Introduction: The First Decade of Women's Studies

Abstract

The scholarship in this special double issue, Women and Education, illuminates the vitality of women's studies a decade after its beginnings. We could not have had this issue until quite recently, at least in part because schools of education have been among the most resistant to the impact of the women's movement, which first touched the campus a decade ago. As the academic arm of the women's movement, women's studies has developed an area of research and curriculum focused on women as a distinguishable group to be studied from their own perspective and on gender as a significant issue in a democratic society founded and administered as a patriarchy. Like most educational movements of the past, this one has a political goal: to establish equity for women, which, as John Stuart Mill said more than a hundred years ago,would be as healthy for men as it was essential for women. Unlike most educational movements, this one has moved very rapidly, at least in higher education, to develop a body of knowledge and many of the elements of academic consequence, including degree-granting programs, professional associations, research institutes, journals, and special issues of journals like this one.