Diffucult Conversations: Thinking and Talking About Women, Genders, & Sexualities Inside and Outside the Academy

The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, which sponsors the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities, was founded in 1930 in response to the marginalization that women historians faced in a male‑dominated profession. There was a small number of women with PhDs in history and they worked primarily in women’s colleges. Although members of the American Historical Association, the AHA excluded women from AHA “smokers,” the social gatherings where historians learned about jobs and where mentoring relationships were established. In 1929, a number of women returning from the AHA decided that women historians needed their own organization. By 1936 their spring weekend retreats in the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts had become an integral part of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, evolving into what we now call the “Little Berks.”