Svetlana Shakirova,

Candidate of Philosophical Sciences,

Director of Center for Gender Studies,

Almaty, Kazakhstan

SUBSTANTIATIONS FOR GENDER STUDIES:

Definition of Concepts, Objectives and Ways of Institutionalization[1]

Introduction

Gender studies is a new discipline within the corps of humanitarian sciences in the transitional countries.

Simply put, the relationships between men and women as social subjects are the object of gender studies.

The educational goal of this discipline is to study sex inequality practices in past and present cultures, with the emphasis put on explaining the causes of this phenomenon.

 In a broad sense, the political project of gender studies is asserting the equality-based policy and practices, and opportunities for a person’s self-realization regardless of sex (both women and men) - professionally, socially, culturally, and psychologically. In a narrow sense, it is realization of the feminist project to increase women’s social status.

The philosophy of gender studies presumes alternative views on existing practices in allocating the resources, power, and influence between men and women.

           The modern theory of gender is known for diverse conceptual approaches. Methodologically, arguments go through a variety of dilemmas, the basic ones among them being:  women’s studies/gender researches, gender theory/sex differentiation theory, gender equality theory/feminism.

It is important to note that the true connection of gender studies with everyday practices of human relations provides researchers with good chances for constant theoretical and pedagogical findings, and makes any pedagogical and educational project on gender relations livelier.

        My report will be based on description and methodological questions on the following topics:

q       Definition of gender and gender studies in the context of continuing arguments about the importance of terms.

q       The past and the present of women’s studies.

q       Gender studies in the post-Soviet academia.

q       The future of gender studies in Central Asia.

1. Definition of Gender and Gender Studies, and Continuing Arguments about the Import of Terms.

So, let’s begin with terminology. In our part of the world, everyone who has ever heard about gender, has a short and successful transliteration: gender is “social sex”, or “social construct of sex”.

This definition can stylistically differ from other definitions given in scientific dictionaries, articles, and course descriptions; however, the idea is the same.

“Gender - socially constructed characteristics of sex”[2].

 “Gender – social division, often based on the anatomical field, but not necessarily concurring with it”[3].

 “Gender - a total of verbal, behavioral, personal peculiarities, spiritually distinguishing men and women subject to culture influence”[4].

“Gender - a complex socio-cultural construct: differences in roles, behavior, mental and emotional characteristics between the masculine and the feminine, made (or constructed) by the society”[5].

This kinship of definitions and their similarity connote a unified sense, a unified sensual space, ever contrasting the natural difference of the biological sexes; but of course, not sex - this mistake is often made when literally translating the sex/gender pair. Actually, I can say that this English word has been widely used in the post-Soviet countries. It happened simultaneously with the import of a new ideology – the feminist ideology of sex equality, which, unlike the term “gender”, has not been so triumphant and widely-used in our academic and social spheres.

The history of the feminist theory is a true sample of a gradual expansion of the term gender; a huge amount of inter-disciplinary knowledge is concentrated around it  - about differences and possible equality of men and women. As we know, during the last 30-35 years, multiplication of the gender idea has been taking place. While Tuttle’s Encyclopedia of Feminism had three hundred definitions of feminism, I think there could be as many definitions of gender - or, more precisely, not the definitions proper but rather ways of its conceptualization, problem-setting, and reflection.

Here are a few examples. Everything began with a simple dichotomy sex/gender. Then, gender is understood as a social construct of sex, and then as a social institution, or a net of power senses; then, more specifically - as an ideological system supporting the forced heterosexuality. Postmodernism brings in a new understanding of gender - as a technology, representation or a compound effect of discourse and visual representations. Finally, gender is seen as performance, not connected with either biological sex or social gender.

With all theories of gender studies, it should be noted that the basic definition of gender stays as a “dry sediment”.

Hence, the definitions of gender studies. According to the Kharkov Center of Gender Studies (KCGS), “gender studies consider different aspects of social problems of  sex”. Just neat. The KCGS is also known for adhering to the feminist discourse: “…we are based on two gnoseological propositions: first, gender studies in the West are connected with the feminist theory and derive from it; second, although the feminist theory and ideology today is just part of a broader topical area of gender studies (…), for patriarchal cultures, whatever their differences are, the feminism topic still is acute - until the feminist theory and politicians yield some tangible results in changing the gender order in the society and women’s social status”[6].

The definition by the Moscow CGS is, in my opinion, a little bit tautological: “Gender studies – an inter-disciplinary research practice implementing the euristic  opportunities of the gender approach to analyze social transformations and domineering systems”[7].

The advertising poster of  the Department of Gender Studies at the Central European University, Budapest, reads:

“Why study gender?

-         to examine and question pervasive assumptions on women and men, male and female, that lie at the heart of  society and culture;

-         to analyze the discrepancy between the value of being born equal and persistent patterns of dominance related to gender, class, race, religion, sexual orientation, and ethnic, national or regional origin;

-         to develop ways of learning, teaching, and living that enable  an adequate representation of the interests and aspirations of all people”[8].

2.      The Past and the Present of Women’s Studies.

           The first program on women’s studies is known to appear in the United States in 1970 in the University of San Diego. In the early 70s, it was just sporadic initiative courses, often read by feminist teachers and public activists free of charge. Influenced by radical feminism and Marxism, women’s studies were based on two epistemological points - empirism (to make women visible) and positionism (standpoint). The main idea of it is as follows: an individual’s experience, identity and place in the society is determined by his/her physical position and point of view. Hence, the motto: “who I am means what and how I know”.

 Later though, the poststructuralist theory changed this notion having proved that experience and identity are, to some extent, derivatives from the knowledge - however it seems that the knowledge derives from the latter. In fact, for 30 years women’s studies have been sticking to the standpoint epistemology, and if accurately used and being self-critical, it will continue inspiring teachers and students, giving new knowledge and changing the world.

Including women as a subject for study has undergone logical and regular phases. Briefly, it looked like that[9]:

Phase 1. “Womanless”. “Womanless” sociology, “womanless” history, “womanless” literature. As only very few women are in the researchers’ limelight so far, students get the impression that only exclusively gifted women have made their name in history.  The curriculum reproduces the opinion that only few women have achieved something, whereas the others have proven losers, “also-rans”, and on the whole, “women do not exist”.

Phase 2. Involving women into the research subject. “Women in history”, “women in society”, “women in literature”. Women are included into the research subject as something rare, unique, but not worth serious study. For example, such questions are asked as: “What types of women are there in great literature?” “Which of the 19^th century woman authors was the best selling one?” That is, women are not yet viewed as the central object and the agent of changes.

Phase 3. “Women as a problem, anomaly, or absence”.  At this phase, the researchers came to the conclusion that if women are viewed from the androcentrist point, then they are marginal and deprived, indeed. That is why curricula try to generate dissatisfaction, anxiety and rage due to the absence of women. Besides, such categories as class, race, gender, sexuality are subject to interpreting.

Phase 4. “Women in their own notions”. Courses like “The Life of Women as History”, “Women as a Community” appear to show that women’s experience and viewpoint make history and culture as much as men’s experience. This phase is already separating from the previous ones which are somewhat phobic to women, i.e. when women are invisible, abnormal, victimized, or become a problem to the domineering social group. It is at this very phase when the invisible wall between the teacher and the student, between the expert and the trainees disappears for the first (!) time - now they make the new attitude to the subject of study together.

Phase 5. “Lateral consciousness”, has not yet been implemented either in the teaching process or in consciousness. This radical change of thinking and working, when we treat other people equally and fight for everyone and everything to live.

        M. Shuster and S. van Dyne came up with this periodization of women’s studies:

-         Acknowledgment of women’s invisibility and defining sexism in traditional knowledge.

-         Search for lost women.

-         Conceptualization of women as a subordinate group.

-         Study of women in their own notions.

Periodization according to Mary Kay Tetreault:

1.      Men’s scholarship, which accepts men’s experience as core.

2.      Compensatory scholarship, which acknowledges that women have indeed been lost by scholars; men however are still viewed as a comprehensive norm, whereas women as its subsidiary.

3.      Bifocal scholarship, standing for dualism of the masculine and the feminine; the subordination of women is accepted.

4.      Feminist scholarship, taking the experience of women rather than of men as a measure of significance. It pays special attention to the context and personal experience of the woman researcher. Sex and gender are viewed in the cultural, ideological, and political contexts. Women’s studies are becoming inter-disciplinary.

5.      Multifocal scholarship, aims at searches for a wholesome view, according to which the ways men and women treat and complete each other, are united in the continuum of human experience. Special attention is being paid to the issues of race, class and ethnicity, in interconnection with gender and sex.

The titles of articles which were published in the 70-80s, are exponential:

“Women’s Studies - a Tactless Offer” (Sheila Tobias)

“Women’s Studies – Renaissance  or Revolution? (Аdrienne Rich)

“Can a Radical Feminist Find Happiness Teaching Women’s Studies?” (Carol Ann Douglas)

“Toward a Woman-centered  University ”(Аdrienne Rich)

“Three missions of higher education regarding women: employment, freedom, knowledge”

“How to Establish a Women’s Studies Course When  the Administration Is Against It, the  Students Think It’s Too Hard, Your Department Is Out of  Money, and You Are Probably Too Old to Be Teaching Anymore” (1979) (Barbara B. Stern)

In the 70s and up to the mid-80s, what women’s studies did was explaining the material grounds for women’s oppression, whereas in the late 80s and 90s, the concept “woman” was viewed as a discourse construction. It is acknowledged that this attention to the discourse, bias, language was sound and explanatory.

It has often been stated that women’s studies do not have their own methodology, epistemology and, thus, are not a discipline but rather a political activity, dressed in intellectual clothes (Marxism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, etc.). In fact, numerous theoretical studies showed that women’s studies do have a unique methodology characteristic of them.

In women’s studies, a rich assortment of methodologies of social and humanitarian sciences is used, as well as quantitative and qualitative methods: analysis of statistics, archive researches, experiments, case studies, all kinds of interview, text analysis, discourse analysis, etc.

Conceptual grounds of women’s studies, as formulated by Marylin Boxer:

·        Systematic oppression of women;

·        Various attitude to patriarchy by women;

·        Social construction of gender;

·        Social construction of knowledge;

·        Redefining and re-conceptualization of women’s power and their empowerment.

What’s the subject of women’s studies?

·        Woman as a category of analysis / metaphor.

·        Gender as a system of relationships, power and oppression.

·        Women as concrete materialistic agents with life experience.

·        Women as crosspoints of multiple systems of power and oppression.

·        Feminism as a historic event / process.

·        Social changes as a core element of education.

The women’s studies students are supposed to be able to[10]:

·        Explain how knowledge is socially produced, and how power regimes, such as gender, race, class, etc., affect this production;

·        Understand historic, geographic and cultural variations of gender roles;

·        Understand the processes of domineering / subordination, and ways to resist them;

·        Integrate knowledge in disciplines, the women’s experience being in the limelight of scientific cognition;

·        Know one or two basic themes within inter-disciplinary women’s studies (e.g., cultural manifestation, political institutions, psychosocial constructs, etc.);

·        Articulate general history of the feminist theory and the historic development of women’s movement and women’s studies in the country (in the United States);

·        Understand women’s contribution to culture;

·        Connect his/her education with personal and social changes;

·        Collect, analyze, assess, and synthesize information;

·        Effectively communicate, using a number of tools, including oral presentations, analytical researches, and public activities.

             Where are U. S. women’s studies now? On the one hand, it is the biggest, well-organized voice of feminism (over 1,500 programs in the U.S.) at 700 universities and colleges, more than 30 feminist journals, and a lot of gender departments in all leading research organizations”[11].

On the other hand, it is admitted that women’s studies now experience hard times. Contradictions within the discipline and inside feminism proper, which appeared since their very beginning, have become acute, and sometimes hinder the smooth flow of the academic life. So, what are these contradictions? They include:

·        Radical feminism /Socialist feminism

·        Activism /academism

·        Women’s studies programs / humanitarian disciplines

·        Stand-point epistemology / post-modernism

·        Humanitarian / social sciences

·        Women’s studies/gender studies

·        Women’s studies/ research of women

·        Discourse / materialistic reality

·        Being disciplinary / inter-disciplinary

 Since the late 90s, a doubt has been growing amongst feminist scholars (sometimes reaching the desperation stage) about the future of academic feminism. It is not an exaggeration to state that for academic feminism, the beginning of the 21^st century was apocalyptic, as today it looks like it has lost political optimism forever[12].

           These narratives brought in a tense atmosphere - sometimes diagnosed as “the crisis language”, as Carla Kaplan termed it in 1992. If we look at the titles of the articles written in the 90s - “Conflicts in Feminism” (1990), “Feminism without Women” (1991), “Feminism Beyond Its Limits” (1995), “Crossing Goals” (1997), - we will see that feminism does not know how to think and theorize itself. This anxiety reached its peak in Wendy Brown’s essay, The Impossibility of Women’s Studies, where the effect of collaboration of feminist researches in the area of race, theory, gender, sexuality, and policy of its institutionalization leads to the conclusion that the most significant achievement of academic feminism – women’s studies- has come to its end.

        Two paradoxes came out.

       First. The growth of trans- and inter-disciplinary women’s studies brought about a big disciplinary specialization. Indeed, knowing a huge amount of academic works on women’s studies in the United States, Europe, and the world on the whole, it is difficult today to find a researcher who would know all the ropes in this ocean of information.  Specialists have no time to process the information flow in their own information area that is limited by specific topics. We are lucky not be affected by it in the Newly Independent States, and we still complain about lack of information and literature.

       Second. Many people began to question the universal gender theories, which led to the following questions: If feminists cannot lay claims to gender as an analytical category any more, then is there any discipline or a discourse field that could be called purely feminist?

       Besides, the growth of institutionalization consequently led to the loss of the critical potential of women’s studies: “…no more heated debates, no tears, no excited personal statements. Always be polite to the institutions which gave shelter to your criticism”[13]. According to Robyn Wiegman’s assessment, of the University of Arizona, feminism institutionally embodies the symbolic, discourse, and sometimes (but very rarely) the materialistic power at the university; it is powerful enough to possess the minds and souls of students and researchers.

“Women” remain the object of women’s studies, but women making up their object are not the same - those who began women’s studies. After difficult disputes and true cognition and growth during these 30 years, American researchers have acknowledged that this woman has many faces, many situations, and many languages.

Theoretically, the explanatory paradigms of women’s studies moved from sex differences between men and women, which, seemingly, explained the hierarchy and subordination of the feminine gender, on to the analytical focus at inner hierarchies within the feminine gender and within the society. And this cannot be free of political content of the categories.

3. Gender Studies in the Post-Soviet Academia

Currently, there are more than 350 gender courses read in the Newly Independent States. The KCGS’s information network has more than 220 individual participants and 42 institutions. The KCGS’s web site (www.gender.univer.kharkov.ua) has dozens of gender course curricula. The best in the Newly Independent States  journal, Gendernye Issledovaniya, has a circulation of 1,000. The European University of St. Petersburg, universities of Kharkov, Tver, and Samara have academic programs on gender studies which confer the Master’s degree, or its equivalent. Beginning with  1997, summer schools have been held on gender studies: 3 all-Russian (MCGS), 6  Foros (KCGS) for the NNS and Eastern European countries, regional ones - in Ivanovo, Riga, Yerevan, Almaty, etc.

For the last three years, a huge amount of literature on gender studies has been published in the NNS, including training manuals, readers, and translations of feminist classics.  

The problems of institutionalizing gender studies are well-known:

-         conservatism of state universities and academic institutions (oftentimes, they are associated with feminism);

-         funding;

-         personnel;

-         literature, especially for students.

        The strengths of our gender studies are:

1.      A more or less painless inclusion into the corps of socio-humanitarian sciences.

2.      Engagement and financial support by international funds.

3.      Peculiarly trendy and progressive belonging to the community of gender theorists.

4.      Direct connection of gender discourse with the English language, which at the same time enhances and weakens our opportunities in developing the discipline. It enhances, because people knowing the language are, as a rule, more active in public social life (trips to conferences, publications, Internet). It weakens, because it significantly reduces the opportunities of learning the discipline by people who don’t speak English.

The weaknesses of our gender education include:

1.Methodological pluralism (versatility and unscrupulousness). Gender covers all - the role of women in history, discrimination, gender equality. Rejecting the significant and contradictory connotation of feminism, gender is seen as a natural reserve of academic decency and political topicality.

2.Vague organizational structure. How should gender studies be better organized – within the center, department, or master’s program? The question of financing enters. External financing (foreign funds) is not regular, whereas the budget funding is not sufficient. Centers of gender studies have been established in Almaty and Karaganda; there are research centers on social and gender problems at the Women’s Pedagogical University. Departments and master’s programs are for the future.

3.Lack of the critical mass of teachers and researchers, able to turn gender studies into an acknowledged training and academic discipline.

K. Simpson from the U.S. has singled out 5 categories of people doing women’s and gender studies:

“1) “pioneers” - those who taught themes close in their content, before gender disciplines appeared;

2) “ideologues”, who came from the women’s movement;

3) “radicals”, politicized by other political movements;

4) “latecomers”, those who were interested in gender studies after their appearance;

5) “bandwagoneers”, those who considered this discipline trendy and useful for their scientific and teaching career”[14].

I am sure that successful teaching of gender courses does not actually depend on the category that the researcher came from. “Ideologues”, with their feminist energy, sometimes lose to moderate bur academically logical “pioneers”, “ latecomers ”, or “ bandwagoneers”. Here we have a paradox: those who do gender studies are not only encouraged to stick to feminism but have to do it.

If three basic principles of rhetoric - logos, ethos and pathos - are applied to teaching gender disciplines, we will get the following picture.

The idea pronounced from the lectern, gets legitimized, acquires legal effect and, so to speak, becomes materialized. If according to Eisenhower, education is what’s left after you forget everything, then, to put it simply, the goal of gender education is developing the for-life attitude and sensibility to gender problems. The curriculum of the course taught, textbooks, methodologies - all of that is the logos.  The relationships between the teacher and the students (egalitarian, partner-based, trust-oriented, respectful) is the ethos. The pathos, or passion of the course taught, emanates from the connection of topics of lectures and seminars and workshops with everyday practices of men-women relationships, as well as women’s movement and political activity of women. Hence, it is the egalitarian pathos.

In my opinion, this rhetoric triad determines successful teaching of a new course. Lack or reduction of one of the components jeopardizes the whole pedagogical enterprise. Here are some examples:

Lack of ethos: you can cleverly and passionately champion racism, fascism, sexism (Zhirinovsky).

Lack of logos: you can stupidly and passionately champion a positive social idea; however weak arguments and cultural base will not give you an opportunity to win the thinking audience.

Lack of pathos: you can impassionately and cleverly champion any positive idea, which will unlikely lead to any significant increase of your advocates.

4. The Future of Gender Studies in Central Asia

The issue of inter-cross-disciplinary gender studies presumes that the versatility of programs and organizational forms reflects the versatility of scientific strategies and social critique.

Institutionally, gender studies are organized today in the form of faculties (departments), branches, programs, centers and other kinds of subdivisions that provide higher education and master’s degree on Gender Studies. For example, in the Central European University, the master’s is called “Comparative Gender Studies”. In fact, there are branches of gender studies in all continents, and not only in the United States and Europe.

      Let me tell you about the development of gender disciplines in Almaty universities. Officially, gender education began here in March 1999, at the Almaty Abay State University, with the course “Theory of Gender”. Eight teachers took turns reading it, and it was called inter-disciplinary. The painful birth of gender education was greatly eased by anesthesia - funding and UNDP supervision. A 22-hour course taught us a lesson of a ”top-down” institutionalization.

But during the next term, the gender course was introduced in the “down-up” manner. Nazym Shedenova, a teacher of the sociology department at the Kazakh al Farabi State University, developed and read the special course, “Sociology of Gender”. The well-prepared 4^th-year students, serious motivation, sociological (not inter-disciplinary) context of the course, predetermined its painless introduction into the academic corps of the country’s best university. No doubt, the status of a full-time teacher who reads the initiated subject within the disciplinary area, differs from the protectionist status of outside guest lecturers.

I’ve had a weird experience of teaching the gender course “from the outside”, and not top-down or down-up. A vice-rector of the private Eurasian Institute of Market invited me to read the course to the 4^th-year students from the International Economic Activity department. The group proved to be rather small - 6 people. On average, two or three young men would attend the lecture. I took the men’s audience into consideration and rejected (with great regret) special opportunities of pathetic women’s studies (women’s autonomy, confidentiality of discussions, experiencing the common women’s subordination, etc.). The course turned out to be a comprehensive study of history and psychology of sexes.

Today, 2/3 of Kazakhstan’s 185 universities are private, so introduction of gender disciplines there is vague to me.

           Thus, the development of the discipline will be enhanced by:

q       social demand, formed into an institutional support of introducing these courses in universities;

q       initiative-minded and well-prepared teachers;

q       development of scientific research and methodologies of teaching in Central Asia - this has to take our realities and socio-cultural context into account.