WHAT ARE WOMENS AND GENDER STUDIES?
Women’s and Gender Studies is an interdisciplinary approach to university study which prepares students to critique power structures relating to sex, sexuality, race, class, age, abilities, belief systems, and other societal institutions. Women’s and Gender Studies exposes and redresses systemic oppression and explores constructions of gender. Formerly known as Women’s Studies, this discipline started out as “the intellectual and research arm of the women’s movement.” (Humm, The Dictionary of Feminist Theory, 1990). Women’s and Gender Studies, however, is more than traditionally academic; it is also committed to activism, connecting theory with practice. Hence, Women’s and Gender Studies students have options to include community work as part of their degree program. This can be achieved with internships, as well as through course and club projects. In Women’s and Gender Studies classes, students learn about the social construction of sex and sex-role socialization; gender identities;
