Established in 1995, the Asian Center for Women’s Studies (ACWS) is a hub of research, education, publication, and networking on Asian Women’s Studies. ACWS plays a pivotal role in fostering critical theorization of Asian feminism and institutionalizing women’s studies in Asia.

ACWS aims to rethink Western-centered hegemonic discourses through an “Asian feminist perspective.” Here, “Asia” is a geographic location that is decentered from the West; an imaginary hub where critical discussions on Western centrism begin; and a perspective to create knowledge from non-Western regions. ACWS reconsiders the  feminist questions from the standpoint of tri-continents, including Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It also investigates the multi-layered regional conditions and the historical contexts of ‘Asia(s)’ that the paradoxes in the experiences of women in Asia illuminate. In doing so, ACWS firstly commits to knowledge productions that draw upon the differently positioned women and gendered contexts in Asia. Secondly, it crtically reflects on the entangled nature of these experiences and processes that are inexplicably structured by power relations and histories beyond the region. Also, ACWS seeks to reconceptualize Asia and Asian women and build alternative relationships that transgress existing borders and boundaries.

The establishment and projects of ACWS lie in the historical flow of Women’s Studies being institutionalized and systematized in Asia, Korea, and Ewha Womans University. Since 1977, when Ewha Womans University institutionalized Women’s Studies as a scholarship for the first time in Korea and Asia, ‘Ewha Women’s Studies’ has crossed various trajectories over the past 30 years. In 1977, Ewha Womans University founded the Korean Women’s Institute (KWI) and opened Korea’s first undergraduate course in Women’s Studies. In 1982, it initiated a master’s degree program in Women’s Studies for the first time in the Asian continents. ACWS was founded in 1995 and continues to publish the Asian Journal of Women’s Studies (AJWS), an English academic journal, until today.

In 2019, ACWS was separated from KWI and became an independent research institution of Ewha Womans University. In 2020, the long-promoted efforts to institutionalize education have come to fruition as the Asian Women’s Studies (AWS), an interdisciplinary master’s degree program for international students, was launched. Since then, ACWS has been working on various research and educational projects to deepen and spread the perspective of Asian Women’s Studies, such as carrying out the research project (Since 2021) as the Institute Programs in the Humanities & Social Sciences funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea.

The Objectives of ACWS 

- Theorizing postcolonial feminist knowledge while decentering western-centered perspectives 

- Educating Asian women and experts with visions for Asian women's studies

- Building and extending a transnational network of feminist researchers

1) Research:

- Actively promotes and develops feminist knowledge based on the postcolonial epistemology with an interdisciplinary approach

- Critically analyzing the globally intersectional dynamics of gender, sexuality, race, class, nationality, ethnicity, and so on.

2) Education  

- Nurturing new generations of feminist experts and activists to engage in research on women’s studies in Asia

- Leading the exploration of creative pedagogical approaches of teaching feminism among higher education institutions in Asia and across the globe.

3) Publication 

- Publishing the Asian Journal of Women’s Studies (AJWS), a quarterly journal in English devoted to critical scholarship across contexts and disciplines

- Contributing to building the multi-vocal feminist knowledge about Asia.

4) Networking 

- Forging collaboration with academic and research institutitons, policy-making bodies, an non-government organizations

- Serving as a platform for building mutual connection and relationships to create transnational feminist communities

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