The ECREA Executive welcomes nominations and self-nominations from individuals or from teams of three people to stand for election as the Management Committee of the Women’s Network (one chair, who must hold a PhD and two vice-chairs, one of whom must hold a PhD). Prospective teams should consider the regional and age balance of the prospective Management Committee. A candidate does not have to be an active ECREA member at the time of elections, but if elected, she/he must join the association or renew membership within two months following the election.
Please could prospective candidates or teams of candidates send an email to John Downey sections@ecrea.eu and to info@ecrea.eu in copy by Friday December 7th indicating their willingness to stand for election? The email should include a brief statement of intentions for the network and brief biograph(y)ies of the candidate(s).
Elections will take place online from December 14th to December 21st. Only members of the Women’s Network can vote. Link to online voting tool will be sent via email to all members of the Women’s Network with active membership. You can join the Women’s Network by updating your profile on the ECREA website (https://ecrea.eu/). In order to participate in the online elections, you need to join Women’s Network by December 13 at the latest.
The objectives of the Women’s Network are below. I would be happy to discuss informally with potential candidates initially through contact at the above email address.
The Women’s Network Objectives
The objective of ECREA’s Women’s Network is to assess and develop the interdisciplinary and multicultural field of female scholarship in the context of European Communication and Media Studies. Furthermore, the Women’s Network aims to research the current situation of women in higher education and academic research in Europe, identifying differences, strengths, weaknesses and areas of good practice.
The Women’s Network intends to stimulate the exchange of ideas, and the development of expertise and insights across national borders in order to promote effective discussions and comparisons of case studies, methodologies and materials on the condition of women within the academic frame. ECREA’s Women’s Network also intends to provide added value to ECREA by pooling the member’s expertise in their respective areas, allowing for the transfer of knowledge and good practices concerning equal opportunities. From this perspective, the Women's Network will function as a channel to disseminate information about ECREA’s activities to its members.
The Women's Network will also work closely together with all ECREA sections, in order to render female scholarship more visible within the sections, and to strengthen it. At the same time, the Women's Network will refrain from developing proper research that transcends the above-mentioned focus on female scholarship in European academia.
Thirdly, the Women’s Network will function as a lobby to promote the production of research and the distribution of information on the equality of work and research conditions for women in academia. Bearing in mind that the male vision is not the dominant one, nor the only one, and that the androcentric vision is always partial, the Women’s Network intends to offer a valid alternative to the male-white-western approach when discussing issues of gender in academia. Therefore, the Women’s Network will build on a plural vision of society, as the Network welcomes, includes and grants visibility to women, young and older scholars, from every social background, ethnicity, and orientation. While promoting an inter-disciplinary and inter-cultural approach to the issue of gender in academia, the Women’s Network will provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and for comparative debates on the situation of women in academia in Europe’s diverse contexts.
The Women’s Network is also committed to transcending the boundaries between the academic and the professional worlds, welcoming members from various backgrounds and institutional contexts. The Women's Network seeks to defend equal opportunity policies, in order to empower female scholars and to inform them about their rights within the European context.
In order to support the work of female scholars, the Women’s Network needs to establish the actual situation of women within academia. Information will be provided by the members who take an active part in the discussion groups and in the publication area of the Network’s website. For this reason, the Network intends to coordinate and to publish, through its website, studies developed in different countries about the actual situation of women in the European academic context. These studies may generate recommendations for further research and for gender-fair evaluation criteria. Moreover, the Women’s Network aims to organise workshops at ECREA’s conferences and at other international conferences, on: how to publish on the web; how to submit works to journals; how to publish in English; how to work in a cooperative way; and the main problem areas discussed in our discussion groups and other network-generated topics. The results of these debates may also be published on-line, at the Women’s Network website.
John Downey
Vice-President ECREA
