From:    Donna.
Subject: Women's Studies


Since I went ahead and typed this one up today, thought you'd like to check
it out:
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				 CONSTITUTION: PREAMBLE AND STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
					National Women's Studies Association (NWSA)

Preamble

	 The National Women's Studies Association was formed to further the
social, political, and professional development of Women's Studies
throughout the country and the world, at every educational level and in
every educational setting.  To this end, this organization is committed to
being a forum conducive to dialogue and collective action among women
dedicated to feminist education and change.

	 Women's Studies owes its existence to the movement for the liberation
of women; the feminist movement exists because women are oppressed.
Women's Studies, diverse as its components are, has at its best shared a
vision of a world free from sexism and racism.  Freedom from sexism by
necessity must include a commitment to freedom from national chauvinism;
class and ethnic bias; anti-Semitism, as directed against both Arabs and
Jews; ageism; heterosexual bias -- from all the ideologies and institutions
that have consciously or unconsciously oppressed and exploited some for the
advantage of others.  The development of Women's Studies in the past
decade, the remarkable proliferation of programs that necessitated this
Association, is a history of creative struggle to evolve knowledge, theory,
pedagogy, and organizational models appropriate to that vision.

	 Women's Studies is the educational strategy of a breakthrough in
consciousness and knowledge.  The uniqueness of Women's Studies has been
and remains its refusal to accept sterile divisions between academy and
community, between the growth of the mind and the health of the body,
between intellect and passion, between the individual and society.

	 Women's Studies, then, is equipping women not only to enter society as
whole and productive human beings, but to transform the world to one that
will be free of all oppression.  This Constitution reaffirms that
commitment.

I. Purpose
Because
-- Feminist education is a process deeply rooted in the women's movement
	and remains accountable to that community;
-- Feminist aims include the elimination of oppression and discrimination
	on the basis of sex, race, age, class, religion, ethnicity, and sexual
	orientation, as well as other barriers to human liberation inherent in
	the struction of our society;
-- Feminist education is not only the pursuit of knowledge about women, but
	also the development of knowledge for women, a force which furthers the
	realization of feminist aims;
Therefore
-- The National Women's Studies Association actively supports and promotes
	feminist education, and supports the persons involved in that effort, at
	any educational level and in any educational setting.
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