Towards Trans- Disciplinary Learning (Australia)

Abstract

In 1983 we are drawing close to the end of the ten years which the United Nations designated the Decade for Women. Hal f-way through that decade, in 1980, in Australia, the proportion of women in the population involved in some kind of post-secondary education had equalled the proportion of men. Only a year earlier it was possible to claim that 'Women's studies courses are at present offered at most Australian universities ' .1 In 1982 the University of New South Wales established a course-work postgraduate degree (a Master [sic] of Arts) in Women's Studies. In 1983 the University of Adelaide set up a Research Centre in Women's Studies . And related courses have proliferated at other educational institutions , ranging from the Studies in Sexism course offered at the Australian National Capital's School Without Wall s, through a host of units - Modern Women Writers, Social History of Women, Women and Film, The Family (as a ' small social system') - taught at the New South Wales Institute of Technology, to the Graduate Diploma course in Women's Studies at the State College of Victoria and the Graduate Diploma in Teaching (Women's Studies) taught at South Australia's College of Advanced Education.