Women's Studies in India and the Question of Asia: Some Reflections

Abstract

This paper reflects on the recent visibility of women's and gender studies in Asia from an Indian perspective. It questions the idea of an “Asian women's studies,” which frequently works with the assumption of a common identity in contrast to the West. The history of women's studies in India, beginning in the 1970s, becomes a vantage point to examine the specific conditions that enabled the birth of women's studies in a few contexts, in contrast to the proliferation of women's studies in recent years. The unprecedented power energising the idea of “Asia” is then discussed, especially in relation to the concept of the ‘Third World” and its subsequent demise. The current moment, characterised by the widespread institutionalisation of women's issues, harbours definite dangers of depoliticisation. But it also offers an opportunity to think afresh about inter-Asian connections and comparative frameworks that have not been on our horizons before.