gender studies education

The Institutionalization of Women and Gender Studies in Higher Education in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: Asymmetric Politics and the Regional-Transnational Configuration1 by Susan Zimmermann Since the regime change of 1989/1991, Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have presented, in the overall and long-term assessment, an area of exceptional growth for women‟s and gender studies. Wherever one looks, women‟s and gender studies are present in one form or another. Numerous courses are offered specializing in this area and university programs specializing in this field have, to a greater or lesser extent, established themselves in impressive range of tertiary institutions with further expansion on the way. In some countries, non-university establishments and initiatives are also playing a role in „spreading the word‟. Even if these developments are sometimes limited and/or vulnerable, the period since the end of the state socialism must be seen as one of triumph for women‟s and gender studies in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. This triumph has taken place against a backdrop of major restructuring of higher education on a global, regional and national level. All this has been happening not just within and between tertiary institutions themselves; rather, higher education has been confronted with diverse new challenges and demands from outside. Though they may differ both in diagnosis and evaluation, scholars broadly agree that we are witnesses to, and actors in, a sea change that is affecting higher education on at least three levels: the institutional structure of higher education itself; the form, content, perspectives and functions of the creation of knowledge; and the relationships between higher education and its socio-economic and political environment.2 In this paper I investigate which actors and interests have influenced, whether positively or occasionally negatively, the to date broadly successful process of institutionalization of women‟s and gender studies in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The focus of the research is therefore on institutional change in higher education. I will show how this change is to a large extent wrought by interests which influenced the nature and direction of the post-communist transformation overall. Those global, transnational, national, and local actors that sought to influence the process, whether powerful, less powerful or sometimes largely uninfluential, did so and continue to do so for sometimes very different reasons. I inquire into the function that this diverse spectrum of actors in gender studies - and also in a broader sense in gender politics – have had within and in shaping this transformation. In the process of institutionalization, the role of actors who have pursued interests that This paper is in part based on my article “Gender Studies in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Part 2: Actors and Interests in the Process of Institutionalisation” in L’Homme: Europäische Zeitschrift für feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 16 (2005), 63-88. It appeared in Hungarian in the journal „Eszmélet‟ (2007) 73, 25-58. 2 Analyses of these changes include Dominick LaCapra, “The University in Ruins?”, in: Critical Inquiry 25 (1998), 32-55; Walter D. Mignolo, “The Role of the Humanities in the Corporate University”, in: PLMA, 115, 5 (2000), 1238-1245; and Jamil Salmi, “Tertiary Education in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities”, in: Higher Education Management, 13, 2 (2001), 105-130. 1 have been principally academic, professional or connected to higher educational politics should also not be underestimated. I investigate how the constantly changing configuration of all the above actors and their interests have contributed to institutionalization of women‟s and gender studies. In closing, I will attempt to assess how this overall configuration has shaped and limited the space for institutionalization of women‟s and gender studies in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Such a reflection is, I believe, an important part of the self-reflection of all those who practice gender studies within or across the region. It is helpful in the process to develop and make explicit one‟s own scholarly and political agenda, to relate it to the above configuration – whether more or less critically – and to use and to extend as effectively as possible the available space for thought and action that it provides. Finally, such an analysis of the case of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union may stimulate further reflection on the complex and in some senses problematic position of gender research and gender studies in the ongoing major transformation of higher education worldwide, taking into account the real existing local and regional diversity and unmistakable global asymmetries and relationships. The present research reveals important and growing differences in the dynamics and results of this process of institutionalization between different sub-regions within Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. It also identifies three distinct stages, the last of which is not yet complete.3 I. The Beginnings: A time of activists, hesitant restructuring and the rise of new political interests The first of these three stages lasted until about the middle of the 1990s. Early women‟s activists have dated to the mid or late 1980s a growing dissatisfaction with how various disciplines approached questions related directly or indirectly to gender issues. Some of these researchers had already, prior to the political changes of 1989/1991, developed a proven interest in women‟s and gender studies.4 In former Yugoslavia, explicit and implicit feminist interest of academics can also be identified significantly earlier, and the introduction of courses in women‟s studies in the University of Ljubljana occurred as early as 1986.5 For some, though not all of the researchers involved, criticism of existing relationships between the sexes as articulated in the framework of gender research meant at this time a clear and A part of the research on which this text is based was completed in 2004-05. As regards the spelling or transcription of names of nonLatin actors and institutions, I have kept the spellings used in the individual sources. 4 These researchers include Irina Novikova in Latvia and Mária Adamik in Hungary. Various country reports in Claudia Krops (ed.), European Women‟s Studies Guide II. Women‟s International Studies Europe, Utrecht 1997; Interview with Mária Adamik, 24/3/2004. 5 Biljana Kašić, “Women‟s Studies in Croatia. Between Feminist Sensibility and Critical Responsibility”, in: The Making of European Women‟s Studies, Athena/University of Utrecht, 5 (2004), 30-40, see p. 30-33 in this context; Eva Bahovec, Nina Vodopivec, Tanja Salecl, Chapter 6: Slovenia, in: Gabriele Griffin (ed.), Women‟s Employment, Women‟s Studies, and Equal Opportunities 1945-2001. Reports from Nine European Countries, Amsterdam 2002, 292-339, 319. 3 2 radical critique of the status quo as a whole, including but not limited to the real existing political system of the time. This political system, whose universities were perforce fundamentally opposed to the idea of separating gender analysis from class analysis and institutionalizing it in the form of women‟s and gender studies, collapsed between 1989 and 1991. In the early nineties the first organized groups and centers concentrating on gender analysis appeared. They focused largely on information and research, and were typically concerned with exerting public influence on women‟s and gender politics. The Moscow Center for Gender Studies, which rapidly became widely known, was founded as early as 1990, as a part of the Institute for Socio-Economic Population Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The work of the Center combined a focus on human rights and close collaboration with various organizations connected to the UN and the World Bank. It worked equally closely with the Russian government, particularly in supporting the latter in fulfilling its international obligations in the field of gender policy.6 The Women‟s Studies Center of the University of Łódź in Poland and the Vilnius University Gender Studies Center were also founded by 1992. The latter was funded by the university, the Open Society Institute Lithuania, a part of the Soros Foundations Network, and by private sponsors.7 The Romanian Society for Feminist Analyses AnA, founded in Bucharest in 1990, has operated since 1993 as an officially registered institution. AnA came into being without any significant institutional or financial support, following a now classical trio of goals: to contribute to the improvement of the position of women, to carry out research connected to this, and to introduce gender studies as a subject on the curricula of universities.8 The famous Prague Gender Studies Center was founded in 1991 with the support of the Network of East-West Women and financially among others by the Frauen-Anstiftung e.V, an organization closely related to the German Green Party, and based in Hamburg. The Prague Center operated a library and an educational and advisory centre.9 In the Prague Academy of Sciences a research group „Gender and Sociology‟ was formed under Marie Čermáková, also with external financial support, and is still active today.10 All in all, the first attempts to establish the category of gender in research and teaching in the first half of the nineties are largely attributable to the labors of a number of individuals. These were embedded in the efforts of newly-created non-state and non-political actors to make gender a visible category within their political and cultural achievements. It happened here and there that these collaborated with official politics as the latter reconstructed itself after the regime change. In any case, the new „Gender Agenda‟ http://www.gender.ehu.by/en/, 25/3/2004; http://www.gender.ru/english/index.shtml, 19/05/2005. About Us. http://www.moterys.lt/index.php?set_lang_id=en, 25/3/2004. 8 Krops, Guide, 4, 49 9 http://www.neww.org.pl/en.php/links/view/1.html?id=24; http://www.zenskestudie.edu.yu/wgsact/czech/cz-cgs.html; all 19/05/2005. 10 http://www.rewindnet.org/asp/OdabirgupeW.asp?OdabranaGrupa=520; 15/05/2005. 6 7 3 was closely linked to the democratization agenda. “Democracy without women is no democracy” – this motto of the initiator and co-founder of the Network of East-West Women, Slavenka Drakulić, could in 1991 count as the watchword of many activists without any need to be more explicit about the desired content of this democracy, other than it should address gender equity as one of its central issues. II. Inequalities in the Politics of Higher Education and in the progress of university reform in the second half of the nineties It was only in the second half of the 1990s that substantial progress was made in the establishment of women‟s and gender studies in university teaching and research (and also outside the confines of the university). This change occurred on two very different levels. II.1 The Time of the Americans: the shadow network of private higher education The systematic institutionalization and promotion of gender studies in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in the second half of the nineties was in large part thanks to an internationalized and privately funded parallel sector, or shadow network of higher education. The existence of this shadow network was principally due to the systematic engagement of US foundations and/or institutions with a US or Anglo-Saxon background that strove to create structures comparable to the Anglo-Saxon private university, particularly at graduate level. As a part of the development of this parallel sector of international private tertiary education, gender studies acquired a relatively important place. A breakthrough happened in the second half of the nineties leading to the founding of independent university programs in gender studies on a firm institutional and financial footing, which was closely connected to the systematization of academic outreach activities. This breakthrough was thanks to this parallel sector, particularly to the institutional and financial support offered by donors and foundations of American or Anglo-Saxon origin. Through this channel, western academics involved in women‟s and gender studies gained the opportunity to set up independent courses of study and outreach programs for gender studies. This development took place not only in the context of newly-established private universities but also within or in cooperation with “centers of excellence” funded principally or exclusively by foreign donors in state universities and various other non-university institutions. One example of the important role played in the creation of non-publicly financed “centers of excellence” located within state universities is the American MacArthur Foundation. As part of their “Initiative in the Russian Federation”, founded in 1992 and providing annual funding to the tune of 4 almost seven million US dollars, the Foundation supports twenty-five such centers in state universities.11 The Network Women‟s Program, a part of the Open Society Institute of US finance magnate George Soros, is a further example of such non-university institutions. This body played an important role in the creation and expansion of networks for and related to gender studies. Since 1997, the Network has supported the development, introduction, institutionalization and networking of gender/women‟s studies programs in numerous ways. As early as 1998, the Network organized a first major conference on “gender studies for [sic] countries in transition” with 140 participants from thirty countries. In 1999 the Network published the comprehensive “Gender Studies and Women‟s Studies Directory. Countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and Mongolia”.12 Parallel to such systematic outreach activities, in the second half of the nineties various university programs in gender studies funded by private donors appeared both in state and private institutions. The Centre for Gender Studies at the European Humanities University in Minsk in Belarus, led by Elena Gapova, for example was founded in 1997 with the support of the MacArthur Foundation, and has continued to receive since then regular and significant support from this source. The Centre set itself the explicit goal of the transformation of the curriculum through the integration of gender studies. In 2000, the Centre established its own graduate course of studies in the form of a one-year MA leading to a degree in Cultural Studies with a specialization in gender studies. Efforts in publishing, as well as related external activities targeted at propagating the “discourse of feminist theory and gender issues in the postSoviet region”, played an important role in the activities of the Centre.13 A second centre that has played an important part in „spreading the word‟ in the former Soviet Union is the Kharkov Center for Gender Studies, led by Irina Zherebkina, at the Kharkov National Technical University in Eastern Ukraine. The Center appeared as a result of teaching activities going back to the early nineties and has had its own series of publications since 1994. Although located in a state university, the Kharkov Center is largely financed by private donors, particularly through a Canadian foundation and also by the Network Women‟s Program. The Center has for many years organized the “University Network Program on gender studies for the countries of the former USSR”.14 In the private European University in St. Petersburg there has existed since 1997 a master‟s program in gender studies. The program is attached to the Faculty of Sociology and Political Sciences and lives on a http://www.macfound.org/announce/press_releases/1_20_2005.htm; 28/4/2005. With information on other activities: Network Women‟s Program. Gender and Education. Gender Studies http://www.soros.org/initiatives/women/focus_areas/c_education; 26/3/2004. 13 Centre for Gender Studies. http://www.gender.ehu.by/en/; 25/3/2004. 14 http://www.gender.univer.kharkov.ua/ENGLISH/index.html (28/4/2005), and information accessible from here about the Kharkov Center; notes from the Workshop “Gender Studies. Teaching Gender Studies, Women‟s Studies, Queer Theory and Masculinities in the University”, organized by the Curriculum Resource Center (CRC) of the Central European University from 22.-27. March 2004 in Budapest. Oral reports from participant at this workshop have been of great help in the preparation of this article. 11 12 5 research grant from the Ford Foundation “to implement an innovative educational program of Women and Gender Studies in Russia”. The program is coordinated by Yelena Zdravomyslova and Anna Temkina, a scholar from the University of Helsinki.15 In the successor states of the Soviet Union in the south of the Russian heartland and in Central Asia, the process of institutionalization of gender studies through the shadow network of private educational institutions under US control did not progress in the same way, either in the second half of the nineties, nor yet in the early years of the new millennium. A Center for Gender Studies came into existence in the Western University in Baku, Azerbaijan in the summer of 2000. Its goals include “promoting women and gender researchers, integrating gender theory into social and humanitarian sciences… developing educational basis of gender studies and introducing gender related courses at universities and schools”.16 Today‟s American University in Central Asia (AUCA), following initial steps starting from 1993, based on an agreement between the Kyrgyz government and the US Department of State and the Open Society Institute, was founded in the capital, Bishkek, in 1997. In this distant southeastern outpost of US intervention in the university systems of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, based on the “need to advance into the world of free markets and democracy” there was neither in the second half of the nineties nor later any systematic effort to create separate course of study in gender studies, even though individual courses do have a relevant focus.17 At the opposite end of the Central and Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union region, in Hungary, another, much more important institution for the development of gender studies within the shadow network of private institutions under US influence appeared in 1991: the Central European University (CEU). CEU was the first independent private university in the region. In the first decade of its existence, the American-style graduate university was in effect financed solely by the Hungarian-born US stock market magnate George Soros. The early date of foundation of the university is particularly due to Soros‟ close connections with members of the political and (neo-)liberal intellectual elite in Hungary, a connection that made quicker and more flexible action possible in comparison with the slow pace of heavyweight US research foundations. In 1994 the Program on Gender and Culture at CEU first saw the light of day. Within CEU, the creation of the Program was not so much thanks to the vague or sometimes reserved expressions of interest on the part of individual teaching staff as to decisive The “Gender Studies” Program. http://www.eu.spb.ru/en/socio/gender.htm; 25/3/2004. http://lists.partners-intl.net/pipermail/women-in-war/2001-March/000284.html; 26/03/2004. 17 http://www.auca.kg/textv/about/history/history.htm; 16/05/2005. The mission statement of AUCA identifies as goals of the University among others, “to help educate a new corps of leaders in the Kyrgyz Republic and in other nations of Central Asian region” und “to raise standards and methods of teaching and research in the Kyrgyz Republic and throughout the region and in this process to be informed by American methods and standards”. . 16/05/2005. Taalaygul Isakulova, Elmira Shishkaraeva, Gender Aspects of Education System in the Kyrghyz Republic: Analysis of Situation, Problems and Prospective, Gender Education. International conference materials. November 4-5, http://www.bilimdon.uz/library/publ.php?s=view&id=132. A printed version in Russian appeared in the Russian language publication Gender Education. International Conference Materials. November 4-5, 2003. Bukhara, 46-53. My thanks to Svetlana Shakirova, who provided me with this article and the relevant bibliographical information. 15 16 6 appearance of Nancy Stepan, renowned historian and wife of Alfred Stepan, who became rector of the university in 1994. The Program already began its own teaching activities in the academic year 1994-95. Students came from all countries of the Central and Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union region, with a small percentage coming from other parts of the world. Soon, within the university the decision was made to establish Gender Studies as a separate “interdisciplinary Certificate Program”. In 1996, the first students enrolled in the new program. The program offered first of all the opportunity to acquire an MA degree in Gender Studies from CEU, a qualification that was accredited in the USA shortly after. The second possibility entailed transforming the MA course into a graduate distance-learning course at the British Open University, which henceforth acted as a sponsoring establishment for the CEU Program on Gender and Culture. This two-year applied research-oriented course of study led to a British style MPhil.18 Practically all of the above-mentioned institutions practiced outreach activities in the second half of the nineties or later, especially programs of pre- or in-service training in the area of women‟s and gender studies for academics of all generations and from the broadest imaginable range of disciplines. Since 1997, the Kharkov Center has, with the support of HESP and the MacArthur Foundation, held regular international summer schools, which have had significant snowball effects.19 This kind of outreach has also played an important role over the years in Minsk.20 The Moscow Center for Gender Studies started its Russian Summer Schools on Gender Studies (RSSGS), funded by the Ford Foundation, in 1996.21 In 1994-95 Nancy Stepan and her co-director Mindy Roseman organized the first Inter-Regional Faculty Seminar in Gender and Culture, at CEU in Budapest, also co-financed by HESP. The seminar included a number of workshops in which scholars from a wide variety of countries within the region were able to participate and get to grips with prepared specialist literature. This first regional seminar was followed by four others until 2002.22 Since 1995, in close cooperation with the Program on Gender and Culture, and since 2001 with the Department of Gender Studies, and financed by HESP, regular groups of scholars from the region have been invited to CEU for short visits. The aim of these visits has been curriculum development in the participants‟ home universities, in other words, the development of courses in the area of women‟s and gender studies across the disciplines.23 The preparation of teachers for the first university course in gender studies in Kazakhstan in 1999 also took place as a part of a similar outreach initiative (funded by the United Nations Development Programme UNDP) in the form of a “crash This information comes from the internal documentation of the present Department of Gender Studies. My thanks to Jasmina Lukić for her help in excavating the relevant document. 19 http://www.gender.univer.kharkov.ua/ENGLISH/institute.html; 12/5/2005; notes from the CRC Workshop 2004, see note 15. 20 http://www.gender.ehu.by/en/; 25/3/2004. 21 http://www.gender.ru/english/index.shtml; 19/05/2005. 22 See note 19. 23 http://www.ceu.hu/crc/; 19/05/2005. 18 7 course” at the European University in St. Petersburg, where gender studies have been institutionalized since 1997.24 All in all, privately-funded teaching activities at these universities, as well as the externally oriented network activities unfolding with the help of the programs for gender studies at these universities and/or directly through international NGOs, have played since the second half of the 1990s an important role in spreading the idea and practice of women‟s and gender studies both across the region and across the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences. In other words, in Central Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space there appeared with the development of this shadow network of largely private elite universities under US-American hegemony, a system of institutions of women‟s and gender studies that was oriented towards American-style graduate education and supported primarily, both academically and materially, by US and Anglo-Saxon patronage. Specific institutional features of US-style institutions of higher education, specifically the credit system of teaching, organizational elasticity and administrative self-government within the university, the individual institute or the discipline, as well as an emphasis on graduate education and supervision make these institutions very flexible and open for the development and rapid institutionalization of innovative thematic and interdisciplinary specializations. Added to this, governments, parliaments, ministries and central administrations of the individual countries experienced an increasing need for data and information on gender questions systematically gathered and processed according to the newly imported international standards. It was therefore in their interests that the university system should be able to produce the relevant expertise and suitably trained scholars as rapidly and to as high a standard as possible. These and similar institutional and academic factors cannot alone, however, explain why decision makers in the (partly) internationally financed sector of the “new” higher education system in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union or in its parent institutions abroad concentrated so systematically on the institutionalization of gender studies in their institutions. There was in addition a specific political pattern that sought to use gender studies to influence the nature and direction of the post-communist transformation as a whole, a trend that occurred only at this time and in this part of the system of higher education. The educational policy actors involved here formed the spearhead of a highly asymmetrical functionalization of “gender” as a symbol and instrument of transnational interest politics as part of unequal or conflictual international relations. They were interested in the promotion of women‟s and gender studies not for and in themselves, or in other words not, or not only, for the purpose of the academic strengthening and deepening of efforts concerned with the equality of women and men and the protection of the human rights of women. Their political strivings were concerned 24 Interview with Svetlana Shakirova in L‟Homme. Zeitschrift für feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 16 (2005), 1, 89-96. 8 rather more with two other highly politically contentious objectives. They were specifically aimed at bringing the education system (and also the activities of civil society organizations involved that are active in this area) into line with those standards that are the norm in the institutional systems of liberalcapitalist market economies. “Mainstreaming gender studies into higher education has been a priority ... for ... the transformation of educational systems in reform.”25 At the same time, moreover, this specific educational policy can be seen in the context of transnational contention over political hegemony, which surfaces, in part, as a debate about cultural values and symbolic affiliation. At this level it is not gender studies or the rights of women that is the real agenda. The commitment of women‟s and gender studies is far more a vicarious substitute for a commitment to values of (largely Anglo-Saxon) western democracy and liberal social and economic order, and to the expectations of the institutions and political actors representing these values that were in ascendancy in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. At the latest in the second half of the nineties, this coupling of “gender studies and democracy” became a predominant configuration from which it became very difficult for those striving to institutionalize gender studies to separate themselves. At this stage there were, as will be shown below, very few alternative routes for the institutionalization of women‟s and gender studies. The institutions of the shadow network of private educational institutions under US-American hegemony thus acquired a key role in attributing to gender studies the role of a „symbolic maker‟ of westernization and the compliant incorporation of the Central and Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union region into the westerndominated global system. That these actors pursued and continue to pursue this policy quite deliberately is clear also from the fact that gender studies have been and still are frequently lumped together with other highly-loaded „markers‟ of the democratic-liberal agenda for Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The Network Women‟s Program, for example, describes its principal agenda as working “…to promote the advancement of human rights, gender equality, and empowerment as an integral part of the process of democratization”.26 The above mentioned “Initiative in the Russian Federation” of the McArthur Foundation pursues, in its own words “two key goals”: as well as seeking to “strengthen universities and scholarly infrastructure”, within which the promotion of gender studies occurs, there is equally the aim “to support a Russia-wide network of human rights organizations”.27 That it should be gender and gender studies (among others) that received the role of a „symbolic marker‟ of compliant westernization is thanks to a wide range of factors. First, there is a long tradition of using of the „women‟s question‟ or „progressive women‟s politics‟ for purposes of western political Network Women‟s Program. Gender and Education. Gender Studies http://www.soros.org/initiatives/women/focus_areas/c_education; 26/3/2004. 26 http.//www.soros.org/initiatives/women/about, 29/04/2005. 25 9 dominance.28 The role of gender studies within the asymmetrical transnationality of the transformation of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union was following in the footsteps of this tradition. Second, the globally accelerating process of the commodification of women‟s labor and the integration of ever more women into ever new areas of business and commerce lends increasing legitimacy to the formal recognition of equality of the sexes worldwide. To the extent that a failure to recognize such a global equality agenda can be blamed as reactionary or rightist, the gender question is highly suitable as a symbolic marker of the acceptance of liberal globalization. Thirdly, there were factors specific to or highly colored by the Central and Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union context. These included both institutional and content-related aspects of the transformation of the higher education system. Policies for the institutionalization of gender studies could be put forward largely as policies for the creation of a new discipline or the founding of interdisciplinary facilities that could find their place next to and in addition to the existing disciplines. In this way, the institutionalization of gender studies presented itself less as an argument over the redefinition or „modernization‟ of existing disciplines or the annexation of institutionally already occupied fields, and rather as the creation of new, additional academic spaces. In those institutional contexts in which gender possessed a certain legitimacy as a symbolic marker of academic transformation, this specific academic location of gender facilitated the potential or actual institutionalization of gender studies in relation to the well-organized academic lobbies of the various existing disciplines. At the same time, an emphasis on the institutional independence of gender studies made much easier a precise division between „new‟ and „old‟ academic culture. In the official world view of state socialism, the equality of the sexes was supposed to be a natural benchmark of science and politics. At the same time, however, women‟s issues were automatically subordinated to higher category of class issues, and gender, if discussed at all, was a legitimate subject of research and study exclusively within the context of class analysis. This was true even in the late and already ideologically softer context of late state socialism when many researchers only formally touched upon or else tacitly bypassed class analysis. It was exactly because the old academic culture systematically disqualified gender as an independent category of analysis that within the new culture gender could become a category of analysis in its own right as a part of the overarching project of taking leave of class analysis as a scholarly concept. Under these circumstances, many of the actors in the Central and Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union region who were concerned in the second half of the nineties with the institutionalization of gender studies, found themselves in a political double bind. Feminist researchers and activists engaged in areas http://www.macfound.org/announce/press_releases/1_20_2005.htm, 28/4/2005 For example so-called „widow burning” in colonial India, eg. Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions. The Debate on Sati in Colonial India. In: Kumkum Sangari, Sudesh Vaid (Eds), Recasting Women. Essays in Colonial History, New Delhi 1989, 88-126. 27 28 10 of research and policy – such as questions of human rights – that are heavily influenced by international power relations and contention over global hegemony will be very familiar with this inherent tension. 29 In Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, one problem in this context was the fact that the potentially strongest allies of the proponents of gender studies were to be found in the camp of those who identified gender issues as a part of a positive orientation to western-liberal and related national and local interests which were overall concerned with a particular model of “transition” from “communism” to a “liberal-democratic market economy”. Again and again, the question arose, in such a relationship between gender studies and “post-communist transition” whether and how the socially critical potential of women‟s and gender studies could materialize. Repeatedly it became apparent that the interests in gender studies of these allies were in fact instrumental. The second (academic and) political tension in which advocates of women‟s and gender studies found themselves, whether they liked it or not, appeared in regard to the political and academic forces that offered themselves as potential allies for a critique of western-liberal-oriented transnational and local hegemonic interests and/or the real existing dynamic and results of the „post-communist transition‟. Many of these forces and interest groups were either critical or dismissive in relation to women‟s and gender studies. They either assumed this area of study to be inherently tied to hegemonic power interests, or else they justified their deep-seated aversion or ignorance regarding the critical potential of gender studies with reference to these ties with hegemonic power interests as they were indeed visible in the broader field of research development and educational policy. Again and again, the question arose whether and how, in such a contradictory relationship between critique of global hegemonic interests and gender studies, the goals of the latter could receive sufficient attention and legitimacy. The strategies for the development of women‟s and gender studies that their proponents developed in the course of coming to grips with this double tension, or with the hegemonic configuration that stood behind it, were manifold indeed. The position of individual researchers, initiative groups and those carrying institutional responsibility were decisively influenced by their respective positions towards three questions. First of all, was it the critique of the geopolitical and cultural subordination of the „postcommunist region‟ and the real existing dynamic of the „transition‟, together with the polarization of society driven by these issues in the individual countries, that was a principal concern for them; or did they identify themselves rather, out of conviction, opportunism or simply a lack of viable personal and Analysis of the tension between transnational (feminist) gender politics and the asymmetry of global relations in the modern world raise, among others, the question of feminist self-location and the possibility of the development of an associated anti-hegemonic global feminism. Cf. Isabella R. Gunning, Arrogant Perception, World-Traveling and Multicultural Feminism: The Case of Female Genital Surgeries. In: Columbia Human Rights Law Review 23 (1992) 2, 189-248; Uma Narayan, Dislocating Cultures. Identities, Traditions, And Third World Feminism, London, Routledge 1997; Anne Orford, Reading Humanitarian Intervention. Human Rights and the Use of Force in International Law, Cambridge etc. 2005. 29 11 political alternatives, various provisos notwithstanding, with the so-called process of „westernization‟? Secondly, did they seek to explicitly link their position on the first question to their efforts and debates towards institutionalizing gender studies; or rather did they make efforts, as far as was possible, to keep the institutionalization of gender studies separate from this highly political question? And finally, which problems, topic areas, and scholarly and political perspectives of women‟s and gender studies lay at the center of the interests of each respective researcher, initiative group or bearer of institutional responsibility? Depending on the combined answers to these questions – explicit or implicit, well thought through or merely perceptible from particular academic policy practices – there arose a broad spectrum of strategies and (self)-positioning in the process of institutionalization of women‟s and gender studies. In this way, researchers who consciously identified themselves with the agenda of liberal westernization were equally conscious in making use of the higher chances of institutionalization of women‟s and gender studies through the shadow network of private universities under US/Anglo-Saxon hegemony, though not always successfully. For other researchers, collaboration with initiatives and programs of gender studies that were unambiguously linked to the transnational hegemonic interests in functionalizing gender studies and gender research in no way meant that they identified themselves with this context. In a few rare cases there were researchers who strove to use their very collaboration with such programs to develop a (gender-focused) scholarly critique of this hegemonic configuration. Other researchers again, concerned with socially critical gender studies in general and hegemony-critical gender studies in particular, starting from a critique of the hegemonic configuration of the period or whatever other reasons, resorted to other strategies of institutionalization. Some, for example, chose the stony and often highly bureaucratic path of institutionalization of gender studies in the old-established institutions of state education. Like many other researchers who were active in this part of the university landscape for other reasons, they encountered manifold forms of resistance, behind which were hidden, in various combinations, rejection of the (academically) critical potential of gender studies, die-hard male and professional power interests, and resistance to new dominant structures in the form of “westernization through gender studies”. In a small number of countries, particularly socially and hegemony-critical researchers strove to establish relatively autonomous extra-university research and study centers. A very differently oriented group of researchers were concerned, in their efforts to promote and institutionalize gender studies, first and foremost with the positioning of specific, and in some cases relatively narrowly defined themes and projects in given institutional frameworks. Others again, in 12 contrast, put thematic orientation in second place to efforts to achieve or use institutional room for maneuver so as to be able to place gender researchers in institutions at all. Another equally important group of researchers, relatively independent of the institutional context, were primarily concerned with content agenda setting, striving to prioritize specific Central and East European/post-Soviet problems or Central and East European/post-Soviet experiences as a startingpoint for anti-hegemonic or socially critical gender studies. All these strategies, which were hardly or no longer at all based on the institutions of the shadow network, yielded different, and more or less far-reaching, results in different parts of the Central and Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union region. II.2 The increasing regionalization of state higher education policies The listing of all the different variations and options that were used in the second half of the nineties in order to deal with the hegemonic configuration already begins to touch on the second important element of developments during this period. In the still dominant public sector of education there occurred, in comparison to the first half of the decade, a rather more substantial establishment of women‟s and gender studies in university teaching and research.30 This development took place in part in quite different ways, and in part in very different academic and political contexts from the parallel, and in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, much more emphatic boom of gender studies in the private shadow network of higher education. In the state-financed sector of higher education, the breakthrough of gender studies occurred first and foremost as the appearance of a growing number of gender studies courses in the curricula of universities. In the University of Latvia in Riga, the teaching of gender studies began in 1995.31 Mária Adamik of the Institute for Social Policy and Social Work of the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest concluded that in Hungary by the middle of the 1990s it was “appreciably easier to move on matters of gender studies in universities”. Courses that gave a central role to gender issues were taught in the capital, as well as in Szeged and other places in the academic year 1994-95.32 Since 1994, the focus on gender at the University of Ljubljana, where it had had a longer initial history, was systematical incorporated into university teaching, starting in the Faculty of Social Work, with a substantial course entitled “Women and Men in Social Work”.33 The Bulgarian Women‟s The factual information provided here regarding developments in this period, unless otherwise specified, are taken from Gender Studies & Women‟s Studies Directory. Countries of Central & Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union & Mongolia. Ed. Open Society Institute – Network Women‟s Program, Budapest 1999. 31 http://www.zenskestudie.edu.yu/wgsact/latvia/lv-cgs.html, 25/03/2004. 32 Interview with Mária Adamik, 24/3/2004. 33 Mojca Urek, Women and Men in Social Work. A Gender Course at the Faculty of Social Work in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In: The Making, note 5 above, 46-49. 30 13 History Group has held courses on gender history at the Center for Theory and History of Culture at the University of St. Kliment Ohridski in Sofia since 1998.34 That women‟s and gender studies have been able gain a better foothold in state universities in these and other countries since the middle of the nineties is, at an institutional level, thanks first and foremost to the reforms undertaken to restructure curricula according to western models. In some countries, competing orientations towards the US system or the imported patterns of (west) European style university education could be observed. In this phase, the flourishing teaching activities received in some cases financial support from the local Open Society Institute and/or its Higher Education Support Program HESP, such as the Budapest Interdisciplinary Lecture Series in Gender Studies described below.35 In other cases, the teaching of gender studies developed through cooperation with individual universities engaged in women‟s and gender studies in particular EU countries. Elsewhere their success was due largely to civil society organizations, and remained in part closely connected to these origins. Only some of these organizations pursued a clearly defined feminist agenda or one that was overtly based on a politicization of the “gender question”, such as, in Budapest for example, the “Feminist Network” founded in 1990/91. Many organizations emphasized rather from the outset their character as information or study centers. This was true for the rapidly international famous Prague Gender Studies Center, led by Irina Siklová, which began to offer or initiate courses in gender studies in various Czech universities as early as 1993. Another example is the Romanian Society for Feminist Analyses AnA, which has also been involved in university teaching since 1997. Besides this, from the middle of the nineties, researchers became increasingly involved, both within their own universities and beyond, in creating networks for the teaching of women‟s and gender studies. One such example is the Interdisciplinary Research Group for Women‟s Studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań in Poland. The Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest held a five-year lecture series, starting in 1993, for which participants regularly received certificates for their involvement. The individual lectures were given by a wide range of experts from academia, civil society organizations and governmental institutions.36 In former Yugoslavia, the teaching of women‟s and gender studies remained mostly limited to non-university structures. The principal institutions involved included the Belgrade Women‟s Studies Center, founded in 1992, which has held its own courses in gender studies since 1998, and the Center for Women‟s Studies in Zagreb, founded in 1995. In Novi Sad in the beginning of 1997 the non-university Initiative Women‟s Studies and Research http://www.historians.ie/women/Newsletter%2034%20Bulgaria.htm; 19/05/2005. Interview with Mária Adamik, 24/3/2004. 36 Interview with Mária Adamik, 24/3/2004. 34 35 14 began a two-year “alternative, academic, educational, interdisciplinary” course of studies.37 In Romania, a specific configuration of factors – including comparatively highly developed extra-university initiatives around gender studies – led to a situation where complete programs of gender studies were successfully established in state universities before the turn of the millennium.38 The reasons why the progress of gender studies in the former Soviet Union – with the exception of the Baltic States – encountered far more serious obstacles than Central and Eastern Europe not only in the late nineties but well into the new millennium, had to do first and foremost with the persistence in the higher education system of institutional structures from the Soviet times. In countries like Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, and in the Russian Federation itself, as well as in Central Asia, the curricula in undergraduate studies remained very strictly regulated by centrally controlled state standards that prescribed a very high contingent of mandatory courses. Institutional innovation could in practice only be initiated by ministries of education. Accordingly, courses in the area of gender studies were, if at all, only offered in the framework of optional subjects available in the fourth or fifth year of study, or in graduate studies. Doctoral students had and still have to fight with a trend towards marginalization arising, among other factors, from strict and again centrally controlled publication requirements. Journals from the field of gender studies are not included in the list of permitted journals, and publications with a focus on gender are rarely accepted in these official approved journals.39 In part, and in some countries of the former Soviet Union more than others, this persistent passive opposition to radical institutional reforms of the higher education system constituted a form of resistance against western hegemonic efforts or “westernization tendencies”. The hesitant denationalization and deburocratization of higher education thus functioned as a form of institutional shield against these influences. This is clearly a defensive strategy and clearly highly imperfect as such. It would be an interesting research topic in itself to investigate how state educational policies in the separate post-Soviet countries positioned themselves in relation to gender studies. From an institutional point of view, in the post-Soviet region in the second half of the nineties there was, the above described basic configuration notwithstanding, a perceptible tendency, albeit hesitant, to integrate gender studies into the curriculum. One example worthy of mention here is the Technical University of Saratov in the south of Russia where gender studies have had a secure place in the disciplines of social work and sociology since 1996. The Ivanovo Center for Gender Studies at the State University of Ivanovo 300 km north east of Moscow, initially created as a research center and civil society organization, was also active Svenka Savić, “Mileva Maric Ajnstaijn“ [Serbian mathematician and physicist, first wife of Albert Einstein, SZ] Women‟s Studies and Research, Novi Sad, Manuscript, 2003. 38 See also the following chapter and the study by Theodora-Eliza Văcărescu, The Short Exultant Life of Gender Studies in Romania. Gender Studies and Curriculum Transformation. http://www.ceu.hu/crc/crc_resfel_draft2006.html (restricted access).My thanks to Theodora Văcărescu for making available to me a printed version of this document.. 39 According to the agreement of the participants of the CRC Workshop 2004. Notes, see 15 above. 37 15 in teaching in the second half of the decade. Here as also with the Kharkov Center and elsewhere in the post-Soviet region (as well as support from private finance) an decisive role was played by a important individual near the top of the university hierarchy who supported the initiative, and who at the same time had good connections in regional or national education politics.40 All in all, across Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, driven by an “informal association of gender enthusiasts and individual specialists” women‟s and gender studies made significant inroads into traditional institutions and disciplines in numerous “provincial” universities.41 In Central Asia, a first serious attempt to introduce women‟s and gender studies into the framework of academic institutions can be identified in 1997. At an international level, this development formed a part of a strategic initiative of the UNDP in the area of gender and development that was started at this time targeted at the entire Central Asian sub-region. In connection with this, in Kazakhstan preparations were initiated for the first series of lectures on gender studies mentioned earlier. In Kyrgyzstan in 1998, at the Kyrgyz-Russian (Slavic) University a chair in Gender Policy of Human Rights was established.42 These tendencies and initiatives were a part of a broader redefinition of the position of Central Asia in the international system. This part of the world had since the mid-nineties been categorized by major international organization like the UN and the World Bank as part of the developing world and deliberately incorporated into the according international policy model. In this way in this part of the former Soviet Union there rapidly began to develop a pattern of internationally promoted activities related to women‟s and gender studies typical of those countries or continents generally classified as “Third World”.43 As will be shown below, this was to have very ambivalent consequences for the subsequent fortunes of women‟s and gender studies in higher education. All in all, the institutionalization of women‟s and gender studies in state universities in the second half of the nineties made significant progress in Central and Eastern Europe and less significant progress in the former Soviet Union, but did not lead, unlike in the shadow network of elite private educational institutions under US/Anglo-Saxon hegemony, either in undergraduate or graduate studies, to the creation of self-supporting programs of study awarding their own degrees.44 The number of institutionalized centers for gender research in state universities in the same period, however, increased appreciably . This was particularly true for the Baltic States (Estonia: Unit of Gender Studies, University CRC Workshop 2004. Notes, see 15 above. Julija Khmelevskaja, Olga Nikonova, Gender Studies in the Russian Provinces. In: L‟Homme. Z.F.G. 14, 2 (2003), 357-365, 358, as well as internet addresses given in this article. 42 Interview with Shakirova, as above 25; http://www.undp.uz/GID/eng/index.html, and related links, 26/03/2004; Isakulova/Shishkaraeva, Gender Aspects, as above 18. 43 Various information on the gender-political consequences of this change can be found in Isakulova/Shishkaraeva, Gender Aspects, see above 18. 44 Cf. below for the appearance of such a program in Romania in 1998. 40 41 16 of Tartu, founded 1995, Women‟s Studies Center, Tallinn Pedagogical University, 1995; Latvia: Center for Gender Studies; University of Latvia, Riga, Faculty of Foreign Languages 1998; in Lithuania there appeared in 1997 a second academic center in the form of the Women‟s Studies Center of the University of Siauliai) and those parts of central and Eastern Europe that bordered on the European Union (Poland: Center for Social and Legal Studies on the Situation of Women, University of Warsaw, with a post-diploma program in gender studies from 1997, for which some of the students had to pay tuition fees; Czech Republic: from 1998 the first academic Centre for Gender Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts of the Charles University took over the agenda of the earlier civil society organization, the Prague Gender Studies Center.) III. The Millennium and beyond: an unholy trinity The millennium in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union signaled a shift to the third phase of the post-socialist development of women‟s and gender studies, a phase which has still not come to a close today. This period was marked an increasing diversification both of the university landscapes and of the hegemonic configuration(s), as well as the stabilization of a changed hegemonic configuration in one of the three now clearly distinguishable sub-regions. In consequence, trends in the institutionalization of women‟s and gender studies became themselves highly diversified. III.1 The “EU-ization” of Central and Eastern Europe In Central and Eastern Europe, and in particular in the EU “eastern expansion zone”, the development of women‟s and gender studies has been and continues to a large, perhaps decisive, extent to be influenced by the dynamics of “Europeanization”, or more exactly “EU-ization of public higher education. This process has been accompanied by an institutional opening-up of higher education. This is principally due to the so-called “Bologna Process” initiated by the Bologna declaration of 1999, which targets particularly the standardization of structures and regulation mechanisms of higher education, increased mobility of students and faculty, inter-institutional cooperation (dual and joint degrees), and across-the-board introduction of a shortened undergraduate education and a medium-level graduate education (separate BA and MA courses of study).45 The EU-wide transformation and standardization of higher education, however, goes far beyond these institutional elements of the Bologna Process. The creation of a European area of higher education is intended to serve “in particular… [the] objective of increasing the international competitiveness of the European system of higher education” so as to promote the latter “world-wide”. It also aims to provide a “key way to promote citizens‟ mobility and employability”. All EU member states – as well as prior to accession the new member states of the 17 eastern expansion zone – have recognized these goals,46 although there is no legal obligation attached to it. Policies informed by these ambitions have contributed, in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, to the liberalization of this sector of education, the implementation of competitive management and financial mechanisms, and to the dismantling of institutional and state barriers to the development of the private education sector.47 These processes have led to a rapid acceleration of the reform processes in higher education in the new EU member states of Central and Eastern Europe. This change has gone hand in hand with a clear shift in the hegemonic configuration that has hitherto partly determined and continues to determine the fortunes and development of women and gender policies in general and the institutionalization of gender studies in higher education in particular. The “EU-ized” hegemonic configuration materialized through a range of decisions of the EU taken at the highest levels. These began with the Copenhagen resolutions of 1993 and were, as far as higher education was concerned, largely concluded with the beginnings of the Bologna Process in 1999. The resolutions of the EU Copenhagen summit created the central political foundation for the policy of eastern enlargement as a whole. The European Council of the EU established on this occasion the objective of membership for the countries concerned, and at the same time welcomed their “efforts ... to ensure a rapid transition to a market economy”. Simultaneously, it laid down the requirements Central and Eastern European countries were to fulfill as follows: “Membership requires that the candidate country has achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities, the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union. … The European Council will continue to follow closely progress in each associated country towards fulfilling the conditions of accession to the Union and draw the appropriate conclusions.”48 With this decision the EU definitively determined the real cornerstones of its enlargement policy of the nineties: democracy, market economy and the adoption of the EU body of laws and stipulations, the so-called acquis communautaire, for the next decade and beyond comprised the non-negotiable foundation of accession negotiations with each of the Central and Eastern Europe countries. Just a few months after this resolution, the first applicants from Central and Eastern Europe rolled up (Hungary in March and Poland in April 1994). A few months before Copenhagen the EU had already internally, with the agreement of the notorious Central documents of the Bologna Process eg. http://www.aic.lv/ace/bologna/poldoc.html, 19/05/2005. The Bologna Declaration of 19 June 1999. http://www.bologna-berlin2003.de/pdf/bologna_declaration.pdf; 5/2/2007. 47 This can clearly be seen from, for example “The Bologna Declaration on the European Space for Higher Education. An Explanation”, prepared by the Confederation of EU‟s Rectors‟ Conferences and the Association of European Universities” and distributed by the European Commission. http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/educ/bologna/bologna.pdf, 2/2/2007. 48 European Council in Copenhagen 21-22 June 1993. Conclusions of the Presidency. http://ue.eu.int/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/72921.pdf; 13-14, 25/1/2007. 45 46 18 Maastricht criteria (ratified in May 1993), taken the first steps towards a united economic, monetary and foreign policy.49 The decisive step for gender policy and gender studies came a few years later, with the Amsterdam Treaty, signed in 1997 and ratified in 1999. This resolution, in the form of amendments to the EC treaty of 1951, introduced for the first time extensively interpretable provisions for the equal treatment of women and men in the basic legal framework of the community.50 Article 3 of the treaty has included since then a wide range of common policies of activities to be introduced (Article 2). In each of these areas, Article 3.2 states, “the Community shall aim to eliminate inequalities, and to promote equality, between men and women”.51 The Amsterdam Treaty thus marked the arrival of “gender mainstreaming”, as it had been worked out in global development and North-South politics, to the European Union.52 The community framework strategy for the promotion of equality between women and men originating from the European Commission for the period 2001 to 2005 set in stone that the “equal treatment legislation is a firmly established integral part of the acquis communautaire that countries applying for EU membership have to respect”.53 Among the “common policies or activities” that were to embrace gender mainstreaming at all levels, the Amsterdam Treaty enumerates “promotion of research” and “contribution to education and training of quality”. In this way it came to serve as an important point of departure for the dynamic realization of the common scientific and higher educational policy of the Community and the Bologna Process, initiated in 1999, which has since then been further extended and deepened at the highest EU level through several steps (Prague Communiqué 2001; Berlin Communiqué 2003; Bergen Communiqué 2005), and is still not completed. Actors in higher educational policy with an interest in women‟s and gender studies in the candidate countries of the eastern enlargement thus found themselves, even years before their actual entry, faced with a clearly-predetermined political configuration. This tight political triangle was composed of the liberal and competitive transformation and EU-ization of higher education in these countries, the closely-coupled affirmation of market economy and democracy, and the political recognition of the relevance of gender (as an equality issue) in education through which the legitimacy of women‟s and gender studies was in principle at least no longer in question. The three sides of this triangle of EUization were available in Central and Eastern Europe only as a package, and henceforth signaled the hegemonic configuration that these actors had in one way or another relate to. Hannes Hofbauer. Osterweiterung. Vom Drang nach Osten zur peripheren EU-Integration, Vienna 2003, Ch. 2. This required intensive lobbying by women‟s organizations. Claudia von Braunmühl, Gender Mainstreaming Worldwide. Rekonstruktion einer Reise um die Welt. In: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 30 (2001) 2, 183-201, here 192. 51 http://www.ena.lu/mce.cfm; http://europa.eu/scadplus/treaties/ecsc_en.htm; http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/equ_opp/treaty_en.html, all 24/1/2007. 52 Von Braunmühl, see above 51, 191. 53 http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/equ_opp/strategy/com2000_335_en.pdf; 24/4/2007. 49 50 19 As a result, the terms and dynamic of the institutionalization of women‟s and gender studies shifted in many respects. For one, the opening up of inherited structures of higher education now affected the higher education system as a whole and this process was unquestionably embedded in a variation of the “post-communist transition” which now increasingly had to be considered as a fait accompli. “Gender” thus to a large extent lost its function as one of a small number of selectively chosen, highly politically laden markers of this transition. As the accession process and then membership in the EU became a fact, a mixture of indifferent tolerance and persistent ignorance towards women‟s and gender studies became the norm in higher education. Open dismissal of gender studies per se as “foreign”, “liberal” or “western” are now in most countries to be found only in the ranks of right-wing and occasionally leftwing populism. Secondly, through this process of opening up of the whole system of higher education, the chances for the institutionalization of women‟s and gender studies have improved at least in principle. This has by no means, however, automatically been accompanied by a substantial expansion of the potential for development of a gender-related scholarly critique of “EU-ized” and local hegemonic interests and/or the real existing dynamic and results of the post-communist transition. On the one hand, the chances of combining gender-related and socially-critical interests were improved in principle. This was connected to the increasing legitimacy of a research focus on gender issues, and the embedding of gender into a much wider and more loosely defined spectrum of values and interests that found their place within the EU-ized hegemonic configuration. On the other hand, the “EU-ized” hegemonic triangle described above simultaneously developed a far more comprehensive influence and political and cultural “radiation” than the hegemonic configuration of the second half of the nineties. Topics, paradigms and dynamics of institutionalization that bore one of the many labels of the “EU-ized” hegemonic configuration surrounded the development of women‟s and gender studies like a dense, impenetrable thicket. There remained little space for a gender-specific critique of the politics of unequal local and EUwide dynamics of the eastern enlargement, the social and political economy of the EU, or its selfpositioning in the unequal global system. In the reality of institutionalization, the “EU-ization” of gender studies had an impact on various levels. The establishment of courses of study, particularly at MA and PhD level, based on inter-university cooperation (dual degrees, joint degrees) has gained increasing importance. All-EU regional diversification counts in this regards as an important requirement that applicants for EU research and cooperation support have to and want to meet. The involvement of partners from the “eastern enlargement zone” has by now become part of accepted etiquette, although hardly any initiatives for programs of this sort have so far come from the region itself, and thus universities from Central and 20 Eastern European countries are (still) rarely to be found coordinating such projects. The components of the promotion of student mobility do at least offer young gender researchers from Central and Eastern Europe extra opportunities. We certainly witness a certain valorization of gender-studies-related expertise and knowledge with reference to Central and Eastern Europe in the current context of inclusion or rather annexation of the region into the European Union. To what extent, however, this trend will become a long-term feature, and which scholarly perspectives will, in the process, shift to the center or the periphery of the field internationally, remains to be seen. One important institution that pursues its own kind of “EU-ization” of women‟s and gender studies is the gender studies network ATHENA (Advanced Thematic Network in Activities in Women‟s Studies in Europe) that by the end of 2006 had begun the third cycle of its activities. ATHENA has been supported within the respective Framework Programmes of the European Community for research and technological development throughout these circles. A second institution, the AOIFE (Association of Institutions for Feminist Education and Research in Europe), founded according to the appropriate EU guidelines in 1996, works in close cooperation with ATHENA. Since the beginning of the nineties, supported by a small number of other western gender studies programs, the Women‟s Studies Program at the University of Utrecht has played a significant role in the preparations for this “Europeanization” of women‟s and gender studies. ATHENA II (2003-2006) collaborated, before their actual accession in 2004 and 2007, with partners from all countries of the eastern enlargement zone as well as with institutions from Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia.54 In its publications and collaboration activities, ATHENA makes efforts to reduce the huge “gaps in our knowledges and on our bookshelves” that appear as regards countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Southern Europe and small countries in Europe generally.55 Leading figures within the (as yet?) western-dominated ATHENA network seek to contribute to overcoming gender-studies-related hierarchies in Europe and creating more inclusive European women‟s and gender studies as regards content. There has, however, been rather less reflection on the political function of the EU-driven Europeanization of academic identities and collaboration, on the current policy of the EU in the world, or on the role of the hegemonic configuration that was inherent in the dynamic of the eastern enlargement in the process of the institutionalization of gender studies. From the beginning, activities aimed at the institutionalization of women‟s and gender studies formed the focus of the Europeanization activities of ATHENA. One of the two working groups financed by AOIFE in contrast was and still is significantly less actively represented in the enlargement zone. Janette van der Sanden, Truth or Dare? Fifteen Years of Women‟s Studies at Utrecht University, Utrecht 2003, 72-75; AOIFE Annual Report 2000. Written by Elisabeth K. Lorenzen, January 2001; http://www.athena2.org/public/partners.php, 25/3/2004 and 4/2/2007; http://www.let.uu.nl/aoife/MEMBERLIST.HTML; 4/2/2007. 55 Gabriele Griffin, Rosa Braidotti (eds), Thinking Differently. A Reader in European Women‟s Studies, London 2002. The quoted material is from the preface, 2. 54 21 the first SOCRATES grant that ATHENA received within the Fifth Framework Programme (19992002) of the Research Directorate-General of the European Commission for the period 1999-2001, was concerned with the development of a European Women‟s Studies Curriculum. Since 2006, the Network is again concentrating, in the third round of its EU-financed activities, within one of three focuses, on curriculum development, the aim of which is to produce “innovative teaching material, new modules, co-taught classes and joint programmes, at BA, MA and doctoral levels.” The “official recognition of joint degrees” on all three levels is the main purpose of the activities.56 In the coming years, then, the ATHENA Network can be expected to have an important role for in building up and developing cross-institutional gender studies programs. ATHENA is not however, the only motor driving this trend. Just a few years after the beginning of the new millennium – supported by EU funds – a considerable number of such programs are under development, including GEMMA (Joint European Master Degree in Women‟s and Gender Studies), with the participation of the Polish University of Łódź and the Budapest CEU, as well as MATILDA (Joint European Master Degree in Women‟s and Gender History), involving the St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia and Budapest CEU.57 This kind of initiative can build in Central and Eastern Europe on the wave of new gender studies programs that appeared around the millennium thanks principally to the EU-ization of the higher education system of these countries as part of the Bologna Process in the late nineties. The considerable differences that existed between the higher education systems in the different countries played a major part in determining the paths and results of this wave of institutionalization. The Masaryk University in Brno in the Czech Republic, for example, has had since the academic year 2004-05 an independent three-year „half‟ BA degree course in Gender Studies. This degree is housed in the Faculty of Social Sciences, and must be studied together with a second main subject from those on offer in this faculty. The rapid establishment of the program was due to the combination of a number of factors. The dean seized the opportunity to use EU funds to convert the traditional education system into the three stage BA/MA/PhD system. A group of young, ambitious academics from different backgrounds, some of whom had degrees in gender studies, had already founded a Gender Center NGO in 2000 and were readily available. The relevant ministry quickly authorized the introduction of gender studies at BA level as part of the EU-funded reform. Finally, the prompt accreditation of the new http://www.athena2.org/index.php?pageid=2; http://www.athena2.org/index.php?ac_id=14&athena_template=custom_module_2&pageid=6; http://www.athena2.org/private/archive.php?action=all&result_set=0 – link to “Annex I. Output structure Athena 3”; all 4/2/2007. 57 http://www.ugr.es/~gemma/; http://www.dieuniversitaet-online.at/beitraege/news/matilda-joint-master-in-women-s-and-genderhistory/66.html; both 4/2/2007. 56 22 program was thanks in part to the fact that the plan for the development of the program fitted in with the policy interests of the ministry particularly in the area of gender mainstreaming in the Czech Republic and the requirements of the EU. According to some who were involved in the Gender Center NGO, and who had hoped to start by creating an MA program, the fact that the new program is in fact a course of BA studies is “purely accidental.58 At the same time as this was happening in Brno, in Hungary, where there were also plentiful EU funds available for the conversion to a BA/MA system, efforts to initiate and fund the introduction of BA programs in gender studies were made practically impossible by the specific submission characteristics of the education ministry and the highly centralized and hierarchical functioning of the accreditation system.59 In Romania, in contrast, again due to a peculiar configuration of interests and institutional structures, there was a boom in institutionalization around the millennium. The process of Europeanization of the higher education system here was not so closely related to EU higher education policy as such, and – for the time being – remained closely entangled with continued extensive support for gender studies through organizations such as particularly those of the Soros Network. Among the other international actors, several west European universities – or their women‟s studies lobbies – continued to play a key role in the institutionalization of gender studies. Local and national factors were, however, most decisive in shaping successful strategies. Romania has, by Central and Eastern European standards, long pursued a fairly liberal higher education policy in issues of university autonomy.60 This liberal policy, like in the US higher education system, makes it possible to establish courses and programs of study largely independent of ministerial control. In addition to this, following the establishment of gender studies in the country in the early nineties, a large number of highly motivated researchers were available to make the most of these advantageous conditions to advance the institutionalization of gender studies. The Interdisciplinary Group for Gender Studies at the Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca was efficient and successful in introducing a two-semester MA program with the title “Gender, Differences and Inequalities” as well as a four-semester undergraduate degree entitled “Gender, Society, and Culture”. Financial support was provided by HESP and the initiative as a whole was “professionally… assisted” by the Research Centre for Women‟s Studies at the University of Sussex, Brighton, in England, and the Centre for Women‟s Studies an the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands.61 The Faculty of Political Sciences at the National Academy for Political and Administrative Sciences in Bucharest has since 1998 Since 2006 Masaryk University has been a member of AIOFE. http://fss.muni.cz/gs/; 19/05/2005; http://gender.fss.muni.cz/english.php, 4/2/2007; Notes from the CRC Workshop 2004, see 15. 59 At the same time, gender researchers in Hungary were agreed that their interests focused on the development of MA level programs. 60 http://www.bologna-berlin2003.de/en/national_reports/index.htm; 15/1/2007. 61 Interdisciplinary Group for Gender Studies (leaflet); and www.gender.salve.ro. 58 23 run an independent three-semester MA Program in Gender Studies, developed in close cooperation with the NGO AnA. The conjunction of a variety of mutually reinforcing interests led to its creation: the renowned researcher Mihaela Miroiu led the program and was at the same time dean of the Faculty of Political Sciences. Two ministries encouraged civil servants from the field of education and labor market policy to participate in the courses of the new program. The program was supported by HESP and a British university.62 And finally, Miroiu‟s husband, who occupied a high position in the hierarchy of the education ministry, also had a decisive influence on the official recognition of the program.63 A further degree program in gender studies was established a few years ago in Timişoara.64 In the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, (until 2003, then since June 2006, with the withdrawal of Montenegro from the union, Serbia and Montenegro), the green light for the substantial institutionalization of gender studies in universities came only after the NATO attacks of 1999, and thus henceforth with the way clear to “send Western democracy” (with an American accent) “through gender”. The Belgrade Women‟s Center has succeeded, since 2001, in establishing gender studies at graduate level in the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Belgrade. Starting in the academic year 2003-04, with the support of the Open Society Foundation, the entire non-university study program of the Center were relocated in the Faculty.65 In the same year, a complete two-year MA degree in gender studies was created at the University of Novi Sad. The body responsible for the program, whose students have to pay tuition fees, is the Center for Gender Studies, founded in 2003. An important factor in the successful institutionalization of the program was the involvement of Fuada Stanković, an academic with long experience in multiculturally-oriented US gender studies, in the administration of the university, and Svenka Savić, a scholar of similar experience, in the organization of the MA program.66 In the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, the first MA program in gender studies in the country was launched at the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the St. Kliment Ohridski University in the academic year 1999-2000.67 The identifiable dominant tendency towards EU-ization of higher education systems in the Central and Easter European enlargement zone – and the forces that seek to draw in further countries of the region – is not always necessarily accompanied by a full retreat of the private shadow network of private institutions and programs under US/Anglo-Saxon hegemony. Developments in this sector nonetheless http://www.anasaf.ro/english/index(eng).html, 19/05/2005; Notes from the CRC Workshop 2004, see 15. Văcărescu, see 39, referring to her Interview with Miroiu. 64 Notes from the CRC Workshop 2004, see 13. 65 Daša Duhaček, The Belgrade Women‟s Studies Centre – The Next Stage? In: The Making, see. 5, 41-45, here see 41, 45. 66 University of Novi Sad. Association of Centres for Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Studies and Research. University Centre for Gender Studies. Profile (copy); Notes from the CRC Workshop 2004, see 15 67 http://www.historians.ie/women/Newsletter%2034%20Bulgaria.htm, 19-05-2005. 62 63 24 show signs of crisis, or are at least uncertain and inconsistent. In 2004, for example, the gender studies programs at the University of Warsaw and the Charles University in Prague had to come to terms with the fact that the current era of financial support from major US foundations was nearing the end, and it was highly unlikely that further financial support would be forthcoming. George Soros, to name another example, had already announced at the beginning of the decade the progressive financial withdrawal of the Open Society Institute across Central and Eastern Europe (with the partial exception of former Yugoslavia) by 2010. The most important institution of the shadow network of private/US higher education in the eastern enlargement zone, CEU in Budapest, meanwhile pursues a strategy of double establishment. Recently the fully accredited US university has, after long and difficult preparation, also achieved full accreditation as a Hungarian higher educational institution, in this way gaining equal access to the higher educational system of the EU and its countries.68 The Department of Gender Studies has reacted to the demands and possibilities of dual US and Hungarian accreditation with a strategy of expansion of study possibilities, aimed at facilitating its close incorporation in the European Higher Education Area.69 III.2 The Fight for Russia and its allies and the developmentalization of Central Asia In the post-Soviet space, the years either side of the millennium were marked on the one hand by continuity and on the other by important changes. Rigid educational standards laid down by the state and central control of curricula continued to obstruct a more substantial institutionalization of gender studies in the non-private sector of higher education. At the same time, in Russia and the western successor states of the Soviet Union, state or regional educational bureaucracies did become increasingly involved in the subject area. Many academics, however, have expressed considerable concern and disappointment at the content and theoretical level, for example, of the text books that have appeared as a result. These concentrate, according to the general agreement of some of the participants at a workshop of the Curriculum Resource Center of CEU in Budapest in 2004, in a narrow manner on questions of family, social policy and the labor market, and present a view of women‟s issues that is entirely outdated.70 The wealth of, and also debate and divergence between, the different perspectives and “schools” of gender studies that have developed in Russia and other successor states of the Soviet Union are quite simple ignored.71 These problems notwithstanding, the spread of gender studies continues, particularly in the form of new courses in more universities. http://www.ceu.hu/introduction.html#7; 4/2/2007. See links under “Graduate Programs” on http://www.gend.ceu.hu/; 4/2/2007. 70 Notes from the CRC Workshop 2004, see 15. 71 A certain impression of these debates and insights can be gained from, for example articles published in 2003 by Almira Ousmanova, Anna Temkina and Elena Zdravomyslova, and Irina Zherebkina in: Studies in East European Thought. Special Issue: Gender and Culture Theory in Russia Today, 55, 1 (2003). 68 69 25 The first of two important changes in the process of institutionalization of gender studies in the former Soviet Union since the millennium, and specifically since 11 September 2001, has to do with the shift or expansion of the geographical focus of many activities of non-European international actors in matters related to gender studies in Central Asia, the Caucasus and other southern countries of the former Soviet Union. Here the deployment of gender studies in the service of geo-strategically motivated policies of “keeping in the western orbit”72 has moved prominently into the foreground once again. It is particularly actors with US backgrounds that have increasingly focused their attention on Central Asia and other southern countries of the former Soviet Union. On the part of the Soros Network, the Network Women‟s Program, using the Women‟s Information Consultative Center founded 1995 in Kiev as its headquarters, has since 1999 conducted its “Empowering Education” program, targeted not only at higher education, in Central Asia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Ukraine and Lithuania. The three-year long program “Gender Studies Development in the Newly Independent States”, also organized by the Network Women‟s Program of the Open Society Institute, deals with in-service training and support for the research activities of scholars. “The Program”, it is stated, “aims to transform higher education through the integration of gender studies”.73 A major international Conference “Gender Education: Theory and Practice” with a focus not limited to higher education took place in 2003 in Uzbekistan. The over one hundred participants came from Central Asia, the Caucasus, Mongolia, Moldova, Ukraine and Russia, and the Network Women‟s Program, the “key-resource persons” being from the Moscow Center for Gender Studies, the Consultative Center in Ukraine and the Kharkov Center.74 With the support of HESP and the Network Women‟s Program, the first summer school for gender studies was held in Central Asia in 2002 and the first student conference in 2001.75 At the same time, the activities of major international organizations flourished in Central Asia, particularly those of the UNO and its sub-organizations concerned with the topic of gender, as well as the World Bank. As part of their developmentalist and policy-oriented activities, these organizations pursued a multi-facetted women‟s and gender policy agenda.76 Although the academic institutionalization of gender studies was in no way a priority of their activities, these international organizations nevertheless certainly relied on the relevant academic expertise in implementing their projects and programs. This was equally true of the governments of the Central Asian countries, which have had to submit regular reports, action plans and programs on gender policy in order to fulfill the requirements of As formulated by Frederick Cooper, Decolonialization and African Society. The Labor Question in French and British Africa, Cambridge 1996, in his Analysis of the Process of Decolonization in Africa. 73 http://www.soros.org/initiatives/women/events/school_20050309; 19/05/2005. 74 Interview with Shakirova, see 25; http://www.soros.org/initiatives/women/focus_areas/c_education; http://www.soros.org/initiatives/women/focus_areas/initiatives/women/events/gender_2; both 26/3/2004; http://www.civilsoc.org/nisorgs/ukraine/kyiv/womn-icc.htm, 19/05/2005. 75 HESP documentation of their supported Summer Schools. My thanks to Mariann Jó for making this document available. 76 A comprehensive overview of the relevant information can be found at the Central Asian Gateway. Web site on Development Issues, http://www.cagateway.org/ , key words “gender” and “gender studies”, 16/05/2005. 72 26 the international organizations and conventions that they have joined. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, there have been efforts since 2002, initiated by state institutions concerned with gender issues and higher education in close cooperation with international organizations, to improve higher education in the area of gender studies. In 2003 the Soros Foundation Kyrgyzstan and the UNDP Program on Social Governance provided financial support for this initiative.77 In the former capital of Kazakhstan, Almaty, a Center for Gender Studies has been opened at the Al-Farabi Kazakh State National University with the support of UNESCO.78 With all this, gender studies in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the other countries of the southern former Soviet Union have experienced less of a substantial institutionalization in the form of independent degree or study programs in state universities, and more a development boost at the level of networking, as well as in the publications, teaching activities and policy-oriented research of numerous individual scholars.79 A second important development influencing the fortunes of the institutionalization of gender studies in an increasing number of countries across the former Soviet Union stems from the various waves of the struggle between the liberal-democratic forces in the West and in the relevant countries, on the one hand, and local regimes potentially or actively opposing westernization or pursuing political autonomy on the other. In this debate, policies connected to higher education and behavior towards international and western NGOs – which are active in this area and therefore also in matters of the institutionalization of gender studies – have played an important role, both symbolically and politically. One specific example is the forced closure by the Belarusian authorities of the European Humanities University (EHU) in Minsk in the summer of 2004. President Lukashenko officially justified the step as follows: “We will educate our elites and our future leaders ourselves in Belarusian institutions of higher education. We neither accept nor tolerate that Belarus should be coerced, in whatever form or direction”. The EHU, in contrast, was accused of striving to train an elite that would “lead Belarus towards the West”. The massive international protests in the West against this measure involved numerous important institutions, including the Council of Europe. With enormous support, particularly from those foundations supporting the EHU, the EHU-International was rapidly created, a virtual distance university in exile, based in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.80 The McArthur Foundation made a considerable financial contribution to this project. These funds are to be used, among other things “to Isakulova/Shishkaraeva, Gender Aspects, see 18. My thanks to Svetlana Shakirova for this information. http://www.unesco.kz/?lang=§or=®ion=&newsid=1449&announce=, 5/2/2007. 79 Cf. also interview with Shakirova, see 25. 80 www.ehu-international.org provides a comprehensive description of the events, protests and various other reactions in English language. My thanks to Tamás Krausz for the translation of the explanation given by President Lukashenko, which was only available in Russian on this website. 77 78 27 strengthen the university‟s PhD and Gender Studies programs”.81 The master‟s program of the Centre for Gender Studies continues to accept new cohorts of students and since 2006 EHU is accredited as a Lithuanian university.82 It remains to be seen how the geopolitically and economically motivated struggle over the relationship of various countries of the former Soviet Union towards the West will influence, in other instances, the future of the institutionalization of gender studies in this part of the world. So long as higher education remains a domain for this symbolic and political struggle about westernization and “opening up” to the free market, gender studies cannot avoid continually trying to come to terms with the role ascribed to it as a “symbolic marker”. *** In many countries of the former Soviet Union, the institutionalization of gender studies has been trapped in a not always happy alliance with the often contested westernization of the education system and its simultaneous reform in the direction of the “entrepreneurial university”. The same is true, in other ways, for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which are increasingly bound up in the process of EU-ization of higher education policy. So long as policies of westernization or EU-ization continue to dominate, this configuration is undoubtedly beneficial for the institutionalization of gender studies. If, however, one looks for the development of gender studies perspectives that address not only the inequality of the sexes and of gender relations, but also the inequality of relations between the West and the “other half” of Europe, as well as the non-European successor states of the former Soviet Union, such optimism is far less appropriate. Yet such a double critical agenda setting is by no means ruled out by the existence of the not always amicable alliance described above. Once the context of international inequality both within and beyond Europe in research and teaching is made explicit, commitment towards women‟s and gender studies in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has much better chances of realizing this double critical potential and of combining gender critique and social critique of past and present of Central and Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space. Translated from German by John Harbord 81 82 http://www.macfound.org/announce/press_releases/1_20_2005.htm; 28/4/2005. http://www.gender-ehu.org/?137_1; http://www.ehu-international.org/chronicles/chronicles_eng.html; both 5/2/2007. 28