Gender is integrated in everything we do, even in places we least expect it. Gender and the greater social landscape are deeply intertwined. The Gender Studies minor focuses on the interaction and relationship of gender with race, ethnicity and sexuality.
Courses such as CRIM 3324 Gender, Crime, and Justice. ,HLTH 3306 Gender in Healthcare, PSY 3324 Psychology of Gender, PSCI 4364 Civil Rights Law and Society and SOC 4375 Organizations, Work, and Gender further highlight the intersection and application of gender in every discipline.
Gender studies courses like GST 2300 Introduction to Gender Studies are at risk of being cut from the core curriculum at UTD along with many other universities proposing to cut similar courses from the core curriculum. However, those core classes are sometimes the only introduction to gender studies for students who would otherwise not take such a course.
Gender’s omnipresence in day-to-day life led psychology major alumni Chen into GST, where the minor eventually found itself on their medical school application. With the GST minor, Chen was able to strengthen themselves as a well-rounded medical school applicant well versed in both STEM and the humanities.
“I want to work in LGBT healthcare, particularly serving the underserved,” Chen said. “I think it’s really important to have a background in why people are underserved, why they can’t access certain resources, [and] the ways in which the system has historically failed them. I want to work in a field that overcomes those barriers.”
In another part of the health world, the GST minor helped clinical social worker and chemical dependency counselor Amanda Ford. As she worked with people struggling with their mental health, her GST minor gave her an extra nuanced set of lenses when approaching individuals struggling.
“Yes, it can be a chemical disease or a diagnosis, but there is this huge social cultural piece of it,” Ford said. “People’s symptoms look different based on what gender they’re socialized as, or people’s diagnosis is different based on how they’re perceived.”
Ford said it was easy to illustrate the GST minor’s application through her experience working at an all-women’s facility for substance use.
“So many of the people would come in and they’d be like ‘I was using drugs or drinking to cope with having to be a mom and do it all [and working] full time and [taking] care of my kids [while] my husband wasn’t helping’,” Ford said.
The GST minor didn’t stop at situational applications post-graduation; it also guided students through another career path entirely. Neuroscience major junior Nina Jordre always knew she’d pursue research, but didn’t know exactly what. She stated that she gained more awareness about the lack of women’s research from the GST minor. This gave shape to her research career as she intends to alleviate the women research gap in the future.
Beyond an occupational boost, the minor offered a warm support system which Jordre vouched for. Due to its relatively smaller class sizes, Jordre said she felt an intense familiarity in her GST classes. Above all, students registered to take these classes were genuinely passionate and curious.
“I just had coffee with one of the gender studies professors yesterday because it feels like a community where the professors are really invested in me succeeding,” Jordre said. “Most of my friends have come from the Gender Studies program. There’s one of them who’s my best friend, who’s also a Gender Studies minor.”
For students like Jordre and Ford, the Gender Studies minor builds students into more thoughtful thinkers and challenges them to look twice when examining gendered norms, especially when such examination helps to identify issues and nuances.
“I feel like [the] most important to [know about] the Gender Studies minor is helping you view the world through a new light,” Jordre said. “[It teaches] how to think about the world and how to look at the world through a different lens.”