Education and feminist studies

Feminism is of itself an educational project.When feminist activists in the early 1970s questioned the status quo, they began to unpick their own socialisation, read against the grain, challenge hegemonies, and reconstruct the world from women’s own perspectives.1 Early initiatives in feminist studies tended to be based in voluntarily run women’s centres, or located within small networks of friends who set up reading groups and consciousness-raising groups, or as they were called in the usa “rap groups”, where a group of women would come together to “rap”, or discuss, a particular issue. Women’s studies came together in a similar way, as collectives were set up “where each woman agrees to share the responsibility for planning the course, initiating discussion, gathering material and ensuring that every member gets her fair chance to participate” (Steiner-Scott, 1985: 286). For Steiner-Scott,women’s studies programmes emerged as “informal groups, that is, those organised outside of traditional educational structures”.