Women's studies courses: Pragmatic and political issues concerning their establishment and design

When attempting to establish women's studies courses within institutions of higher education, women face a traditional power structure designed to obstruct movements for change. Four factors relevant to a power analysis of this situation are status, concrete resources, expertise and self-confidence. These factors are defined and examined in relation to the fight to establish women's studies courses. Within this background the issue of men as ‘patrons’ as teachers and as students, and the fact of women's anger are examined. Many arguments forwarded by conservative patriarchal institutions are discussed. The paper emerges from the experiences of the author in three universities. It is aimed at clarifying some of the traps set for women so that other women can eliminate any fears that their experiences are idiosyncratic or ‘their fault’ rather than part of a formalized power game.     

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.     

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.     

Management education: A case for women's studies?

At a recent weekend seminar-workshop convened by the Personal Development Division of the Anglian Regional Management Centre, Essex. U.K., British pioneers, practitioners and academics with experience of management training for women conferred on the state of the art and laid plans for further developments. In this article Virginia Novarra, Visiting Fellow at the Centre with special reference to women's training needs, sets the debate in the context of the women's studies movement.     

‘A whisper in the assembly of nations’ United States' participation in the International Movement for Women's Rights from the League of Nations to the United Nations

This work examines North American feminist activities in the international arena from the end of the First World War to the early days of the United Nations. Led by Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party of the United States, feminists attempted to obtain greater equality for women by having nations agree to an Equal Rights Treaty and an equal Nationality Treaty. But they ran into opposition from more moderate social reform women's organizations. Believing protective legislation for women in industry to be more important than legal equality, and antagonistic to the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States' Constitution, reformers objected to the international feminists on ideological grounds. They also disapproved of the radicals' militant tactics and active publicity seeking, thereby extending the quarrel to the realm of personality differences. Thus the divisiveness caused by the ERA in the United States disrupted the international women's movement as well. Working through Pan American Congresses and the League of Nations, and continuing into the United Nations, feminists devoted more than a quarter of a century to fighting for equal rights world-wide. While their actual achievements were not notable, in the end their equalitarian ideas proved to have more enduring value than reform theories.     

A seminar room of one's own

The editors have asked for ‘a short synopsis of 150 words in length’. When I wrote this paper uppermost in my mind was the importance of and fusion between content and style: what is said and how it is said. Therefore, no synopsis. Please either skip the article or read it in full.     

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.     

新常态下的工会工作

以中高速、优结构、重创新、机遇挑战并存为显现特征的我国经济新常态悄然到来,这一切必将对整个经济社会产生重大而深远的影响。如何认识理解新常态,进而融入服务新常态,是时代赋予我们工会组织的神圣使命。新常态下的工会工作要更好地体现时代性、把握规律性、富于创造性。工会工作要对社会宏观政治、经济环境进行分析。这样就能认清形势,顺势而为,找准工会工作的切入点和突破口,从推动解决职工群众最关心、最直接、最现实的利益问题入手,注重在政府工作的重点、职工生活的难点、社会关注的热点问题上,体现工会的特点,努力在新形势下推动工会工作创新发展。     

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.     

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 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.     

试析当代中等职业教育的学生观

树立正确的学生观是实现中等职业教育健康发展的必须环节。目前,中等职业教育的学生观存在以下局限性:1.对学生生命本身的目的性缺乏关注;2.对学生多元价值观缺乏综合认知;3.对学生创造性与个性缺乏深入把握。经过改进后的新学生观,表达了当代中职学生身上的独立自主性、发展过程性、生命丰富性和个体创造性等鲜明特质,强调了教育者在教育过程中应当和学生建立平等爱护、教学相长的辩证关系。     

浅析承包人建设工程优先受偿权的若干问题

《合同法》第286条首次确立了建设工程优先受偿,这一制度设计极大的保护了承包人的权益,随后2002年最高人民法院以《批复》的形式细化了建设工程优先受偿权在行使过程中几个重要问题。文章从承包人如何在各阶段利用好建设工程优先受偿权出发,对建设工程优先受偿权的若干理论和实践问题进行了分析和研究,以期对承包人有所裨益。     

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.