Making it relevant: Mapping the meaning of women's studies in Tamil Nadu

Abstract

What is women’s studies? Is it a discipline? Subject? What should a women’s studies' programme connote and what obtains in practice? Through a survey this paper attempts to map the different aspects of the women’s studies programme in the institutions of higher education of Tamil Nadu. Among other things, the contention of the paper is that the forms and conditions of institutionalization of women’s studies in the institutions of higher education to a large extent constrained the possibilities of carrying out women’s studies as an academic discipline. The paper has important implications for bodies such as the UGC that, at one level, has been in the forefront of the institutionalization of the women’s studies’ movement in India particularly in the 1990s, but, at another level, has failed to achieve the kinds of intellectual and political changes promised by the founders of women's studies in India.