ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Women's StudiesSubscribe to Women's Studies

Why Women’s Studies?

The dissolution of the Planning Commission and expiry of the Twelfth Plan has imperilled the futures of the centres for Women's Studies, and Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy across public universities in India. These centres were borne out of struggles for inclusion and continue to operate at the margins of the academic set-up. A critical appraisal of Women's Studies has been undertaken here to locate its relevance in contemporary times.

The Abdullah Hall Years

The Women's College of the Aligarh Muslim University has a chequered history of engagement with feminism, as a former student recalls in a moment of poignant remembrance.

Stories We Tell

One of the central methodological insights of feminist science studies has been refuting the binary worlds of nature and culture. Over the last three decades, feminist science studies has developed a vibrant epistemological, and methodological apparatus for studying the natural world as a naturecultural world. Bringing together (inter)disciplinary methodologies, philosophies, practices, assumptions, methods and languages of women's studies and the natural sciences, we see the emergence of new modes of knowledge production. This paper explores the epistemological challenges of studying gender in the natural and physical sciences and the methodological tools the field has developed to study the human and non-human, life and non-life.

Matriliny and Women's Status

Matriliny Transformed: Family, Law and Ideology in Twentieth Century Travancore by K Saradamoni; Sage Publications India, New Delhi and AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, 1999; pp 177, map, index; Rs 32.5

How Gender Figures in Economic Theorising and Philosophy

Women's engagement with economics, in its theory and its practice, takes several forms: to draw attention to problems not addressed before; to point out how the way problems have been addressed are unhelpful or fallacious and lead to wrong conclusions and wrong prescriptions; to critique theories and tools in order to expose their inadequacy or invalidity; to refine existing tools using available frameworks so as to 'let in' gender; and to seek new tools of analysis. The engagement can also be at a more philosophical level, namely, the foundational assumptions of the discipline. This paper seeks to explore these themes.

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