Women's Studies in Britain in the 1990s: Entitlement cultures and institutional constraints

Abstract

The changes in the last 15 years in British politics (massive unemployment, market-led higher education, Thatcherite consumer rhetoric, citizenship charters, and heightened student expectations) have generated many paradoxes for Women's Studies in (new and old) universities. For instance, traditional feminist demands for access to education have been deployed in right-wing individualist and consumerist rhetoric to expand places but to also implement cutbacks and competition within higher education. Paradoxically, Women's Studies has expanded and become institutionalised through the rapid growth in places. But because the places did not come with adequate resourcing and, in fact, were part of a larger programme of rationalisation and constraint, the demands from students far outweigh what can be provided. In between the concomitant demand and constraint lies the feminist teachers with their ideals of feminist pedagogy. It is the changing processes and contradictions in Women's Studies within British higher education and the place of feminism within these that this paper explores.