women's studies

a multidisciplinary approach to the analysis and understanding of the position and experience of women in patriarchal societies both past and present. Emerging alongside the growth of the WOMEN'S LIBERATION MOVEMENT in the late 1960s, women's studies programmes have been developed and expanded in higher education establishments in Europe and the US. Informed essentially by a commitment to feminist theories, methodologies and practice, women's studies programmes seek, via a woman-centred approach to learning, to challenge the misrepresentation of women found in traditional disciplines, including sociology. The content of women's studies courses has been shaped by feminists working within the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences. They have also been shaped by feminists working in the community, particularly in women's organizations. Thus women's studies programmes have emerged out of women's direct experience of and response to sexual exploitation and oppression. An essential aim of women's studies is to render visible women's engagement with society and culture whilst making explicit the masculine biases underpinning traditional knowledge. Women's studies programmes seek to challenge all major forms of discrimination and to question the rigid boundaries demarcating one academic subject from another. As such, they provide a radical critique of established academic knowledge and educational practice. The content of such programmes varies but most courses aim to combine a feminist analysis of women's oppression with the development of practical skills such as assertiveness training. Traditional methods of teaching and assessment are re-evaluated in the light of women's needs and links are drawn between theoretical concerns and the daily experience of women.

Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

Guy-Sheftall says a large number of students have some contact with the comparative women's studies program as all Spelman students must take a course in either women's studies or international studies as part of the core requirements.

Finding the right fit: prominent scholars in women's and gender studies face challenges in increasing its presence on HBCU campuses

While feminist campaigns for the inclusion of women in all areas of life and in all social institutions have been a hallmark of second wave feminism in Australia, women's participation has often been marred by disdain, tensions, and the need to compromise, and it was no different for the fledgling Women's Studies Department at the University of Adelaide in 1992.

'Bending and morphing': the department of women's studies at the University of Adelaide continues past its twenty year anniversary

The association's aims include undertaking and disseminating research about women by women from a feminist perspective, educating women about women in culturally appropriate ways, and facilitating the establishment of women's studies courses with a feminist perspective.

Awards for feminist research

The participants in this forum are all tenured faculty at research universities across the United States and Canada, with the majority of participants appointed (at least jointly) in women's studies; women's and gender studies; women's, gender, and sexuality studies; or sexuality studies programs.

Women's Studies and Sexuality Studies in Conversation

I was studying history and women's studies at Carroll at the time, determined to finally finish my Bachelor's degree.

From the new librarian

He says the same is true of the field of women's studies; it emerged from the cultural foment of the 60s and 70s, but has in recent years been under attack from the far right and in budget-cutting measures.

Women on the Verge course offered this fall at KU

Three parallel efforts to document Women's Studies' early years are brought together in this text, which offers an archive of personal reflections on a process of academic inquiry that continues to unearth the complexities of knowledge politics.

Wendy Robbins, Meg Luxton, Margrit Eichler, and Francine Descarries, eds., Minds of Our Own: Inventing Feminist Scholarship and Women's Studies in Canada and Quebec, 1966-76

Its feminist roots have enabled women's studies to engage with critical theory in ways that illuminate the complexity of gendered lives.

Women's studies: is it time to change course?

Hull, Scott, and Smith asserted that "Black Women's Studies will not be "dependent on women's studies, Black Studies, or 'straight' disciplinary departments for its existence, but will be an autonomous academic entity making coalitions with all three" (p.

Black Studies: challenges and critical debates

Students at the Women's Studies Center received a monthly stipend and in addition to attending courses at the Center where required to study English.

International specialist on Islamic and gender studies Margot Badran to the Yemen Times: - "Yemen's creation of its own customized version of modernity was disrupted by the agenda of political Islam." (Culture)

Building on a monologue that the author has been performing as a one-woman show for over a decade, Revenge of The Women's Studies Professor recounts the author's experiences as a student and later as an instructor of women's history in various institutions of higher learning across the U.S.

Revenge of the Women's Studies Professor

The black women historians in Telling Histories tell it like it is, including their struggles to get advanced degrees and the ongoing disrespect they face in their jobs and toward their scholarship; while many of the contributors to Women's Studies on the Edge argue that women's studies is now so successful that it has become "orthodox," "inflexible," "exhausted," and no longer "vital." Although they made their reputations in this field, they separate themselves from the fray both implicitly, in their use of postmodern language that excludes the uninitiated, and explicitly, by repeating old arguments and republishing decades-old essays.

The changing of the guard