Director’s Message

Hello everyone! Thank you for visiting KANITA’s website. As a person who can be said to have professionally grown with KANITA, I would like to encourage you to get to know us and our work better by exploring this website and by contacting us if you have further queries about us and what we do.

As you may have gauged from the section on our history, KANITA started as a research project by a group of committed female and male researchers in Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) who understood the significance of making deeper exploration into the difference in experiences of poverty amongst and between women and men. Although poverty was something that had already been prioritised as a research area that had policy implications at the time, as with many traditional social research, gender was not a category that was well analysed in these inquiries. This research by KANITA’s pioneers spearheaded more serious efforts into establishing a unit and a centre that seeks to understand how gender play important roles in understanding and analysing social norms and practices especially those norms and practices that impact on effort to achieve social justice.

KANITA’s core business continues to be to understand the social world through gender lens so that both women’s and men’s experiences are investigated, documented and analysed for the purpose of creating a better society for Malaysia and the world. KANITA also works towards utilising data from its research for the purpose of academic publication and teaching, influencing policy (through a variety of modes and media), engaging with communities and advocating for a sustainable and just world.

Currently KANITA has a small but active team of academician-researchers who conduct studies of wide-ranging areas of interest while using gender analytical lens. We have a vibrant community of students and young research staff members who are engaged actively in KANITA’s research, academic, advocacy and co-curriculum activities. KANITA promotes equality, non-discrimantion and diversity-values in its work- and study- place environment.

KANITA offers postgraduate studies by research and has plans to offer a Master’s degree by mixed mode (taught courses and dissertation) in the near future. We have also commenced our MOOC (Massive Online Open Learning Course) entitled “Introduction to Gender Studies in the ASEAN Context”.

We welcome you to explore the possibility of joining us by enrolling as our postgraduate students and online students, collaborating with us on different academic activities (research, publication, training, advocacy) and working with us on other activities that will benefit the society (community engagement, women’s empowerment programme etc).

We hope you will be able to get as much information about us as you would like to from this website. However, if you still have further queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you.

ASSOC. PROF. DR. NORAIDA ENDUT'

DIRECTOR                                                                          

Background

The Centre for Research on Women and Gender (KANITA) is the first autonomous research centre with a research focus on women’s and gender issues, in Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) and Malaysia. KANITA grew from a research project in 1978 funded by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) that studied the issue of poverty with a focus on women and children. KANITA’s evolvement into a research centre demonstrates USM’s commitment to lead in the exploration of new thinking and knowledge that considers gender as an important analytical framework for theory and research. It also reflects the university’s dedication in meeting the needs of the underserved and marginalised in the community. As a research centre within the context of these commitments, KANITA not only aims to explore and investigates the social world in an academic manner but also to use and transfer the knowledge from the research findings for the purpose of advocating for the needs of women and the marginalized. KANITA chooses transforming society towards gender equality and social justice through the acquisition, application and transfer of knowledge, as its vision. KANITA’s vision and mission reflect converging efforts and dedication of academic members from various disciplines towards championing gender equality, equity and justice in the society, both theoretically and in practice.