My beloved WomanStats

I got this email today, and it made my heart happy to hear that my favorite non-profit, the WomanStats Project, is doing so well! Also, congrats to Dr. Hudson on her amazing success and move to Texas, you are dearly loved!!

Dear WomanStats Alumni,


Exciting developments are taking place at the WomanStats Project and we want to make sure our alumni coders stay updated.

Total number of data points as of the end of the year 2010: approximately 115,000!

WomanStats now possess more data than the six next largest gender-issue databases combined, including the databases on women sponsored by the UN and the World Bank!


We’ve published articles in International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Peace and Conflict, Journal of Peace Research, Political Psychology, Cumberland Law Review, World Political Review and Foreign Policy. See a list here. We have a forthcoming book—Sex and World Peace: Roots and Wings of National and International Relations—to be published soon from Columbia University Press. We’ve also presented at the Association for Politics and Life Sciences, the Brookings Institute, and the International Studies Association Conference (which had a full panel on our database), and have written several encyclopedia entries. In March 2011, Dr. Hudson presented about the WomanStats Database at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

We are building support from a variety of scholars and policy makers. Swanee Hunt, the founding director of Harvard’s Women and Public Policy Program, wrote in 2011 that “the WomanStats Database is an indispensable aid to researchers, policymakers, and advocates involved in women’s security.” Our data has now been vetted and/or utilized by various branches of the UN, the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, USAID, and the World Bank. For example, our data and research was used by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in crafting the International Violence Against Women’s Act.

Specifically, in the year 2010 our website became more user friendly (now with live bibliographic links and the ability to add new variables on the view screen). We are using social media more - our twitter feed is a great place to get updates on global women's research and issues. Follow us. Our blog is filling up with stories from coders about their experiences and findings while doing the research.  And don't forget to like our Facebook page.

We developed several new scales (including murder, suicide, government participation, rape, educational discrepancy, and property rights) and have now a grand total of 11 scales and accompanying maps. Click here to see our awesome maps page! We have also added several new variables (including patrilocality, prevalence of consanguinous marriage, and the average age of the onset of menarche). Matt Stearmer and Andrea Den Boer have now joined the WomanStats Board, and BYU allocated us a permanent office in the Kennedy Center! Dr. McDermott rejoined the board, and recently gave expert testimony on polygyny laws in Canada. In 2009 Dr. Hudson was named by Foreign Policy Magazine as one the top 100 global thinkers. In January, Dr. Hudson will be moving to Texas A&M, and so there will be two branches of WomanStats - one in Texas and one in Utah.

The WomanStats project continues to be one of the largest mentoring projects in the College of Family Home and Social Sciences at BYU. We are proud of the contributions our alumni have made as they left us to go on to greater things.


Sincerely,

Professor Hudson, Professor Emmett, and the rest of the WomanStats Team