Women, Knowledge and Change: Gender Is Not Enough (1)

Introduction Feminists who have reflected on fe ninism in academia are deeply cognizant of women's studies' activist roots and its h.ghly to change.... (Wine, 1991, p. 342) In 1991, Jeri Dawn Wine wrote that existence of women's studies was one of women's movement's major triumphs (Wine, 1991, p. 342). Now, many years later, these words are more important than ever. They suggest herstory of how women's movement helped us in academia to uncover patriarchal biases in scholarship, to create new concepts and approaches, and to suggest alternative ways forward for change. I know that women's movement motivated me as a young academic to participate in considerable intellectual work required to rethink foundational assumptions for what would become women's studies/recherches feministes.2 An explicit political to is still necessary because patriarchal assumptions still dominate scholarship, cultures and societies. It will continue to be required as long as social organization of WDrId and its cultures are designed in patriarchal ways which centre around values of control, violence, greed and hatred. A feminist orientation is needed to end discrimination against women which persists in every irstitution of society in almost every society in world.3 It is needed to redesign social organization of communities - locally, regionally and globally - so that cultures and social institutions are oriented to caring, fully and equally, for lives of women and men of all ages as well as planet. Wine discussed mutually supporting relationship between feminists inside and outside and also warned of dangers: of academic feminists becoming overly committed to development of theory, or too focused on a narrow slice of feminist scholarship and thereby neglecting work of women seeking social change (Wine, 1991, p. 342). Part of threat to this orientation comes from patriarchal structure of university itself. In her article, Wine vividly demonstrates contradictions involved in teaching a course that emphasizes feminist collective process and focuses on fostering feminist community change in context of hierarchical, patriarchal authority of academy (Wine, 1991, p. 243). Indeed, as is common in Women's Studies (see Christiansen-Ruffman et al., 1997), Wine conceived course, Organizing and Community Psychology, as an explicit effort to bridge academia and activism. She found course to be both highly rewarding and most difficult course...taught in my 19 year teaching career (Wine, 1991, p. 343). After considering benefits, she concludes that effort is worth taking (Wine, 1991, p. 358). My paper reflects on another part of patriarchal threat to Women's Studies, one stemming from realm of scholarly ideas. It focuses on concept of gender which, as we will see, many feminist writers such as Barbara Marshall (2000) and Eudine Barriteau (2001, 2003) have considered to be the central feminist concept. Wine used a feminist methodology, grounded in her own experiences in specific classrooms, to elaborate complex inter-relations between social contexts of university and community. This paper also uses a feminist retrospective reflection. Aided by my long-standing interest in sociology of knowledge and my participant observation in development of Canadian women's studies, this feminist retrospective reflection focusses on my experiences of changes in scholarly concept of gender in relationship to its scholarly and societal contexts over time. Feminist retrospective reflection has a long history, with a variety of names given to it. For example, Jessie Bernard (1973) used term autobiographical history. I have borrowed name, conceptual travelogue, from Barbara Marshall whose journey with concept of gender is very different from mine. …

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