Background
The regional educational (institutional) context and needs for the gender/women’s/feminist studies:
As far as the gender/feminist studies education is concerned, a shared feature in the region of Southeastern Europe is its utter absence from the institutions of the official higher education. Or, in the brighter cases (e.g., the University of Sofia where there is an integral postgraduate program, or University of Skopje offering several courses), one can speak of this field’s radical marginality, consisting in a low position on the scale of power relations (poor funding, invisibility, etc.) In many countries of SEE, the feminist scientific and theoretical thought and the production of knowledge (including education) have functioned on an informal level, in alternative spaces and, by doing so, have represented an opposition – thus, alternative and supplement – to the formal higher education. Nevertheless, the official production of knowledge and of what is considered competent professional formation rigidly maintains its ban to – according the dominant discourses - the “non-scientific” gender studies: “non-scientific” since knowledge is still deemed to be irrevocably universal and, thus, genderless/sexless.
