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MONTREAL (CUP) — Across Canadian universities, a debate is raging over the recent trend of renaming women’s studies institutions and courses to include gender and sexuality in their title.

With hopes to expand women’s studies by framing it as more accessible, inclusive and enticing to enrolling students, Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University announced on CBC’s The Current, Jan. 12, that it is the first institution in Canada to change its department's name — from the department of women’s studies to the department of gender, sexuality and women’s studies.

“We really want to look at the intersections,” said Catherine Murray, director of the program at SFU. “By broadening our name we’re signalling a historical interest in feminism expanding its horizons to attract new students . . . and more men to the program.”

Both an issue of budgetary pressure to get bodies in classrooms and a move for more inclusive women’s studies spaces, the announcement has prompted feminist voices from coast to coast to question the goals of the programs in universities and predict what types of changes a new name may bring to the field.

Many, including women’s studies professor and advisory board member Renée Bondy of the University of Windsor — a school with over 180 students majoring in women’s studies — believe that “women” is an important signifier in the programs, as it connects academia to a community.

“Can we rally a larger population around the word gender?” she asked hesitantly. “I don’t know.”

Weighing in on the place of feminism in the university and the merits of its pedagogy in the classroom, Linda Kay — a gender and journalism professor at Concordia University and a fellow of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute — speculated that the change might have to do more with the association than enrolment.

“I recognize that universities are consolidating and phasing out certain programs . . . but I would hesitate to say that it’s really all about this issue,” she said. “I see this in my classes: women today are very hesitant to identify with feminism at all because there’s this dirty-word connotation . . . and I’m kind of shocked. This was the sort of stigma of the ‘60s and ‘70s, but now, 40 years later, there is still this view of it.”

Kay suggested that perhaps choosing to use the word “gender” over “women” is a “very cosmetic kind of change to make it more palatable,” but finds it unfortunate nonetheless.

“Honestly, the battle (or women’s equality) isn’t over,” she said with a sigh. “It’s this institution that has helped women so much . . . but now, I guess, women don’t feel that there’s a need for women’s studies per se, so they talk about gender studies.”

What’s in a name?

Concordia’s Simone de Beauvoir Institute (SDBI) — a women’s studies space that put the university on the map when it was established on March 9, 1978 — has seen its share of semantic conflict in years gone by, but has managed to survive both budgetary pressure to cut programs and conflicting opinion about its namesake.

For example, in the original 1977 submission written by the Concordia Women’s College Committee to the university senate — proposing what would eventually become the SDBI — the language was clear from the onset that the word “Institute” be a mandatory part of the program.

“The women’s institute would prefer not to be confused with either CEGEP levels of education or religious colleges,” read the submission.

According to the Concordia archives, once Simone de Beauvoir approved the use of her name for the institute in February 1978, ballots were sent out to 36 founding members of the Institute. Asking them to choose between Simone de Beauvoir, Thérèse Casgrain, Emily Carr, Nellie McClung, Idola St. Jean and Minerva, 18 voted for Beauvoir out of the 33 ballots returned.

Disagreement surrounding the use of Simone de Beauvoir’s name was particularly due to the fact that she wasn’t French Canadian. This decision prompted the Féderation des femmes du Québec to publicly demonstrate and advocate their cause in the pages of Le Devoir.

Four months later, the Concordia board of governors approved the name despite the highly-publicized controversy. That September, the SDBI opened its doors with 27 students majoring in women’s studies programs and 100 students in total enrolled at the institute. At this time, the student population included two male students and two male staff members.

Cosmetic changes

Traditionally, women’s studies programs across the country have been sites of progressive, pedagogical discussion and debate, evolving with the times to resonate with larger social and political attitudes taking place outside of a university context.

Perhaps the continually self-reflexive and subjective nature of women’s studies is a reason this discipline has been characterized as a radical, boundary-pushing discipline since “The Nature of Woman” was taught for the first time at Sir George Williams University (a predecessor of Concordia) in 1970.

A recent example of another change — and continued point of contention among feminists — is the very spelling of the word “woman,” which was modified by certain groups to womyn in the mid-‘80s in order to provide a representational word that didn’t contain “man” within it. Across the country, course material, textbooks and institutional names also changed along with the trend.

In September 1985, the SDBI also offered its first course in lesbian studies, but the curriculum committee at the time quickly removed the word “lesbian” from its title and changed it to female sexuality studies due to “concerns that having ‘lesbian’ on a transcript might hurt students’ future career prospects.”

Gradually becoming more inclusive, by 1989 “Lesbians in Society” became the first accredited lesbian studies course offered in Canada — future prospects be damned — and the change sparked a new approach of including and acknowledging queerness in both the realm of women’s studies and the greater university establishment.

Semantic antics

Mediating tumultuous pedagogical politics, funding, and highly-public growing pains through the years, the SDBI has withstood many tests for a relatively young feminist institute. Though there are no current plans to change the name on the front door, many other programs across the country may not be able to preserve women’s place in the bigger picture.

“I really wonder how much curriculum changes when you go from women’s studies to gender and sexuality,” remarked Kay. “I think they probably teach them the same stuff to tell you the truth, but what can we conclude about the (significance of the) word woman?”

Moving from the discipline of “women’s studies” to “gender and sexuality studies” raises two thought-provoking questions: is feminism realizing a better reflection of the world around us, or — are we losing something fundamental if we drop the word woman?