Conference to celebrate two decades in women's studies

The 20th year of the Gender and Women?s Studies Graduate Program is now being celebrated with a three-day event, the International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women?s Studies, between Oct 9 and 11 at ODTÜAnkara?s Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ) institutionalized feminism and began its quest to give master?s diplomas to people from different generations of feminists, post-feminists, and feminists-in-the-making 20 years ago when it began its Gender and Women?s Studies Graduate Program. The two-year, interdisciplinary program was established in the academic year of 1994-95 under a project funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The program examines issues of knowledge, society and gender within a feminist perspective, in the interests of contributing toward an understanding of the social position of women and the inequality between women and men, with a primary focus on the case of Turkey. Education, research and advocacy are the three pillars of the program that has a diverse curriculum, with courses like Gender and Peace, Women?s Experience with Hierarchy and the State, Economics of Gender, and Problems of Studying Women in Muslim Societies.

The 20th year of Gender and Women?s Studies Graduate Program is now being celebrated with a three-day event, the International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women?s Studies, between Oct. 9 and 11 at ODTÜ. The conference is set to provide a platform to discuss the formation and development of gender and women?s studies over the last two decades and the future of the discipline both in Turkey and globally. 

Gender and women?s studies is a relatively new but increasingly flourishing discipline, not only in terms of knowledge but...