ABOUT WOMEN'S/GENDER STUDIES

The National Women's Studies Association's institutional members include not only women's studies programs but programs identified as gender studies, feminist studies, and other related fields.

Program content or structure for these disciplines may vary from one Institution to another but not necessarily based on the name of the program or department.

Relationship between Women's Studies and Gender Studies

Gender studies may be best understood as an evolution from the women's studies programs founded in the 1960's and after.  In recent years some campuses have changed the name of their women's studies program to "gender studies," while others who have not previously had a women's Studies program have begun a new program using the name gender studies. Additionally many programs combine the names and are called "women and gender Studies," or the "study of women and gender."  In some settings, gender studies may reflect additional attention to masculinities or sexuality studies.

The following descriptions from campuses in the U.S. provide insight into the academic discipline of Women's and/or Gender Studies:

Women's Studies

1. Women's Studies is an interdisciplinary program of study of women and men in society within both historical and contemporary contexts and from multicultural and multiracial perspectives.
   — From Dept. of  Women's Studies University of Maryland, MD
   
   
2. Women's Studies at Duke University is part of a historical educational enterprise dedicated to the study of identity as a complex social phenomenon. Since its founding in 1983, the Program has brought new scholarship on women to the university curriculum by linking the study of gender to race, sexuality, class, and nation. In the classroom as in our research, we reach across divisions of historical, political, economic, representational, technological, and scientific analysis in order to offer students innovative methods and theories that enhance the broad reach of their studies and their everyday lives.
   — From About Women's Studies Duke University, NC
   
   
3. The idea of the interdisciplinary field of Women's Studies emerged in the late 1960s as students and faculty recognized that research and teaching often ignored or devalued the contributions and experiences of women. The development of courses that gave serious and informed attention to women's lives involved a search for historical documents by and about women, the unfolding of women's concerns, and formation of feminist theories. Since the first Women's Studies program was established in 1970, Women's Studies programs have grown and prospered and today exist in most major educational institutions in the U.S.. Moreover, feminist scholarship has changed the way many disciplines approach their work.
   — From What is Women's Studies? James Madison University, VA

 

Women’s and Gender Studies

1. The Women’s and Gender Studies Program is an interdisciplinary program encompassing feminist studies, masculinity studies and sexuality studies. The program is committed to a multicultural curriculum that sustains and integrates diverse perspectives.
   — From Dept, of Women and Gender Studies American University, DC
   
   
2. Women's & Gender Studies is an interdisciplinary undergraduate Program, that provides an academic framework and broad-based community for scholarly inquiry focusing on women, gender, race, and sexuality.  Although gender is a central component of every subject, the study of gender requires attention to connections between gender, sexuality, race, class, religion, nationality, and other social categories; different subjects shed light on different aspects of such connections.
   — From What is Women and Gender Studies MIT Boston, MA.
   
   
3. The Program for the Study of Women and Gender examines gender, race, class, and sexuality as important and simultaneous aspects of social worlds and human lives. This examination requires inquiry into the construction and operation of power relations, social inequalities, and resistances to them in both national and transnational contexts. We understand women, gender, feminism, queer, masculinity and transgender as politicized terms. As categories of analysis they help reveal how subjects become racialized, sexualized, gendered and class-located.
   — From Study of Women and Gender Smith College, MA

 

Gender Studies

1. Gender Studies addresses such issues as femininity and masculinity; gender and the body; gender and culture; gender and knowledge; current and historical inquiries into the relationships between the sexes; gender and aesthetics; gender as an organizing factor on social, political, and familial institutions and policy; gender role development and institutionalization; feminist theory; sexual orientation; sexual identity politics and history, queer theory, and lesbian cultural criticism and other interdisciplinary inquiries related to sex, gender, sexuality, reproduction, and feminist theory. It examines ideas of femininity and masculinity across cultures and historical periods and how these concepts are represented within cultures (e.g., literature, popular culture, the arts, science, and medicine).
   — From Women or Gender Studies Indiana University Bloomington, IN
   
   
2. Gender studies courses focus upon gender identity and gendered representation as central categories of analysis. Gender studies uses the concept of gender to analyze a wide range of disciplines. Although many lines of argumentation in gender studies are inspired by feminism, a broad variety of theoretical approaches are used to study the categories of gender. Gender studies includes women's studies, men's studies, and gay and lesbian studies.
   — From Gender Studies Whitman College, WA
   
   
3. Building on its origins in Women’s Studies, our Program continues to examine the experiences, ideologies, works, and actions of women in a variety of national, cultural, historical, and political contexts. As an interdisciplinary endeavor, the Study of Women and Gender shows students how different academic disciplines view the operation of gender in the labor market, the family, political systems and cultural production. Research and theory emerge from these everyday realities and feminist theory, in turn, informs our analysis of political choices. The Study of Women and Gender is joined to an understanding of the forms of activism around the globe.
   — From Study of Women and Gender Smith College, MA