The long history of Women’s Studies in Canada is often traced back to the University of British Columbia’s non-credit Women’s Studies course (“The Canadian Woman: Our Story”) in the early 1980s. The (her)story continues through the founding of women’s studies programs across Canada and the 1982 establishment of the Canadian Women’s Studies Association. This month, the association (now known as Women and Gender Studies et recherches feministes), is in its thirty-seventh year of operations, and is holding its annual conference at the Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of British Columbia.

The ups and downs of women’s studies in Canada can be traced through the publications in the archive. For example, an article on the cover of the March 7, 1985 issue of Otherwise describes a continuing threat facing women’s studies programs: the cobbling together of a program by offering courses in a wide-range of departments and relying on a small number of precarious or overworked faculty to make it work, rather than allocating the faculty, space, and money it would take to have a department and degree that can stand on its own. This issue is also addressed in a longer article by Christa van Daele for Branching Out in 1978. Many women’s studies programs have done well in these environments—feminist activists and scholars seem to make the best stone soup. Yet, without committed resources, long-term planning and vision is difficult, as so much time must be spent trying to stay alive.

Some of the non-credit courses in the “Faculty of Extension” at the University of Alberta. From Womonspace News (February 1984)

The view of women’s studies as ephemeral—and therefore not necessitating substantial resources or capacity—may come from the longstanding view of women’s studies as a trend, aiming to address inequalities in the labour force and the home, and then be done with it. In an article for The Other Woman published in 1976, Cindy Wright takes on this question (“Women’s Studies: A Fad?”) by contesting claims that women’s studies courses are cozy seminars not worthy of those with intellectual prowess, and asserting that while women’s studies courses may work to improve understanding of women’s oppression, they must be part of a “political theory and way of living” not limited to universities.

A longer article by Leslie Campbell in an early issue of Herizons (September 1981) addresses the same concern about women’s studies as a fleeting field, identifying the potential of women’s studies classes to challenge historical understandings of knowledge as belonging to men. Like Cindy Wright, she argues that women’s studies  “aims at subverting the patriarchal order of our society by  increasing our awareness of it and its effects on our lives.” And decades later, feminists continue to question the bounds of women’s studies.

Image accompanying Leslie Campbell’s article for Herizons on the longevity of women’s studies.

The archive includes many more documents and publications which address the evolution of women’s studies in Canada over time. A few highlights:

• An article in Priorities: A Publication of the NDP Women’s Committee (BC) describing the work of founding the British Columbia Women’s Studies Association in 1974 and 1975. This article is particularly helpful in identifying the historically political nature of starting and maintaining women’s studies programs within the university. 
• An article by Catherine Ross for Cayenne (1986) describing an early experience teaching women’s studies in a Toronto high school (well before the Miss G Project took this issue on in Ontario) (and an editorial and article in Upstream in 1976 describing the Ottawa Board of Education’s failure to consider women’s studies in its high schools).
• An article in Pandora (Spring 1986) by Elizabeth Bosma congratulating Professor Angela Miles for receiving tenure, after she was refused despite her strong reputation and record of scholarship. The article draws attention to the historically precarious spaces occupied by women, and the politics involved in keeping feminists out of the ivory tower.