Women’s Studies and its Interconnection with ‘Race’, Ethnicity and Sexuality

Abstract

In 1990 Meg Coulson and I published an article on Women’s Studies which was called ‘Making a Difference — Questioning Women’s Studies’ (Coulson and Bhavnani, 1990). In that article we suggested that while Women’s Studies was beginning to deal with issues of difference — both in its rhetoric as well as in its courses — many (mainly white, but not exclusively so) teachers and students of Women’s Studies had not yet incorporated the rhetoric or course material into their political practice outside academic work, or, at times, inside their academic work. In sum, we argued that too many ‘women’s-studies-people’ had rarely attended to the ‘race’/ethnicity aspects of equal opportunity or affirmative action policies, but instead had focused on the gender aspects of these policies. Since then, I have written a chapter, entitled ‘Talking Racism and the Editing of Women’s Studies’ (Bhavnani, 1993a) in which I argued that processes of Erasure, Denial, Invisibility and Tokenism combined together to reproduce one form of racism within Women’s Studies. In that chapter, I suggested that if academic writers and political activists (who may be one and the same at times) paid serious attention to international issues, epistemological concerns, and difference, then, perhaps, the practice of Women’s Studies would be shifted away from editing women of colour¹ out of feminist thought and towards a Women’s Studies agenda which was of value to all women.

Feminism is the political theory and practice that struggles to free all women: women of colour, working class women, poor women, disabled women, lesbians, old women — as well as [Western] white economically privileged heterosexual women — Smith, 1982, p. 49