The Institutionalization of Women’s and Gender Studies in Higher Education in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: Asymmetric Politics and the Regional-Transnational Configuration

Abstract

Women’s and Gender Studies in higher education have developed in Central Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space since the late 1980s within the context of a complex triangle made up of the interests and impact of a whole variety of transnational actors, the changing politics of higher education at national and university levels, and the interests and aspirations of academics on the ground. The study explores these constellations as they changed over time, and varied within the post-“state-socialist” world from one sub-region to the other. It highlights the often unequal processes of internationalization, the partial privatization, EU-ization, and national reform of higher education and the role played by the dedication of academics spreading the word and the institution, as the major factors producing the success story ― even if always endangered ― of the Women’s and Gender Studies trade in the “other half of Europe”. The strategic function ascribed in Central and Eastern Europe to Gender Studies as a symbolic marker of pro-Western educational “reform” has been shaping both the fortunes of Women’s and Gender Studies in the region and the academic, political, and discursive opportunities available for those involved in research and teaching in this field.