The recently issued 13th UGC guidelines for the development of Women’s Study Centres for 2019 has sparked debate and protest on some crucial aspects of the same. In a memorandum submitted by the Indian Association of Women’s Studies (IAWS) to the UGC, grave concerns regarding funding have been raised. However, the inadequacy of the 13th plan is not limited to budgeting. Vague, rigid and overly simplistic as it is, the 2019 guidelines have retrograded and reduced Women’s Studies to a set of narrow goals rather than envisioning and mapping the future of an exciting and dynamic discipline.
Two broad contentions can be posed: firstly, with respect to the way stakeholders and objectives have been defined, and secondly, regarding the short-sighted nature of these objectives in light of the fund crunch.
The 12th UGC guidelines for 2012-2017, in its preamble, traces the history and evolution of Women Studies. It elaborates on how the focus has shifted from just women and there is increasing inclusion of “the lives of men, third genders and other groups marginalized on the basis of their sexual orientations.” At various points, it defines marginalized groups along the parameters of sex, caste, religion, economic class, sexuality, etc.
In effect, it allows and encourages flexibility and inclusivity within Women Studies. Largely, the guidelines are discipline-oriented and aim at ensuring that “…women studies as a discipline will constantly grow and gain greater heights and not suffer the bane of stagnation that may be seen elsewhere.”
The 13th plan defines its goal as “help(ing) India achieve her UN Sustainable Development Goal of Promoting Equality & Empowerment of Women,” which in light of globally acknowledged agendas, is a fair aim. However, the document, at no point, acknowledges the inherent value of the discipline and the research with which it has historically concerned itself. There are two disheartening implications of this vision.
Firstly, it takes away from the value of academia and basic research for the sake of enriching and evolving existing bodies of knowledge. The suggested focus areas of research in the 12th plan equally prioritise advocacy and specialised study, emphasising on their complementary nature. For instance, there is an emphasis on the need for continued study of the skewed sex ratio in India as well as Cultural Studies and the role of gender representation in media.
In essence, this discipline-oriented approach requires a gendered lens to look at all aspects of social life, not merely those which can be readily associated with some universally defined, tangible metrics of empowerment.
On the other hand, the 2019 guidelines define focus areas quite loosely. For instance, “conduct evidence-based research on ‘Women and Economic Development’” and “strengthen existing knowledge and build new knowledge on ‘Women in Indian Perspective’” are two proposed focus areas.
Can Women’s Studies Centres be burdened with both academic growth and advocacy when there is a paucity of funds? Of course not, and therefore, one must be prioritised above and over the other. The new guidelines make this prioritisation apparent. A striking theme consistent in the objectives of the 2019 plan is that of achieving ground-level awareness and change.
This might seem like a good idea, but some important considerations about the social sciences must be kept in mind. Social knowledge, unlike knowledge about the material world, does not compound with time. In simpler words, the social world is far too complex and our methods to study it are never sterile and free of bias. Hence, our methods and efforts to explore socially situated knowledge need to constantly evolve and keep up with the exponential rate of change in culture, politics and gender relations.
Therefore, any attempts to change the immediate circumstances for women that do not acknowledge the world those circumstances are contextualised in, will, at best, be short-sighted and have limited relevance, and at worst, be nominal and unproductive.
Moreover, in a scenario where the growth of the discipline is no longer legitimised as an end in and of itself, the stagnation that the 2012 guidelines feared is inevitable.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the question of who the discipline aims to empower is significant. The primary stakeholders for the 13th plan are women – cisgender, heterosexual women. “Women from Schedule Caste and Tribes, women with disabilities, women living in unsafe environments, exploited sex workers, women living in conflict areas, women in conflict with the law, homeless, destitute and abandoned women, uneducated & unskilled single women, elderly and sick women, etcetera.”
The mention of transgender individuals occurs once with respect to wage gaps, but nowhere else. Sexual orientation isn’t mentioned at all. While there was a lack of specific emphasis on intersex, transgender and homosexual individuals in the previous guidelines as well, one would expect the emphasis to increase rather than be eliminated altogether.
This is especially disappointing keeping in mind the Supreme Court ruling that decriminalised Section 377 last year, the Transgender Bill that was widely criticised and debated upon, and the global shift to more queer-inclusive discourse. We have slipped back to archaic times the 2012 guidelines talked about moving away from when women were the sole stakeholders in feminist discourse.
The second contention has to do with how the fund crunch will affect the realisation of these objectives, and more importantly, the teachers and students involved in this endeavour. The 12th plan states that “paucity of faculty and requirements of academic leadership are the two main structural challenges for these centres.”
The 2012 guidelines clearly acknowledge that one of the two major challenges faced by Women Study Centres has historically been their inability to “retain accomplished faculty due to career insecurities related to a Plan bound scheme.” It then went ahead and addressed this problem by “including permanency in faculty positions as required for each phase, payment of the Sixth Pay Commission scales and continuity from one Plan to another.”
Rather than focusing on measures to ensure long term sustainability of Women’s Studies Centres and improving incentive structures, the 2019 guidelines have done quite the opposite. Less funding means that professors will lose their jobs, MA, MPhil and PhD students will lose guidance and mentorship, and ongoing research projects will be disrupted. Moreover, if this problem is not addressed adequately and in time, the instability and underfunding of the Women’s Studies Programs will likely be a disincentive to professors and future students entering the field.
Meera Velayudhan, the president of IAWS and a senior policy analyst with the Centre for Development Studies, has commented that the fund cut will affect other departments as well. “The WSCs are entrusted with conducting gender sensitization activities, serving on sexual harassment committees, and also engaging in advising and implementing many legal and policy measures related to gender.”
Furthermore, the 2012 guidelines propose Administrative and Financial norms. These focus on how the capacities of the various centres and departments may be strengthened, what students pursuing different degrees must be exposed to within the discipline, and what streamlined efforts may be made in the area of research.
In contrast, the newest guidelines lack elaborate and strategic administrative and financial norms that these centres can follow for their optimal functioning. While there are some directions for training and research work within the subheading “Some Suggested Activities,” there are no details regarding the curriculum for undergraduate and postgraduate students, or how the reach of Women’s Studies can widen within academia. At different points, it is said that an “interdisciplinary” approach is necessary, but there are no concrete plans to that end. The “Extension Activities” mentioned are primarily with respect to the community at large.
Because this can be misconstrued as flexibility, it is important to note that there is no analysis of past failures and obstacles in the field, why these challenges exist, and how they can be overcome. This is especially problematic considering the change in the larger vision, scrapping of jobs and orientation of research, and can, therefore, cause major disruption.
Lastly, what is most startling about these guidelines above all other considerations is how major decisions have been made without any dialogue between the IAWS members and the UGC, as reported by Meera Velayudhan. This lack of transparency is presently being challenged by IAWS members.
The UGC has responded to the memorandum by issuing a circular stating that the guidelines released on March 12, which had proposed fund cuts, were “draft” guidelines. All stakeholders have been invited to submit suggestions until April 5.
Meera Velayudhan has commented that suggestions could have been taken earlier and that the consultative process between WSCs, IAWS, UGC and the government should be revived. Moreover, she believes that the UGC’s change in their stance has been in response to strong opposition in the media.