Women’s And Gender Studies Research Articles

Can you get a job with that? Student endorsement of misconceptions and stereotypes about Women's and Gender Studies

University students today are increasingly concerned with social justice issues and the relevance of their degrees and skills in the job market. Enrollment in Women's and Gender Studies (WGST) programs are decreasing, and university administrators must better understand student perceptions of WGST programs to promote recruitment and retention. This exploratory study used an online survey to assess the attitudes of 141 first-year students. Students indicated how often they had heard 38 different statements about WGST (e.g., WGST is easy) and how much they agreed with those statements. All students recognized the benefits WGST provides to social change. However, women were more likely than men to endorse positive statements toward WGST, and many students do not understand the applicability of WGST degrees and how they could help in the job market. We discuss the implications of these findings and how WGST can improve student recruitment and retention at their universities.

Women and Allies in Action: College Students as 'Diversity Workers' in the Activism Classroom

Research on feminist pedagogy has analyzed activism-based teaching practices in introductory courses and special topics courses in Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS). Few studies have focused on courses that entirely center on feminist activism and have students implement weeks-long activism projects. In this article, I investigate how we can transfer an activist consciousness to our students, some of whom might not consider themselves feminists, might not have thought of themselves as activists, have not participated in any form of activism, or might be taking a WGS course only for general education or diversity credit. Using data collected in my “Women and Allies in Action” class via surveys, interviews, and analysis of students’ reflective writing, I assess which challenges hold students back and what motivates them to create and implement complex, creative, and sustainable feminist activism projects.

Dependency as Situated Knowledge: A Reflexive Politics of Location on the Positionalities of Chinese Feminist Scholars

While feminist knowledge has historical roots in China, the academic knowledge production about women’s and gender studies (WGS) as situated knowledge has always been a contestation between opposing forces. The Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, marked the critical discursive and organizational moment for grounding the feminist concept of gender as an analytical and action framework. Since then, WGS have flourished, but the label of feminism has been ambivalent. To examine the complicated state of academic dependency and the politics of location in this interdisciplinary academic field, I interrogate researchers’ positionalities in some recent publications on feminism and gender studies about China by pointing out the interplay of diasporic and domestic positionalities in English and Chinese publication outlets. This article argues that for an interdisciplinary program like WGS, with its inextricable connection to the political state of China and socialist state feminism, the theory of academic dependency cannot adequately capture the often contested, strategic, and situated standpoints of feminist scholars. While diasporic and domestic scholars are deeply aware of their own positionalities in the channel of publications that grant them voices, they are also caught in the current hegemonic political economy of knowledge. This article interrogates the contested positionalities of overseas and domestic feminist scholars in creating a feminist academic field about China.

Walking on Eggshells: Impacts of the Changing Political Conjuncture on Women’s and Gender Studies Centres in Turkey

Following the second wave feminist movement, Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) started to institutionalise at universities in Turkey in the late 1980s. The first ‘Women’s Studies Centre’ was established at Istanbul University in 1989. By 2017, there were around a hundred Women’s and Gender Studies Centres (WGSCs) in Turkey, scattered throughout the whole country, both in public and private universities. This article is based on thirteen expert interviews and institutional material collection from theoretically selected seven cases of WGSCs. In the study, we show the significance of several nationally and internationally influential actors, processes, and institutions that altogether prepped the political setting for the institutionalisation and transformation processes of the WGSCs in Turkey in the time span from late 1980s to 2017. We conclude that the field was influenced by international networks and processes up until the 2010s and in the post-2010 period, the main source of political influence having an impact on the institutional landscape of WGSCs becomes domestic political factors. We interpret this as 1) the discovery of ‘gender’ as a political and scientific category in international outlets and its adaptation to the national level; and 2) a growing interest in making the discovery of ‘gender’ visible in the field of higher education. This paper is based on findings of the empirical project ‘Women’s and Gender Studies in Turkey: Institutionalisation and Transformation’ (Jan. 2017-Dec. 2019).

Our Actions, Our Stories: A Readers Theater

This article presents the script of Our Actions, Our Stories: A Readers Theater that was researched, written, and presented by students in a women’s and gender studies (WGS) class called “Action: Intersections and Coalitions.” Based on qualitative interviews, the script illustrates six respondents’ perspectives on their activism and explores their backgrounds and intersectional identities in relation to these. The readers theater explores how activism and identity intersect and what that means for those engaged in activism. The article concludes with a discussion about the meanings that doing this project in a feminist experiential learning course had for the WGS students involved and how such experiences contribute to growing a much-needed new generation of qualitative researchers dedicated to social justice.

Studying gender in the neoliberal, postfeminist university: Australian university students’ perspectives

In a neoliberal environment where university students are encouraged to study subjects and courses which will lead to specific job outcomes, this article explores which students undertake Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS), why they undertake the degree, and what it teaches them. Drawing on interviews with students at a regional Australian university, this qualitative study examines the extent to which the university’s Gender Studies cohort is postfeminist, and the impact that this has on retention and student outcomes. Findings suggest that WGS holds an ambivalent position within the contemporary university context. While students claim that studying WGS may not directly benefit them in the contemporary job market, they choose to study it because it gives them a better understanding of themselves and the world around them. The value students place on WGS is an insight rarely recognised previously.

Liberating or indoctrinating? Surveying students’ perceptions of a Womens’ and Gender Studies requirement

ABSTRACT This article offers new insight into students’ responses to Womens’ and Gender Studies (WGS) classes by overcoming the self-selection bias hitherto inherent in the field. Exploring the experiences of 1406 students (770 women, 636 men) of a university with a WGS requirement across all study programmes, we examine the prevailing discourses on WGS, participants’ (dis)agreement as well as personal and professional benefits gained through WGS. Additionally, we evaluate the perceived value of WGS for themselves, in society, and of WGS opportunities in higher education. Findings reveal a gender bias regarding discourses, experience, benefit, and value, with 70.1% women and 32.4% men supporting the idea of WGS as a mandatory subject. Women’s support indicates a need for tools to negotiate gender issues, while men’s resistance serves to defend male privileges. We conclude that a requirement of WGS classes amplifies the potential for both – resistance and change.

Mapping Women’s and Gender Studies in the Academic Field in Slovenia

The aim of the present paper is to map the development of women’s and gender studies (WGS) in the academic field in Slovenia. Slovenia is the first of the former Yugoslav state republics in which WGS have succeeded in entering the academic field and becoming part of institutionalised university study. In this paper we will ask the following questions: How, when and why did this happen? How was this connected to women’s and feminist movements and politics regarding women’s issues and demands? What were the obstacles in this process? Who were the agents and what were the factors that supported demands for the incorporation of WGS in academia? How has the field evolved in the last few decades? What were the phases of this development? Which fields were the forerunners, which were the late-comers and which are still left aside? What are the thematic scopes taught in WGS courses? In which degrees are thecourses offered and what are their modules? Who teaches them? The mapping in this paper is mainly based on primary sources of university programmes and their curricula at faculties of the University of Ljubljana, as well as on interviews with important agents in the field.

“I Wanted to Raise My Hand and Say I’m Not a Feminist”: College Men’s Use of Hybrid Masculinities to Negotiate Attachments to Feminism and Gender Studies

Using a hybrid masculinities framework, we qualitatively analyzed 15 college men’s experiences with feminism and gender scholarship in Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) courses. Men described adopting particular strategies of discourse in their social interactions to manage varied reactions to feminism and gender studies. As a way of justifying their choice of academic study, these men also learned to navigate social relationships by highlighting or downplaying their own masculinity (i.e., creating or deconstructing a hybrid masculinity). Finally, men reconciled the multiple meanings of feminism and WGS studies by drawing from dominant cultural norms and expectations in attempts to make sense of the incongruence of men studying feminism. Implications for future research and college campuses and educators are considered.

Checking Privilege at the Door: Men’s Reflections on Masculinity in Women’s and Gender Studies Courses

Certain types of masculinity undergird gender inequality, but different contexts may encourage individuals to conceptualize gender in new and unique ways. Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) university courses support this for women, but less is known about men’s experiences. Through an analysis of interview data from 15 men who have taken WGS courses, we ask: What do men experience in the WGS classroom and how do men perceive that their experiences in WGS courses shape their conceptualizations of gender and gender relations? Men described developing their understandings of gender inequality after taking a WGS course and they applied this knowledge beyond the classroom. We address the different ways men negotiate gendered classroom dynamics, with some men articulating that their gender provided a unique position from which to participate and others reporting more discomfort. We discuss the findings’ implications regarding men disrupting or perpetuating hegemonic understandings of masculinity within educational contexts.

Sensing dispossession: Women and gender studies between institutional racism and migration control policies in the neoliberal university

Synopsis This paper discusses the positioning of Women and Gender Studies (WGS) and Gender Studies (GS) within the neoliberal university by focusing particularly on the dynamics of exclusion resulting from institutional racism and migration control policies in British and German universities. From this angle, the article first discusses the place of WGS/GS within the neoliberal university. In a second step, it looks at critical race debates regarding universities as sites of hegemonic Whiteness in Germany and the UK. Following this, it discusses the institutional discriminatory effects of migration policies in universities' within a broader context. In a fourth step, it examines the affective economy of these policies. In this sense, the article explores the feeling of dispossession transmitted and impressed by migration control policies. It concludes with some thoughts on relating WGS/GS to the project of building the anti-racist university.

Where Are We Headed? What’s in Our Way? How Can We Get There? Thoughts From Directors of Women’s and Gender Studies Programs

We are at a critical time in determining the trajectory of the discipline of Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS). This article explores how WGS programs are marginalized within the academy, and alternately, by what means they have succeeded. We additionally take stock of predictions for the future of this highly dynamic discipline, drawn from the perspectives of those uniquely positioned to carve out these spaces and new territories—the directors of WGS programs. Data were gathered through a census of WGS programs at large 4-year institutions across the United States and Canada and supplemented by 24 in-depth follow-up interviews.

“Subject Positions”: Perspectives on Gender and Identity in the Academy and Beyond

����� ��� In Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies, Orr, Braithwaite, and Lichtenstein have overseen the publication of a stylish, informative volume, characterized by a wonderfully simple structure. Eighteen essays define and illustrate key terms from the fields of women’s and gender studies (WGS). The result is a fresh and lively work that never feels overly didactic or pre scriptive. So much thought has gone into making this an accessible and readable text that even the table of contents is a delight, as each chapter effectively “advertises” itself there, in concise abstracts that read in some cases like mini manifestos. Astrid Henry’s excellent essay, “Waves,” for example, is presented as being about a metaphor which “is both descriptive and prescriptive, simultaneously offering a representation of femi nism’s history and constraining our imagination of that history” (viii), while Jennifer Purvis’s contribution is more succinctly summarized: “Women’s and Gender Studies is always already queer” (ix). Rethinking is a descriptive title, then: in it, terms are rethought and revivified. But it’s not a carelessly iconoclastic volume. Instead, it acknowledges its forebears (Robyn Wiegman, especially) and maps the existing critical terrain. In one essay, for example, Susanne Luhmann vividly reminds her readers of, and then builds on, Carolyn M. Shrewsbury’s formative 1987 article “What Is Feminist Pedagogy?” to argue that “in the face of the categorical instability of the term ‘woman’ . . . it becomes increasingly politically and intellectually unintelligible to assume that WGS is about women, or that we know what ‘women’ are” (81). Each one of the eighteen contributors uses first-person narrative to some extent. This is good: it’s the way that “theory” ought to be explicated

Transforming Scholarship: Why Women's and Gender Studies Students Are Changing Themselves and the World by Michele Tracy Berger and Cheryl Radeloff, and: Feminist Activism in Academia: Essays on Personal, Political and Professional Change ed. by Ellen C. Mayock and Domnica Radulescu, and: Reconstructing Policy in Higher Education: Feminist Poststructural Perspectives ed. by Elizabeth J. Allan, Susan Iverson, and Rebecca Ropers-Huilman

Reviewed by: Transforming Scholarship: Why Women's and Gender Studies Students Are Changing Themselves and the World by Michele Tracy Berger and Cheryl Radeloff, and: Feminist Activism in Academia: Essays on Personal, Political and Professional Change ed. by Ellen C. Mayock and Domnica Radulescu, and: Reconstructing Policy in Higher Education: Feminist Poststructural Perspectives ed. by Elizabeth J. Allan, Susan Iverson, and Rebecca Ropers-Huilman Casandra E. Harper (bio) Transforming Scholarship: Why Women's and Gender Studies Students Are Changing Themselves and the World by Michele Tracy Berger and Cheryl Radeloff. New York: Routledge, 2011, 278 pp., $149.00 hardcover, $29.87 paper. Feminist Activism in Academia: Essays on Personal, Political and Professional Change edited by Ellen C. Mayock and Domnica Radulescu. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010, 206 pp., $55.00 paper. Reconstructing Policy in Higher Education: Feminist Poststructural Perspectives edited by Elizabeth J. Allan, Susan Iverson, and Rebecca Ropers-Huilman. New York: Routledge, 2009, 206 pp., $150.00 hardcover, $51.95 paper. Higher education can be a setting where individuals can develop and see the world and themselves in a new light. When assumptions are challenged and new knowledge is created, opportunities for transformation and more equitable outcomes are possible. Each book contained in this review speaks to these opportunities and calls for its readers to engage differently with individuals, scholarship, coursework, the academy, discourse, or policy. The books pose thoughtful, sometimes difficult questions, while also appropriately avoiding offering readers easy, simplistic answers. I found the content of each book to be compelling on both the personal and professional levels and recommend them, particularly Transforming Scholarship and Reconstructing Policy in Higher Education, for use in relevant courses. Feminist Activism in Academia and Reconstructing Policy in Higher Education are useful for those interested in reflective reading and a call to action for scholars and activists interested in challenging the status quo and learning new strategies for responding to or dismantling those norms. Written with the intended audience of prospective and current undergraduates interested in learning more about the intricacies of being a women's and gender studies (WGS) major, Transforming Scholarship: Why Women's and Gender Studies Students Are Changing Themselves and the World by Michele Tracy Berger and Cheryl Radeloff offers a response to those who ask what one can do with a WGS degree. Drawing from survey and interview data with WGS graduates, the authors offer readers an overview of what students might expect as a WGS student. Transforming Scholarship is organized into three sections—with two chapters contained in each—representing three time-points relevant to a student: the pre-college or early college career year(s) prior to declaring a major, the college years as a declared WGS major, and the post-college career. In the first section, the authors provide an overview of the history of the WGS major, a description of how its structure might vary by institution, an overview of key theories and sample courses that might be offered, and a list of the professional associations and organizations that might be relevant. Much of the information presented [End Page 205] in this section has applicability for non-WGS students as well, such as the difference between a major, minor, and concentration, making it a worthwhile read for students unsure of their choice of major. The second section, concerning those who have committed to WGS, has a chapter dedicated to justifying this choice of major to others, particularly family, friends, and coworkers. As the authors note in the introduction to the book, students pursuing WGS degrees are often questioned about their choice, and are asked to respond to stereotypes and misconceptions about this major. The authors address some of these questions and offer both strategies for responding and arguments to use when doing so. The chapter also includes stories and strategies from WGS graduates, which contribute to a greater understanding of the range and depth of questions that students might face and the variety of possible responses. Concepts like gender, intersectionality, inequality, equity, and empowerment are defined and introduced in the second chapter in this section as lenses that can frame coursework. Students are also encouraged to consider their inner strengths and conditions for success. The...

Feminism's Attachments

Feminism'sAttachments Ann Braithwaite and CatherineM. Orr There is no women's studies without feminism. Feminism is the the oretical and political foundation of women's studies. —Bonnie Zimmerman1 Although bonnie Zimmerman's claim would seem to verge on the obvious for many in women's and gender studies (WGS), consider the following not-so-unusual scenarios: • A colleague who teaches several WGS courses, serves on WGS program committees, and produces knowledge on topics such as Islam, marriage practices, and social movements through the lenses of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation, emphatically refuses the label "feminist," preferring instead to position herself as "womanist." • A colleague in WGS, whose current scholarship focuses on legal studies, disability studies, and social welfare policy, and a graduate student in WGS, whose dissertation is on a First Nations community center in a large urban setting, are both regularly challenged by their colleagues to explain what makes their work feminist, and thus WGS. FeministStudies39, no. 2. © 2013 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 512 Forum:W/G/SStudies 513 • Colleagues at a national meeting of the CWSA/ACEF (the Canadian national association for WGS) openly worry that changing the name of the association to something that doesn't include the words "women," "gender," or "feminist" will mean a loss of visibility and perceived value for the work of the discipline of WGS.2 Taken together, these scenarios point to the need to rethink a number of assumptions that circulate around the questions of both this forum on "whither feminisms?" and in the field of WGS more generally about the assumed relationship between feminism and WGS. We want to argue—perhaps provocatively—for the possibilities opened up in interrogating the multiple attachments that the above scenarios make apparent. Of course, we are not alone in this provocation to rethink attachments to feminism.3 But here, we contend that such attach ments within WGS contexts both enable and delimit, produce and fail to produce, intellectual work that is up to the demands of the worlds we inhabit. Our focus, then, is on exploring some of the possi ble consequences of "letting go." As the above scenarios demonstrate, there are any number of ways in which feminism and WGS are consistently sutured together, including that WGS and its practitioners are/must be feminist; that both WGS and feminism require a focus on "appropriate" subjects; that the appropriate subjects of WGS and feminism are women or gender; and that feminism is the (only?) means to analyze the range of topics included in WGS, even while the term itself is increasingly con tested and now more typically referred to in the plural ("feminisms"). They demonstrate the ease with which WGS assumes that feminism is both necessary for and foundational to the field. And as the prompt for this forum points out, this foundational status is both intellectual and institutional: WGS is feminist, and without feminism, there is no intellectual project unique to WGS, andwithout WGS, there is no insti tutional space that is (unquestionably) feminist. Our concern is that these attachments to feminism are not benign, but rather shape how WGS can (and too often does) respond to the questions of this forum about the consequences of institutional consolidations and changes. But the "whither feminisms?" question also reveals another mean ing to this idea of attachment — that is, as a deeply held affective bond embedded in our individual disciplinary (and professional) identity 514 Forum:WjGjS Studies formations. Why do we—the practitioners of WGS — desire to main tain this connection so centrally in the firstplace? Is it that we wonder who we would be without feminism — even though the complexity, multiplicity, and indeed often contradictory understandings of this term can, and have, led to much disagreement about the sort of profes sional identity WGS should produce? There is no doubt that in inter rogating the primacy of this attachment, we risk confrontation with the various fears, anxieties, and nostalgias—as well as the hopes — that fuel our passions for the intellectual, pedagogical, and institu tional labor we do under the sign "WGS." If our intellectual identi ties and disciplinary claims are tied to the unquestioned centrality of feminism, then challenging that attachment...

Men as Students and Teachers of Feminist Scholarship

When men participate as students in Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) classrooms, they undergo feminist change. They adopt more progressive understandings of gender, show greater support for feminism, and increase their involvement in anti-sexist activism. Male students in WGS classrooms benefit to the same degree as female students, showing similar levels of change, although they start with poorer attitudes and thus the gap between them and their female peers persists. At the same time, male students’ presence highlights critical challenges to feminist pedagogy: gendered patterns of interaction, resistance to feminist teaching, and limitations on women’s critical reflections on personal experience. When men teach WGS, typically they are ‘‘graded up’’—evaluated by students as less biased and more competent than female professors. Male professors face distinct dilemmas in teaching about gender inequality from a position of privilege. Yet, like male students, they can adopt traitorous and antipatriarchal social locations and standpoints, developing pedagogies for and by the privileged.

Queer Intersubjectivity: Doing and Undoing Masculinity in Women’s Studies

This article uses autobiographical anecdotes to explore the attitudes, decisions, and experience of straight men in Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) and from this perspective to reflect on the complexities and challenges of queering masculinity for them. In an attempt to focus on the intimate moments of lived gender embodiment, but also to frame a queer ethics grounded in something more tangible that a utopian call for identity disavowal, the article appeals to Jessica Benjamin’s notion of intersubjectivity to enhance the analytical and practical reach of queer theory.

The Differential Relationship of Feminist Attitudes and Feminist Identity to Self-Efficacy

Feminist theorists have suggested that feminism provides a number of benefits for women, particularly regarding self-evaluations. However, most studies have conflated feminist attitudes and feminist identity. The main goal of this study was to assess the differential relationships of feminist attitudes and feminist identity to self-efficacy. Four hundred thirty-five students were surveyed at the beginning and end of their women's and gender studies (WGS) classes. In general, feminist attitudes and feminist identity were related to self-efficacy variables at pretest and to change in these variables over time. Feminist identity partially mediated the relationship between feminist attitudes and self-efficacy. Additionally, the results of this study generally support previous findings regarding the effect of WGS classes on students' feminist attitudes, feminist identity, and self-efficacy. Implications of these findings for the importance of feminist identity are discussed.

Student Responsiveness to Women’s and Gender Studies Classes: The Importance of Initial Student Attitudes and Classroom Relationships

We explored responsiveness to women’s and gender studies (WGS) in a large sample of students (519 women and 143 men) enrolled in one of 48 WGS classes offered at one of six colleges in a large Midwestern urban area. Our results revealed that, as a group, students felt far more empowered by their classes than distressed or angry, developed positive relationships with their WGS teachers and fellow students, and changed during their classes toward greater awareness of sexism. Women began their classes with greater awareness of sexism and openness to diversity in gender roles than men, but men showed as much change toward feminist attitudes as did women by the end of the semester-long classes. Although women reported more positive classroom relationships and greater feelings of empowerment from their WGS experience than men, men were not more distressed or angry about their classes. African Americans had greater awareness of sexism than Asian Americans or Euro-Americans as they began their classes, but the latter groups had caught up to the African Americans by the end of class. Asian Americans were less open to gender diversity than Euro-Americans and African Americans, but Euro-American, Asian American, and African American students changed equally over time on this dimension. Students who began their classes with more feminist attitudes experienced by the end of class more feelings of empowerment and, when ceiling effects were minimized, showed more change toward awareness of sexism and flexibility in gender roles than students who began with less feminist attitudes. The development of positive classroom relationships served as a medium through which these changes came about. Pedagogical and research implications of the findings are discussed.

Predictors of Change in Feminist Activism Through Women’s and Gender Studies

Predictors of change in feminist activism were studied in a group of 519 women and 143 men enrolled in 48 women’s and gender studies (WGS) classes on six college campuses in a large Midwestern urban area. Over the semester-long classes, students increased their feminist activist behaviors and intention to engage in future activism. Although women had greater activist behaviors and intentions than men, increases were similar for women and men across time. African American and Euro American students increased to a similar extent and more so than Asian American students. Predictors of change included student initial gender attitudes, changes in attitudes over time, and feelings of empowerment gained from the class. Feelings of distress and anger were unrelated to activism. Both awareness of sexism and gender egalitarianism were predictive of changes in activist intentions, whereas only awareness of sexism predicted changes in activist behaviors. Empowerment mediated the relation between attitudes and activism. Pedagogical and methodological implications are discussed.