2020. Women's Studies in JNU: Or a Short Story about Feminism and the University (original) (raw)
Related papers
Pande, Rekha ( ed), 2016, Women’s Studies Narratives: travails and Triumphs , The Women Press, New Delhi. pp.
The Women’s studies narratives, project started in 2009 and we wanted to capture the stories and journeys of women studies in different parts of the world. It was felt that it was high time that the story of these feminists be told so that the future generations would know the struggles and efforts that went into making the women’s studies a reality in the academic struggle. This story had to start from the individual. First the individuals had to make themselves sensitized to this issue and some were not familiar with the issue to begin with, while others were concerned with the reality around them which was not gender sensitive. They had to start with their own research and many could move beyond this and establish these centers. Some were not so lucky and did not get the support of the higher ups and had to confine their work only to their own writings. This book is an attempt to capture all this through the lived experiences and insights of women involved in women’s studies .It uses a narrative mode of telling a story. By telling these stories these women not only narrate the stories of their personal and political life but also show the cultural and regional difference with regards to the issue of women and gender disparity in different cultures and the multiplicity of issues that they had to confront. The first part of this Project has already been published as, Pande, Rekha (ed), 2014, Journey’s into women’s studies- crossing interdisciplinary Boundaries, Palgrave Macmillan Press, U,K. ISBN 978–1–137–034137. This is the second part of this project. The present book is the narrative of 15 women across the globe and India , who have struggled to give women’s studies a visibility and carved out a niche for it amidst the mainstream disciplines which are by and large are very patriarchal in their approach. By looking at the narratives of these women their pains, travails and triumphs this books looks at the achievement of this discipline, its themes and trends-dominant and dormant. Based on life stories of women involved with women’s studies and feminism, this book also highlights different issues such as, the importance of sisterhood, the personal being the political, the false separation of the public and private spheres, a recognition of the common oppression of women and their diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, age and levels of disability and the idea of development as a feminist consciousness and the women’s movement.
Education and Beyond: Analysing the Struggles of 21st Century Women in a Central University
MINDSHARE: International Journal of Research and Development, 2021
Culture plays a critical role in determining gender roles in said space, and Aligarh Muslim University happens to be an educational institution with a history dating back to the colonial period. Drawing its cultural roots from India's pre-independence Islamic traditions, the University upholds certain beliefs regarding women, which happen to exist in the present times with slight modifications. This paper studies the various social, political, religious, and cultural forces existing in the University that impact the space of female students residing in the campus premises in the twenty-first century. The research is supported by a qualitative and quantitative survey of AMU students and interviews of political leaders. It also uses references from secondary data sources. Struggles faced by women of AMU as a consequence of the division of space is exemplified by unequal distribution of power and access, problems of representation in political leadership, and geographic isolation in the paper, thereby taking the lived experiences of these women beyond education.
Dynamics of Women’s Studies and English Studies- A Synthesis Essay
Academia Letters, 2021
Once considered to be the outcome of the political upsurges and feminist movements of the 1970s, Women's Studies is now recognized to locate the conditions and status of women, gender, and sexuality. This paper firstly part presents the history of Women's Studies. Secondly, it synthesises the main argument(s) put forth by Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan in her essay, English Studies via Women's Studies, and examines whether the new curriculum of Indian University finds a resolution for these disputes.
A Reflection on the Scope of Feminist Pedagogy in Indian Tertiary Education
2021
The Indian National Education Policy seek to restructure and standardize the higher education institution (HEI) curriculum and look forward to a futuristic, meritocratic, equitable, and multidisciplinary pedagogy. Present work critically analyses the scope of Feminist Pedagogy in the Indian higher education scenario, in this regard. It would try to offer an active participatory teaching-learning strategy to dismantle the existing gender hierarchy and oppression in Indian HEIs
Journey of Women’s Studies in India (1974-2023)
Synergy, 2023
It is essential to critically reflect on cross cultural studies from feminist perspectives and understand the dimensions of universal standards of gender equality in different cultural contexts and interpretations. In the Indian context, women's rights movement, women's studies and gender studies have provided such space for reflections on cross-cultural perspectives. Women's Studies as a discipline aims to theorise for the oppressed and direct its knowledge construction efforts for a gender transformative agenda. This article aims to provide a survey of the history of this discipline in India, and to critically present its main challenges, while underlining its most evident achievements.
Contemporary Challenges to Women's Education: Towards an Elusive Goal?
Economic and political weekly
Why has education been peripheral to the concerns of the contemporary women's movement in India, especially given the legacy of struggle by women to establish their right to education? How can the women's movement re-engage with questions of education? Part of the challenge in thinking through concerns about gender and education lies in uncovering the dialectical linkages between the formal education system and larger social and economic processes and their influence on girls' and women's lives.
Men in women's studies: A case study
This chapter foregrounds the muted history of men’s positive engagement with the institutionalization of women’s studies in India. It uses a women’s studies centre in eastern India as a case study to narrate men’s (academics, policymakers, administrative staff, and students) roles in the establishment and growth of feminist pedagogy in masculinist institutions of higher education. This project is pursued by conducting in-depth interviews with those associated with the instating and everyday operations of the centre. In locating women’s studies departments as a locus of feminist theory and practice, and then telescoping in on the supportive roles of men in them, the larger questions which this chapter probes are: What are the modalities for men contributing to feminist pedagogy and the production of feminist knowledge? What are the stakes of men's involvement in women's studies departments? Further, what implication does this involvement have for the autonomy of feminist practice from masculinist appropriation?
Gender crisis has become one of the emerging and prominent paradigms within the ever increasing deepening crisis of the university education system in India and beyond. With increased gender sensitization globally, there have been claims of a positive impact on University students and staffs who identify themselves as women, Queer, Trans, LGBT+ in India. For the sake of focused precision, and due to lack of time, this paper concentrates on those who identify themselves as women both within and outside the university structure. There seems to be a general notion that, if more women are put in the leading prominent posts of the university, then this crisis would be solved. However, it is not that simple. While many women are becoming professors and senior academic staff, and many are obtaining scholarships, there however has been no substantial systemic Change towards Gender Justice and, indeed, no change for the majority of women in the patriarchal society we live in. The loud masculine-voice, which has and often continues to be the sole voice of the male dominated university, has now been transferred, with careful precision, to the handful of women who are now climbing into the upper rungs of the university system, thereby maintaining and holding up the status quo of the patriarchal university structure. Colonial Bourgeois Feminism is being misused to segregate women, who have the privilege of being a part of the Eurocentric University system of Miseducation on the one hand; and on the other hand, women who are still excluded, primarily on the basis of class, caste, race, age and alternative knowledge systems. Although, Black Feminism since 1989, has gifted the world with the theoretical perspective of Intersectionality, these theories do not make much sense to say, a woman farmer living in rural India, mostly occupied with her farming which is her livelihood. This paper attempts to focus and bring the Gender Justice demands of rural women for more than the usual Education, indeed for Cognitive Justice, from their community spaces of Lifelong Learning, by analysing the specific case of the Siddi Women in Karnataka, India. The Siddi women's demands through Our Communities Deserve Better Campaign (OCDBC) proposes more just, meaningful and sustainably viable solutions to the deepening crisis which universities in India and beyond face in the shifting paradigm of gender sensitization.