What women's studies programs do that mainstreaming can't

This article draws some conclusions about the limitations of ‘mainstreaming’, based on a comparison between the author's experiences as director of a ‘mainstreaming’ project (in this case, on Ethnic Studies) and her experiences as coordinator of a Women's Studies program. Integrating the curriculum and building autonomous programs are fundamentally different projects.‘Mainstreaming’, while important, cannot represent the full scope, complexity, vitality, and contextuality of Women's Studies. Women's Studies has its own subject, gender, just as other disciplines have their central subjects. The new body of knowledge and theory about gender cannot be assimilated into ‘traditional’ departments and disciplines. Women's Studies is in the process of constituting itself a discipline; and knowing a discipline implies familiarity with the central issues of a given discourse, a knowledge of its central questions and controversies, an awareness of resonances among texts, and participation in the institutions and activities generating new knowledge and ideas. It is this sense of relationship among texts, ideas, empirical findings, theories, even the personalities and visions of individual human beings that cannot be fully transmitted in any mainstreaming project. Only in autonomous programs can Women's Studies continue its evolution toward disciplinary status and achieve its full intellectual and political promise.     

‘Transformation’ of the curriculum: Problems of conception and deception

Integration projects often grow out of a particular institutional situation. This paper outlines some of the advantages as well as the pitfalls of our project. Although advocates of ‘integrationism’ and ‘autonomous Women's Studies’ have different definitions of transformation, these are not mutually exclusive.     

The woman in the moon: Women's studies and the academy

This paper argues that Women's Studies has received a ‘bad feminist press’, and out of my experience as a ‘student’ on a part-time MA in Women's Studies at the University of Kent I want to encourage a more positive reappraisal of the relationship between feminism and the academy. It is therefore neither an apologia nor a eulogy; instead it seeks to show something of the complexity and tension involved in feminist intellectual work in an elitist environment; at the same time it is a firm statement of the value of being there, making the revolution, bringing the ‘woman in the moon’ down to earth as well as endorsing her visionary and inspiring example.     

On the bottom rung: A discussion of women's work in sociology

Women, Women's Work and ‘Women's Studies’ are in a disadvantaged and marginal position within academic settings. This is a reflection of women's position in society in general, and it should be no surprise to find it to be the case in sociology as elsewhere. Women's studies has achieved some respectability within the social sciences, but rather than this being seen as a straightforward success, the disadvantages of this ‘respectability’ must be understood, as must the subtlety of male incorporation of feminist ideas not at a conscious level but within and through the male defined ethos of academia. The use of a qualitative methodology to get behind the ‘facts’ of qualitative differences in women's and men's positions is important. The lives of women postgraduates and researchers in Great Britain, those women on the bottom rung, can give us insights into the difficulties for women's studies and into the possibilities for the direction that attempts to redress the imbalances between men and women in academia might take.     

The image of women's studies

We are three feminists, one Australian, one American and one English, who surveyed the image of Women's Studies in the sphere of Adult Education. This article gives the results of our survey; it illustrates both the problems and the potential of the image of Women's Studies in Adult Education in London—and by implication throughout the UK. Each of us is involved in teaching several Adult Education classes in a variety of subjects, not all of them within the sphere of Women's Studies. We polled our classes to assess their image of Women's Studies, finding it largely negative except in those classes specifically titled ‘Women's Studies’. More depressing, however, was our poll of administrators and staff in Adult Education and of non-feminist community groups of women, the ‘average’ women in the UK. Finally we query whether the problem is one of image or name or whether it is more deeply rooted in English misogyny, a heritage of patriarchy.     

Women's projects and co-operatives in France at the beginning of the 19th century

Seamstresses, washerwomen and midwives establish co-operatives in order to organise their own work, independent of employers, and to divide their profit amongst themselves and to assure a reserve for harder times, for periods of sickness, for their old age. Women's collectives publish feminist magazines, including a daily newspaper by and for women; they found co-operative schools or an organisation for the support of single mothers. Women live in communes, make plans for women's houses and women's meeting-centres. And all this took place in the France of 1830–1848.In my paper, I would like to present some of the self-organised women's projects and co-operatives of that time and thereby also uncover information and sources which have remained buried under prevailing historiography. Moreover, my further intension is to refuse the commonly-held prejudice which dismisses the ‘proletarian’ or ‘socialist’ Women's Movement of the 19th century far too easily as having been ‘male-dominated’, a verdict frequently passed in Women's Studies in Germany. In view of this, it seems to me important to highlight historically the autonomous projects of proletarian and socialist women and to pay appropriate tribute to their significance for the history of the Women's Movement (not only in France!). Finally. I would like to approach a methodical problem which confronts me again and again in my work: the contradiction between historical distance and personal proximity and identification with the historical theme. By this, I mean the toilsome process of approaching history as something which is extraneous and yet related to us; this problem of, on the one hand not wiping out our present-day knowledge, feelings, values and norms from our research, and on the other hand, not using these as a distorted gauge from the women of former times.     

Varieties of women's studies

The distinction between ‘autonomous’ Women's Studies programs and ‘integrationist’ projects as adumbrated by Bowles and Duelli Klein is a false one; in fact, this is all part of the same work. Several factors (funding sources, publicity, terminology, administrators' attitudes and the relationship of curriculum change programs to the disciplines) have made it seem as though these are different kinds of work. This paper argues that we should try to see our varied efforts as complementary and some of our differences as due to necessary strategic choices.     

The teacher's tale: On teaching women's studies

The teaching of Women's Studies is beset with difficulties as much as rewards: in this brief article some reflections are offered on the experience of being a teacher on a Women's Studies course. It is suggested that teaching Women's Studies often differs from teaching more conventional disciplines, but that this offers a chance for academic innovation.     

Minority studies and women's studies: Do we want to kill a dream?

When we engage in integration of new subject matter into the existing university curriculum, or when we speak of mainstreaming into the existing curriculum, we are engaging in the proliferation of the sickness of the dream deferred. The mainstream is very sick, and rightfully near death. We must be about ultimately replacing it through transformation. Yet neither Women's Studies nor Minority Studies has been transformed; we must be involved in a pluralistic, generative, interactive process that transforms Women's Studies, Minority Studies and the traditional disciplines.     

Women's studies: Sinking and swimming in the mainstream

After the necessary background pages, this article becomes a series of warnings about integration efforts that replace rather then supplement Women's Studies.     

Sell-out or challenge? The contradiction of a masters in women's studies

This is an account of planning a part-time Masters degree in Women's Studies at a British Polytechnic. We explain how we obtained approval from the necessary authorities for the course, and discuss the conflict between—on the one hand—the need to conform to these institutional procedures in order to get the course established, and—on the other hand—the desire to keep faith with the political origins of Women's Studies in the Women's Movement. We discuss a number of major issues which have confronted the members of the committee responsible for planning this course including the struggle to demonstrate within the college the academic legitimacy of WS; decisions about what kind of course to offer students—a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary curriculum, with or without optional elements—and how to defend these proposals during the lengthy process of seeking formal approval; the institutional politics of launching the course; and anticipated problems associated with the eventual teaching of the course.     

Beyond defensiveness: Feminist research strategies

In the course of doing research for a book on utopian fiction by women, it became evident that my formulation of the project constituted a trap, for it affirmed the very thing I wanted to challenge: the assumption of the centrality of utopias by men and the ‘otherness’ of works by women. As I reoriented my research, I came to see that this contradiction pervades much feminist scholarship and is present as well in the very notion of ‘Women's Studies’. This essay describes the process by which I came to identify the problem; how the techniques of defamiliarization and reversal pointed toward a solution; and the two research strategies that evolved. These strategies, both of which depend upon reversal of the usual rules of relevance and irrelevance, can be applied to feminist research endeavors in other fields as well.     

Women's studies in the workers' educational association

The following is a brief account of the formation of a local Women's Studies Branch of the Workers' Educational Association in the South of England, including a discussion of the potential of the WEA for encouraging the growth of Women's Studies.     

UN decade and women's studies in Latin America

Women's Studies programs developed rapidly in the 70s especially in the United States, which did not happen in other countries. The Simone de Beauvoir Institute, at Concordia University, in Canada, is an exception. Even in Europe, very few universities have been including such programs for more than ten years, at the beginning of the 80s. By that time, in Central and South America, Women's Studies were still in their early stages and few regular programs had been really implemented. One of these was the Center for Women's Studies created at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, in early 1981, with an offer of special courses and seminars and conducting research projects.A Regional Seminar on Women's Studies in South America and the Caribbean was held at that University in November 1981 with the financial support of UNESCO, to evaluate the situation of teaching and research in 11 countries: Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, México, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Chile and concluded that much still needed to be done in that field.Nonetheless, the feminist movement, in its struggle for equal rights, against sex discrimination, for better opportunities for all women and their effective integration into national development and political participation, has been supported by thousands of women and gained a great momentum in the 70s.The Women's International Year (1975), The World Plan of Action (1976–1985) and the Copenhagen Conference (1980) have been concrete expressions of the effort initiated by the UN to call the attention of all nations and governments to the need of definitively eliminating all forms of discrimination against women and to adopt measures to ensure that the capacities of women will be utilized in a more fruitful way, aimed to national development. The Decade played an important role in the implementation of Women's Studies programs in Latin American.     

Re-thinking feminism: Some thoughts on the limitations of ‘basics’-training

In this article, I draw on my experience as a Jew and a lesbian and as a Jewish lesbian—both outside and inside the Women's Liberation Movement—to examine the problem of feminist ‘basics’ and to assess the new ethos of ‘diversity’, which has emerged in recent years as ‘other feminists have begun to make our presence felt within feminism.     

Women who do and women who don't,join the women's movement

Twenty-four women from five countries were asked to discuss their attitudes towards the women's movement. Half of this group were feminists and half were antifeminists. They ranged in background over class, race, age and sexual preference, and their comments formed the body of the book Women Who Do and Women Who Don't, Join the Women's Movement. This paper begins by discussing the women's movement as a social movement, its origins and the major issues involved in its struggle. The antifeminist ‘backlash’ is then analysed and its platforms clarified. The contributors' comments are summarised, bringing the issues alive, creating a diverse patterns of women's interpretations of ‘being female’. The issues of contention such as men, motherhood and the family are discussed, and the bases of the differences between feminists and antifeminists are analysed. Surprisingly, similarities between the two groups also emerge, particularly in terms of their experience of ‘self’. I conclude the paper by discussing why these splits among women occur, why one woman becomes a feminist while another is an antifeminist, and what this means for the future of women and of feminism.     

Cooperation and conflict: A case study of a women's research network in Norway

During four years (1978–82), 25–30 Norweigian women social scientists formed a research network of small local groups, studying ‘Women's mutual relations’ in various settings. Women's friendships, their cooperation in factories and local communities and in women's organizations were the focus of our research. This article, however, is not about the results of our research—although some of them are reported in the notes—but we describe the organization of our association, its purposes, structure and positive results, as well as our tendencies to build up conflict, fractionalism and withdrawal. The research network was established in opposition to male social science, both with respect to the choice of its main themes and its organizational form. A supportive work style, a ‘horizontal’ structure and a playing down of conflicts was more or less deliberately chosen by the network members. We discuss here some of the types of conflict that developed in the network, and the ways we dealt with them. Most conflicts were either solved ‘talking through’ or handled by avoidance. We ask the question if deliberate conflict avoidance is functional for a feminist network of organization. The case is made for a ‘horizontal network organization as a positive and fruitful supplement to usual academic organization structure.     

A brief overview of the development of women's studies in the UK

This paper provides a brief overview of Women's Studies (WS) in the UK, drawing attention to its greatest expansion in adult education and, in general, non-degree granting areas of education. It further argues that this impressive diversity, at present, contributes to the invisibility of WS in the UK but that, potentially, the foundation of a National Women's Studies Association could make both the women who do WS, and WS itself, visible and powerful.     

Toward a holistic paradigm for Asian American Women's Studies: A synthesis of feminist scholarship and women of color's feminist politics

In this paper I propose a Women's Studies method for an Asian American Studies curriculum by incorporating a women-centred feminist historical approach and a holistic feminist anthropological approach with American women of color's feminist politics with an emphasis on the interconnectedness of sexism, racism, classism and homophobia in the American social systems and cultural ideologies.My work is based on the belief that an Asian American Women's Studies method must be founded on a feminist politics which is specifically derived from their own definition of themselves and feminism which are based on multiple consciousness raising and multiple identities of gender, race, ethnicity, class and sexuality.