After the Cold War ended, international donors, national governments, and local feminist movements in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South Asia turned Women’s and Gender Studies into a global battlefield over what “gender” should mean. Existing histories of the post-Cold War era focus on politics and economics, ignoring how gender became a central category in research, advocacy, and policy. This project fills that gap by tracing how scholars, activists, and institutions—from the World Bank to grassroots nonprofits—used “women” and “gender” to shape transitions to liberal democracy and market economies. It treats Gender Studies not as a neutral academic field but as a contested space where different actors fought for influence. If successful, the research will produce a new global history, an open-access database of oral histories and archival sources, and educational materials—videos, podcasts, and training guides—co-created with nonprofits in Chile, Czechia, and India. These resources will support gender sensitisation training in those countries, giving practitioners concrete historical context for their work. For future researchers, the conserved archives will make visible how global power dynamics—not just local activism—shaped the field.
View original technical description
Globalising Gender Studies explores the gendered effects of transitions to liberal democracy and neoliberal market economies after the Cold War through a global history of Women’s & Gender Studies carried out in partnership with women’s studies centres and non-profit organisations in Eastern Europe, Latin America and South Asia. Through multi-country archival research, semi-structured interviews and analysis of the research, advocacy and outreach materials produced by women’s and gender studies scholars since the 1990s, we provide a unique comparative analysis of how this new interdisciplinary research field emerged in the context of interactions between international donors in the global North, including financial institutions and philanthropic foundations, national governments, and local social movements in the global South and post-socialist East. Understanding Gender Studies as a site of contestation between historical actors, as well as a source of social scientific and policy research, we contribute to an emerging debate among historians about writing the history of the post-Cold War era, a period that until recently was the preserve of social and political scientists. Addressing AHRC theme ‘Contemporary Challenges’, Globalising Gender Studies departs from existing academic scholarship by i) analysing Gender Studies in the context of global ‘transitions’ after the Cold War, ii) examining the role of international, national and local state and non-state actors as historical agents in this process, iii) generating, preserving and disseminating oral histories and archival research in disparate local contexts from around the world, iv) collaborating with non-profit organisations to translate our research into accessible formats for wider audiences in Chile, Czechia and India. Through a comparative analysis of the global history of Women’s & Gender Studies since the 1990s, we aim to: identify how international organisations and donor agencies, national governments, social movements and scholars used ‘women’ and ‘gender’ as categories of analysis in research, advocacy and outreach in the context of global transformation before and after 1989 map, collate and conserve organisational records, oral history, published texts and ephemera in disparate archives for the benefit of future researchers work collaboratively with feminist non-profit organisations to support gender sensitisation training To achieve these aims, we will: 1) Write a new global history of Women’s and Gender Studies from the 1990s to the present, published as a monograph 2) Create a research team with expertise in Eastern Europe, Latin America and South Asia to guide the project, as well as a wider international network of scholars with expertise in other geographical contexts, especially South Africa, West Asia, the United States, and China; 3) Establish a sustainable research agenda for historically-informed scholarship on gender and post-Cold War transformation, outlined in a special journal issue and academic articles; 4) Create a database on our project website of primary sources and oral histories with scholars and activists who founded or engaged with gender studies in these regions, as a resource for researchers 5) Produce a video documentary, podcasts and educational materials with our project partners (nonprofit organisations in Chile, Czech Republic, and India) for use in gender sensitisation training in those countries.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know