What to do
with a Women’s Studies degree . . .
A. An interdisciplinary field of study (begun in many universities in the 1970s) that is concerned with difference, history, and social justice, especially regarding gender, race, class, age, and sexuality.
ISU’s Women’s Studies Program has the following goals:
- To introduce the histories of women.
- To understand relationships among gender, race, age, and sexuality.
- To learn about same-sex, cross-sex, and cross-cultural differences.
- To communicate across differences, not necessarily overcoming them.
- To explore different kinds of societal oppression.
- To form educated opinions.
- To study the politics of education.
- To know the history and practice of feminisms.
Q. What can I do with a women’s studies minor?
A. Students who have specialized in women’s studies end up in occupations in the health, social, and human services; in education and library services; and in law and government.
According to Barbara F. Luebke and Mary Ellen Reilly’s Women’s Studies Graduates: The First Generation (1995), women’s studies students have gone on to work in the following occupations:
| advocate for domestic violence victims | journalist |
| advocate for hate-crime victims | law enforcement |
| archivist | lawyer |
| art therapist | librarian |
| artist | minister |
| battered women’s center director | musician |
| business owner | nurse-midwife |
| clinical social worker | Planned Parenthood clinic coordinator |
| college professor | program associate at human rights organization |
| communications consultant | psychotherapist |
| congressional fellow | public and government relations manager |
| cooperative grocery manager | rape crisis program director |
| director of program for inner-city teenagers | recreational therapist |
| doctor | sexual assault/sexual abuse educator |
| energy conservation manager | teacher |
| film-casting assistant | theater worker |
| flight instructor | town manager |
| health clinic medical assistant | union organizer |
| HIV educator | university staff psychologist |
| hospital foundation executive director | writer |
| human services administrator |
Q. How can I find out if Women’s Studies is right for me?
A. Talk to faculty and current students, take a women’s studies course, or research the subject at the library.
WS 200 (Introduction to Women’s Studies) is a general education course [B1, E2]. There are several sections offered each semester, though they fill up quickly. ISU also has a Women’s Studies Minors’ Assocation. The Women’s Studies Program Office is located in Dreiser Hall 201. Our hours are M-F 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and by appointment.
The aforementioned Women’s Studies Graduates: The First Generation (1995) is a good book to read, as is O’Barr and Wyer’s Engaging Feminism: Students Speak Up and Speak Out and Barbara Findlen’s Listen Up: Voices of the Next Feminist Generation.