Phase 4: New Directions

Mariam Chamberlain and Alison Bernstein suggest that "the global reach of women's studies" is a major direction for the future as well as a new trend that constitutes the internationalization of women's studies. This thrust includes both the establishment of infrastructures for women's studies outside the United States and greater attention to global women's issues on the part of U.S.-based women's studies institutions and programs.

Global reach has been an important component of the black and third-world women's feminist agenda in the United States since the emergence of black women's studies and African diaspora studies. For example, Andrea McLaughlin, professor of humanities at Medgar Evers College, coordinates the pioneering International Cross-Cultural Black Women's Studies Summer Institute, which has met in London, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, the mainland United States, and Hawaii. The institute fosters international cooperation among women from economically developing nations, promotes peace, advocates for human rights, and provides opportunities for women of diverse cultures to exchange information, share experiences, identify resources, and build linkages.

It is also apparent that women's studies in the United States is becoming more international. Beginning in 1990, the women's studies program at Hunter College has offered two humanist-in-residence fellowships a year. Sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, the fellowships enable scholars to work for three years on projects related to gender and feminism in third-world contexts. Similarly, the Institute for Women's Policy Research in Washington, D.C., sponsored the "Third World Women's Policy Research Conference" in May 1992, which focused on the effects of migration and immigration trends on women, with a particular emphasis on race and ethnicity. Since 1992 was the 500th anniversary of the European "discovery" of the Americas, the conference reflected a feminist multicultural understanding of the factors that shape women's lives in the Americas. Bennett College also has women's studies programming with an international focus.

The expanding women's movement in the third world and Africa is also bringing fresh perspectives on such issues as structural adjustment, the debt crisis, domestic violence, reproductive rights, militarism, reproductive technologies,