora Bennett, Edith Flynn, Peggy Fortune, Ann Mahoney, Gene Moyer, Nicky Rafter, Lilian Reilly, Nanci Wilson, and Margaret Zahn. P. J. Baunach and Nanci Wilson were elected as the co-chairs of the Caucus (Wilson, 1982).

P. J. Baunach was uniquely qualified to take a leadership role in the fledgling women’s movement within ASC. Mentored as a graduate student by prison reformer Tom Murton (whose story was the source for the Academy Award-winning 1980 movie Brubaker), Baunach went on to a career as a researcher with the Minnesota Governor’s Commission on Crime Prevention and Control. This led to a consultantship on the National Study on Women’s Correctional Programs (Glick & Neto, 1977), the first comprehensive description and analysis of American female prisoners. This in turn led to a position as a Correctional Research Specialist with the National Institutes of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice (which later became the National Institutes of Justice [NIJ]), where she oversaw the funding of research projects. Some of the first funded studies of women as professionals, victims, or offenders came through the unsolicited research program she initiated there (MacKenzie, 1997).

This interesting background meant that, when Baunach began attending ASC meetings in 1976, she was uniquely positioned to recognize the marginalization of women in those meetings. Unlike most of the women in attendance at those early meetings, who were teachers and researchers, Baunach brought what MacKenzie (1997) has called “a national perspective” to her view of the needs faced by women professionals in the field of criminology. She was among those female conference participants who not only lamented the limited role of women in the ASC but also realized that women needed “a supportive network to help them participate fully in their profession” (MacKenzie, 1997, p. 8). Her national position led to her being appointed by one ASC president as an “honorary member” of the ASC board and then as a member of a variety of ASC committees and ultimately the Executive Board. This gave her insights into the inner workings of the ASC and its leadership, which would turn out to be very useful as women ASC members began to seriously organize.

Baunach was not the only woman who had gained a position on the ASC Executive Board by the early 1980s. Freda Adler was the first in 1974-1975, but there were at least eight others who gained positions on the Board by the time Baunach was formally elected for her first term in 1981-82 (see ASC Officers on the ASC website). Some of them, such as Barbara Price and Edith Flynn, also provided valuable organizational insights to the growing women’s movement within ASC. Their practical organizational knowledge would turn out to be important in the task confronting those who wanted to pursue greater visibility and acceptance for women within the ASC.

Even with the support and guidance of these pioneering ASC women, it took over five years for the Women’s Caucus to work through all the problems they faced and win formal organizational recognition. One real problem was that the ASC Constitution and bylaws had no provisions for the recognition of subunits within the larger body. Another was convincing the ASC leadership that there was a real need for some way to focus on the issues of concern to women and gender researchers within the organization, and that there was sufficient support within the ranks for such a development. The Caucus tackled the latter problem by actively recruiting members and garnering the support of like-minded male ASC members. It also began a mimeographed newsletter, The Newsletter of the Women in the ASC, edited by Nanci Koser Wilson and first published in October 1980. The purpose was to inform interested persons of the planned activities of the group for the Annual Meetings of the ASC scheduled for November 1980 in San Francisco. Among those activities was a luncheon meeting, along with a “no host cocktail party” and a total of 12 panel sessions on the topic of women/gender and crime.

By 1981, the Caucus had changed its name to “Women in ASC” and had begun thinking about what a formal group would look like. There was considerably less hostility among ASC leaders to the notion of official subgroups, best demonstrated by the fact that they had developed protocols for subgroups seeking divisional status. Certainly, attitudes in American society regarding the roles of women had already changed somewhat for the better and perhaps this encouraged change in ASC leadership. But the improved attitude of the ASC leadership may also be credited, at least in part, to the inside and behind-the-scenes lobbying of P. J. Baunach and Freda Adler, who had achieved considerable status within the larger ASC by that time (Rafter, 2005). The new protocols for seeking divisional status, included in a “Resolution for the Establishment of Divisions in the American Society of Criminology,” specified the development of a constitution, which would acknowledge the subservient status of divisions to the larger Society and meet with ASC Executive Board approval. Divisional hopefuls were also required to elect officers and provided a list of members, which would demonstrate that “at least 3% of the membership expressed an interest in participating in this division once it is formed” (Baunach & Wilson, 1981a).

To meet this requirement, P. J. Baunach and Nanci Koser Wilson sent a letter in September 1989 to ASC members soliciting their support. Members were encouraged to sign and mail back a statement of support to affirm their agreement to the idea of forming a division, though there was a very short deadline to do this (Baunach & Wilson, 1981a). Nonetheless, 80 members submitted such statements of support, which met the 3% threshold. Of the 80 signatories, 30 were male members. It is important to note that there were quite a few supportive male members who joined the Caucus very early on, some of whom were high-ranking members of the ASC or prestigious members of the discipline.

P. J. Baunach and Nanci Koser Wilson did most of the actual work which had to be done to create a division. With the help of others, they developed agendas for Women’s Caucus meetings and developed strategic plans for meeting ASC’s new divisional requirements. Baunach is credited with doing most of the initial drafting of a constitution.

The formal process of soliciting the ASC Executive Board for permission to form a Division on Women and Crime finally came to fruition in the fall of 1981 when Baunach and Wilson submitted to the Board their “Petition for the Establishment of a Division on Women and Crime” (Baunach & Wilson, 1981b). The petition clearly asserted that the “purpose of the Division on Women and Crime is to bring together ASC members of both sexes interested in discussing issues related to women of all ages as professionals, victims and offenders in the criminal justice system” (p. 1). Interestingly, the petition also asserted that,

[i]n forming this division, we are not attempting to isolate or segregate the study of issues about women from the study of issues about men; rather, we want to focus on the importance of issues related to women and to facilitate a communication link and resource network among those concerned about the study of women and crime. (p. 1)

This reassurance was intended to mollify the lingering concerns that the creation of a division would provoke schisms within the Society and the discipline. It worked. The Board approved the petition at its November 1981 meeting.

From Recognition to Reality

This did not constitute the end of the process. To finalize the evolution from Caucus to Division, a constitution had to be drafted, approved by the membership and also approved by the ASC Executive Board. In February 1982, the new division’s newsletter described the hurdles yet to be overcome and described the process of creating the proposed constitution, which would hopefully be circulated to members for their input later that spring. The goal was to have a final draft ready for an official vote by division members by the annual meeting later that fall. The newsletter also reported on the establishment of a division data bank of research interests “among those whose specialty areas include the study of women and the criminal justice system”—the first attempt to create a rudimentary research networking system on women and crime (Wilson, 1982a, p. 2). The newsletter reported that, of the 960 presentations made at the 1981 ASC Annual Meeting, 200 were made by women, constituting over 20% of the presentations.

Most of these were not on the topic of women and crime, demonstrating that women are not being isolated in their own “special topic area,” but rather are being integrated into the study of criminology as a whole, which is most encouraging. (Wilson, 1982a, p. 2)

However, it was noted that 48 papers were also specifically on women’s issues, most of them focusing on women as offenders. The tide had turned. Thereafter, panel sessions and roundtables on various aspects of gender and crime were a regular feature on the ASC conference program. So was the participation of women members in panels and roundtables on a wide variety of other subjects.

In September 1982, P. J. Baunach sent out a letter to all “ASC members interested in the Division of Women and Crime,” which included a copy of a draft constitution and solicited feedback. The newsletter in October 1982 announced that a vote on the proposed constitution would take place at the first formal meeting of the new Division in November, after which it would be sent to the Executive Board for their consideration. The newsletter also noted that much had changed since that first informal hotel room meeting in 1975. “This year’s meeting in Toronto will be a benchmark for those whose special interest is women and crime,” Wilson reported.

Now in our eighth year, we have achieved status as a Division in ASC. The number of papers we will present has increased seven-fold, and there appears to be no question that what we are learning about the relationship between gender and crime is of importance to criminology as a whole . . . Well past the stage in which we saw the activities of women as unimportant, we are now systemically documenting those activities, exploring their meaning, and talking it for granted that they are important. (Wilson, 1982b, p. 1)

The first business meeting of the provisional Division occurred on November 4, 1982, and drew at least 25 persons—the first time actual attendance records were kept. The members revised and approved the draft constitution and voted to send it on to the ASC Board. They discussed a recommendation from the Board that the Division also create bylaws, which are easier to amend. The membership agreed that bylaws should be created, and Chris Rasche was appointed to the task of developing these for future consideration. Members also discussed creating an award for the best research on gender and crime, and Wilson and Ira Silverman were appointed to explore this idea and report back the next year. Members also appointed Anna Kuhl and Cathy Spatz-Widom to monitor the process by which ASC award recipients were nominated, so that the new Division could begin to have a voice in suggesting candidates. Finally, members elected an interim Division Executive Board for a two-year term to continue to guide the development process. P. J. Baunach was elected as Interim Chair, along with Nanci Koser Wilson as Interim Vice Chair, Anna Kuhl as Interim Secretary, and Cathy Spatz-Widom, Chris Rasche, and Ira Silverman as Interim Executive Counselors (Adler, 1997).

The ASC Executive Board approved the draft constitution at its November 1982 meeting with a few recommended changes and sent it back to the fledgling Division for ratification, which it did the following year. As per the ASC protocols, the Division on Women and Crime became an official entity a year after that when it held its first official business meeting at, and appeared on the program of, the ASC conference in 1984. It had taken almost a decade, but the Division had become a reality and, in the process, had already significantly changed the larger Society of which it was a part.

The Politics of Development

The advancement of the Division on Women and Crime arose out of the continuing felt need for a community of others who would understand and not minimize the research and professional interests of women entering the discipline. The period of the mid-1970s was a volatile one for the larger women’s movement in the United States and, as noted earlier, it is not surprising that the ASC felt some of that volatility within its own ranks. But it is also clear that the mere expression of discontent is not enough to manufacture change, and the women (and men) who pressed for change within the ASC in the mid-1970s and early 1980s were not guaranteed to get it.

The historical overview above recounts the process by which the women who formed that first Caucus in 1975 went on to develop and maintain subsequent iterations until it finally became an official division in 1984. That historical rendition provides a great example of how new social groupings, especially when they are in conflict with larger and more powerful groups, require certain attributes to be successful. Not the least of these is the availability of savvy leaders who understand the politics of the situation and the strategies that might be successful. As Austin Turk (1969) eloquently described in his analysis of the nature of power relations, conflict between differing interest groups is inevitable but the outcome of that conflict is not. While some marginal interest groups may have strong ideological or moral arguments with which to attack the powerful status quo, compelling arguments alone are insufficient to effect change. The women who challenged the ASC clearly had compelling arguments for fostering diversity in the organization. But many of those same arguments had been voiced by the larger women’s movement in America for over a century, resulting in only small societal changes. Powerful groups, Turk (1969) noted, are never inclined to give up their dominance and power voluntarily, even when maintaining the status quo begins to seem morally indefensible. History provides ample evidence of the powerful clinging to the status quo long after they have been overtaken by social events. For this reason, the less powerful always face the difficult task of developing successful strategies for change (Turk, 1969).

As discussed above, the Women’s Caucus was served admirably in this regard by the presence of early leaders who possessed a savvy grasp of the situation in which they found themselves and also who understood the politics of the larger organization. They were assisted by a number of male ASC members who joined the infant division or provided other strategic support either because of their own interest in gender issues or out of sheer principle. In combination, the leaders and members of the early Women’s Caucus were able to make a number of decisions, which served them well in the struggle for recognition. Indeed, their success became a model for other interest groups within the ASC who sought division status in the years that followed. In addition to those decisions and actions already described above, the following events and strategies may be regarded as important to the success of the Division in seeking its identity.

One of the first important problems the Women’s Caucus had to confront in its beginning efforts to organize in the mid-1970s was communicating with members and supporters. Today, when social media abounds and everyone carries a cell phone or smart phone, it may be difficult to imagine how challenging it was just to identify potential recruits and keep in touch with constituents. This was the period prior to the availability of, not only social media, but personal computers and email. Contact with colleagues outside one’s own institution or locality was dependent on the Postal Service and/or long distance phone calls. Under these conditions, one of the most important things the fledgling Caucus did was establish a newsletter. As noted above, Nanci Koser Wilson took on this challenge, even though it meant physically duplicating copies by mimeograph machine and mailing them to members. It is difficult to overstate how important it was to the original members to have this one small connection with colleagues who shared their scholarly interests and professional concerns.

Another important decision came when the Caucus finally succeeded in getting its petition for divisional status approved in 1982. In addition to its approval, the ASC Executive Board recommended that the fledgling division give up the small mimeographed newsletter Wilson had been distributing in favor of using the much bigger and slicker official ASC newsletter, The Criminologist. In a sense, inviting the Division to become a part of the mainstream communication system was a validation of the Division’s existence. The Division members recognized this and seriously discussed the suggestion at its 1982 meeting. However, they wisely decided to keep producing their own newsletter, regardless of its comparatively primitive nature and the difficulty in producing it. The Division would just periodically “submit brief items to the Criminologist concerning the Division’s activities” (Wilson, 1983). In retrospect, this decision turned out to be vital in the continuing development of the Division’s identity and agendas. Nanci Koser Wilson published the first version of the newsletter for six years and it was clearly important in fostering that first network, developing a list of potential Division members and distributing important news. In spring of 1987, Chris Rasche took over and began publishing a somewhat more sophisticated printed newsletter, re-named The DivisioNews, a task she continued for the next decade. Rafter notes that these early division-only newsletters were “crucial in creating the group’s identity and keeping members in contact between meetings . . . and formed a basis for organizing” (2005, p. 1). In more recent years, the newsletter was named Sarah for a time, in honor of Sarah Hall, the long-time Executive Secretary for the ASC who provided substantial support to the Division in its formative years, especially in getting the necessary mailing labels for the newsletter. Today, the newsletter is digital, which does not diminish the difficulty of its production, but massively improves its ease of delivery and its capacity for being updated in a timely fashion.

Another important development in the growth of the new Division was the decision in 1986 to create a DWC brochure. Chris Rasche agreed to undertake this task and produced a simple three-panel brochure, which outlined the group’s purpose and activities, and included a membership form. This greatly facilitated the identification of ASC members who were interested in the Division and its activities, and membership grew quickly. From those initial 25 who attended the 1982 meeting, membership had grown to 220 by the fall of 1989 (The DivisioNews, 1990, insert).

Once brochures were available, the next smart move undertaken by the Division in the early years of its development was the decision to sponsor a display table during the ASC annual meeting of 1987. Display tables were a common feature of ASC conferences but were largely limited to the Exhibit Hall where book publishers and other vendors displayed their wares. In an effort to increase visibility and recruit members, the Division asked for and received permission to have a display table just outside the Exhibit Hall. They did not have much to put on the table, but set up signs, put out membership forms and the new brochures, and signed up volunteers to staff the table during the conference. While this information booth certainly succeeded in raising the visibility of the Division within the Society, it also unexpectedly proved to be a great meeting and conversational nexus. With no other permanent location to call its own, the Division inadvertently created a space where members could physically connect with each other. Again, in the age before cell phones and digital linkages, this small place within ASC’s huge conference domain proved to be immensely valuable. It became very important in helping to overcome the isolation and intimidation commonly experienced by new women ASC attendees. The Division information table remains a fixture of ASC conferences to this day.

Since one of the original purposes of the Division was to be a networking vehicle, it is not surprising that a variety of efforts developed early on within the Division to address common concerns of women in academia. One of the first of these was a Tenure/Promotion Support Network which began to form in 1988 in response to the persistent question of whether women could get equitable access to promotions and tenure in the field of criminology. It was not uncommon back then for women (and some men) to report that their scholarship in areas of gender, or particularly about women and crime, had been dismissed as unimportant by T&P committees or external reviewers. In response, the Division endeavored to create a list of members who were willing to serve as external reviewers, so that members could find reviewers “who may have a better appreciation for their work” (The DivisioNews, Spring/Summer 1988, p. 4). Laura Fishman took on this task, and also created a list of members who had successfully negotiated the process, or had experience in administrative roles where such decisions were made, who were willing to provide advice. In subsequent years, this initial networking effort grew to include annual ASC panel sessions on tenure/promotion, which have often drawn as many male candidates as the female academics for which they were originally conceived. The Division newsletter today carries a regular T&P column to provide ongoing advice to potential candidates.

Another way the early Division responded to members’ concerns or interests was by creating Task Forces, which often led to other activities. For example, in 1990, the newsletter reported that seven areas of concern had been identified at the Fall 1989 conference, resulting in Task Forces being created in the areas of (a) pregnancy, drugs, and the criminal justice system: criminalizing pregnancy; (b) the impact of AIDS on women; (c) sexual harassment; (d) the status of women in criminology and criminal justice; (e) the status of women criminologists in non-academic settings; (f) incarcerating women: the explosion of female imprisonment; and (g) women of color: exploring the diverse experiences of women and overcoming racism within criminology (The DivisioNews, 1990). Some of these Task Forces persist to this day, while others developed into scholarly panels, annual workshops, or active research groups. Similarly, in subsequent early years, when concerns were raised about women’s need for mentoring in their professional careers, it resulted in a mentoring project which has continued to the present time. When concern arose over the lack of women involved in the NIJ and other governmental agencies’ peer-review processes for funding decisions, the result was workshops on funding and campaigns to increase women’s submissions of their credentials to become peer reviewers.

Interestingly, the identification of sexual harassment as an area of concern by the Division in 1989 presaged the explosion of the subject onto the national stage just a few years later in 1991 when Anita Hill was called to testify before the Senate Judicial Committee regarding the nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Division’s prescient concern with sexual harassment and creation of a Task Force to address the issue eventually prompted Betsy Stanko to spearhead a survey of the membership in the summer of 1991 to explore the issue of sexual safety at work and within the profession (The DivisioNews, Summer 1991). The Senate Judicial Committee hearings took place the following Fall of 1991, at which time the whole nation suddenly learned about sexual harassment. Against the backdrop of the new national debate, when Stanko (1992) made a verbal report on the findings of her survey during the Division’s annual business meeting, it led to “emotional story-sharing, which led to the holding of a special ad hoc support group session . . . and the creation of a Division Support Network for women in the discipline experiencing sexual harassment” (p. 1). Nancy Wonders took on the task of coordinating names and phone numbers to organize and maintain this first network for women experiencing sexual harassment in the discipline.

As for the impromptu special support group session hastily organized during the 1991 ASC conference, Division leaders had to scramble to find a place to hold it. Several dozen members had indicated an interest in attending, since Stanko’s (1992) report on her survey findings had clearly “hit a raw nerve for many members” (p. 4). Finding a private and unoccupied space in a convention hotel is not easy during the height of the conference. Eventually, they obtained ASC President John Hagan’s hotel suite for the spontaneous gathering, and more than 40 women attended. After two and a half hours of sharing, the group vowed to hold another such meeting the following year, and incoming ASC President Del Elliot immediately offered his Presidential suite for that purpose. The fact that one of the Division’s activities resulted in the exposure of a real-world crisis within academia was monumental, as was the fact that two ASC Presidents stepped up to the plate to serve the needs of the Division. The DWC had clearly come into its own.

Last, but certainly not least, it is important to note that the growth of the Division into its prominence within the ASC reached a kind of pinnacle when it successfully negotiated the creation of a scholarly journal titled Feminist Criminology. To be clear, this was not the first journal to focus on issues of women and crime—that honor goes to the journal Women & Criminal Justice, which was initiated in the late 1980s by Haworth Press. The DWC celebrated the creation of the latter when its first edition was announced in Fall 1989, especially as its inaugural editor was Clarice Feinman, who had been an active Division member from the earliest days (The DivisioNews, 1989). Many DWC members served on its editorial board and contributed to its contents. However, the idea of the DWC publishing its own journal, which would specifically highlight feminist criminological scholarship, arose in 2004. First proposed by Susan Sharp, it required some convincing to persuade members that the DWC was up to this challenge. But with the support and advice of member Claire Renzetti, founding and long-time editor of the enormously successful journal Violence Against Women, Sharp drafted a proposal to submit to Sage Publications, who was very receptive. The Division voted to pursue a contract with Sage, and the first issue was published in January 2006. As one sign of the journal’s success, it was indexed by Thomson Reuters in 2010 and clearly has been a triumph for both the Division and Sage. This current special DWC 30th Anniversary edition is testimony to the breadth of feminist criminological scholarship today, a true indicator of the Division’s influence and maturity.

Conclusion

Today, the Division on Women and Crime counts more than 300 members, gives out several annual awards for achievements specific to research and accomplishments regarding women/gender and crime, publishes a very successful journal, and can truthfully claim to have changed both the ASC and the various disciplines and practices it represents. Its social events are major gatherings during ASC conferences, its breakfast business meetings draw people who normally never rise before dawn, and its listserv is one of the most vibrant digital exchange sites in academia. Women in the profession, and all researchers interested in gender issues, continue to be welcomed as members in this growing organization.

None of this was foreseen, or even imagined, by the intrepid women who gathered in a hotel room that dreary day in 1975. Driven to collective action by chauvinistic lack of acceptance, these pioneers of the DWC sought only equity. Looking back now at the things they initiated more than 30 years ago, and the things the Division has accomplished since, should give all women in the profession the sense than anything is possible.