Asian Women's Studies (AWS) is a program built on the long-standing academic goals and endeavors of the Asian Center for Women's Studies (ACWS) at Ewha Womans University. Since its founding in 1995, ACWS has continued to play a pivotal role as a hub to produce Asian feminist knowledge by institutionalizing Asian Women's Studies through joint research projects, journals, and textbook publications in collaboration with feminist scholars across the Asian region. By launching the master's program in Asian Women's Studies, ACWS seeks to further contribute to the interdisciplinary field of Asian Women's Studies by training promising young scholars and activists.

     AWS was initiated in the context of the growing importance of transnational solidarity in nonwestern regions. Such solidarity requires a cross-cultural feminist perspective to analyze the different micropolitics of subjectivity and struggle within Asia, as well as the macropolitics of global economic and political systems and processes across Asia. Drawing on critical postcolonial and feminist approaches together with empirical case studies, AWS seeks to develop a new generation of scholars and leaders who will work to acknowledge, understand, and critically interrogate the issues of women, gender, and sexuality by participating in feminist knowledge production as a decolonial practice to achieve justice and equality for all people.