Special Feature of Post Graduate Interdisciplinary Certificate Course in Women’s Studies
 
This course is being conducted for last fifteen years or so as a part-time introductory/ basic course in Women’s Studies for building critical lens to engage with gender issues. It is unique in its composition of students. Students from diverse locations and with diverse orientations/agenda pursue this course:
  • Professionals – media and development practitioners – and social activists seeking to develop their abilities to address gender issues
  • PG and research students seeking to address gender in their academic quest or as an added qualification
  • Women with a gap in education wanting to address gender concerns in their everyday lives.
     

Their uneven academic backgrounds and different imaginations of what a Women’s Studies course would offer make teaching and learning a difficult but enriching experience.

In order to work towards its objectives, the course has integrated the following:

Internal Assignments - Each module consists of 50% of internal evaluation. This has a twin aim of developing academic and practice oriented skills among its participants and encouraging the participants to focus – read and think in concentrated manner - in areas of their own interest or work. The assignments promote serious reading in Women’s Studies defying the assumption about Women’s Studies being a site of debate of opinions.

The internal assignments try to enable participants

  • To engage with and analyze diverse materials of Women’s Studies - movement literature, state documents, journalistic writings, popular texts along with academic writing
  • To present their arguments in different forms- essay, news piece, report etc.
     

Some of the assignments include film analysis, book introduction, letter to editor, reading statistical tables, seminar presentation, poster reading etc.

Field Work- The module on fieldwork gives basic training in conducting field work of different kinds- research or campaign building. It constitutes field visits to a women’s organization working in diverse fields and conducting field work.

Some of the field visits have been to ‘Bhimthadi Jatra’ (annual fair of SHGs all over Maharashtra) or to Yuvak-Yuvati Mela (a gender sensitization fun cum learning fair for young men and women organized by Akshara, Mumbai). The field work has been organized with micro-credit programme of women on the campus (preparing their profile) or with SWACH (waste- pickers’ organization) activists working on the campus. An attempt is made to network with communities on the campus of University of Pune, to document their experiences and concerns as a baseline document for planning future extension activities on the campus.