How Women’s Studies Can Save Your Life
Demie Kurz
Co-Director, Women’s Studies Program
Okay, this is going to be fast. How, you might think, can women’s studies and the study of gender save your life, or at least save you a lot of grief? Take women’s studies classes, and you’ll find out.
Gender is a basic organizing principle of every society, so it is absolutely relevant to everything – personal life, the economy, science, family life. Two examples of what we all want in life: One, we all want good relationships. Boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife, mother/daughter, father/son, father/daughter, girlfriend/girlfriend, boyfriend/boyfriend. We need to know about gender to have good relationships. Gender can cause differences between men and women in talking styles, intimacy, sharing activities and priorities. Differences can be confusing. It’s not that men and women are very different kinds of people. They’re not. But our society socializes people to male and female genders. And when a relationship isn’t good, do you need to know about gender? Gender factors into divorce and into physical and psychological abuse in relationships, especially by males, but men can be victims, too. Knowing about gender will help.
Second, and very important in all our lives, is our work life. We all want good, interesting jobs with good, fair pay. Your pay is affected by your gender. Women receive less pay. Your pay is also affected by the kind of work you do. Women and men tend to be tracked and track themselves into sex-typed jobs. Know about gender so you don’t get tracked into places you don’t want to be.
And we all want good work/family balance. If you have children, if you’re caring for a family member or a loved one who is ill, you want to spend time with them. Workplaces are not very accommodating to men or women – men or women – caregivers. We can work to change this imbalance.
So to find out about all these things and have a good life, take women’s studies classes. There are over 50 here, cross-listed with different departments and schools. And come to women’s studies events. This is our 30th anniversary, and we have some great lectures and panels on gender and athletics, women in the 2004 elections, globalization and gender, and much, much more. Thank you. See you at our events.