This is the 35^th year that I have been monitoring participation by women at our Annual Meeting. These PS reports have documented the ascent of women in our profession. While some are sanguine in believing that women have achieved sufficient advancement and that my annual assessments are no longer necessary, there was a plenary roundtable at the 2006 meeting with a premise that there is still a problem of continuing underrepresentation in the discipline (see Table 1).

Participation by Women in the 2006 APSA Annual Meeting

By way of comparison, examine gender participation at the most recent International Studies Association (March, 2006)¹

Participation by Women in the 2006 ISA and IPSA Meetings

As I've noted previously, where women head divisions or panels, there is a greater likelihood of other women being selected for program contributions. Again this year one of the two chairs of the Program Committee was female. In 2006, 15 of the 48 division persons were women (31.2%) (Cf., 1996: 30.06%; 2000: 36%; 2001: 35.4%; 2002: 39.2%; 2003: 48.1%; 2004: 45.6%; 2005: 29.4%). The divisions they headed had women as 29.7% (70 of 236) of the chairpersons, 32.3% (320 of 990) of the papergivers, and 29.7% (105 of 353) of the discussants (Cf., 1996: 26.1%, 35.1%, 29.8%; 2000: 32.3%, 36.1%, 28.3%; 2001: 34.5%, 30.9%, 29.5%; 2002: 30.5%, 30.5%, 30.7%; 2003: 31.6%, 34.%, 31.6%; 2004: 29.7%, 32.4%, 28.4%; 2005: 33.2%, 30.1%, 37.1%).

The convention divisions led by women had 54.3% of the convention's female panel chairs, 33.6% of the papergivers, and 34.2% of its discussants (Cf., 1996: 40.4%, 48.1%, 50.7%; 2000: 49.3%, 48.8%, 52.8%; 2001: 49.1%, 42.9%, 43.7%; 2002: 52.0%, 47.9%, 47.5%; 2003: 61.0%, 46.9%, 54.8%; 2004: 59.1%, 57.7%, 57.8%; 2005: 40.6%, 35.3%, 41.8%).

Women-chaired panels had 36.7% female papergivers and 43.4% female discussants (Cf., 1996: 38.7%, 33.9%; 2000: 41.9%, 42.2%; 2001: 43.7%, 48.3%; 2002: 38.4%, 50.2%; 2003: 28.9%, 51.1%; 2004: 42.9%, 44.1%; 2005: 40.8%, 49.3%). These constituted 31.2% of the women giving papers at the 2006 Annual Meeting and 41.0% of the women serving as discussants (Cf., 1996: 30.9%, 30.3%; 2000: 37.3%, 44.0%; 2001: 36.0%, 49.7%; 2002: 38.9%, 48.9%; 2003: 27.8%, 48.4%; 2004: 35.0%, 44.3%; 2005: 36.6%, 51.9%).

In recent years we've added poster session presentations to the program. At the 2006 Annual Meeting women were 35.3% of those making presentations (192 out of 543) (Cf., 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 poster sessions: women were 29.7%, 30.1%, 31.7%, 27.8%, 33.2%, and 33.1% of the presenters).

Women were 50% of the 2006 plenary session chairs and 26.2% of the panelists.

The divisions with the strongest female representation were those on Foundations of Political Theory; Normative Political Theory; Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations; Urban Politics; Women and Politics*; Race, Ethnicity and Politics*; Information Technology and Politics; Politics and Literature*; New Political Science; and Qualitative Methods* (*=headed by women).

The divisions with the weakest female representation in 2006 were those on Political Thought and Philosophy: Historical Approaches; Formal Political Theory; Comparative Politics of Advanced Industrial Societies; International Collaboration; International Security and Arms Control; Foreign Policy; Conflict Processes; Elections and Voting Behavior; and International History and Politics.

Among the predominantly female panels (omitting the panels in the Women and Politics section, Not a Ghetto but an Opportunity) were those on Dark Prisons, Racial Orders, and the Justice System; Civil-Military Relations and Strategic Success in the Global War on Terrorism; Contemporary Politics: Gender, Generation and Race; Narratives of Power in Imagined Presidencies; Power, Vision, and Imagination; Power, Violence and the Body; Democratic Exclusions; The Emergence, Evolution, and Future Issues in Feminist Political Theory; Women in the East (and West) Wing; The Edge of Reason: Science and Anger in the Liberal Tradition; and Roundtable: Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies.

And, finally, panels lopsidedly “stag”: Political Methodology and Formal Theory; Reforming the European Social Model; Education Policymaking in the States; The Marketplace of Democracy: Electoral Competition in the US; The Moral Foundations Reconsidered; Appreciation, Appropriation and the Question of Praise Across the Racial Divide; Rethinking Power in the ‘Debate About Empire’; Democratic Challenges: Corruption, Deception, Truth, Deliberation; Exploring New Substantial Domains in Experimental Political Psychology; Rationality, Culture and Structure in Comparative Politics; Regime Type and Determinants of Capital Flow; Ethnicity and Civil Conflict; Europe and the Balance of Power: Security Dilemmas and War; Proliferation Puzzle Revisited; Public Opinion and Foreign Policy; Public and Secret Threats; Power Reconsidered; Can the Media Serve as an Effective Watchdog?; Author Meets Readers: Sanford Levinson's ‘Our Undemocratic Constitution’; Power, Policy, Federalism, and Hurricane Katrina; Strategic Candidates and Parties; The Political Vision of Wendell Berry; Does Virtue Have Power over Us?; Judicial and Bureaucratic Interaction; Morality Policy and Policy Diffusion Across the States; Political Trust; Power, Preservation, and Change in the Early American Experience; Theme Roundtable: Polarization, Parties, and Power; Formal Models and Bureaucratic Behavior; The Missing Link(s) Between Inequality and Redistribution; Presidential Power and Privilege Reconsidered in the Post-9/11 Era; Bureaucracy and Public Policy; New and Emerging Methods for Examining Courts and Judges; Making Up Publics; Analyzing Durations/Count/Time Series Data; Post Civil War Outcomes: Bosnia and the North Caucasus; Elections and Voting Behavior in the States; Comparative Economic Voting; The Impact of Electoral Systems; Explaining Human Rights and Governmental Accountability; Roundtable: Social Inquiry and Political Knowledge; The Modern Paradox of Presidential Power: Katrina and 9/11; Spatial Models and Ideal Points Estimation; Mexico's 2006 Election: Democratic Consolidation?; Political Economic Context and Policy Voting; Geography and Civil War; Morality, Power, and Politics in Literature; Politics and Anthropology in Modern Political Philosophy; The Politics of Conversion; The Dynamics of Federalism; Prospects for Political Reform in China; New Challenges to Partisan Strategies and Government Policies; First Things First: Exploring Why and How Third Parties Intervene to Understand When They Succeed; Long-Run Perspectives in Regime Development Politics and Pluralisms; Federalism; Democracy in the Professions, the Farms, and the Market; Varieties of Domination; Alliance Formation; Judicial Selection to the Federal Courts; and The American Voter: A Classic Revisited.