Supporting Women in Geography (SWIG) Ireland: Confronting the role of gender and asserting the importance of the female voice : Constituting SWIG Ireland: Community, Social Capital and Academic Citizenship

In this paper I will use a community organising approach to sketch out a model whereby women-centred organisations can achieve a form of “co-active power” (Stall & Stoecker 2008, p. 244), a “communal democracy” (Garber 2008, p. 295) to sustain their support in academia over the long haul. I will use the Supporting Women in Geography (SWIG) Ireland group as a case to make this argument. I contend that women’s work in academia, as well as in community organising, can both be considered invisible, devalued labour (Daniels 1987). Building on this, I aim to show that the potential ability of communities to achieve representation and gain resources, to actualize goals (intellectual, professional, and personal) and to provide collective goods, might support women in academia in addressing this severe oversight. In the current academic climate of structural change and funding cuts, ensuring the full participation of all genders in consultative processes is more important than ever. It is time now to recognise the gendered nature of academic citizenship whose membership to the community also implies duties deriving from kinship in reciprocation of the benefits that membership brings. To this end, I will outline the women-centred community organising model, the social capital that is involved, and the range of activities for empowering women to alter the efforts in Irish academia to making this change.