In May 1988, Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, then Lecturer at the University of Reading, sent over one hundred and fifty letters to as many women she could find working or studying in the field of German Studies in the UK. The letters invited them to a special one-day conference in Reading to discuss the situation for women working in their field. Watanabe-O’Kelly had been struck by the dearth of female colleagues at the CUTG (Conference of University Teachers of German) meeting in Sheffield the year before, observing later with characteristic humour that: ‘there were so few women attending that there wasn’t even a queue for the lavatory’…
Read on: the story as as pdf-doc (or as word-doc: WiGS Retrospective)
Women in German Studies 
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Thanks!