Students in our women's studies classes learn that women—their ideas, their contributions and their resources—count!

Women's Studies is an ideal component of a liberal arts education

• Our interdisciplinary program can be combined with any other major or minor to be presented for graduation.
• Students bring together a wide range of disciplines, learning to analyze situations, think abstractly, organize material, write and present their conclusions, and contribute to group performance.
• Students learn to work together and collaborate closely, pooling their resources as they research and generate projects.
• Women's Studies pedagogy emphasizes diverse individual learning styles and interactive classes.
• Students examine the links between gender discrimination, racial discrimination, and other types of social inequality.
• Internships provide real-life experience that combines theory with practice.
• Women's Studies can supply information and practice that fills in the gaps of traditional disciplines.
• In asking questions about how gender operates in our lives, our program embodies the spirit of inquiry and reflection that characterizes the best kind of education.

Employers welcome the useful array of skills that graduates of Women's Studies programs offer.

• Understanding the diversity of women's experience prepares graduates to thrive in a diverse, multi-cultural, and global workplace.
• Courses use a collaborative model of learning which is directly relevant to the contemporary work environment.
• Knowledge of how the concept of gender operates is important in many professional situations.
• Specific gender-related careers in women's organizations, women's shelters, or women's health centers are greatly enhanced by the knowledge that a women's studies background brings to the employees.
• A degree in Women's Studies prepares you for almost anything, both traditional roles and those on the cutting edge.

See the Michigan State University webpage What You Can Do With a Career in Women's Studies for ideas and bibliographic resources.

A background in Women's Studies lays the foundation for advanced graduate work.

• Many of the most exciting developments in the arts and sciences (e.g. social and cultural theory, medicine, historical method, law, literary criticism, and philosophy) are being advanced within a feminist and gender studies framework.
• Students may use a focus on women and gender to establish a specialty area in law school, medical or allied fields, social work, politics, or communications.
• Women's Studies has been a field in its own right for over twenty-five years, leading to jobs in and out of academe.

See the WMSTL website for over 500 links to Women's Studies Programs, Departments, & Research Centers

Women's studies can be personally challenging.

• Our program strives to create an environment that supports diverse individual efforts and choices, as well as collective activism.
• We raise questions about how race, class and gender inform the everyday experience of individuals in different ways.
• Students examine the connections between personal issues and larger issues of social and political justice.
• In rethinking and studying what women have been and what women might become, women's studies works to provide a greater range of possibilities and choices for all women and men.
• Being more aware of how gender identity is constructed fosters an increased sense of what is important in creating strong families and social relationships
• Women's Studies seeks to make a difference in people's lives, empowering others to create social change.

WS Programs Webpages

Here are some WS pages that also ask and answer the question why study with us? Some of the language for this draft was borrowed directly from these sources.

American University

What Can I Do With a B.A. in Women's and Gender Studies? a very nice page on how WS skills translate into life and workplace skills. Good quotes from "recent graduates".

Lancaster University

Starts out with some nice questions: Did you ever wonder why...? that inspired the If you ever wondered...

Ohio State

Note sidebar WS is not, many directly quoted in WS is NOT

Ohio University

Asks precisely our question, why women's studies?

Case Western Reserve

Shippensberg University

Career opportunities

Oregon State University

Nice mission statement

Hit RELOAD or REFRESH to read different quotations in the boxes above.
This page developed by Amelia Carr (http://merlin.allegheny.edu/employee/a/acarr)

last update: 15 August 2003
http://merlin.allegheny.edu/dept/womens/academ/why.html