Why women's studies?

This paper considers arguments about what Women's Studies is, asserting that it must also be feminist studies, and addresses the conflicts and contradictions involved in doing WS in the academy. It also argues for recognition of the contribution WS and feminist theory has to make to the Women's Liberation Movement. It is written out of my experience as a student of WS in the academy.     

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.     

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.     

Inside an integration project: A case study of the relationship between balancing the curriculum and women's studies

This paper presents an ‘inside view’ of a federally-funded integration project in a small women's college in the Eastern US from the perspective of the project director. The author illustrates various stages and kinds of ‘Women's Studies’, pointing out that the integration project has resulted in increased Women's Studies course offerings, as well as a minor at the college. She makes distinctions between superficial integration and more profound efforts, which lead to a real struggle between traditional and feminist scholarship.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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 impact of the women's decade on women of Sri Lanka

The International Women's Year awakened many to the position of women in Sri Lanka. The mass media flooded with discussions on women's issues; meetings and seminars were held. Women's organisations gained new strength with the grants placed at their disposal by foreign voluntary organisations for development projects for women. Women's seminars and conferences abroad increased significantly and more Sri Lankan women attended them. However, this is only a beginning: Sri Lankan women's organisations are composed largely of middle-class women—feminist groups must strive to reach all women in Sri Lanka.     

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.     

The uses of hermeneutics for feminist scholarship

Although feminist scholars must be primarily devoted to understanding the experience of women, we can also use the critique of logocentrism being made by male thinkers of the hermeneutic/interpretive persuasion. The bulk of male scholarship in these movements has been unable to move beyond the preliminary effort of a negative critique of the limitations and irrelevancies of the traditional/scientistic methodology. Feminist scholarship has not only stood critical of traditional assumptions but has made the positive move of putting forth alternative epistemologies which use experience, intuition and evaluation as modes of knowing. For these new ideas to emerge in a powerful way, there has to be a locus for their emergence. Women's Studies is that place.     

Research priorities in women's studies in Eastern Africa

Studies of women as a specific object of inquiry began to become popular in the mid-seventies in eastern Africa. This is related to growing concern among state and international agencies about women as a problem in production and reproduction. The economic crises has led to heightened concern about the political consequences of real declines in income, the high rates of malnutrition and infant and child mortality rates, and the deterioration of peasant agriculture combined with the breakdown of peasant family relations. Women became of pivotal concern in the effort to forestall revolution as well as to increase production of food and export crops, given their central role as food producers in the peasant sector, and as providers of nearly all other family needs in cash and in kind.Two opposing lines have emerged in Women's Studies. One, the integration line, is identified with bourgeois feminism which calls for equal participation in education, employment and other spheres of society while maintaining the status quo of society. Women-in-development (WID) research and actions falls into this category. The other line calls for transformation of society through revolutionary struggles organised and led by the progressive segment of the women masses in Africa. This category is far less defined, in part a reflection of the level of class consciousness and organisation in the region and the way in which women intellectuals are divorced from the masses.Analysis of the issues which have arisen in relevant research indicates the significance of class differentiation among women, and the need to distinguish different kinds of male-female relations both within and across the different classes in society. A critical analysis is needed of Women's Studies which is carefully periodized to take into account different stages in the capital accumulation process and different forms of capital accumulation as these relate to concrete struggles of different classes of women.     

Dame unise,feminist maiden who fares well with the patriarchy: Jessica Amanda Salmonson's ‘the prodigal daughter’ and the emerging tradition in feminist speculative fiction

In her discussion of recent feminist utopias, Joanna Russ notes that the authors have likely read one another and that their ‘works form a remarkably coherent group in their presentation of feminist concerns and the feminist analyses which are central to these concerns’ (Russ, 1981: 71). My essay further explores the emerging tradition in feminist speculative fiction. It notes the common elements connecting three novels—Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong (1976), Suzy McKee Charnas' Motherlines (1978), and Elizabeth A. Lynn's The Northern Girl (1980)—and analyses Jessica Amanda Salmonson's ‘The prodigal daughter’ (1981) in terms of its relationship to these connections. References to Louise Bernikow's Among Women (1980) link these feminist imaginative works to feminist reality, reality which is more closely adhered to by Salmonson than by the authors of the novels. While the novels' feminist protagonists succeed in isolation from the patriarchy, Salmonson's feminist hero, Dame Unise, succeeds because she is able to cooperate with a patriarch. Positive images of patriarchy are absent from the novels; Salmonson's story emphasizes such positive images.     

Survival in the ‘master's house’: The role of graduate teaching assistants in effecting curriculum change

Since graduate teaching assistants administer most core courses at U.S. universities (and hence reach the majority of the undergraduate population), their potential for effecting political change is immense. This potential has too often been ignored. This paper suggests ways teaching assistants can organize and work towards bringing feminist perspectives into core courses in a way that complements the efforts of Women's Studies and that circumvents the current problem of decreased funding for the administration of new programs.     

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.     

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.     

The support function and social change—A feminist case history

The first part of this article describes the history of a Belgian anglophone organisation—W ♀ E (Women's Organisation for Equality)—from the perspective of its role in the process of social change and women's liberation. It then analyses the reasons for W ♀ E's longevity and effectiveness as a feminist support group and as a bridge for women emerging into feminism. Finally the paper suggests how W ♀ E might continue its effectiveness as a support group, but at a new level, taking into account the fact that though women are continuing to need support as they wake up, there is now a large group of awakened women who have been struggling as feminists for a long time.     

‘Male sexual politics and men's gender practice’

The responses to feminism and women's liberation, which men make when we define ourselves as ‘supportive’ of women's demands, are problematic. There continues to be debate within gender politics around the polarization ‘men's liberation’ and ‘men against sexism’, and critiques made from within various feminist understandings of, in particular, ‘men's liberationist’ preoccupations. The assumptions and contitutuent practices within the discourse of men's sexual politics in general are described and analyzed, rather than such debates reproduced. The assumption of ‘the sexual’ which men bring to our politics, and how our sexual politics is defined through these assumptions, is opened up. In particular, men's sexual politics seems precisely ‘male sexual politics’, in that it is defined through masculinist understanding of the sexual. Men's sexual politics is also male sexual politics, and our assumptions about the political, including the attempt to live from theory to action, are also instrumental in the ‘how’ of men's sexual politics.