Announcing the 50:50 in 2020 initiative
Andrew Dorman and Leah de Haan
We are excited to announce that, in 2020, International Affairs will be taking on the 50:50 challenge for gender equality. This means that we will be actively working towards ensuring that fifty per cent of the contributors to the journal identify as women. The gender balance of the journal’s contributors is something we have been working to improve in recent years. However, as Chatham House celebrates its centenary in 2020, we feel this is an opportunity to take a clear stance on the issue through this commitment to gender parity in 2020.
Why are we doing this?
Our commitment to this is in recognition of the under-representation of women in the discipline of International Relations. Many amazing organizations, initiatives and individuals have been drawing attention to this problem, and have been working to correct it, for a long time. While their work has cause great improvements, it is also clear that women’s under-representation and exclusion manifests itself variously in a citation deficit, a lack of female professors, women’s work not being included on syllabi and a discrepancy within journals.
As a journal there are many ways in which we can contribute to rectifying this shortcoming in the discipline. However, the biggest contribution we can make is tackling women’s under-representation in terms of journal publication. While International Affairs has successfully promoted this at times in the past, we have struggled to be consistent among all of the different contributions. One cause of this general imbalance, as far as we understand it, is the similarly imbalanced rate of article submissions to the journal. At the moment, we receive far more submission from men than from women, and this is where we are hoping to make the biggest intervention. Over the next year we will be hoping to encourage more submissions from women as well as be shining a light on this issue in our blog series ‘women, gender and representation in International Relations’.
What does this mean?
The 50:50 in 2020 initiative will apply to all of the journal’s contributors. This will include journal article authors, book reviewers, review essay authors, blog contributors, webinar participants and event participants. This means that, for instance, we will actively strive to ensure that fifty per cent of all article authors identify as women. We will be looking both at the total number of authors, while also differentiating between co-authored and single-authored articles.
It is important to stress that we will of course continue judging articles solely based on their merit, relying both on our editorial judgement and double-blind peer review. We believe that by taking gender equality seriously in International Affairs’ editorial and commissioning processes, by focusing on the myriad of ways this inequality manifests itself across the discipline of International Relations, by highlighting all the fantastic work that is already being done towards gender equality in the field and beyond, we will ensure that International Affairs is a journal where all people feel comfortable publishing their work.
What else will we be doing?
In order to achieve all that is outlined above, this initiative is also made up of a range of activities. In January 2020 we will release the report discussing the state of gender representation in International Affairs up to this point. In March we will participate in the ‘Addressing the Gender Gap in Academic Journals’ panel at the International Studies Association Annual Convention. Throughout the year, we will discuss the different dimensions of women’s under-representation in our ‘Gender, women and representation in International Relations’ blog series. And we will also reach out to all the great initiatives that are already working towards gender equality in International Relations, to see how we can team up with them. Through these activities we hope to shine a light on the problem, engage with the variety of solutions people have developed, and encourage an increased number of women to contribute to International Affairs.
How can you get involved?
We are hoping that as many individuals and organizations get involved as possible. If you have read this blog piece and would like to get involved, we would be thrilled to work with you in a number of different ways:
- You can submit an article or book review to International Affairs.
- You can write a piece for our ‘gender, women and representation in International Relations’ series about your experience of working in the discipline, the issues you see as crucial to women’s representation or the way gender inequality feeds other disparities.
- You can follow us and sign up to take on the 50:50 challenge.
Our commitment to striving for gender parity in 2020 is just the start. We hope to see all organizations and publications take up the 50:50 challenge in the future. Of course, women are not alone in experiencing biases and disadvantages within the IR discipline. Our work on under-representation will not stop in 2020, nor will its aim be limited to improving the representation of one gender identity. The editorial team is committed to making International Affairs — and as far as we can the discipline of International Relations — as diverse and inclusive as possible.
Andrew Dorman is Editor of International Affairs and Professor of International Security at King’s College London.
Leah de Haan is Junior Editor in the International Affairs team at Chatham House.
If you would like to get involved in the 50:50 challenge, email Leah at LdeHaan@chathamhouse.org.
