Women'S Studies

Scholarly journals in women's studies were begun in the United States early on (1972 for Feminist Studies; 1975 for Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society; but not until 1988 for the National Women's Studies Association Journal), and soon there were journals published around the world. In 1999 an informal International Network of Women's Studies Journals (now the Feminist Journals Network) was formed, meeting first in Tromso, Norway, then in Halifax, Canada, in 2001 and in Kampala, Uganda, in 2002. Thirty editors from twenty-seven journals in twenty-one countries were represented in the membership in the early twenty-first century. Joint publishing projects, including a book series by Zed Press, reprinting of articles from journals in the "economic south" (developing nations) by journals in the "economic north" (industrialized nations, mostly in the north but including Australia), a Web site, and a listserv to make members aware of current issues are all part of their work.

Ellen Messer-Davidow surveyed the number of books and scholarly monographs available in English between 1980 and 1998 and estimated that 10,200 feminist books were published during that period. As she says, the print knowledge is so voluminous that scholars cannot keep track, much less read it all. And the topics are superabundant: "everything and anything is gendered, … gendering is narrated, quantified, or modeled, … and 'gender' as an analytical category is interrogated" (Messer-Davidow, p. 167).