SALON

Wednesday, Mar 26, 2008 9:10 AM UTC

Is women’s studies dead?

A British newspaper pronounces the academic discipline "predictable, tiresome and dreary."

By

Topics: Broadsheet, Love and Sex,

Oh, look — is feminism dead? Again? That’s what two British papers would have you think. “Farewell to ‘predictable, tiresome and dreary’ women’s studies,” read the U.K. Independent’s headline, while the London Times posed a false dichotomy: “Women’s studies is about to disappear as an undergraduate degree in the UK. But is it because it is no longer relevant or because it has done its job by putting the issues in the mainstream?”

Or maybe it’s that, in fact, women’s studies is actually a fairly young and dynamic discipline, one that has given rise to queer studies, men’s studies and gender studies, and that these departments are simply being renamed to reflect the field’s widening — not shrinking — range.

But, of course, that’s not nearly as exciting a story, since it doesn’t really give journalists a chance to quote the well-known anti-feminist Christina Hoff Summers saying that “British and American societies are no longer patriarchal and oppressive ‘male hegemonies’” while claiming in the next paragraph that perhaps, on the other hand, the real problem is that “young women have shied away from studying feminist theory because they would rather opt for degrees that more obviously lead to jobs.” Which must be why feminist theory is now studied in departments of literature, sociology, political science and history. And if being a feminist doesn’t lead to a job, doesn’t that suggest that society is still perhaps just a wee bit patriarchal?

The Times offers a less polemical explanation: declining enrollments. (Though their reporter, too, quotes Hoff Summers. Note to journalists: E-mail me if you need a quote from an actual feminist about feminist topics, OK?) But their example of a course with only four students doesn’t seem to me unusual for a British university. When I studied at the University of Sussex in the late ’80s, four wasn’t a particularly small size for a seminar: Most of my courses in the still-extant department of English had between three and six students. Sussex, by the way, still has an active Centre for Gender Studies that includes seven possible undergraduate ‘modules,” or subdisciplines.

I’m quite willing to believe that in the U.K., just as in North America, smaller interdisciplinary departments are under a great deal of pressure from the corporatization of higher education. Which is a real problem, since education isn’t, in fact, a business — nor should it be. But the idea that students are “consumers” and professors are “providing a service” in universities that are supposed to function like diploma mills is a problem that affects the entire university, not just women’s studies. The real problem isn’t moldy old feminists (as if!): It’s old-school anti-intellectualism, trying to reduce the value of education to a simple matter of pounds and pence.

More Tedra Osell.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 60 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations