Why Women's Studies?

Women's studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is an interdisciplinary curriculum that explores the experience, perspectives, concerns, and needs of women. Courses analyze gender, sex, and sexuality as biological, psychological, social, and cultural phenomena. Particular emphasis is pla ced on the nature and social construction of gender and gender roles as they vary with respect to time, place, and specific social context.

Women's Studies courses also introduce students to ideologies that have been used over time to explain women's and men's natures, as well as their functions and roles in society. Students are exposed to the new scholarship on women that has emerged in the past two decades, to feminist theory, and to critiques of feminism. Finally, courses in Women's Studies revise and redefine scholarship in the traditional academic disciplines.

A major in Women's Studies provides a rich and flexible liberal arts education and also demonstrates the integration of knowledge across traditional academic boundaries. A Women's Studies major or minor is useful preparation for training in the professions: education, law, health sciences, social work, policy studies, or management. It is also an appropriate undergraduate degree for postgraduate training in the social sciences and the humanities. On the personal level, coursework in Women's Studies enhances the human potential of both women and men by questioning and redefining societal values.