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Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 1–11, 2000 Copyright © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0277-5395/00/$–see front matter
Pergamon
PII S0277-5395(99)00089-8
NETWORKING WOMEN: A HISTORY OF IDEAS, ISSUES AND DEVELOPMENTS IN WOMEN’S STUDIES IN BRITAIN Sue Jackson Roehampton Institute, Women’s Studies Programme, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Southlands College, 80 Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5SL, United Kingdom
Synopsis — The history of women’s studies has not always been a happy one, particularly academic women’s studies. Indeed, there are those who have argued that women’s studies has no place in the academy. bell hooks, for instance, has stated that whilst it is in the academy, women’s studies will find it hard to resist becoming part of the mainstream academic culture, and will have little opportunity to challenge or alter prevailing higher educational structures (see hooks, 1989). Adrienne Rich has described women’s studies as “compensatory history”, which fails to make sufficient challenges to existing structures (Rich, 1986, p. 2). In Britain, others have argued that as women’s studies becomes increasingly institutionalised, it is in danger of losing its radicalism (see e.g., Brimstone, 1991). However, I will argue here that women’s studies in Britain has been radical since its outset and throughout its development, and that there is every reason to suppose that it will continue to be so as it moves into the future, although it might also be that women’s studies will (be) move(d) out of and away from the British academy. I will consider the links between women’s studies and feminist political activism through charting some of the themes and publications of the Women’s Studies Network (UK) conferences throughout the 1990s. © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
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able students (entirely or almost entirely women) to engage with feminist principles, and to explore a range of issues around social change. Women sometimes came to a feminist political awareness of the real work they had already been doing in the home, and of the structures which helped determine the limited choices they now had, choices which were further constrained and structured through social class. The women created strong bonds with each other, and a keen awareness of women’s issues. This was not always easy for them, challenging many aspects of their lives, but nevertheless women started to engage in a consideration of feminist ideas. Early courses in women’s studies, then, although not necessarily so titled, were very much based in the experiential nature of women’s lives. The first women’s studies course in Britain to carry that explicit title was taught by Juliet Mitchell at the Anti-University in 1968/69 (see Humm, 1989, p. 244). This was soon to be followed by many others (see e.g., Brighton and Hove WEA/Women’s Studies Branch, 1983),
The development of women’s studies in Britain has an interesting history, emanating from grass roots activities of women. It is a little different to that in, say, the United States, where women’s studies grew and developed mainly within the academy. In Britain, the early establishment of women’s studies courses came not through the universities, but through women’s socialist commitments and through adult education and community-based study arising from the growth of the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s (see Duelli Klein, 1983; Kennedy & Piette, 1991; Richardson & Robinson, 1993; Zmroczek & Duchen, 1991). Such courses carried with them a variety of titles and descriptions, usually based in different aspects of women’s lives. Although not called women’s studies, that was in fact what they were. For instance, during the 1980s I taught on Fresh Start courses, Access courses, and courses run by the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA). None of these courses were explicitly feminist or activist, but they did en1
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where working outside of higher education meant that tutors had relatively few institutional constraints in what was taught. Renate Duelli Klein has described the development of women’s studies in Britain through adult education during the 1970s and 1980s as “dynamic”, showing that in the first British directory of women’s studies courses in the UK, published in 1975, adult education far outweighed any other arena (Duelli Klein, 1983, p. 257). Indeed, it was an adult education department which hosted the first National Conference in Women’s Studies, in Manchester in 1976 (Duelli Klein, 1983, p. 258). By 1977, the WEA had so many women’s studies courses running that it started a regular newsletter (Aaron & Walby, 1991, p. 3). In a special issue of Women’s Studies International Forum on women’s studies in the UK, published in 1983, it is noteworthy that several of the articles focus on women’s studies and adult education. That the first women’s studies course was taught at the Anti-University is interesting, highlighting many of the issues that were to arise for women’s studies within the context of the university, where lecturers for instance are not always free to follow an activist line, and are more tightly constrained by rules, regulations and procedures. Within the universities, the history of women’s studies as an academic discipline is a relatively new one in the Britain. One of the first feminist university courses was started at Lancaster University in 1973 (Aaron & Walby, 1991, p. 3). Others soon followed. One of the many institutions that was considering the introduction of women’s studies during the 1970s was the Open University, although it was not until 1983 that it was able to introduce a half credit course in women’s studies (with a total of six credits needed to obtain a degree). Gill Kirkup, one of the original course team members involved in designing and implementing the course, describes this as “surprisingly late in the day” for “an institution which prides itself as being innovative and on having a large body of women students” (Kirkup, 1983, p. 273). Nevertheless, many other institutions were also as late or later in the day. This ‘lateness’ is not to do with any lack of feminist commitment, but with the difficulties in getting such a course agreed by the university. Indeed, in common with the beginnings of many women’s studies courses, Gill Kirkup describes how the germination of such
an idea started with women from the university who met in a feminist activist group outside. She describes how pressure to develop a women’s studies course came from “a small group of women on campus who were either junior academics or administrators” (Kirkup, 1983, p. 274). Not surprisingly, such a ‘low status’ group received little encouragement from senior academics. However, the setting up of the course was finally agreed, and Gill Kirkup describes some of the central elements for the course team in designing a women’s studies course. These include presenting the need for a separate women’s studies course; making the course transdisciplinary, with a “valid input into every discipline” (Kirkup, 1983, p. 278); drawing on a teaching style based in the valuing of personal experience; and including means of assessment which do not rely on traditional academic modes. Gill Kirkup expands her article by showing the contradictions that arose—and continue to arise—between feminist principles and university teaching methods. Such a picture is true for many other academic feminists. Through commitment to feminist pedagogies and ideologies, they have given of their time and energies to teach on women’s studies modules, whilst remaining within their own particular subject backgrounds. Whilst this has at times made it difficult for women’s studies courses to survive without the goodwill of such women, it has also made it possible for these women to stay within their subject areas, working to permeate feminist teaching across the university, and having a ‘home’ of their own, an issue to which I shall return later. With all the inherent problems that arise in setting up individual courses, and small parts of degrees, it is not surprising perhaps that although it remained the case throughout the 1980s that some form of women’s studies was evident in many British higher educational institutions, it was not possible in Britain to gain an undergraduate degree in women’s studies. Although the first master’s degree was launched at the University of Kent in 1980, it was not until a decade later that the first British single honours undergraduate degrees were launched, at the then Polytechnic of East London, and at Lancaster University and Roehampton Institute, London. Early courses in women’s studies that were set up often relied on the commitment and goodwill of other aca-
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demics—usually feminists—to supplement the programme, often in addition to already heavy workloads. Even today it is rare for women’s studies departments to employ many of their own staff, and many feminist academics work both within and without women’s studies. For many students of women’s studies, too, their women’s studies modules have been offered as part of combined degrees, or they have found single options in other disciplines such as “Women and technology”, or “Women in the 19th century novel”, to start to explore these issues. However, these single option modules are not always widely available. I take as a case study the University of East London, where one of the first single honours women’s studies degree began: here students are currently (1998/99) offered a choice of 1,433 units, set out in the unit and pathway catalogue. However, was there no women’s studies degree, and if students wished to choose units in which they could explore issues of gender or feminism, they would not find this easy. If we exclude the 15 units currently available as women’s studies units, out of nearly 1,500 possibilities, only 12 additional units contain some variation of the words women, gender or feminism. Of these 12, four come from the area of New Technology, and can currently form part of the students’ women’s studies degree. Apart from these, then, there are just eight unit titles in the university which appear to be associated with gender issues. If students were, for example, keen to do a degree in health studies (with, at 63 titles, the second largest number of units available in any one subject area in the university), they would find that only one of these considers women’s health issues: “Gender issues in health and exercise”. There are no units which appear to deal explicitly with gender in subject areas such as psychology, psychosocial studies, social policy, community studies, literature, history, media studies, education studies and so on. This is not to say that gender issues are not included in some of the units available, but there is no way of knowing this from the titles presented in the unit and pathway catalogue. I do acknowledge, of course, that this is just one university amongst many, and that women’s studies exists in a diversity of forms and ranges of institutional strategies. However, if a university which has been at the forefront of developing women’s
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studies has made so little impact on unit choices in the institution as a whole, I believe this might also be the case in other institutions. In her consideration of the development of women’s studies, Mary Maynard has charted what she describes as three broad phases: recuperative, reconstructive and reflexive (Maynard, 1998, pp. 250–251). As I have shown above, the first phase in the development of women’s studies in Britain in particular arose from the activist agendas of those involved in its growth during the 1970s. Whilst Mary Maynard suggests that this stage involved claiming back, or ‘adding in’, women’s lives, and challenging the silences, the women’s studies of the 1980s moved on to look at constructions of knowledge that only focussed on the public world, and paid scant attention to the private. Women’s studies in the 1980s was concerned with questions about the nature of male power, and the consideration of different theoretical perspectives in exploring these issues, focussing on the commonalities of oppression shared by women. However, it is to the third phase that I now turn. This is the phase that Mary Maynard has described as reflexive, raising difficult and painful issues, particularly around concepts of ‘difference’. Whilst discussions of and theorising about difference was an integral part of feminism and women’s studies in the 1990s, much of this work emanated from the United States. However, by the late 1990s some women in Britain were researching the impact of social class on women’s studies students (see for instance, Jackson, 1998; Zmroczek & Mahoney, 1997). Indeed, it was also as late as 1997 that the first volume to entirely focus on Black British feminism was published in Britain (Mirza, 1997). Here, Heidi Safia Mirza, the collection editor, asks whether what she calls “black female educational urgency” (Mirza, 1997, p. 272) is or could be a new social movement. She looks at strategies for transformation through Black women’s activism, showing how their challenges to “knowing and understanding” can ultimately lead to “collective action and social change” (Mirza, 1997, p. 275). These are of course central issues for women’s studies, and a core part of any consideration of its growth. Although the collection does not deal specifically with the development of women’s studies in Britain, it does consider ways in which Black women in Britain have actively shaped, and continue to
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shape, the debate, although often outside of the women’s studies classroom. WOMEN’S STUDIES NETWORK (UK) ASSOCIATION 1 Indeed, academic feminism does not just take place in the classroom, but in a number of other arenas. One such arena is at conferences, and in particular at women’s studies conferences, which are a central forum for women’s studies practitioners and activists to share our work, our ideas and our visions. The Women’s Studies Network (UK) (WSN), set up in 1989, has held annual conferences since then to “promote the development of . . . feminist intellectual ideas and the . . . framework necessary for them to survive and take root” (Aaron & Walby, 1991, p. 4). This of course is by no means the only feminist group to run conferences through the 1990s, and indeed The WSN is formed mainly of feminist practitioners working in higher education. Nevertheless, the attempt to promote not just women’s studies within the academy, but also to find ways to ensure the growth and survival of feminist ideas, could certainly be considered feminist activism. The WSN has been part of an feminist academic/activist movement in higher education in the UK. To chart the themes and the books of these conferences is also to chart part of the history of ideas, issues and development of women’s studies in Britain throughout the 1990s. The Women Studies Network (UK) Association is a national network, with international feminist and professional links. It has regional subgroups, and encourages networking between women, although this is mainly an academic organisation, involved in lobbying national education bodies around women’s studies and feminist issues. The Network has a newsletter which “stimulates debates around new issues in women’s studies, and includes book, conference and website reviews and an up to date events listing” (Women Studies Network (UK) Association Newsletter, 1999). In addition, one of the main focuses of the Network is its annual conference, and the ensuing publication of conference papers. Although the Network is an organisation of professional academic women, and its main concern is with higher educational issues, the conferences engage in a range of themes and issues developed
from a range of feminist perspectives and politics. I will go on to chart some of these themes throughout the 1990s. The conferences from 1990 to 1995 published books of conference papers, with the further books due to follow from the subsequent conferences. Through an examination of the themes of these books, I will show that there has been a continuing connection between women’s studies, feminism and political activism. WOMEN’S STUDIES NETWORK CONFERENCE THEMES AND BOOKS: 1990–1995 At the start of the 1990s, the WSN was asking whether women’s studies in the 1990s could expect to come out of the margins and into the mainstream. In its conference book, published in 1991, there were those who argued that the margins offer a strong conceptual space, and women’s studies should be wary of incorporation into the dominant culture (Brimstone, 1991). However, others were concerned with a discussion of the incorporation of previously marginal concerns in women’s studies into central debates, including working with diversity, especially in considerations of lesbianism. The editors of the conference book, Jane Aaron and Sylvia Walby, entitled their introduction “Towards a feminist intellectual space” (Aaron & Walby, 1991), in which they argue that for change to take place, an intellectual space is necessary. Therefore, the feminist intellectual space of women’s studies is an essential component of feminist change. This is a change which is needed in the transformation of teaching practices, placing the diversity of women’s experiences at the centre of the agenda, and reconsidering relationships between learners and teachers. In the quest for feminist praxis, both practice and theory need to be considered, and Jane Aaron and Sylvia Walby suggest that radical movements have always built upon intellectual theorising, clearly seeing no broad distinctions between theory and activism. Indeed, one of the four organising sections of this conference book focusses on the links between women’s studies and the feminist movement. By the following year, the concern was how to take women’s studies forward through the 1990s, with a conference title which suggested that women’s studies needed to find “new di-
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rections”. Rather than the concern about the position of British women’s studies which came from the 1990 conference, it could now be supposed that the new direction was to look outwards to international feminism, developing connections with women studies as far apart as central and eastern Europe, and Australia. However, in its central theme of finding new directions, these were not so much geographical directions but political and theoretical ones. The conference book, Working Out: New Directions for Women’s Studies (Hinds, Phoenix, & Stacey, 1992), has sections on the politics and practice of women’s studies, as well as on theories and methods, for instance, with a continuing development of the discussion about feminist praxis. These expand the debate from the previous year, again exploring connections between women’s studies and feminist politics, and their relationships to theoretical and methodological approaches. As early as the start of the 1990s, when the conference from which this book emanated took place, there was also a concern for keeping the politics going in what was starting to be called a ‘post-feminist era’, an ongoing issue through the 1990s (see e.g., Faludi, 1992; Whelehan, 1995). Another clear conference debate continued from the previous year and which was to develop throughout the 1990s was that of diversity and difference. The emphasis that women’s studies has made, and continues to make, in connecting with women’s movements and women’s lives was the theme of the WSN conference book published in 1993. Indeed, the link between women’s studies and feminism is evident throughout the conferences, and is particularly emphasised in this book, whose authors convey a whole variety of feminist identities and perspectives. Indeed, the first of the book’s four sections takes as its theme “Identities and Feminisms”, developing the need to work with women’s multiple identities and within a plurality of feminisms (Kennedy, Lubelska, & Walsh, 1993, p. x). A further section considers the positions of feminists both inside and outside the academy, including those women working to co-exist with those at the centre, whilst being continually relegated to the margins. As I suggested earlier, many feminist teachers in higher education have had to tread a delicate line between teaching in women’s studies, and keeping a firmer toehold in the
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academy by taking their (feminist) teaching to other arenas in the academy. Whilst there is then still a concern with difference in this volume, there is also a “crucial shift of priorities” (Kennedy et al., 1993, p. x), focussing on a feminist politics which connects identities and alliances, moving towards a politics of coalition. These identities and alliances are something which feminist teachers within higher education and elsewhere are continually having to negotiate. Holding onto a commitment to feminist politics, and using that commitment to activate change, is not unproblematic. Part of such change is in challenging constructions of knowledge and ‘truth’ claims. There is also a section in this conference book which considers the importance of redefining knowledge, and the connections between knowledge, patriarchal power and women’s oppression: a connection I have suggested elsewhere is a central component of feminist pedagogic practice (see Jackson, 1997). Indeed, the volume picks up on tensions in the academy for the feminist practitioner: including the so-called ‘objectivity’ of the academy; the personal (and political) involvement of feminist teachers; and power relations within the academy as well as issues of empowerment for both teachers and students. In particular, this book of conference papers raises the thorny question, which I have grappled with here, of how “feminists in academia stay alive as functioning feminists” (Kennedy et al., 1993, p. xiii). Perhaps then it is not surprising that the conference held that year, from which some of its papers were published in 1994, took as its subtitle “Challenges for Feminism” (Griffin, Hester, Rai, & Roseneil, 1994). By the 1990s, these challenges seem many and varied. The editors’ introduction states that there has in the past been a tendency to see “a split between women in academe (the theorizers) and women outside academe (the practitioners)” (Griffin et al., 1994, p. 2). Nevertheless, both the conference and the book argue against this split, suggesting instead, albeit implicitly, that women’s studies is indeed “feminist politics in action” (the title of the first section of the conference book). Although the three papers in this section appear diverse, considering feminist action in war; the activities and campaigns of the women’s movement; and anti-feminist strategies in local government; I would argue
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that their inclusion in a WSN conference and publication makes a strong connection between women’s studies and feminist activism, continuing the constant thread running through the development of women’s studies in Britain. Indeed, the final section of the book connects “women’s studies and feminist practice” much more explicitly, at least through its subtitle, although the articles themselves are more concerned with the conflict between the two, rather than the connections. Nevertheless, these connections had by now become an ongoing theme with the WSN conferences and books. The 1994 conference published two volumes: one in 1995 and one in 1996. Although the 1995 publication focusses on (Hetero)sexual politics Maynard & Purvis, 1995), it is still possible to read this as an ongoing debate between the way we live our political and personal lives, the connections we are able to make between theory and practice, and the constraints and choices that we face, all central issues in the pedagogic practices of women’s studies. The 1996 publication, edited by Maynard and Purvis (1996), is in two parts. The second section considers identity, migration and nationalism, calling for women’s studies in Britain to do more to consider a range of international women’s movements, setting out to challenge the “white, Western and Ethnocentric bias which often characterizes Women’s Studies work” (Maynard & Purvis, 1996, p. 1). However, for the sake of this history of the development of ideas within women’s studies and the women’s movement, it is the first section that I find more interesting. This section sets “new agendas for women’s studies”. The list is certainly challenging. Within an international framework, it considers anti-racist practice; post-colonialism; feminist politics; the political and the personal; and considerations of knowledge and feminist history. Women’s studies has moved a long way, whilst retaining a commitment to some of its early ideologies, and there can be little doubt that there are new frontiers opening all the time, with more and more border crossings to be made. Women’s studies is, then, an active movement. The 1995 conference, which published some of its conference papers in 1997 (AngLygate, Corrin, & Henry, 1997), suggests that there is a need to keep challenging and keep building. As was apparent in the previous year,
though, as women’s studies developed throughout the 1990s, there was also an emphasis on its history: its past as well as its present and its future. The book takes as its central title that of the 1995 conference: Desperately Seeking Sisterhood (Ang-Lygate et al., 1997). Sisterhood is of course a concept arising from the very start of the women’s liberation movement, although perhaps it was then considered more unproblematically as a concept which united women through that which we share. Throughout the 1990s, such a concept became increasingly difficult and the book certainly does not suggest that ‘sisterhood’ is a simple notion nor an easy concept. Perhaps the complexity of sisterhood is why it has not yet been found, why we are still urged to seek for it, for the editors of Desperately Seeking Sisterhood suggest that it is worth the struggle. What they do not say, however, is why the search is desperate. Perhaps one of the reasons is that a struggle to achieve sisterhood will also keep alive the already strong connections between women’s studies and feminist activism. There is certainly a commitment in this volume to a women’s studies shared by feminist academics, practitioners and activists, who need to work together to rebuild a notion of sisterhood founded in feminist praxis. This is a sisterhood which acknowledges and analyses differences between women, whilst also celebrating them. It is a sisterhood which also looks for connectedness; which theorises power relations; which finds a place to develop individual and collective voices; and which challenges oppressive constructions. It is also a sisterhood which is based in activism in creating positive change for women. WOMEN’S STUDIES NETWORK CONFERENCE THEMES: 1996–1999 No WSN annual conference since 1995 has yet published any volume of its conference papers, although plans are in hand for such publications to appear in the future. Such is the nature of academic publishing that ideas and issues only become public some time after they have been researched and written. Perhaps then the 1996 conference, which focussed on “Feminisms: Past, Present and Future”, was an apt one: the future publication of past conference debate and research is still awaited! It was
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clear from this conference that a consideration of the development of a variety of feminisms has clear connections to developments of women’s movements and of women’s studies. The 1997 conference took policy and politics as a central theme, with both aspects ranging through many arenas in women’s lives. The conference, based at the Institute of Education in London, certainly had one strand which focussed on education: an important area for facilitating change in women’s lives. However, many other issues in women’s lives also took their place as conference strands. These included health and welfare, violence, families, citizenship, sport, the environment, local politics and women’s movements. These conference strands enabled possibilities for change to be reviewed. However, such possibilities can be limited by many factors. The 1998 conference took as its central theme women’s choices and constraints in gendered spaces. These ‘spaces’ were wide ranging, with themes including the public arena of politics and policy debated at conference the previous year; the ‘private’ arena of domestic violence; the spaces occupied by disabled women and lesbians; and European and postcolonial space. Here again, then, as through the 1990s, we can see continuing concerns with public/private; with difference; and with moving outside of UK women’s studies to other spaces. Indeed, the conference itself was wide ranging, showing the diversity of women’s studies in the 1990s, in a postmodernist age where it is difficult to find any single way forward. Perhaps this is the shape of women’s studies at the end of the 1990s—uncertain of its direction, but still challenging, developing and looking for safe spaces in which to continue this work. The call for papers for the 1999 conference, looking forward to women and the millennium, invites contributions “in the sprit of Donna Harraway’s concept of ‘situated knowledge’ . . . ‘not the view from above but the joining of partial views and halting voices’’’ (“Call for Papers”, WSN (UK) Conference, 1999). Despite the halting voices, however, or maybe because of them, the strands are in the main familiar from other WSN conferences in the 1990s. There is, for instance, a strand on re-viewing feminisms, which suggests not just a new consideration, but a link too to the past. There is a strand on activisms and intellectual life, a theme which has been clearly woven into the history of Brit-
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ish women’s studies since its early development. In addition, there is a strand on postcolonialism, an apparent concern of British women’s studies in the late 1990s. Indeed, it could be said that a key word of British feminism in the 1990s is ‘post’, with much debate even through the early part of the decade focussing on the centrality or otherwise of postmodernism and post-structuralism for feminism (see e.g., Brodribb, 1992; Jackson, 1992; Kenway, 1995; Ramazanoglu, 1993; Sawicki, 1991). When the work of so many feminist writers is rich, varied and challenging, should post-strucuralism, for instance, especially when based in the (often misogynist) work of French male theorists, hold such prominence in feminist theory? Is, as Somer Brodribb has suggested, the bringing of male theory into the women’s movement “a position of compromise within institutions” (Brodribb, 1992, p. xxxvii), and does it de-politicise feminist activisms and movements? Or does post-strucuralism, as Jane Kenway (1995) suggests, enable feminism itself to take its place as a site of discursive struggle within the academy (p. 45). What has been missing from the conference papers and books is an engagement with the tensions these debates have aroused. With so much popular talk of another ‘post’— post-feminism—where will the debate move to in the year 2000? TOWARDS THE NEW MILLENNIUM Despite the title of the 1999 WSN (UK) conference, “Women and the Millennium”, whether women’s studies continues to survive as an academic discipline remains of course to be seen. There are many things working against it. The move to vocationalism, for instance, will mean that students will choose degree subjects that lead to a recognisable career. Although Beverley Skeggs, in her consideration of women’s studies in Britain in the 1990s, suggests that “feminism has opened up employment spaces . . . (and) students know that women’s studies can provide entry to a range of employment opportunites” (Skeggs, 1995, p. 477), my research does not show this to be the case, especially for working-class students (see Jackson, 1998). Furthermore, few of the features that Beverley Skeggs identified in 1995 as being symptomatic of Thatcherism in a particular historical, political
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and social moment in British social history have disappeared with the new Labour government. Indeed, much of the ideology remains intact. For example, the introduction in Britain in 1998 of a fee of £1000 per year for undergraduate students will hit particularly hard at the very people women’s studies tries to attract—women, of course, but also particular women: Black women, working-class women, women who have been denied full educational opportunities in the past. Beverley Skeggs charts a rapid growth in women’s studies, with ever-increasing student numbers (Skeggs, 1995). However, at the end of the 1990s, the situation has reversed, with many women’s studies courses struggling to attract students and to keep running, with lecturers and course leaders engaged in political and pragmatic discussions about changes in course structures, titles, etc. In addition, many women’s studies courses in Britain are still struggling to secure institutional recognition with courses closed down if the individuals committed to them leave a particular institution or faculty. There is also, in Britain, a current emphasis for academics to produce published work. One of the ways in which universities gain funding is through submission of such publications to the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). However, such submission is discipline-based, and the Research Assessment Exercise does not recognise women’s studies as a distinct subject area. This means that women who might otherwise associate themselves with women’s studies will be forced to submit their work in other disciplines, leaving women’s studies undervalued, little recognised and even more marginalised. Despite this, the WSN is a part of the consultation process of the RAE, and there is a women’s studies panel which reports to Sociology as part of the assessment exercise. Nevertheless, this is not sufficient recognition. Indeed, part of the current debate within feminism asks whether women’s studies should stay as a separatist discipline within universities, or whether issues of gender should be integrated into all other disciplines, although I certainly do not see this as a choice of either/or, and would strongly argue for both. And in any case, it can be seen (as my case study of courses at the University of East London shows) that gender is not yet integrated into all other disciplines.
Back at the beginning of the 1980s, Renate Duelli Klein showed that women’s studies had a long way to go until it became a separate field of its own, rather than an ‘add-on’ “within the present male-centred compartmentalisation of knowledgemaking” (Duelli Klein, 1983, p. 255). Although the steady growth of women’s studies courses and degrees at British universities might show some advance here, the current climate suggests that women’s studies is struggling to survive. Indeed, initial (currently unpublished) research which I am undertaking on behalf of the WSN shows this to be the case, certainly at undergraduate level. Whilst it could be considered a success of women’s studies that it has on occasion caused other disciplines to seriously consider aspects of gender, with integration alone, women’s studies is indeed in danger of becoming “compensatory history” (Rich, 1986, p. 2). In addition, women’s studies is not only multi- and interdisciplinary; it is also transdisciplinary, seeking to challenge existing structures as well as to advance ways of being ‘differently academic’ (Jackson, 1999a). These are theoretical concerns which will be seriously damaged without a base of women’s studies. There is a need for feminist theory if such challenges are to be made, and for feminist academics not to be returned to working in isolation. That this base is surviving in dangerous territory (see Reay, 1998) is also evident in the strong media presence of discussion of post-feminism, with a political backlash against both women’s studies and feminism (see e.g., Faludi, 1992; Whelehan, 1995). All of this makes women’s studies in the late 1990s an uncomfortable place to be. Diane Reay suggests that women’s studies in the academy is about “surviving in dangerous places”, with hallmarks which include “cooption, insecurity and lack of authenticity” (Reay, 1998, p. 11). These are hallmarks, she suggests, that women’s studies in Britain shares with its working-class students, in a system which invalidates and renders invisible the experiences of working-class women (see also Jackson, 1998). Diane Reay suggests that while women’s studies continues to validate working-class women’s experiences, it will also continue to jeopardise its own place in the British academy, with “tensions . . . compounded by Women’s Studies’ . . . relationship to feminist activisms” (Reay, 1998, p. 15).
Networking Women
Women’s studies in the late 1990s, she concludes, is still struggling to find alternative ways within the academy (Reay, 1998, p. 18). Nevertheless, there is a positive side. Women’s studies may be struggling, but it has found many alternative ways in the academy to challenge conventional academic structures and teaching practices. In the new political climate which has moved towards an emphasis on teaching in higher education, women’s studies is at the forefront of progressive education and innovative pedagogic practice. Women’s studies as research is strong and, even if not always able to attract academic funding, is now a competitive industry in the arena of journal and book publications. In addition, despite the worries of continuing to attract student numbers, women’s studies is still more than evident in the academy. The 1998 UCAS (University and Colleges Admissions System) guide shows 87 full time undergraduate degree courses that include women’s studies, with eight institutions offering single honours undergraduate degrees in women’s studies, including the University of East London. In addition, students continue to actively engage with women’s studies at postgaduate level. And the history of women’s studies shows that even if women’s studies finds it increasingly difficult to survive within the academy—and I clearly hope that it does survive— it might well continue in the field of adult and continuing education in the quest for lifelong learning so advocated by the current government on the recommendations of Lord Dearing’s committee, set up to consider a broad range of issues in learning and teaching. However, it should be noted that adult and continuing education is also facing severe cuts and pressures. Whilst it is difficult to state that women’s studies has radically altered prevailing higher educational paradigms, it is clear that these paradigms are going to need to shift to fit in with changing cultures, and the political demands that are put upon the educational system generally, and especially on the higher educational system, following the recommendations of the Dearing committee. Women’s studies is ideally situated to lead the way forward to meeting these demands, as it has been continually engaging in innovative ways to engage in lifelong learning, to challenge traditional constructions of knowledge, and to work with di-
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versity. There has been an ongoing connection between women’s studies and feminist politics, which I suggest has been central in placing women’s studies at the forefront of progressive education. CONCLUSIONS Again and again, then, throughout the 1990s, and despite the diverse themes of the WSN conferences and the resulting books, the links between women’s studies and feminist politics have remained strong. Indeed, an ongoing theme has been the insistence that feminist intellectual space—in the academy, at conferences, in books, and in the other spaces we find to develop theories and analyses—is a central component in initiating change. Indeed, as I showed earlier, there has been a suggestion throughout the conferences that intellectual theorising is as important to radical movements as other political actions. Whilst, then, the WSN (UK) Association’s conferences have been placed within a higher educational framework, all the conference books contain articles written by a large variety of interested and interesting women: by academics in women’s studies and outside it; but also by tutors from a range of adult educational institutions; by journalists; by students; by social workers; by policy advisers; by members of women’s centres; and by activists. One of those contributors, Virginia Vargas (1993), has considered her own relationship with both feminist activism and the academy by discussing her long connection—as founder, activist and organiser—with the Peruvian feminist movement, and her work as an academic professor of women’s studies. She described the women’s movement as being made up of a plurality of processes, as are the women within it. She says the movement is made up of three strands: the feminist movement itself; women with institutional commitment (e.g., within academe) and women who “from their roles as mothers, wives and daughters, continue to advance and become aware of their existence as part of a subordinate gender” (Vargas, 1993, p. 146). However, I would argue that within women’s studies, both lecturers and students are engaged in all three strands, which is partly what gives women’s studies its activism, an activism which has been apparent from the outset in the particular development of British
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women’s studies. We are all continually working out how we stand in relation to the women’s movement and feminism; to our personal relationships and significant others; and to our relationship with the academy. I will show elsewhere (Jackson, 1999b), that each time women’s studies students identify as feminist and have to justify it; each time they struggle with ‘difference’; whenever they consider feminist theory as praxis; when they consider constructions of knowledge; and when they engage in change in their lives, try to seek sisterhood, or connect the personal and the political, there can be little doubt that women’s studies, feminism and political activism stand hand-in-hand in the academy. And when lecturers take the subjective and experiential nature of women’s studies into the apparently ‘objective’ academy; when we locate our personal feminism in the classroom; when we live our lives as feminists in academe; we are engaged in political activism. It seems clear, then, that women’s studies in Britain has retained its roots based in the Women’s Liberation Movement, and that the very act of engaging in a women’s studies course is feminist political activism. It is as little possible for me to separate them as it is for me to separate theory and practice, or the personal and the political. My own introduction to feminism was not through conventional activism, but through enrolment on a women’s studies course. It changed my life. I include myself and parts of my life experiences in my teaching. In including the personal I would find it difficult— impossible maybe—not to also include the political. In raising with my students issues with which I have grappled and struggled, I believe I am engaged in direct social change activism. And in my work with the many women who enrol on women’s studies courses, I believe they are too. Growing from its early links with women’s socialist commitment and left wing politics, through its strong base in adult and community education, British women’s studies has struggled to retain its activist roots, despite grappling constantly with the problems and issues of location in the academy. In 1986, Adrienne Rich was raising doubts about academic women’s studies: The question now facing women’s studies . . . is the extent to which she has, in the past decade, matured into the dutiful daughter of
the white, patriarchal university . . .; (and) the extent to which Women’s Studies will remember that her mother was . . . the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1960s. . . . (Rich, 1986, p. 79)
It is clear from this overview of women’s studies in Britain, and through a consideration of the WSN (UK) books and conferences, that women’s studies is still her mother’s daughter. ENDNOTE 1. For details contact: Nicole Matthews, Membership Secretary, Women’s Studies Network (UK) Association, Department of Media and Cultural Studies, Liverpool John Moores University, Rodney Street, Liverpool L1 7BY, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
REFERENCES Aaron, Jane, & Walby, Sylvia. (1991). Towards a feminist intellectual space. In Jane Aaron & Sylvia Walby (Eds.), Out of the margins (pp. 1–6). London: Falmer Press. Ang-Lygate, Magdalene, Corrin, Chris, & Henry, Millsom. (Eds.). (1997). Desperately seeking sisterhood: Still challenging and building. London: Taylor and Francis. Brighton and Hove WEA/Women’s Studies Branch. (1983). Women’s studies in the Workers’ Educational Association. Women’s Studies International Forum, 6, 270–272. Brimstone, Lyndie. (1991). Out of the margins and into the soup: Some thoughts on incorporation. In Jane Aaron & Sylvia Walby (Eds.), Out of the margins (pp. 119– 130). London: Falmer Press. Brodribb, Somer. (1992). Nothing mat(t)hers: A feminist critique of postmodernism. Melbourne: Spinfex Press. Duelli Klein, Renate. (1983). A brief overview of the development of women’s studies in the UK. Women’s Studies International Forum, 6, 255–260. Faludi, Susan. (1992). Backlash: The undeclared war against women. London: Chatto & Windus. Griffin, Gabrielle, Hester, Marianne, Rai, Shirin, & Roseneil, Sasha. (Eds.). (1994). Stirring it: Challenges for feminism. London: Taylor and Francis. Hinds, Hilary, Phoenix, Ann, & Stacey, Jackie. (1992). Working out: New directions for women’s studies. London: Falmer Press. hooks, bell. (1989). Talking back. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Humm, Maggie. (1989). The dictionary of feminist theory. Herts: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Jackson, Stevi. (1992). The amazing deconstructing woman. . . . Trouble and Strife, 25, 25–31. Jackson, Sue. (1997). Crossing borders and changing pedagogies: From Giroux and Freire to feminist theories of education. Gender and Education, 9, 457–467. Jackson, Sue. (1998). In a class of their own: Women’s studies and working-class students. The European Journal of Women’s Studies, 5, 195–215.
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Jackson, Sue. (1999a). ‘Differently academic’? Constructions of ‘academic’ in higher education. Manuscript in preparation. Jackson, Sue. (1999b). Of politics and revolution: Researching the women’s studies classroom. Manuscript in preparation. Kennedy, Mary, & Piette, Brec’hed. (1991). From the margins to the mainstream: Issues around women’s studies on adult education and access courses. In Jane Aaron & Sylvia Walby (Eds.), Out of the margins (pp. 30–40). London: Falmer Press. Kennedy, Mary, Lubelska, Cathy, & Walsh, Val. (Eds.). (1993). Making connections: Women’s studies, women’s movements, women’s lives. London: Taylor and Francis. Kenway, Jane. (1995). Having a postmodernist turn or postmodernist angst. In R. Smith & P. Wexler (Eds.), After postmodernism: Education, politics and identity (pp. 39–48). London: Falmer Press. Kirkup, Gill. (1983). Women’s studies ‘at a distance’: The new Open University course. Women’s Studies International Forum, 6, 273–282. Maynard, Mary, & Purvis, June. (Eds.). (1995). (Hetero)sexual politics. London: Taylor and Francis. Maynard, Mary, & Purvis, June. (Eds.). (1996). New frontiers in women’s studies: Knowledge, identity and nationalism. London: Taylor and Francis. Maynard, Mary. (1998). Women’s studies. In Stevi Jackson & Jackie Jones (Eds.), Contemporary feminist theories (pp. 247–256). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Mirza, Heidi Safia. (Ed.). (1997). Black British feminism. London: Routledge. Ramazanoglu, Caroline. (Ed.). (1993). Up against Foucault:
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Explorations of some tensions between Foucault and feminism. London: Routledge. Reay, Diane. (1998). Surviving in dangerous places: Working-class women, women’s studies and higher education. Women’s Studies International Forum, 21, 11–19. Rich, Adrienne. (1986). Blood, bread and poetry. New York: Norton. Richardson, Diane, & Robinson, Victoria. (1993). Introducing women’s studies. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Sawicki, Jane. (1991). Disciplining Foucault. New York: Routledge. Skeggs, Beverley. (1995). Women’s studies in Britain in the 1990s. Women’s Studies International Forum, 18, 475–485. Vargas, Virginia. (1993). Academia and the feminist movement in Latin America. In Mary Kennedy, Cathy Lubelska & Val Walsh (Eds.), Making connections: Women’s studies, women’s movements, women’s lives (pp. 145–154). London: Taylor and Francis. Whelehan, Imelda. (1995). Modern feminist thought: From the second wave to ‘post feminism’. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Women’s Studies Network (UK) Association Newsletter. (1999). 32(March). Zmroczek, Christine, & Duchen, Claire. (1991). What are those women up to? Women’s studies and feminist research in the European community. In Jane Aaron & Sylvia Walby (Eds.), Out of the margins (pp. 11–29). London: Falmer Press. Zmroczek, Christine, & Mahoney, Pat. (1997). Women’s studies and working-class women. In Magdalene AngLygate, Chris Corrin, & Millsom Henry (Eds.), Desperately seeking sisterhood: Still challenging and building (pp. 192–202). London: Taylor and Francis.
Pergamon
PII S0277-5395(99)00089-8
NETWORKING WOMEN: A HISTORY OF IDEAS, ISSUES AND DEVELOPMENTS IN WOMEN’S STUDIES IN BRITAIN Sue Jackson Roehampton Institute, Women’s Studies Programme, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Southlands College, 80 Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5SL, United Kingdom
Synopsis — The history of women’s studies has not always been a happy one, particularly academic women’s studies. Indeed, there are those who have argued that women’s studies has no place in the academy. bell hooks, for instance, has stated that whilst it is in the academy, women’s studies will find it hard to resist becoming part of the mainstream academic culture, and will have little opportunity to challenge or alter prevailing higher educational structures (see hooks, 1989). Adrienne Rich has described women’s studies as “compensatory history”, which fails to make sufficient challenges to existing structures (Rich, 1986, p. 2). In Britain, others have argued that as women’s studies becomes increasingly institutionalised, it is in danger of losing its radicalism (see e.g., Brimstone, 1991). However, I will argue here that women’s studies in Britain has been radical since its outset and throughout its development, and that there is every reason to suppose that it will continue to be so as it moves into the future, although it might also be that women’s studies will (be) move(d) out of and away from the British academy. I will consider the links between women’s studies and feminist political activism through charting some of the themes and publications of the Women’s Studies Network (UK) conferences throughout the 1990s. © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
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able students (entirely or almost entirely women) to engage with feminist principles, and to explore a range of issues around social change. Women sometimes came to a feminist political awareness of the real work they had already been doing in the home, and of the structures which helped determine the limited choices they now had, choices which were further constrained and structured through social class. The women created strong bonds with each other, and a keen awareness of women’s issues. This was not always easy for them, challenging many aspects of their lives, but nevertheless women started to engage in a consideration of feminist ideas. Early courses in women’s studies, then, although not necessarily so titled, were very much based in the experiential nature of women’s lives. The first women’s studies course in Britain to carry that explicit title was taught by Juliet Mitchell at the Anti-University in 1968/69 (see Humm, 1989, p. 244). This was soon to be followed by many others (see e.g., Brighton and Hove WEA/Women’s Studies Branch, 1983),
The development of women’s studies in Britain has an interesting history, emanating from grass roots activities of women. It is a little different to that in, say, the United States, where women’s studies grew and developed mainly within the academy. In Britain, the early establishment of women’s studies courses came not through the universities, but through women’s socialist commitments and through adult education and community-based study arising from the growth of the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s (see Duelli Klein, 1983; Kennedy & Piette, 1991; Richardson & Robinson, 1993; Zmroczek & Duchen, 1991). Such courses carried with them a variety of titles and descriptions, usually based in different aspects of women’s lives. Although not called women’s studies, that was in fact what they were. For instance, during the 1980s I taught on Fresh Start courses, Access courses, and courses run by the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA). None of these courses were explicitly feminist or activist, but they did en1
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where working outside of higher education meant that tutors had relatively few institutional constraints in what was taught. Renate Duelli Klein has described the development of women’s studies in Britain through adult education during the 1970s and 1980s as “dynamic”, showing that in the first British directory of women’s studies courses in the UK, published in 1975, adult education far outweighed any other arena (Duelli Klein, 1983, p. 257). Indeed, it was an adult education department which hosted the first National Conference in Women’s Studies, in Manchester in 1976 (Duelli Klein, 1983, p. 258). By 1977, the WEA had so many women’s studies courses running that it started a regular newsletter (Aaron & Walby, 1991, p. 3). In a special issue of Women’s Studies International Forum on women’s studies in the UK, published in 1983, it is noteworthy that several of the articles focus on women’s studies and adult education. That the first women’s studies course was taught at the Anti-University is interesting, highlighting many of the issues that were to arise for women’s studies within the context of the university, where lecturers for instance are not always free to follow an activist line, and are more tightly constrained by rules, regulations and procedures. Within the universities, the history of women’s studies as an academic discipline is a relatively new one in the Britain. One of the first feminist university courses was started at Lancaster University in 1973 (Aaron & Walby, 1991, p. 3). Others soon followed. One of the many institutions that was considering the introduction of women’s studies during the 1970s was the Open University, although it was not until 1983 that it was able to introduce a half credit course in women’s studies (with a total of six credits needed to obtain a degree). Gill Kirkup, one of the original course team members involved in designing and implementing the course, describes this as “surprisingly late in the day” for “an institution which prides itself as being innovative and on having a large body of women students” (Kirkup, 1983, p. 273). Nevertheless, many other institutions were also as late or later in the day. This ‘lateness’ is not to do with any lack of feminist commitment, but with the difficulties in getting such a course agreed by the university. Indeed, in common with the beginnings of many women’s studies courses, Gill Kirkup describes how the germination of such
an idea started with women from the university who met in a feminist activist group outside. She describes how pressure to develop a women’s studies course came from “a small group of women on campus who were either junior academics or administrators” (Kirkup, 1983, p. 274). Not surprisingly, such a ‘low status’ group received little encouragement from senior academics. However, the setting up of the course was finally agreed, and Gill Kirkup describes some of the central elements for the course team in designing a women’s studies course. These include presenting the need for a separate women’s studies course; making the course transdisciplinary, with a “valid input into every discipline” (Kirkup, 1983, p. 278); drawing on a teaching style based in the valuing of personal experience; and including means of assessment which do not rely on traditional academic modes. Gill Kirkup expands her article by showing the contradictions that arose—and continue to arise—between feminist principles and university teaching methods. Such a picture is true for many other academic feminists. Through commitment to feminist pedagogies and ideologies, they have given of their time and energies to teach on women’s studies modules, whilst remaining within their own particular subject backgrounds. Whilst this has at times made it difficult for women’s studies courses to survive without the goodwill of such women, it has also made it possible for these women to stay within their subject areas, working to permeate feminist teaching across the university, and having a ‘home’ of their own, an issue to which I shall return later. With all the inherent problems that arise in setting up individual courses, and small parts of degrees, it is not surprising perhaps that although it remained the case throughout the 1980s that some form of women’s studies was evident in many British higher educational institutions, it was not possible in Britain to gain an undergraduate degree in women’s studies. Although the first master’s degree was launched at the University of Kent in 1980, it was not until a decade later that the first British single honours undergraduate degrees were launched, at the then Polytechnic of East London, and at Lancaster University and Roehampton Institute, London. Early courses in women’s studies that were set up often relied on the commitment and goodwill of other aca-
Networking Women
demics—usually feminists—to supplement the programme, often in addition to already heavy workloads. Even today it is rare for women’s studies departments to employ many of their own staff, and many feminist academics work both within and without women’s studies. For many students of women’s studies, too, their women’s studies modules have been offered as part of combined degrees, or they have found single options in other disciplines such as “Women and technology”, or “Women in the 19th century novel”, to start to explore these issues. However, these single option modules are not always widely available. I take as a case study the University of East London, where one of the first single honours women’s studies degree began: here students are currently (1998/99) offered a choice of 1,433 units, set out in the unit and pathway catalogue. However, was there no women’s studies degree, and if students wished to choose units in which they could explore issues of gender or feminism, they would not find this easy. If we exclude the 15 units currently available as women’s studies units, out of nearly 1,500 possibilities, only 12 additional units contain some variation of the words women, gender or feminism. Of these 12, four come from the area of New Technology, and can currently form part of the students’ women’s studies degree. Apart from these, then, there are just eight unit titles in the university which appear to be associated with gender issues. If students were, for example, keen to do a degree in health studies (with, at 63 titles, the second largest number of units available in any one subject area in the university), they would find that only one of these considers women’s health issues: “Gender issues in health and exercise”. There are no units which appear to deal explicitly with gender in subject areas such as psychology, psychosocial studies, social policy, community studies, literature, history, media studies, education studies and so on. This is not to say that gender issues are not included in some of the units available, but there is no way of knowing this from the titles presented in the unit and pathway catalogue. I do acknowledge, of course, that this is just one university amongst many, and that women’s studies exists in a diversity of forms and ranges of institutional strategies. However, if a university which has been at the forefront of developing women’s
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studies has made so little impact on unit choices in the institution as a whole, I believe this might also be the case in other institutions. In her consideration of the development of women’s studies, Mary Maynard has charted what she describes as three broad phases: recuperative, reconstructive and reflexive (Maynard, 1998, pp. 250–251). As I have shown above, the first phase in the development of women’s studies in Britain in particular arose from the activist agendas of those involved in its growth during the 1970s. Whilst Mary Maynard suggests that this stage involved claiming back, or ‘adding in’, women’s lives, and challenging the silences, the women’s studies of the 1980s moved on to look at constructions of knowledge that only focussed on the public world, and paid scant attention to the private. Women’s studies in the 1980s was concerned with questions about the nature of male power, and the consideration of different theoretical perspectives in exploring these issues, focussing on the commonalities of oppression shared by women. However, it is to the third phase that I now turn. This is the phase that Mary Maynard has described as reflexive, raising difficult and painful issues, particularly around concepts of ‘difference’. Whilst discussions of and theorising about difference was an integral part of feminism and women’s studies in the 1990s, much of this work emanated from the United States. However, by the late 1990s some women in Britain were researching the impact of social class on women’s studies students (see for instance, Jackson, 1998; Zmroczek & Mahoney, 1997). Indeed, it was also as late as 1997 that the first volume to entirely focus on Black British feminism was published in Britain (Mirza, 1997). Here, Heidi Safia Mirza, the collection editor, asks whether what she calls “black female educational urgency” (Mirza, 1997, p. 272) is or could be a new social movement. She looks at strategies for transformation through Black women’s activism, showing how their challenges to “knowing and understanding” can ultimately lead to “collective action and social change” (Mirza, 1997, p. 275). These are of course central issues for women’s studies, and a core part of any consideration of its growth. Although the collection does not deal specifically with the development of women’s studies in Britain, it does consider ways in which Black women in Britain have actively shaped, and continue to
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shape, the debate, although often outside of the women’s studies classroom. WOMEN’S STUDIES NETWORK (UK) ASSOCIATION 1 Indeed, academic feminism does not just take place in the classroom, but in a number of other arenas. One such arena is at conferences, and in particular at women’s studies conferences, which are a central forum for women’s studies practitioners and activists to share our work, our ideas and our visions. The Women’s Studies Network (UK) (WSN), set up in 1989, has held annual conferences since then to “promote the development of . . . feminist intellectual ideas and the . . . framework necessary for them to survive and take root” (Aaron & Walby, 1991, p. 4). This of course is by no means the only feminist group to run conferences through the 1990s, and indeed The WSN is formed mainly of feminist practitioners working in higher education. Nevertheless, the attempt to promote not just women’s studies within the academy, but also to find ways to ensure the growth and survival of feminist ideas, could certainly be considered feminist activism. The WSN has been part of an feminist academic/activist movement in higher education in the UK. To chart the themes and the books of these conferences is also to chart part of the history of ideas, issues and development of women’s studies in Britain throughout the 1990s. The Women Studies Network (UK) Association is a national network, with international feminist and professional links. It has regional subgroups, and encourages networking between women, although this is mainly an academic organisation, involved in lobbying national education bodies around women’s studies and feminist issues. The Network has a newsletter which “stimulates debates around new issues in women’s studies, and includes book, conference and website reviews and an up to date events listing” (Women Studies Network (UK) Association Newsletter, 1999). In addition, one of the main focuses of the Network is its annual conference, and the ensuing publication of conference papers. Although the Network is an organisation of professional academic women, and its main concern is with higher educational issues, the conferences engage in a range of themes and issues developed
from a range of feminist perspectives and politics. I will go on to chart some of these themes throughout the 1990s. The conferences from 1990 to 1995 published books of conference papers, with the further books due to follow from the subsequent conferences. Through an examination of the themes of these books, I will show that there has been a continuing connection between women’s studies, feminism and political activism. WOMEN’S STUDIES NETWORK CONFERENCE THEMES AND BOOKS: 1990–1995 At the start of the 1990s, the WSN was asking whether women’s studies in the 1990s could expect to come out of the margins and into the mainstream. In its conference book, published in 1991, there were those who argued that the margins offer a strong conceptual space, and women’s studies should be wary of incorporation into the dominant culture (Brimstone, 1991). However, others were concerned with a discussion of the incorporation of previously marginal concerns in women’s studies into central debates, including working with diversity, especially in considerations of lesbianism. The editors of the conference book, Jane Aaron and Sylvia Walby, entitled their introduction “Towards a feminist intellectual space” (Aaron & Walby, 1991), in which they argue that for change to take place, an intellectual space is necessary. Therefore, the feminist intellectual space of women’s studies is an essential component of feminist change. This is a change which is needed in the transformation of teaching practices, placing the diversity of women’s experiences at the centre of the agenda, and reconsidering relationships between learners and teachers. In the quest for feminist praxis, both practice and theory need to be considered, and Jane Aaron and Sylvia Walby suggest that radical movements have always built upon intellectual theorising, clearly seeing no broad distinctions between theory and activism. Indeed, one of the four organising sections of this conference book focusses on the links between women’s studies and the feminist movement. By the following year, the concern was how to take women’s studies forward through the 1990s, with a conference title which suggested that women’s studies needed to find “new di-
Networking Women
rections”. Rather than the concern about the position of British women’s studies which came from the 1990 conference, it could now be supposed that the new direction was to look outwards to international feminism, developing connections with women studies as far apart as central and eastern Europe, and Australia. However, in its central theme of finding new directions, these were not so much geographical directions but political and theoretical ones. The conference book, Working Out: New Directions for Women’s Studies (Hinds, Phoenix, & Stacey, 1992), has sections on the politics and practice of women’s studies, as well as on theories and methods, for instance, with a continuing development of the discussion about feminist praxis. These expand the debate from the previous year, again exploring connections between women’s studies and feminist politics, and their relationships to theoretical and methodological approaches. As early as the start of the 1990s, when the conference from which this book emanated took place, there was also a concern for keeping the politics going in what was starting to be called a ‘post-feminist era’, an ongoing issue through the 1990s (see e.g., Faludi, 1992; Whelehan, 1995). Another clear conference debate continued from the previous year and which was to develop throughout the 1990s was that of diversity and difference. The emphasis that women’s studies has made, and continues to make, in connecting with women’s movements and women’s lives was the theme of the WSN conference book published in 1993. Indeed, the link between women’s studies and feminism is evident throughout the conferences, and is particularly emphasised in this book, whose authors convey a whole variety of feminist identities and perspectives. Indeed, the first of the book’s four sections takes as its theme “Identities and Feminisms”, developing the need to work with women’s multiple identities and within a plurality of feminisms (Kennedy, Lubelska, & Walsh, 1993, p. x). A further section considers the positions of feminists both inside and outside the academy, including those women working to co-exist with those at the centre, whilst being continually relegated to the margins. As I suggested earlier, many feminist teachers in higher education have had to tread a delicate line between teaching in women’s studies, and keeping a firmer toehold in the
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academy by taking their (feminist) teaching to other arenas in the academy. Whilst there is then still a concern with difference in this volume, there is also a “crucial shift of priorities” (Kennedy et al., 1993, p. x), focussing on a feminist politics which connects identities and alliances, moving towards a politics of coalition. These identities and alliances are something which feminist teachers within higher education and elsewhere are continually having to negotiate. Holding onto a commitment to feminist politics, and using that commitment to activate change, is not unproblematic. Part of such change is in challenging constructions of knowledge and ‘truth’ claims. There is also a section in this conference book which considers the importance of redefining knowledge, and the connections between knowledge, patriarchal power and women’s oppression: a connection I have suggested elsewhere is a central component of feminist pedagogic practice (see Jackson, 1997). Indeed, the volume picks up on tensions in the academy for the feminist practitioner: including the so-called ‘objectivity’ of the academy; the personal (and political) involvement of feminist teachers; and power relations within the academy as well as issues of empowerment for both teachers and students. In particular, this book of conference papers raises the thorny question, which I have grappled with here, of how “feminists in academia stay alive as functioning feminists” (Kennedy et al., 1993, p. xiii). Perhaps then it is not surprising that the conference held that year, from which some of its papers were published in 1994, took as its subtitle “Challenges for Feminism” (Griffin, Hester, Rai, & Roseneil, 1994). By the 1990s, these challenges seem many and varied. The editors’ introduction states that there has in the past been a tendency to see “a split between women in academe (the theorizers) and women outside academe (the practitioners)” (Griffin et al., 1994, p. 2). Nevertheless, both the conference and the book argue against this split, suggesting instead, albeit implicitly, that women’s studies is indeed “feminist politics in action” (the title of the first section of the conference book). Although the three papers in this section appear diverse, considering feminist action in war; the activities and campaigns of the women’s movement; and anti-feminist strategies in local government; I would argue
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that their inclusion in a WSN conference and publication makes a strong connection between women’s studies and feminist activism, continuing the constant thread running through the development of women’s studies in Britain. Indeed, the final section of the book connects “women’s studies and feminist practice” much more explicitly, at least through its subtitle, although the articles themselves are more concerned with the conflict between the two, rather than the connections. Nevertheless, these connections had by now become an ongoing theme with the WSN conferences and books. The 1994 conference published two volumes: one in 1995 and one in 1996. Although the 1995 publication focusses on (Hetero)sexual politics Maynard & Purvis, 1995), it is still possible to read this as an ongoing debate between the way we live our political and personal lives, the connections we are able to make between theory and practice, and the constraints and choices that we face, all central issues in the pedagogic practices of women’s studies. The 1996 publication, edited by Maynard and Purvis (1996), is in two parts. The second section considers identity, migration and nationalism, calling for women’s studies in Britain to do more to consider a range of international women’s movements, setting out to challenge the “white, Western and Ethnocentric bias which often characterizes Women’s Studies work” (Maynard & Purvis, 1996, p. 1). However, for the sake of this history of the development of ideas within women’s studies and the women’s movement, it is the first section that I find more interesting. This section sets “new agendas for women’s studies”. The list is certainly challenging. Within an international framework, it considers anti-racist practice; post-colonialism; feminist politics; the political and the personal; and considerations of knowledge and feminist history. Women’s studies has moved a long way, whilst retaining a commitment to some of its early ideologies, and there can be little doubt that there are new frontiers opening all the time, with more and more border crossings to be made. Women’s studies is, then, an active movement. The 1995 conference, which published some of its conference papers in 1997 (AngLygate, Corrin, & Henry, 1997), suggests that there is a need to keep challenging and keep building. As was apparent in the previous year,
though, as women’s studies developed throughout the 1990s, there was also an emphasis on its history: its past as well as its present and its future. The book takes as its central title that of the 1995 conference: Desperately Seeking Sisterhood (Ang-Lygate et al., 1997). Sisterhood is of course a concept arising from the very start of the women’s liberation movement, although perhaps it was then considered more unproblematically as a concept which united women through that which we share. Throughout the 1990s, such a concept became increasingly difficult and the book certainly does not suggest that ‘sisterhood’ is a simple notion nor an easy concept. Perhaps the complexity of sisterhood is why it has not yet been found, why we are still urged to seek for it, for the editors of Desperately Seeking Sisterhood suggest that it is worth the struggle. What they do not say, however, is why the search is desperate. Perhaps one of the reasons is that a struggle to achieve sisterhood will also keep alive the already strong connections between women’s studies and feminist activism. There is certainly a commitment in this volume to a women’s studies shared by feminist academics, practitioners and activists, who need to work together to rebuild a notion of sisterhood founded in feminist praxis. This is a sisterhood which acknowledges and analyses differences between women, whilst also celebrating them. It is a sisterhood which also looks for connectedness; which theorises power relations; which finds a place to develop individual and collective voices; and which challenges oppressive constructions. It is also a sisterhood which is based in activism in creating positive change for women. WOMEN’S STUDIES NETWORK CONFERENCE THEMES: 1996–1999 No WSN annual conference since 1995 has yet published any volume of its conference papers, although plans are in hand for such publications to appear in the future. Such is the nature of academic publishing that ideas and issues only become public some time after they have been researched and written. Perhaps then the 1996 conference, which focussed on “Feminisms: Past, Present and Future”, was an apt one: the future publication of past conference debate and research is still awaited! It was
Networking Women
clear from this conference that a consideration of the development of a variety of feminisms has clear connections to developments of women’s movements and of women’s studies. The 1997 conference took policy and politics as a central theme, with both aspects ranging through many arenas in women’s lives. The conference, based at the Institute of Education in London, certainly had one strand which focussed on education: an important area for facilitating change in women’s lives. However, many other issues in women’s lives also took their place as conference strands. These included health and welfare, violence, families, citizenship, sport, the environment, local politics and women’s movements. These conference strands enabled possibilities for change to be reviewed. However, such possibilities can be limited by many factors. The 1998 conference took as its central theme women’s choices and constraints in gendered spaces. These ‘spaces’ were wide ranging, with themes including the public arena of politics and policy debated at conference the previous year; the ‘private’ arena of domestic violence; the spaces occupied by disabled women and lesbians; and European and postcolonial space. Here again, then, as through the 1990s, we can see continuing concerns with public/private; with difference; and with moving outside of UK women’s studies to other spaces. Indeed, the conference itself was wide ranging, showing the diversity of women’s studies in the 1990s, in a postmodernist age where it is difficult to find any single way forward. Perhaps this is the shape of women’s studies at the end of the 1990s—uncertain of its direction, but still challenging, developing and looking for safe spaces in which to continue this work. The call for papers for the 1999 conference, looking forward to women and the millennium, invites contributions “in the sprit of Donna Harraway’s concept of ‘situated knowledge’ . . . ‘not the view from above but the joining of partial views and halting voices’’’ (“Call for Papers”, WSN (UK) Conference, 1999). Despite the halting voices, however, or maybe because of them, the strands are in the main familiar from other WSN conferences in the 1990s. There is, for instance, a strand on re-viewing feminisms, which suggests not just a new consideration, but a link too to the past. There is a strand on activisms and intellectual life, a theme which has been clearly woven into the history of Brit-
7
ish women’s studies since its early development. In addition, there is a strand on postcolonialism, an apparent concern of British women’s studies in the late 1990s. Indeed, it could be said that a key word of British feminism in the 1990s is ‘post’, with much debate even through the early part of the decade focussing on the centrality or otherwise of postmodernism and post-structuralism for feminism (see e.g., Brodribb, 1992; Jackson, 1992; Kenway, 1995; Ramazanoglu, 1993; Sawicki, 1991). When the work of so many feminist writers is rich, varied and challenging, should post-strucuralism, for instance, especially when based in the (often misogynist) work of French male theorists, hold such prominence in feminist theory? Is, as Somer Brodribb has suggested, the bringing of male theory into the women’s movement “a position of compromise within institutions” (Brodribb, 1992, p. xxxvii), and does it de-politicise feminist activisms and movements? Or does post-strucuralism, as Jane Kenway (1995) suggests, enable feminism itself to take its place as a site of discursive struggle within the academy (p. 45). What has been missing from the conference papers and books is an engagement with the tensions these debates have aroused. With so much popular talk of another ‘post’— post-feminism—where will the debate move to in the year 2000? TOWARDS THE NEW MILLENNIUM Despite the title of the 1999 WSN (UK) conference, “Women and the Millennium”, whether women’s studies continues to survive as an academic discipline remains of course to be seen. There are many things working against it. The move to vocationalism, for instance, will mean that students will choose degree subjects that lead to a recognisable career. Although Beverley Skeggs, in her consideration of women’s studies in Britain in the 1990s, suggests that “feminism has opened up employment spaces . . . (and) students know that women’s studies can provide entry to a range of employment opportunites” (Skeggs, 1995, p. 477), my research does not show this to be the case, especially for working-class students (see Jackson, 1998). Furthermore, few of the features that Beverley Skeggs identified in 1995 as being symptomatic of Thatcherism in a particular historical, political
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and social moment in British social history have disappeared with the new Labour government. Indeed, much of the ideology remains intact. For example, the introduction in Britain in 1998 of a fee of £1000 per year for undergraduate students will hit particularly hard at the very people women’s studies tries to attract—women, of course, but also particular women: Black women, working-class women, women who have been denied full educational opportunities in the past. Beverley Skeggs charts a rapid growth in women’s studies, with ever-increasing student numbers (Skeggs, 1995). However, at the end of the 1990s, the situation has reversed, with many women’s studies courses struggling to attract students and to keep running, with lecturers and course leaders engaged in political and pragmatic discussions about changes in course structures, titles, etc. In addition, many women’s studies courses in Britain are still struggling to secure institutional recognition with courses closed down if the individuals committed to them leave a particular institution or faculty. There is also, in Britain, a current emphasis for academics to produce published work. One of the ways in which universities gain funding is through submission of such publications to the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). However, such submission is discipline-based, and the Research Assessment Exercise does not recognise women’s studies as a distinct subject area. This means that women who might otherwise associate themselves with women’s studies will be forced to submit their work in other disciplines, leaving women’s studies undervalued, little recognised and even more marginalised. Despite this, the WSN is a part of the consultation process of the RAE, and there is a women’s studies panel which reports to Sociology as part of the assessment exercise. Nevertheless, this is not sufficient recognition. Indeed, part of the current debate within feminism asks whether women’s studies should stay as a separatist discipline within universities, or whether issues of gender should be integrated into all other disciplines, although I certainly do not see this as a choice of either/or, and would strongly argue for both. And in any case, it can be seen (as my case study of courses at the University of East London shows) that gender is not yet integrated into all other disciplines.
Back at the beginning of the 1980s, Renate Duelli Klein showed that women’s studies had a long way to go until it became a separate field of its own, rather than an ‘add-on’ “within the present male-centred compartmentalisation of knowledgemaking” (Duelli Klein, 1983, p. 255). Although the steady growth of women’s studies courses and degrees at British universities might show some advance here, the current climate suggests that women’s studies is struggling to survive. Indeed, initial (currently unpublished) research which I am undertaking on behalf of the WSN shows this to be the case, certainly at undergraduate level. Whilst it could be considered a success of women’s studies that it has on occasion caused other disciplines to seriously consider aspects of gender, with integration alone, women’s studies is indeed in danger of becoming “compensatory history” (Rich, 1986, p. 2). In addition, women’s studies is not only multi- and interdisciplinary; it is also transdisciplinary, seeking to challenge existing structures as well as to advance ways of being ‘differently academic’ (Jackson, 1999a). These are theoretical concerns which will be seriously damaged without a base of women’s studies. There is a need for feminist theory if such challenges are to be made, and for feminist academics not to be returned to working in isolation. That this base is surviving in dangerous territory (see Reay, 1998) is also evident in the strong media presence of discussion of post-feminism, with a political backlash against both women’s studies and feminism (see e.g., Faludi, 1992; Whelehan, 1995). All of this makes women’s studies in the late 1990s an uncomfortable place to be. Diane Reay suggests that women’s studies in the academy is about “surviving in dangerous places”, with hallmarks which include “cooption, insecurity and lack of authenticity” (Reay, 1998, p. 11). These are hallmarks, she suggests, that women’s studies in Britain shares with its working-class students, in a system which invalidates and renders invisible the experiences of working-class women (see also Jackson, 1998). Diane Reay suggests that while women’s studies continues to validate working-class women’s experiences, it will also continue to jeopardise its own place in the British academy, with “tensions . . . compounded by Women’s Studies’ . . . relationship to feminist activisms” (Reay, 1998, p. 15).
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Women’s studies in the late 1990s, she concludes, is still struggling to find alternative ways within the academy (Reay, 1998, p. 18). Nevertheless, there is a positive side. Women’s studies may be struggling, but it has found many alternative ways in the academy to challenge conventional academic structures and teaching practices. In the new political climate which has moved towards an emphasis on teaching in higher education, women’s studies is at the forefront of progressive education and innovative pedagogic practice. Women’s studies as research is strong and, even if not always able to attract academic funding, is now a competitive industry in the arena of journal and book publications. In addition, despite the worries of continuing to attract student numbers, women’s studies is still more than evident in the academy. The 1998 UCAS (University and Colleges Admissions System) guide shows 87 full time undergraduate degree courses that include women’s studies, with eight institutions offering single honours undergraduate degrees in women’s studies, including the University of East London. In addition, students continue to actively engage with women’s studies at postgaduate level. And the history of women’s studies shows that even if women’s studies finds it increasingly difficult to survive within the academy—and I clearly hope that it does survive— it might well continue in the field of adult and continuing education in the quest for lifelong learning so advocated by the current government on the recommendations of Lord Dearing’s committee, set up to consider a broad range of issues in learning and teaching. However, it should be noted that adult and continuing education is also facing severe cuts and pressures. Whilst it is difficult to state that women’s studies has radically altered prevailing higher educational paradigms, it is clear that these paradigms are going to need to shift to fit in with changing cultures, and the political demands that are put upon the educational system generally, and especially on the higher educational system, following the recommendations of the Dearing committee. Women’s studies is ideally situated to lead the way forward to meeting these demands, as it has been continually engaging in innovative ways to engage in lifelong learning, to challenge traditional constructions of knowledge, and to work with di-
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versity. There has been an ongoing connection between women’s studies and feminist politics, which I suggest has been central in placing women’s studies at the forefront of progressive education. CONCLUSIONS Again and again, then, throughout the 1990s, and despite the diverse themes of the WSN conferences and the resulting books, the links between women’s studies and feminist politics have remained strong. Indeed, an ongoing theme has been the insistence that feminist intellectual space—in the academy, at conferences, in books, and in the other spaces we find to develop theories and analyses—is a central component in initiating change. Indeed, as I showed earlier, there has been a suggestion throughout the conferences that intellectual theorising is as important to radical movements as other political actions. Whilst, then, the WSN (UK) Association’s conferences have been placed within a higher educational framework, all the conference books contain articles written by a large variety of interested and interesting women: by academics in women’s studies and outside it; but also by tutors from a range of adult educational institutions; by journalists; by students; by social workers; by policy advisers; by members of women’s centres; and by activists. One of those contributors, Virginia Vargas (1993), has considered her own relationship with both feminist activism and the academy by discussing her long connection—as founder, activist and organiser—with the Peruvian feminist movement, and her work as an academic professor of women’s studies. She described the women’s movement as being made up of a plurality of processes, as are the women within it. She says the movement is made up of three strands: the feminist movement itself; women with institutional commitment (e.g., within academe) and women who “from their roles as mothers, wives and daughters, continue to advance and become aware of their existence as part of a subordinate gender” (Vargas, 1993, p. 146). However, I would argue that within women’s studies, both lecturers and students are engaged in all three strands, which is partly what gives women’s studies its activism, an activism which has been apparent from the outset in the particular development of British
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women’s studies. We are all continually working out how we stand in relation to the women’s movement and feminism; to our personal relationships and significant others; and to our relationship with the academy. I will show elsewhere (Jackson, 1999b), that each time women’s studies students identify as feminist and have to justify it; each time they struggle with ‘difference’; whenever they consider feminist theory as praxis; when they consider constructions of knowledge; and when they engage in change in their lives, try to seek sisterhood, or connect the personal and the political, there can be little doubt that women’s studies, feminism and political activism stand hand-in-hand in the academy. And when lecturers take the subjective and experiential nature of women’s studies into the apparently ‘objective’ academy; when we locate our personal feminism in the classroom; when we live our lives as feminists in academe; we are engaged in political activism. It seems clear, then, that women’s studies in Britain has retained its roots based in the Women’s Liberation Movement, and that the very act of engaging in a women’s studies course is feminist political activism. It is as little possible for me to separate them as it is for me to separate theory and practice, or the personal and the political. My own introduction to feminism was not through conventional activism, but through enrolment on a women’s studies course. It changed my life. I include myself and parts of my life experiences in my teaching. In including the personal I would find it difficult— impossible maybe—not to also include the political. In raising with my students issues with which I have grappled and struggled, I believe I am engaged in direct social change activism. And in my work with the many women who enrol on women’s studies courses, I believe they are too. Growing from its early links with women’s socialist commitment and left wing politics, through its strong base in adult and community education, British women’s studies has struggled to retain its activist roots, despite grappling constantly with the problems and issues of location in the academy. In 1986, Adrienne Rich was raising doubts about academic women’s studies: The question now facing women’s studies . . . is the extent to which she has, in the past decade, matured into the dutiful daughter of
the white, patriarchal university . . .; (and) the extent to which Women’s Studies will remember that her mother was . . . the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1960s. . . . (Rich, 1986, p. 79)
It is clear from this overview of women’s studies in Britain, and through a consideration of the WSN (UK) books and conferences, that women’s studies is still her mother’s daughter. ENDNOTE 1. For details contact: Nicole Matthews, Membership Secretary, Women’s Studies Network (UK) Association, Department of Media and Cultural Studies, Liverpool John Moores University, Rodney Street, Liverpool L1 7BY, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
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Jackson, Sue. (1999a). ‘Differently academic’? Constructions of ‘academic’ in higher education. Manuscript in preparation. Jackson, Sue. (1999b). Of politics and revolution: Researching the women’s studies classroom. Manuscript in preparation. Kennedy, Mary, & Piette, Brec’hed. (1991). From the margins to the mainstream: Issues around women’s studies on adult education and access courses. In Jane Aaron & Sylvia Walby (Eds.), Out of the margins (pp. 30–40). London: Falmer Press. Kennedy, Mary, Lubelska, Cathy, & Walsh, Val. (Eds.). (1993). Making connections: Women’s studies, women’s movements, women’s lives. London: Taylor and Francis. Kenway, Jane. (1995). Having a postmodernist turn or postmodernist angst. In R. Smith & P. Wexler (Eds.), After postmodernism: Education, politics and identity (pp. 39–48). London: Falmer Press. Kirkup, Gill. (1983). Women’s studies ‘at a distance’: The new Open University course. Women’s Studies International Forum, 6, 273–282. Maynard, Mary, & Purvis, June. (Eds.). (1995). (Hetero)sexual politics. London: Taylor and Francis. Maynard, Mary, & Purvis, June. (Eds.). (1996). New frontiers in women’s studies: Knowledge, identity and nationalism. London: Taylor and Francis. Maynard, Mary. (1998). Women’s studies. In Stevi Jackson & Jackie Jones (Eds.), Contemporary feminist theories (pp. 247–256). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Mirza, Heidi Safia. (Ed.). (1997). Black British feminism. London: Routledge. Ramazanoglu, Caroline. (Ed.). (1993). Up against Foucault:
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Explorations of some tensions between Foucault and feminism. London: Routledge. Reay, Diane. (1998). Surviving in dangerous places: Working-class women, women’s studies and higher education. Women’s Studies International Forum, 21, 11–19. Rich, Adrienne. (1986). Blood, bread and poetry. New York: Norton. Richardson, Diane, & Robinson, Victoria. (1993). Introducing women’s studies. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Sawicki, Jane. (1991). Disciplining Foucault. New York: Routledge. Skeggs, Beverley. (1995). Women’s studies in Britain in the 1990s. Women’s Studies International Forum, 18, 475–485. Vargas, Virginia. (1993). Academia and the feminist movement in Latin America. In Mary Kennedy, Cathy Lubelska & Val Walsh (Eds.), Making connections: Women’s studies, women’s movements, women’s lives (pp. 145–154). London: Taylor and Francis. Whelehan, Imelda. (1995). Modern feminist thought: From the second wave to ‘post feminism’. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Women’s Studies Network (UK) Association Newsletter. (1999). 32(March). Zmroczek, Christine, & Duchen, Claire. (1991). What are those women up to? Women’s studies and feminist research in the European community. In Jane Aaron & Sylvia Walby (Eds.), Out of the margins (pp. 11–29). London: Falmer Press. Zmroczek, Christine, & Mahoney, Pat. (1997). Women’s studies and working-class women. In Magdalene AngLygate, Chris Corrin, & Millsom Henry (Eds.), Desperately seeking sisterhood: Still challenging and building (pp. 192–202). London: Taylor and Francis.