For and About Women

I always enjoy reading about the origin of Women’s Studies because I feel like I always view it in a new lens. These readings are usually assigned in the beginning of the semester, so it is an interesting gauge on how much I have grown as a feminist since the last time I had read about it. As a freshman in an intro class, I was seeing through rose-colored glasses and thought it was such an incredible story of women empowering women. After that, I learned how to be more conscious. I learned about the role that intersectionality played and that white women were not so empowering or inclusive after all.

This time, I looked at it from a feminist conflict perspective and took our readings from the last few weeks into account. One reading from last week, The Tyranny of Structurelessness, was mentioned. It was transcribed from a speech given in 1970, around the same time as the events being discussed by Boxer in this article. Joreen discussed how the women’s movement was organized on the idea of structurelessness, meaning there was no leaders or hierarchies. This resulted from opposition to the structuredness of society. She reports that though formal structures were nonexistent, informal structures existed and the confusion that resulted impeded on the movement itself.

A quote from page 667 in Boxer’s article reads, “The double purpose of women’s studies to expose and redress the oppression of women-was reflected in widespread attempts to re-structure the classroom experience of students and faculty. Circular arrangement of chairs, periodic small-group sessions, use of first names for instructors as well as students, assignments that required journal keeping, ‘reflection papers,’ cooperative projects, and collective modes of teaching with student participation all sought to transfer to women’s studies the contemporary feminist criticism of authority and the validation of every woman’s experience.” This lack of leadership is an example of the structurelessness that Joreen discusses. The Women’s Studies movement was still under construction, so many took it into their own hands to discover what the best method of teaching and learning was, despite the consequences of the confusion. She mentions that the movement disagreed on various academic and political goals. It’s interesting because the origin story of Women’s Studies is always portrayed as a liberating time, but the more I learn, it seems that it actually only was for the women in charge of it. Obviously in regards to exclusion based on race, class, and sexuality, but also for the students actually learning. There was a lack of cohesion in the informal leadership, which surely affected the quality of education that the students received. This seems that it would be counteractive to the original movement by putting their own interests above the students and definitely signifies a feminist conflict.