이 글은 학문적 정체성을 추구하면서 동시에 제도적 확장을 이루어내야 하는 내적, 외적 조건하에서 한국여성학의 새로운 도약을 모색해 보려는 한 시도이다. 연구자는 『한국여성학』의 게재논문들에 대한 분석을 통해 외적 조건의 향방을 모색하였고, 1999년에 여성학자들에 의해 집중적으로 이루어진 한국여성학 방법론 논의에 대한 비판적 읽기를 통해 내적 조건의 향방을 모색하였다. 연구자는 여성학의 외적 조건에 대한 대응으로 학회 차원에서는 연구영역의 다변화와 분과학문의 확장을, 대학원 여성학 전공과정에서는 연구영역의 전문화와 그 영역에 관한 대학 단위의 학제간 연구의 강화를, 학부과정에서는 교양교육체계의 참여와 개발에 대한 장기적인 계획을 제안했다. 여성학의 내적 조건에 대한 대응으로는, 젠더 개념의 강화와 독립적인 여성정체성의 구성이 전제되어야 하며, 여성정체성은 재현된 여성과 실재 여성을 모두 포함하는 전제 하에 재현과 실재가 엮여 있는 방식을 설명할 수 있는 방법을 정립해야 한다고 보았다. 이 같은 여성학적 지식구성에 있어 연구자는 각자의 지식체계가 부분적이라는 것을 인정하는 것, 연구대상의 능동성을 보여주려는 것, 그리고 자신의 설명에 책임지려는 태도를 통해 여성학적 지식의 윤리성을 지킴으로써 그 정치적 효과를 기대할 수 있다고 보았다.
For the last 20 years, Korean WS as an institution has successfully entered into the academic community by establishing WS program in graduate schools and providing "Introduction to WS" courses in the undergraduate level nationwide. It also succeeded in disseminating women issues in academe as well as in public. However, as Korean WS moves toward the next stage, it now confronts new problems, both internal and external, that demand WS scholars to provide a new vision for the future both in institutional development and WS knowledge formation. This paper is a preliminary attempt to find out ways to overcome the present constraints and reinforce WS as a discipline. This paper specifies constraints that WS now faces in two aspects. The first is the institutional issue of how to strengthen WS as an institution in the campus without losing its independency as a discipline. The second is the issue of what constitutes WS knowledge as a solid discipline. As for the first aspect, based on the analysis of the articles published in Han'guk Yeoseonghak and on the general understanding of the situation of the so-called "Humanities in peril" in the campus, this paper proposes three agendas for the future institutional development of WS. First, Korean Women's Studies Association needs to expand its interdisciplinary character not only among the participating disciplines, but over to the more diverse non-participating disciplinary fields, such as natural science and engineering. Second, given the lack of resources, each WS program in a graduate school needs to concentrate its own specialties based on the WS faculties' trained fields, then utilizing the resources in each campus. Third, as for the development of undergraduate elective courses, WS needs to prepare for the emerging new concept of liberal education because it can provide appropriate conceptual preparations to the students who will have to live in the era of "difference and coexistence." As for the second aspect, based on the critical reading of the researches by the feminist scholars, this paper discusses the three issues of experience, women's identity, and self-reflexivity. First, the gender perspective needs to be strengthened in dealing with women's "experience," and the further conceptual refinement of women's identity is required. Second, the women's identity includes both "represented" women and "real" women. The point is to show the way in which the symbolic and the real are interconnected to each other. Third, WS knowledge production requires that we, the feminist scholars, need to recognize that each of us has a partial knowledge based on one's own training, reveal the agency of the subjects, and be responsible to our own works. Keeping its ethical character in mind, we could produce WS knowledge that has strong influences in both academic circle and society in general.