I shared earlier this semester my abstract for the conference I will speaking at in Richmond, today. Below is my speech I’ve worked on and have flushed out all week. God, I’m tired.
The Reconstitution of Women’s Studies
Today I will discuss current issues in how the department of Women’s Studies is constructed.
A) To begin, it is important to understand as a whole, gender holds substance.
i. Defining Women’s studies as an area of study and how it interacts with other disciplines often focuses exclusively on select issues concerning women.
ii. But women do not exist in a vacuum. To fully engage studies on women it is imperative to address all internal and external interactions and influences: culture, people, religion, profession, and social engagements. Such engagements would expose the futility of excluding one of the most important interactive influences on the place of women in society, namely, the man or “the patriarch in the patriarchy”. In the college environment, this means the male student. Women’s studies programs and classes have historically been and remain over-patronized by female students. Indeed, some male students view them as hostile spaces.
B) In this presentation I contend it is imperative to redefine not just the naming of department of Women’s Studies, but also recruitment strategies, new masculinity studies inclusive courses, pedagogy and the naming of courses. This will create a more co-ed friendly space for the engagement of all gender issues. Such an approach would result in the expansion of university programs on women’s issues while simultaneously occasioning a more inclusively sensitized population.
C) I will argue this based on a series of five questions.
- i. Concerning my own university
- ii. The evolution of Women’s Studies
- iii. The nature of Women’s Studies departments in the United States
- iv. The implications of this nature
- v. Strategic solutions to these negative implications
I) For the first question I ask, is my university a case in point?
A) At James Madison University, there are 42 students enrolled as Women’s Studies minors, two of who are male.
B) There are approximately 40 classes offered year around that cover singular topics such as gender, sexuality, and women’s issues.
- i. A high percentage of these courses are formally linked with other fields of study such as science, communications, English, Africana Studies, and Justice Studies.
C) Where JMU excels in cross-disciplinary courses in Women’s Studies and other departments, it fails in recruiting substantial numbers of male students in the program.
II) Secondly, how do the departments of Women’s Studies in the United States look as a whole?
A) In 2009, the University of Maryland Baltimore County researched gender-related programs offered in the United States at the undergraduate level of education.
- i. Their results came to approximately 172 programs offered in the United States as of 2009.
B) With some roughly 4,000 universities and colleges in the United States, it is sad there are only approximately 172 gender-related undergraduate programs offered.
a. In today’s modern notions of gender equality, it is disappointing we have not gone far in promoting the movement of gender equality in academia.
III) This begs to ask my third question, how has Women’s Studies evolved over time?
A) As Mary Evans explains in The Problem of Gender for Women’s Studies, “Now that women have, in a sense, arrived as part of the academic consciousness of the male academy, the problem arises of where Women’s Studies might go next, and in particular what might happen to that once subversive and radical category of women.
The Women’s Movement has come a long way from the days when merely stating the specificity of the female condition constituted a solidaristic and a confrontational act; in other context. Women, a term in some disarray and some disharmony, appear to have become less acceptable and, in a sense, more controversial (Women’s Studies International Forum, 1990).”
a. Though Mary Evans points out some of our achievements, we have yet to reach our end point. Instead of moving forward, we’ve almost moved backwards since the ‘ghettoization’ of Women’s Studies.
IV) So I ask, what are the implications in ghettoizing the department of Women’s Studies?
A) First, it creates an alarming amount of ignorance, and secondly, an imbalance of sensitivity between men and women.
i. The problem is only partially solved when female gender sensitive adults are left among under-sensitized male counterparts.
B) Another implication is societal transformations.
i. Ghettoizing the department leaves male students too uncomfortable to participate in a Women’s Studies class. Eventually, they carry this discomfort to the workspace. More importantly, this discomfort underlines an ideology that will be too late to change after college.
ii. The time to discuss pay inequalities is not when women are being paid .77$ to the dollar. The time to talk about this is before a woman takes on her first job after college.
iii. We must distinguish between symptoms and causes, we need to start addressing the causes of male under sensitivity.
- Academia’s sole responsibility to its students is to develop them into model citizens who will make a truly egalitarian society.
C) A gross consequence of this under-sensitivity is the widespread culture of sexual assault.
- i. 1 in 4 college women will be sexually assaulted before graduation. This is not an issue, this is a crisis. Furthermore, what is alarming is the low level of awareness regarding this issue amongst both sexes.
- ii. This low level of awareness, if not addressed quickly and appropriately, continues beyond college.
D) The last implication I will discuss is the intellectual isolation of women.
i. Informed women are left to deliberate amongst themselves, and are deprived of a fellow male perspective.
ii. Women’s Studies programs have provided women the opportunity to develop into powerful, aware, and sensitized humans. Their male-counterparts should be awarded the opportunity to view their fellow female students as such.
V) So what can be done?
A) The department of Women’s Studies must improve its strategies in closing the education gap between female and male students. It is time for a reconstitution of Women’s Studies.
B) By reconstitution, I mean
i. Renaming the department of Women’s Studies itself to Gender Studies.
ii. Substituting ‘women’ with ‘gender’ in all relevant course titles.
iii. Mainstreaming gender issues into more professors’ syllabi and other fields of studies, as well as incorporating masculine studies into Gender Studies curriculum.
a. A sustainable way to mainstream these issues is to strategically target them at male-dominated departments, departments such as physics, engineering, political science, and business.
b. In my own experience, I have enjoyed this marriage of male and female dominated specialties in a “Gender Issues in Science” course.
iv. Lastly, offer Introduction to Gender Studies as an option to fulfill general education requirements in college.
a. Introduction to Gender Studies could fulfill Social and Cultural requirements, as well as Arts and Humanities prerequisites.
b. Nevertheless, this is not a new suggestion, for this has been discussed amongst both professors and students of James Madison University for some time now.
c. Although we have seen some improvement such as the “Gender Issues in Science class” I mentioned earlier, we have yet to see a full embrace of cross-disciplinary efforts. Concerns against these efforts range from general hesitancies over minority issues to low numbers of professors willing to teach such a general education course.
d. The negative consequences of an absence of this sort of cross-disciplinary effort far outweigh these concerns and discomforts.
In conclusion, I want to reiterate the necessity to quickly and fully embrace a reconstitution of Women’s Studies. The problems I have mentioned today are concerning and unfortunate. But at the same time, I am very pleased and fortunate to be sitting and discussing this topic with you all. This gives me hope that my daughters and sons will benefit from the type of gender studies an egalitarian society offers.
In the beginning, Women’s Studies was brought about to create an area for discourse between women and women only. But our society is in a different stage. We no longer need, can, or should remain in this safe haven. Now, it is time for Gender Studies, accommodating both women and men.
ShoutOut! James Madison University 