Gender studies

Gender Studies

Gender Studies (pronunciation: /ˈdʒɛndər ˈstʌdiz/) is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. It includes women's studies (concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics), men's studies and queer studies. Sometimes, gender studies is offered together with study of sexuality. These disciplines study gender and sexuality in the fields of literature, language, geography, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, cinema, media studies, human development, law, and medicine. It also analyses how race, ethnicity, location, class, nationality, and disability intersect with the categories of gender and sexuality.

Etymology

The term "gender studies" is believed to have been first used in the 1970s, when feminist theorists began to extend the scope of their research to include the study of men and masculinity, as well as women and femininity. The term was used to denote a study that includes both men and women, and is thus distinct from women's studies.

Related Terms

• Feminism: The advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.
• Masculinity: A set of attributes, behaviors, and roles associated with boys and men.
• Femininity: A set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with girls and women.
• Queer Theory: A field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of queer studies and women's studies.
• Intersectionality: The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.

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