Overview

The Women and Gender Study program of San Francisco State University studies how bodies, families, communities, and nations are gendered in specific cultural and historical contexts and investigate connections to their own lives, roles, and contributions. The expertise of the department lies in interdisciplinary, intersectional, and transnational studies of power. Students are taught to draw from a range of theoretical and methodological approaches in their study of women and gender. Courses consider global structures of power and histories of racism in relation to local, regional, national, and transnational feminist practices. The department provides analysis and debate of exciting works by feminists who confront and transform various institutions and arenas, including politics, law, non-profit groups, non-governmental organizations, health and medicine, sexuality, pedagogy, labor struggles, and cultural productions. 

The goals of the department include: the development of conceptual, analytic, and critical thinking skills in relation to gender and feminism in a transnational framework; the ability to integrate academic studies in Women and Gender Studies into personal and professional goals; the development of skills to formulate and implement theoretically-informed political, cultural, and community action; the ability to analyze gender from an interdisciplinary perspective, using a range of methodological tools; an historical understanding of gender in relation to structural inequality, social movements, and labor struggles; and the ability to critically examine representation and cultural production through a feminist lens.

Program Learning Outcomes

• Students will be able to define and describe contesting theories, methods, histories, and representations of women, gender, and feminism (department-wide)

• Students will identify the politics of knowledge production across multiple disciplines in relation to Women and Gender Studies (department wide)

• Students will be able to compare and distinguish historical understandings of gender in relation to structural inequality, social movements, and labor struggles (WGS 150)

• Students will be able to explain and situate the ways citizenship is shaped through both the institutional foundations of governance and ideological mechanisms of politics (WGS 160)

• Students will be able to examine women and gender in relation of race, class, sexuality, colonialism, multiculturalism, and/or globalization

• Students will be able to conceptualize and analyze gender and feminism in a transnational framework and from an interdisciplinary perspective, using a range of methodological tools while also demonstrating writing proficiency

• Students will be able to integrate their academic studies in Women and Gender Studies into their professional goals and be able to formulate and implement theoretically informed political, cultural, and community action

Career paths

The Bachelor of Arts in Women and Gender Studies is an interdisciplinary liberal arts degree that focuses on women and gender issues in literature, history, sociology, anthropology, cultural, and ethnic studies. The major provides the incentive, knowledge, and skills that prepare students for a variety of graduate programs; and for careers in traditional and alternative social and educational institutions including non-governmental organizations that require expertise in women and gender issues. Some students have used the degree as a foundation for further work in areas such as teaching, counseling, journalism, law, social work, health, administration, advocacy, labor organizing, and community activism.