What unique problems currently confront women eager to pursue careers in the discipline of political science? This question was a central one for the Association's Committee on the Status of Women, organized two years ago. As a major part of its fact-finding activities, the Committee conducted a mail survey of graduate students and post-graduate professionals in the discipline during the spring of 1970.

It is obvious that the development of all careers present obstacles. But the Committee survey was designed to arrive at some balanced and realistic view of those points at which women in particular encounter difficulties that are less prevalent for men in comparable situations.

In the background stood the obvious fact, well documented elsewhere, that in the progress over career development hurdles from undergraduate majors in political science through to active roles as adult professionals in the discipline, women show much more marked rates of attrition than men. Clearly a substantial proportion of the extra attrition arises because of a choice on the part of the female at one point or another in favor of a conventional sex role within the family, with a consequent abandonment of career aspirations. However, increasing numbers of women would like to maintain a mix of family and career roles, and there is reason to believe that the current structure of opportunities raises artificial obstacles to such professional participation, and loses important talent to the profession.

The annual election for officers and members of the Council of the American Political Science Association took place between November 2 and 23, 1970, with results reported in the Winter, 1971, issue of this journal. Voting was for one President-elect, three Vice Presidents, one Secretary, one Treasurer and eight members of the Council. There were two candidates each for President-elect, Secretary and Treasurer, five for Vice President and sixteen for Council. These candidates were nominated and supported by a variety of groups and three of these groups—The American Political Science Association nominating committee, the Ad Hoc Committee and the Caucus for a New Political Science—fielded complete or virtually complete slates.

This report is an analysis of some of the patterns in the voting. We have worked with constraints, however. Since we received only ballots for the candidates, we were unable to analyze voting on constitutional amendments and resolutions or to look at candidate voting patterns in conjunction with voting patterns on issues. Secondly, there was the limitation inherent in any secret ballot; it was not possible directly to relate voting patterns to attributes of the voters. Thirdly, we did not receive the ballots until early April, 1971. Carding and analyzing them took so much time that we were not able to do all that we had planned. Thus this article is a great deal less comprehensive than we would have liked.

The draft constitution for the Association, presented to us by the Constitutional Revision Committee, responds to a widely expressed desire for assurance that our officers are representative of our membership. We live in a time of increasing demands on all of our institutions, including those of the APSA, An important purpose in devising workable democratic forms is therefore to insure that those who make these demands do not feel that they have been unheard because of biases in their institutions of government. Although this is not the only purpose of our constitution, it is an important one, and the central one that the framers of the proposed draft seem to have had in mind. I do not believe that this purpose can easily be attained by other alternatives before us, including our present constitution.