OUR VISION

The Association of Lebanese Women Researchers (Bahithat) is a venue/forum for free exchange of ideas and dialogue without any restraints. Bahithat provides researchers with the possibility of encountering/meeting other researchers on the personal, human, and on the scientific research level. It also strives to raise women’s voices and have these voices heard in the research domain after having been dismissed or overlooked for ages.[H1] 

Bahithat is a non-hierarchical framework that embraces democratic process and procedures, supports the individuality of its members and offers them the opportunity to undertake joint research among themselves or with other researchers in various fields of scientific research. It is an advocate of the intellectual rights of researchers and their research outputs.

The Association is a research outfit that adopts diversity as its overarching principle, whether at the level of scientific specializations in various branches of human knowledge, or at the level of its research approaches (feminist, women, or gender, among others), or at the level of its academic origins (various universities).

The Association encourages research, especially among young women researchers, and strives to deepen the interaction between different generations of researchers in order to create an environment of dynamic, live language of communication that reflects the issues and concerns of society: and emanates from their own intrinsic interests as academicians or from their interaction with worldwide sources of knowledge.

Bahithat supports and insures the maturing of ideas and experiences expressed in texts dealing with the marginal, the different/dissimilar, and the “other”, or creative initiatives and practices addressing taboos and stigmas , as well as research capturing the sensitivities of various social strata of individuals, groups, and organizations.

OUR AIMS & GOALS

We believe that improving the productivity of women scholars, providing a much-needed space for growth and the fulfilment of our intellectual ambitions, as well as giving our members a platform for their ideas, can only increase our confidence in ourselves and our abilities, and will promote our participation in the intellectual, and therefore ultimately the professional, social and political leadership in our society.

1. Bring women researchers into contact with one another
2. Support and promote the research of its members
3. Encourage young women researchers in finding their way
4. Provide a forum for intellectual exchange.
5. Networking and communicating with women researchers in Lebanon and elsewhere
6. Networking and connecting with the various research centers in Lebanon, the Arab countries, and the world
7. Mentoring young and emerging female researchers (training workshops, seminars, follow- up, association, fellowship, friendship, etc
8. Supporting women researchers, in general, and the young amongst them, in particular
9. Encouraging research; - Embracing and opening-up to various scientific fields
10. Widening the sphere of influence via monitoring and follow-up of research and cultural outputs, and reaching new research outfits and groups

OUR HISTORY

The Lebanese Association of Women Researchers tajammu' albahithat allubnaniyyat, (or "bahithat" as we are informally known locally, both as individuals and as a group), is an independent, non-profit association whose members have been engaged in scholarly activities in Lebanon and the Arab world. The idea for Bahithat arose during the long civil war in Lebanon when women scholars on both sides of the divide, refusing the forced divisions along confessional lines and insisting on the unity of the people, and wishing to carry on intellectual exchange despite the raging violence, began to meet regularly to discuss matters of intellectual interest. By the time the war ended, the meetings had become so important a part of our lives that we resolved to carry them on. We sought a more formal organizational existence, and received formal recognition in 1992.

The Association presently consists of around forty members, all of whom are women researchers active in many fields, including the social and behavioral sciences, the humanities, economics, education, health, and the arts. While some of our members are independent writers and researchers, the majority are university professors, and the majority of those teach at the national Lebanese University. Others teach at the American University of Beirut, Saint Joseph's University, the Lebanese American University, the University of Balamand, The University of the Holy Spirit in Kaslik, and Notre Dame University.

STRUCTURE

An important feature distinguishing LAWR from most other associations is its non-hierarchical structure. Ever since the association’s inception, members of LAWR have repeatedly expressed their wariness of rigid strict structuring and of any form of authoritarian leadership, likely to produce ‘stars’ posing as the ‘speakers’ of the association. LAWR went a long way in maintaining the type of structure it prefers while remaining true to the principles, values and ground-rules it had stipulated for itself. Its progressive horizontal organization is maintained by means of revising its Internal Regulations, whenever the need arises. The role of these Regulations is to complement the Statutes while providing the organizational framework for integrating new experiences and additional awareness. It has transpired in regulating internal and external activities and in reinforcing traditions that have proven to be useful. LAWR appears to be heading towards becoming settled in its organizational structure while keeping the door open for free revisions that substitute what is efficient and suitable to whatever impedes productivity or harmony or strays away from the goals the association set for itself.