Date & Time: 15:30-17:30, 26 November (Mon.) 2018
Venue: Room 213, the 2nd floor, Inamori Foundation Memorial Building, CSEAS, Kyoto University

Speaker: Dr. Shanthi Thambiah

Title: “The Development and Growth of the Gender Studies
Program at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia”

Commentators:
Mario Ivan Lopez (CSEAS, Kyoto University)
Naoko Yoshinaga (Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University)

Moderator:
Junko Koizumi (CSEAS)

Abstract:
In Malaysia, women’s studies and gender studies are new fields struggling to be accepted as legitimate academic fields equal to mainstream disciplines. The academic and intellectual validity of women’s studies and gender studies was recognised because of the research done by early feminists. Research and studies on women before the seventies were scarce but researchers who welcomed international changes achieved by the global women’s movement were prepared to work to localise the need to elevate the position of women in society.
Public universities were also urged to look into ways of contributing towards uplifting the status of women. The article outlines the history of the institutionalisation of gender studies and its profile since its inception at the University of Malaya.

About Speaker:
Associate Professor of Gender Studies at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya. She studied at the University of Malaya for her bachelor’s degree, M.Phil from the University of Cambridge and her PhD in Social Anthropology is from the University of Hull. She has published widely on gender, family and work and changing gender relations in Malaysia.

This seminar is organized in collaboration with the Fieldworker Family
Care Support Group, ASAFAS, Kyoto University.