If you need to fulfill a Human Diversity requirement and have an interest in gender studies and women’s equality, then Wright College has the class for you.
Humanities 144 , an intro to Women’s and Gender Studies, is a new course at Wright College, taught by Professor Valerie Pell, a staunch feminist. Women’s and Gender studies is an interdisciplinary field of academic study that studies gender as a social and cultural construct, which is what society says is appropriate in order to be masculine or feminine, and the relationships between power and gender.
“It has been a discipline for about 30 to 40 years.” Pell stated. “I think it’s really going to open up a lot of possibilities for us at Wright College in terms of scholarships and activism. Women are the most oppressed people across the globe and bringing awareness to that would positively impact us because every member in the classroom can bring that information back to their own communities and lives. My hope is that class enrollment increases so that we can get more people to understand the political situation of women.”
Wright College Professor Sydney Hart teaches Sociology 207, Sociology of Sex and Gender, and is also part of the Women’s and Gender Studies committee. She stated that the course was written by former Wright College Professor and advisor for The Wright Times Suzanne Sanders.
“She’s been really involved with Women’s and Gender Studies, and she gathered a group of us together who became the Women and Gender studies committee. We decided that the class made more sense in the Humanities and English area than in social science. In social science, we only offer Sociology 207 as a gender studies class, whereas there is a lot more flexibility in English and Humanities,” said Hart.
Hart also mentioned that given over 50% of the population is women, and that women are attending college at higher rates, it is important that we understand something about women’s experiences in the world.
“The differences are within the group of women, so it offers us an opportunity to get students involved in Gender Studies where they can take that to their four-year college. It will really change the way that students see the world. It’s also really good for men to understand women’s experiences in the world and to appreciate both the oppression we face as women and also the strengths we bring from our position in the society.”
Pell mentioned that we were taught from a very young age what a woman’s roles are and what a man’s roles are, and how society teaches those things. “These are messages that were taught to us all the time, but are sort of invisible. We are taught not to question them and they are naturalized to us.”
Although feminism is often portrayed as “man-hating”, this class is a safe space for everyone. Hart stated that “Being ‘for women’ doesn't mean you're against men. Yes, the word ‘feminist’ is often looked down upon by people who don’t understand it, but all it really means is that we need to treat women as fully human. It is controversial, but college is a place where we should be exploring controversial ideas from a personal perspective. It's pretty sad that it’s still controversial to treat women as full human beings and that it is thought of as even slightly problematic.”
Pell added that “Patriarchy is a type of ideology that is meant to be unseen and naturalizes the notion that men are superior to women. Around the 70’s and early 80’s, this picture of feminist became very negative. It was a backlash that made people question feminists and made them wonder if they were indeed ‘man haters.’
These are stereotypes that we still hear today. This system of patriarchy that puts men on top and women on the bottom is constantly reaffirming the stereotype that feminists don’t like men when, in fact, men are our allies. Feminists love men and they love women too, they just think that everything should be equitable.”
Humanities 144 is a class for everyone and students interested in this class should know one thing: there is no right or wrong way to be a feminist.