Women’s Studies Program sends Wisconsin Idea around the world for 30 years

In the last few decades, scholars have come to realize that women’s experiences warrant serious academic investigation. UW–Madison offers one of the nation’s oldest Women’s Studies Programs (WSP), founded 30 years ago this fall. The program at Madison still is widely held as one of the largest and strongest in the world.

According to Jane Collins, professor of rural sociology and women’s studies who directs the program, the last three decades have seen the academic field of women’s studies grow into a multidisciplinary endeavor that represents wide diversity in feminist approaches to research and teaching.

“Fifteen years ago we offered about nine courses per semester. Today we have up to 18 courses per semester — Afro-American studies alone has six classes cross-listed with women’s studies. We have 17 budgeted faculty appointments, four of which have tenure homes in women’s studies, and 12 non-budgeted joint governance faculty in 15 different departments representing six schools and colleges on campus,” Collins says, adding that the program currently has 129 declared majors.

A product of ’60s activism in civil rights, the radical left and other areas, women’s studies emerged as a discipline in the 1970s. Gerda Lerner, Robinson-Edwards Professor of History emerita at UW–Madison, established a graduate program in women’s history as part of the university’s American history program. Women’s studies faculty were central to its development. For a long time, UW–Madison was among a handful of places offering a doctorate in women’s history. Now there are hundreds of women’s history courses.

“When I began teaching, women’s history didn’t exist — people didn’t think that women had a history worth knowing,” she says. “Women’s history and women’s studies have altered the direction of academic discourse. I liken it to what the Renaissance did for men.”

Aili Tripp, professor of political science and women’s studies and director of the WSP-affiliated Women’s Studies Research Center (WSRC), says that contemporary gender research has expanded to encompass more disciplines, a phenomenon that is changing the nature of the work being done in women’s studies.

“Initially, women’s studies regarded gender differences as the most important cause of women’s subordinate status in society. The focus on gender difference has widened to include inequalities of many sorts, as well as greater sensitivity to the varying nature of inequalities within and across genders,” Tripp says. “Over the past two decades, women’s studies scholarship has come to focus on the importance of race, class, nationality, sexuality and other factors in interpreting women’s experiences across cultures.”

The new master’s program in international and multicultural women’s studies/ gender studies reflects this global focus, Collins says.

Some of the urgent concerns have to do with issues of women’s health and biology. Mariamne Whatley, associate chair of the program and associate dean in the School of Education, says that health and science have been integral to the WSP since its inception.

“Unlike many programs in which ‘interdisciplinary’ refers only to the humanities and social sciences, biological sciences always have been important to our curriculum,” she says. “Our program is seen nationally as a model of the integration of science into the women’s studies curriculum. One reason is that the late Ruth Bleier, a physician and neuroscientist, was a founder of the program, and there is a scholarship for undergraduate women in science in her name. Our majors are required to take both an introductory and an upper level biology/health course, and certificate students are required to take at least one.”

Given the activist origins of women’s studies, it should come as no surprise that the WSP places considerable emphasis on the Wisconsin Idea. Several UW–Madison faculty have been involved with Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton’s Wisconsin Women = Prosperity Project, aimed at improving the status of women in Wisconsin. In conjunction with Lawton’s project, the WSP held a colloquium last year on the status of women in Wisconsin in areas such as education, political leadership, health and many other concerns. In addition, UW–Madison women’s studies faculty are involved in leadership roles on a project-related task force dealing with women and mental health.

Lynet Uttal, associate professor of human development and family studies, offers another example of the Wisconsin Idea at work. Uttal researches issues of care-giving, employed mothers and child care providers, women of color in the United States, and biculturalism. For the past five years she has been working with a community partner agency to establish The Latino/a Family Childcare Project, a certification program targeted to Latina immigrants in Madison. The women in this program have mobilized themselves to develop their own economic opportunities and to strengthen their community. Other faculty provide background documents on the status of women worldwide for the United Nations, the World Bank and other global agencies.

To celebrate the achievements of the program over the last 30 years, the Women’s Studies Research Center has planned a weekend of events on campus Friday and Saturday, Oct. 14 and 15. For information and a complete schedule of events, visit http://www.womenstudies.wisc.edu.