Women's Studies and Higher Education: The Troubled Journey

This paper reviews the evolution and development of women's studies in contemporary India from the 1970s to the present. It begins by highlighting the sense of crisis experienced at the very onset of women's studies due to the presence of multiple agendas and the lack of a history to build on. In spite of such problems, the end of the decade of the 1970s also witnessed con vergences between, for instance, sections of the women's movement and women's studies, while the subsequent decade of the 1980s was a time of institutional legitimisation and growth in the field. The essay concludes by recognising new sources of crisis as well as fresh challenges at the turn of the century.