Abstract:
Feminist scholars have been the driving force of curriculum transformation initiatives at
the University of Colombo. While there has been neither national policy nor formal
discussions initiated at the overall institutional or faculty levels regarding incorporating
gender into the curriculum, a few, yet, influential women have made significant
contributions to transform the curriculum. With the exception of the Faculties of Science
and Management, a gender dimension has been incorporated into curricula at both the
undergraduate and post graduate levels. There are a significant number of courses
whose main focus is gender, while other courses have included gender as part of the
analytical framework. The Master of Arts in Women’s Studies was one of the first two
programmes offered by the Faculty of Graduate Studies. The introduction of a Gender
Studies Stream in 2004 was the first initiative to introduce gender at an institutional level.
The stream has not designed new course material, but pulls together courses taught in
the different departments to provide an inter-disciplinary understanding of gender issues
and concepts.
Interviews and class observations conducted during the ‘Gender Equity in Higher
Education’ project, revealed that these courses have had a significant impact on mainly
women students whose personal and professional lives have been transformed after
participating in feminist discourse. While on the one hand, the lack of policy level
initiatives has been counteracted by the personal investment some women faculty
members have made, on the other hand, the structural indifference of the university has
meant that these efforts have continued to stagnate mostly at the personal level. One
could even argue that the lack of opposition to individual efforts has resulted in the lack
of advocacy for curriculum transformation at the institutional level.
This paper critically examines the sustainability of these changes and explores what
changes need to take place to institutionalize curriculum transformation in order to
ensure that both women and men are transformed.
