The Global South Gender Initiative (GSGI) aims to foster international exchanges between UCLA Women's Studies Program and the Center for the Study of Women (CSW), and women's/gender studies institutions in Middle East/North Africa and Muslim South Asia. Our primary objective is to facilitate dialogue on emerging theories, concepts, pedagogies, and curricula as related to contemporary social and political issues within the field of women's/gender Studies.

Our project is motivated by and will seek to address the persistent biases within curriculum and pedagogy in the field of women's studies. For more than two decades, Global South scholars have challenged "Orientalist" conceptualizations of Middle Eastern/North African and Muslim South Asian women, and pushed the field of women's/gender studies, previously dominated by Western feminists, to confront its own assumptions and short comings. Unfortunately, however, these critical perspectives emerging from Global South scholars often remain on the peripheries of women's studies programs.

We seek to forge an intellectually challenging space for cross-fertilization through the GSGI with the goal of contributing broadly to the transformation of women's/gender studies and feminist research intellectually, academically, and institutionally, and to build cosmopolitan and transnational research projects, curriculum, student body, and faculty.

For information, contact the Principal Investigator:

Professor Sondra Hale
Department of Anthropology
341 Haines Hall - Box 951553
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1553

sonhale@ucla.edu