Women's Studies

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Women's Studies

In the United States women's studies became a distinct scholarly discipline as an outgrowth of the "second wave" of feminism in the 1960s. While women and issues of sex and gender had been the subject of research and theory prior to that time, women's studies developed as a uniquely interdisciplinary and feminist endeavor. Early proponents of women's studies saw the establishment of their field as inextricably related to a larger movement for feminist social transformation. Like that of ethnic studies programs originating at the same time, the very existence of women's studies as a field challenged the self-declared objectivity and scholarly disinterest of academic institutions that had failed to perceive the significance of women, people of color, the working class, and other marginalized groups within American society. The essential feminist insight that "the personal is political" called for study of the status of women as the result of institutionalized forms of oppression. It also led to research and teaching methods that emphasized learning in interaction between individual subjectivity and the object of theory or study. Thus, from the outset, women's studies programs and scholars sought to redefine the very nature of scholarship.

Since the late 1960s women's studies research, courses, and programs have developed an extensive body of scholarly work in the humanities and sciences. As a part of a new, interdisciplinary field with activist roots, women's studies scholars have always had diverse and, at times, conflicting understandings of the nature and purpose of their discipline. From the start, there have been those who perceive separate women's studies programs as segregating and further devaluing the significance of feminist scholarship, rather than creating a demand for an integrated curriculum in all areas of study. Defenders of women's studies as an independent field argue that it gives feminist scholars greater support and academic freedom and also creates connections among numerous disciplines that enhance feminist scholarship. The enormous growth in the literature on women, sex, and gender has, in some ways, resolved the dispute. As the research has become more specialized and sophisticated, it has increasingly addressed an audience within its own specific field. On a purely practical level, the sheer volume of work in women's studies has made it impossible for any individual scholar to remain current in the discipline as a whole.

Another controversy has been the issue of essentialism: whether there actually is a distinct (essential) female nature or experience that can be the focus of discrete study. As working-class and ethnic-, racial-, and sexual-minority women developed their own scholarship, they critiqued the feminist research that had assumed a middle-class, Christian, white, and heterosexual perspective as normative. Their work challenged the notion that there could be any singular, universal voice or theory concerning sex and gender. Earlier feminist theorists had perceived the importance of distinguishing biologically determined sex (female or male) from socially constructed gender (feminine or masculine). The growing body of research on women as well as the influence of deconstructionism, a movement that challenged the idea that there are any fixed meanings or identities, led women's studies scholars to question even these categories and explore instead their fluidity and indeterminate nature. One response to this debate has been a growing emphasis on gender or gender studies rather than an exclusive focus on women.

The relationship between women's studies and religious studies has changed dramatically over the course of the past three decades. Like the feminist movement in general, early women's studies programs were at best indifferent and frequently hostile to religious traditions perceived as inherently and irrevocably patriarchal. This antagonism extended to feminist scholars of religion, especially those working within institutional religious frameworks. Even in the absence of overt antipathy, religious studies were generally excluded from the disciplines considered essential to women's studies programs.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s a number of factors began to change this situation. Allowing appropriate visibility to feminist scholars from racial and ethnic minority communities involved an acknowledgment of the continued significance of religion within those cultures. Feminist scholars in fields such as comparative literature, history, and sociology began to research topics in religion, conveying the importance that spirituality and ritual play in the lives of the vast majority of the world's women. A growing number of scholars in religion had experience in feminist activism, scholarship in other disciplines, or both and initiated ties with women's studies programs.

Nevertheless, there has continued to be an unequal relationship between the disciplines. To the extent that women's studies scholars perceive the study of religion as doctrinal, they fail to inform themselves of the larger theoretical issues raised in the field, such as feminist hermeneutics (theory of interpretation), epistemology (theory of knowledge), and historiography. In contrast, feminist scholarship in religion incorporates a wide range of feminist sources in other fields.

During the 1980s women's studies in religion became increasingly institutionalized and visible as a distinct area of scholarship. The American Academy of Religion, the professional organization of scholars in religion, established a Women in Religion section. Seminaries and university religious studies departments developed their own women's studies courses and programs. Fellowships, visiting scholar positions, endowed lectures, and a few endowed professorships in women's studies in religion have continued to be created.