or "through attitudes, tradition, and custom." On the other
hand, cultural institutions can be a spur to change. In the United
States, for example, women are now entering the ministry and
rabbinate in greater numbers. As they do so, they push a
conservative field into a recognition of the ways in which gender
bias has shaped religious institutions and symbols and into an
appreciation of women's spiritual experience. That field, as it
alters, will help its followers to do so as well.
International Achievements
Although this
publication is concerned with women's studies in the United States,
women's studies has emerged vigorously in Europe and in developing
countries throughout the world. Women's programs appeared in the
Caribbean, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Brazil, India,
Thailand, Bangladesh, Korea, Japan, Australia, and other countries
in the 1970s. The United Nations meetings for the International
Decade for the Advancement of Women—the first in Mexico City
in 1975, the second in Copenhagen in 1980, and the third in Nairobi
in 1985—accelerated the process. Preparing for the Copenhagen
gathering, a UNESCO-sponsored committee of experts concluded:
... we
recommend that UNESCO cooperate in the creation and development of
both women's studies programmes and research as part of university
curricula and in other relevant institutions.... Women in general
have suffered from injustice and from traditions that have hindered
their full... potential.... Programs for teaching and research in
women's studies are one of the means to securing women's complete
equality.
Many
structures of scholarship now exist in these countries: institutes,
programs, networks, national and regional associations,
publications, conferences, seminars, and courses; but their forms
and foci, shaped as they are by local and regional conditions,
differ from women's studies programs in the United States. In
developing countries