Generational Change in Women’s Studies

Abstract

  Women’s studies became the generational change, on the retirement of the pioneer generation. This paper argues the change of generations and its impact, tracing back the history of women’s studies and gender studies. Women’s studies were grown outside of academia along with the women’s liberation movement. INOUE Teruko defined women’s studies as a study of women, by women, and for women, which caused controversy. Women’s studies had been spread in the field of adult education such as women’s centers and community centers, and then entered the university curriculum, approved as an academic discipline. Followed by men’s studies, women’s studies were integrated into transdisciplinary gender studies with a refined definition of gender. In this process, gender studies became institutionalized for specializing gender and sexuality as a reproductive system of academic knowledge, which provided researchers with research funds from the governmental budget as well as academic posts, however small it was.

  The pioneer generation considered women’s studies as the other side of the coin of feminism, with a connection to activism. The second generation formed their identity as academic researchers in the academic cycle. The third generation is more oriented to main streaming in their disciplines. Though gender becomes an indispensable category of analysis, gender studies are still marginalized in most disciplines.