<p>What is it? What do you learn as a Women's Studies major? What's the point?</p>
<p>I was looking at the list of majors available at a college and Women's Studies was on the list, and I realized I had no idea what it entailed.</p>
<p>you study women?</p>
<p>In many schools, women's studies has been replaced by gender studies. In other cases, the name remains, but the focus has become gender, as well as both women and men. There is in fact a whole field of masculinity studies. </p>
<p>Women's studies is an interdisciplinary program that draws on history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, possibly biology. It is also likely to include the study of women and gender in different societies.</p>
<p>I know very little about it, but I will guess... there are a host of legal, ethical, political, and social issues surrounding women as a gender. Think everything from the rape shield laws to domestic violence laws, outlawing rape in marriage (or acknowledging that it can exist), delegating resources for spousal abuse... to the income gap, "mommy hours," flex time, the changes in corporate America as women become more of a force, the changes in things like law and med school where women tend to push for ethical standards... to the more everyday problems of being a woman, like accessible health care, birth control, treatment for heart attacks (until this year, the #1 killer of women, but horribly misdiagnosed in hospitals), to how medications are often tested only on men because they have simpler (read: non-monthly cycle) systems.</p>
<p>If you earn a degree from that department you will be fully qualified to be a woman wherever you go.</p>
<p>Coureur,</p>
<p>I wasn't ready for that coment but it was good.</p>
<p>If you do well, does it make you a good woman?</p>
<p>Coureur:</p>
<p>Beware! Transgender has become an object of study. Anyone now can become a woman :)</p>
<p>S took a women's studies class in college. He was one of five guys in the class, so he did get to meet a lot of women. Even better, he emerged as such a staunch feminist that he would question some of my statements! At least he understands the problems that women have faced in the past and encounter today.</p>