WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES

The program in Women’s and Gender Studies at The University of Tulsa considers how gender and other intersecting factors, such as ethnicity, race, class, culture, sexuality, and age, have worked to shape the life experiences of women and men from diverse backgrounds. The program analyzes the contemporary and historical factors that underlie the current statuses of women and men from all parts of the world and explores the various means by which people have sought to achieve equality.

The program’s dual emphases on interdisciplinarity and intersectionality offer students analytical frameworks and methodological tools with which to understand people’s life experiences, human interactions, and economic and social institutions.  By promoting awareness and knowledge of status-based oppression; of people’s interrelationships; and of the ways in which civil rights movements throughout history have struggled for equity, the program seeks to contribute to changing attitudes and practices that tend to silence people’s voices or that work to devalue, marginalize, or subordinate women and men’s choices and life experiences.

MISSION STATEMENT

The program analyzes the contemporary and historical factors that underlie the current statuses of women and men, from all parts of the world, and explores the various means by which people have sought to achieve equality.  By employing diverse methods of inquiry grounded in a variety of academic disciplines, courses in the program use gender as a pivotal category of analysis to clarify relationships between people and to analyze the extent to which their differences have been socially constructed and historically contested.

WHY WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES?

• Students in women’s and gender studies gain crucial insight into how ideas about gender affect the lives of both women and men, shaping how all of us relate to ourselves and each other
• Students in women’s and gender studies develop an international perspective, exploring differences and similarities among women from diverse cultures and geographies
• As the most interdisciplinary program at TU, women’s and gender studies offers a structure for building focus within a chosen major while also exploring its connections to other areas of study
• Businesses need individuals with an understanding of gender-related issues such as flex-time, parental leave and pay equity
• Many women’s organizations hire individuals with specializations in women’s and gender studies
• Professionals in law, medicine, social work, teaching, and counseling need expertise in gender issues
• Specialists with training in women’s and gender studies serve as consultants in industry, higher education, and personnel companies

Among the opportunities that recent Women’s Studies certificate graduates are pursuing: U.S. Marine Corps. officer training; Tulsa Family & Children’s Services case manage; University of the Pacific development research analyst; Rogers County (OK) juvenile justice specialist; North Carolina State University graduate program in sociology; University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee graduate program in communication; Fairleigh Dickinson University graduate program in teaching; and law school at the University of Tulsa.

Questions? Contact: dennis-denisoff@utulsa.edu