Students protest cuts to Gender Studies : Melbourne Indymedia

As part of the 'Growing Esteem' strategy, the University of Melbourne is introducing 6 new generalist undergraduate degrees. Conspicuously absent from the list of majors available in the new Arts degree is Gender Studies, which, if the University is successful, will be available only as a minor.

Last Thursday 22nd March, close to 100 students protested outside Melbourne University's Academic Board, demanding that Gender Studies be retained as a major in the ‘new generation’ Arts degree. In the end, the only dissent to the passage of the new degrees came from student representatives on the Board. The University did its best to render protest invisible, shutting down the building from 9am, and keeping the windows and shutters closed despite the heat. This ultimately failed, and students remained outside the meeting for an hour and a half, keeping the protest clearly audible inside the meeting.

The University has argued that by retaining Gender Studies as a minor and postgraduate area of study, it is not seeking to abolish the field altogether. The Student Union's repsonse is that this justification is unsound - the continuation of an Honours/postgraduate program in gender studies is no compensation for its deletion as a major. Students are unlikely to feel confident in pursuing research in a field beyond their major area of study. This will leave few students to continue through to research programs. In a few years, the downturn in ‘research productivity’ will provide an excuse to cut out research possibilities altogether. No research will equate to no teaching staff, which will in turn justify the eradication of gender studies even as a minor.

The relegation of gender studies to the lowly status of a ‘minor’ area of study is not a politically neutral decision. Women’s Studies and Gender Studies are products of hard fought victories against fundamentally conservative institutions. These departments appeared as a result of student and community pressure, not the benevolence of university administration. Universities were forced to recognise their role as social institutions with an obligation to facilitate critique and dissent.

The gradual move towards corporate, rather than socially relevant, higher education has threatened women’s/gender studies departments and other potentially radical fields worldwide. In an under-funded higher education system geared towards profit, there is little room for academic programs that do not churn out productive workers and which threaten institutionalised sexism, racism and homophobia. Student Union womyn’s officer Erin Brown agrees, saying that “My involvement in gender studies is what first got me involved in feminist activism, and turned me from a scared little first year into an angry, lefty feminist. And I guess that answers the question of why the university is doing this – to shut down the feminist factory that is gender studies”.

Student representatives will meet with the Faculty of Arts next week to keep up the pressure. The Student Union is encouraging letters of support from other groups in order to publicly expose the University’s attacks on Gender Studies.