Women's studies in the 1990s - Problems and prospects

Oct 15, 2026

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Keynote address on the future of women’s studies in the 1990s, grounded in a brief review of its 1970s and 1980s objectives, achievements, and limitations. Identifies interrelated problems across Australia and other Western countries, including under-representation in faculty and postgraduate research, curriculum disputes and exclusions by race, ethnicity, and Aboriginality, and institutional and political pressures on practitioners. Concludes with prospects for transforming faculty culture, advancing equity, reshaping curricula, and sustaining feminist scholarship through pluralistic theoretical engagements.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

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Pages2

Reading Time5 min

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Women's studies in the 1990s: Problems and prospects

Problems confronting women's studies in the 1990s

The discourse

# Women's studies in the 1990s:Problems and prospects* Judith Alen, Griffith Univereity It gives me great pleasure tobe here today to talk with you aboutwomen's studies.As mytitle suggests I want to address the future,no doubt a hazardous undertaking for an historian.To do this,Iwant to briefly examine a little of the past of women's studies inthe1970s and 1980s-its objectives,its characteristics,its achieve-ments and its limitations.The last of these -limitations -signalsa second theme it seems useful for a conference like this toaddress.Many problems have been identified especially duringthe last five years,and their solution if possible will be one of ourtasks across the 1990s.Some of these problems in Australia haverelated to the Dawkinsinitiatives in higher education,but othersare of wider salience for women's studies in a number of westerncountries.They include the following: the relationship between women's studies as a field ofknowledge and feminist scholarship within mainstream disci-plines; ● the problem of women's continued under-representation asfaculty staff,and as postgraduate research students; ● the curricula of women's studies -its characteristics,itsallegiances and disputes with other positions,its costly exclusionswith regard to race,ethnicity and Aboriginality,its generationgapsand age blindnesses; ● the institutional problems facing women's studies:to marginor mainstream -the special unit versus integration;the name'women's studies'itself and ways the research and teachingmissions of its workers can be rcpresented;the lack of boundariesaround the mission of women's studies workers in the academy;and last but not least the political problems confronting women's studies practi-tioncrs (or life of being attacked from all sides,friends and foes). Many papers at this conference will be dealing in depth withthese problems facing us.To address this second theme carly,Ishall mainly rzise questions and quote from many of you present,as to how you have seen the problems over the past five years. The final issue I want to examine,the prospects for women'sstudies in the 1990s and in the light of this series of as yetunresolved problems.Again the modemust be through questionsand necessarily speculative-who can know the future?(I wouldn'thave predicted five years ago that Queensland would today haveaLabor Government for whom some of mysenior men colleaguesmost supportive of women's studies now work.) The prospccts worth addressing include the following: o changing faculty culture as a place for women to work ①changingthenumbers andexperience of women postgraduate students acceptance that equity for womenin higher education serves national goals opening up the women's studies curricula producing constructive theorctical engagements between feninist theory and other positions defining a research centre for women's studies and feminist scholarship e ending the pursuitof purity by feministintellectuals in favour of the political pluralities that will be necessary for women's *Keynote address at the Second Annual Conference of the Australian Women's Studies Association,25 September 1990 studies to survive into the next century,I will conclude by briefly examining some of these prospects. # Women's studies:the discourse What is women's studies?This is a question journalists andVice-Chancellors and parents of students often ask with a faint airof quizzical bemusement.The answers almost never entirelydisplace this air.The answers have changedhowever.In writing ofthe 1970s the women's studies project was defined in terms ofcompensating women as a group from their omission or misrepre-sentation in knowledges,politics and culture.A fundamentalaxiom was that women constituted aunified group with acommonexperience,unjustifiably excluded from the canon of humanexperiences,as exhibited or advanced in literature,art,music,history,philosophy and the social sciences.The basis or l

FAQs

What problems does the address highlight for women's studies entering the 1990s?

It highlights issues such as women’s under-representation among faculty and postgraduate research students, curriculum disputes and costly exclusions related to race, ethnicity and Aboriginality, and institutional and political pressures faced by practitioners.

How does the address describe the evolution of women's studies from the 1970s and 1980s?

It contrasts early objectives centered on compensating women for omission or misrepresentation with later shifts influenced by critiques of dichotomous Western thought, recasting women’s studies within the academy and framing knowledge as a site of complex sexual politics.

What prospects does the address propose for women’s studies in the 1990s?

It suggests changing faculty culture for women’s employment, increasing women’s postgraduate numbers and experience, advancing the acceptance that equity supports national goals, opening curricula, fostering theoretical engagements between feminist theory and other positions, and defining a research centre for women’s studies and feminist scholarship.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Blitz