New directions: what is gender studies?
In spring 2008 the program’s core faculty voted to change the name to Gender and Women’s Studies. This change reflects the intellectual development of the field, which grew not only to study women’s lived experience but also to consider how gender itself is constituted through everyday language, institutionalized policies, and cultural practices. While women’s studies implies a focus on women’s roles, oppression, and contributions to society, gender studies questions the generic use of “woman” as analytical category – not all women are alike! This stance allows for a fuller investigation into intersecting issues of race, class, nationality, sexuality, age, and physical ability. The move to gender studies also reflects an approach that asks how concepts of manhood and masculinities emerge historically and culturally, and invites research into the infinite varieties of gender expression. What counts as masculine or feminine changes depending on historical era, socioeconomic class, geographic location, sexual desire, and cultural or ethnic identity. On a daily basis, we routinely (and often unconsciously) invest ordinary encounters and objects with gendered meaning. Gender studies calls attention to such investments.
At OSU, we appreciate and offer both modes of analysis – women’s studies and gender studies – to students who are naturally curious about how social inequalities are perpetuated and how all people engage in, and are affected by, the gendering of our daily lives.
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