Women and gender studies continues to focus on important issues
National debates may shift the focus of women and gender studies to sexuality, queer or gender studies, but Ohio Wesleyanâs WGS program continues to hold women as a high priority.
The WGS program is an interdisciplinary course of study comprised of sociology, history, literature, anthropology, economics, journalism and several other departments on campus.
Introduction to WGS, Gender in Contemporary Society and Sexuality Studies are three of the current course offerings in the WGS program.
Historical sketch of Ohio Wesleyan females
In 1850, long before thoughts of a womenâs studies program were entertained, Ohio Wesleyan University was founded as an all-male college. The institutionâs founders felt the need for women to be educated as well, so they established the Ohio Wesleyan Female College in 1853.
In 1877 the two colleges merged, enabling women âto secure an equal educational opportunity with men,â according to the Board of Trustees minutes from June of 1877. Curfews, special brochures for parents, all-female dorms and other strict regulations were put in place to protect the fair sex.
From this time forward, the womanâs role at OWU gradually changed. The all-female residences of Monnett Hall and Stuyvesant Hall were replaced by the co-ed dormitories of todayâs campus. Organizations such as the womenâs booster chapter of Mortar Board, the Womenâs Resource Center and the Womenâs House were established for the promotion of womenâs issues.
As early as the 1960s and 70s, a Feminist Fortnight was held on campus. This was a two week period focused on womenâs issues and personal growth for females.
âIt is our hope that the program will foster new consciousness for women and men who wish to make change in their own lives and stimulate an increased awareness of womenâs roles as agents of change within our present social structure,â from the 1974 Feminist Fortnight brochure.
Womenâs Week, the contemporary version of Feminist Fortnight, continues to this day. Documentaries, the Take Back the Night sexual assault awareness program and other activities are held during this time.
As OWU faculty members and students became more active and outspoken about womenâs issues, the need for a womenâs studies program was recognized.
Beginnings of a discipline
Kaaren Courtney, professor of modern foreign languages, came to OWUâs department of romance languages in the fall of 1967.
Courtney said she had recently received tenure when several older women got together and picked her to help them get the womenâs studies program started.
âI thought I could do it and I liked the challenge of it,â she said. âI think itâs fair to say that the other female faculty members in romance languages backed me up. They all said yes, thatâs a good thing to do. So, I felt supported by my friends and colleagues.â
Courtney taught the first introduction to womenâs studies course in the spring of 1976. She said there was an even distribution between men and women in the course.
âThey were hippie men,â she said. âThis was the 1970s, people were still anti-war and everything. I loved developing that first class.
OWUâs womenâs studies major, the first in the GLCA, was officially approved by the faculty in 1981, but Courtney said there were some men who didnât want it to happen.
Courtney said while she was in a department where many females were teaching, the climate for women on campus was overall not very good.
âI think by the end of the 1960s the female faculty knew that we were getting shorted in terms of numbers, pay and a lot of things,â she said.
Courtney said despite these issues of equality, many older male faculty members did understand the issues of the day and were âimmediately behind the advancement of women and the major.â She said there were some male faculty members who had major sexual harassment issues with female students.
âI think the climate for female students today, vis-Ă -vis their academics, has improved a lot,â she said. âHowever, Iâm not sure that socially on campus the situation has changed as much as it should have by now.â
A former studentâs perspective
Kim Keethler Ball (â83) was a womenâs studies and journalism double-major. She said from her first year at OWU she was on track to become a womenâs studies major. After the Academic Policy Committee approved the major, she officially declared her junior year.
Ball was the first womenâs studies major. Her first class was Women in American History.
âMy head sort of exploded,â she said. âMy whole world became new again with that course and I fell in love with womenâs studies. I wanted to take any course which said âwomen andâ.â
She said areas of womenâs studies and feminism were new topics and diversity was beginning to be explored at this time. She added that the major âdrove my student involvements and extracurricular activities from the start.â
Ball was the president of the Womenâs Resource Center and worked on the Athena, a feminist literary magazine, as an independent study. She was a member of the womenâs studies committee, the committee on the status of women and the affirmative action committee.
âThe WRC was really vibrant back then,â she said.
Ball, who lived in Hayes Hall, said the climate on campus was socially scary.
âIt was the tail end of the 70s so it was wild here,â she said. âI was here when the Betas hauled their furniture out and torched it.â
She said part of the social climate on campus involved a divide between the heterosexual and lesbian feminists on campus.
âBack then there wasnât an in between in the muck that was feminism,â she said. âIt was important to know that you could still be heterosexual and feminist.â
Ball also said it was difficult telling her parents she was a womenâs studies major â her father said he didnât want to see her carrying signs on the news and her mother asked why she had to call herself a feminist.
âI certainly didnât fit in anymore when I went home,â she said.
Womenâs studies incorporates gender
Shari Stone-Mediatore, interim director of Ohio Wesleyanâs women and gender studies program, said the shift to WGS came in 2003.
âWe fought about whether we should change it to gender studies and we decided to make it WGS because there are still issues that affect women,â she said. âThere are womenâs studies that need to be addressed, in addition to the various ways that gender constructions affect identity.â
Stone-Mediatore said she thinks the major will stay with WGS for a while because it covers anything which is important. In addition, she said if there is a shift in the make-up or naming of the program, it will hopefully come from a collaboration between students and faculty.
She said the WGS major will continue to be important in the future because it is another lens to view the world through.
âTo use gender as an analytical tool and to realize how gender ideology, as a way of thinking, allows us to look critically at the way we view the world,â Stone-Mediatore said.
She said the incorporation of gender in the name of the major highlights additional issues related to womenâs studies.
âWeâre all gendered and weâre all influenced by gender ideology and itâs partly about womenâs struggles,â she said. âGender is something which has organized all of our lives and our society, so itâs something all of us need to learn about in order to reflect critically and be informed about our world.â
Stirrings of a new generation
Junior Paige Ruppel, moderator of the Womenâs House, said other fields of study have excluded women and focused on men.
âYou canât escape the fact that we live in a male-dominated society,â said Ruppel, a biology and WGS major.
Ruppel said one of the arguments against the program is that it creates a division between the male and female gender, but she disagrees with this viewpoint.
âI think people who make that argument are very misinformed about what feminism is and theyâre looking at it from a defensive perspective that feminism seeks to destroy men,â she said. âIf they sought to better understand what the WGS major is, they would see that the aim of the major is to dissolve that division.â
She said regardless of what the program is called in the future, the field will be necessary until equality is achieved between the sexes.
âI think these inequalities are more muted than when the major started, but theyâre still relevant today,â Ruppel said.
She said itâs easy to forget academic institutions and disciplines have been informed by males historically. For Ruppel, the suggestion that the major offers topics covered by other fields of study is false.
âTo some extent this is true, but the thing that distinguishes it is that itâs informed by women and youâre looking at the broader social structure from a womanâs perspective,â she said. âItâs very difficult to accomplish that elsewhere.â
Ruppel said for her, the debate about what the national debate about what the major should be called is purely semantic.
âRegardless of what the department is called, this major will be relevant until we achieve equality between the sexes,â she said. âI think the inequalities are more muted than when the major started, but theyâre still relevant.â
She said a gender studies department wonât change the content of what the major is because âthereâs a lot of discussion about patriarchy in regards to both genders.â Additionally, she said sexuality studies as a freestanding discipline may not be necessary because gender and sexuality are intertwined and canât really be separated in an academic setting.
Ruppel said the creation of a queer studies department would be a positive thing, but itâs not practical at OWU because currently there is only one faculty member in the actual WGS program.
âIt would be a twin department to WGS and would focus more on queer theory,â she said. âQueer is becoming more political and relevant. Itâs hard to cover queer studies in one course and currently, itâs only a section of one course at OWU.â
Ruppel said changes to the name of the department could come from the student community, but this movement may be far in the future because the WGS department is currently so small.
Junior Colleen Waickman, StAP intern at the LGBTIQ Resource Center and first year resident at WoHo, said the WGS field was the result of a political movement, so the students in the major have a passion others donât.
âWGS is so important because the major is aimed at discovering knowledge about how people see the world through the lens of gender, but it was also born out of an effort to unite academia and activism,â she said.
Waickman said WGS attempts to deconstruct the division between the genders by looking at the world through another lens.
She said the naming of the program will probably shift in the future, and eventually every university will have a WGS department of some sort.
âI think that itâll grow to be less stigmatized and itâll become less of a subculture within universities,â Waickman said.
Waickman also said including women in the name of the program is an important aspect for her.
âWithout saying women in the name, I think weâre ignoring that homophobia and sexism are intrinsically intertwined,â she said. âI think all social problems are rooted in gender inequality, and WGS teaches you to see the world in a totally different way.â
She said there is a historical importance to including women in the name, so leaning toward simply gender studies would take away the focus on historical inequality of women. She said instead of focusing on queer studies, there should be a movement towards incorporating sexuality studies to a greater degree.
âThe only reason sexuality is such a big deal is because gender is a big deal,â she said. âIf we didnât care so much about gender, then you could fuck whoever you wanted.â
Smith College in Northampton, Mass., and other universities are beginning to offer sexuality women and gender studies departments, commonly referred to as SWAG. But for Waickman and other students, this shift is far in the future for OWU.
Junior Anna Cooper, second-year Womenâs Resource Center employee and WGS minor, said any changes to the department would start with academia and trickle down through students.
âItâs all about the philosophy of the individual department,â she said. âThe field, in general, is important to learn about because it allows a better understanding of societal interactions.â
Cooper said she believes women are still subordinate to men and this should be reflected when studying the WGS discipline. She said in the realm of WGS, itâs important to âmake an effort to study the marginalization of women and work that back into the mainstream.â
âI think the direction weâre going is eventually toward queer studies, but right now it kind of depends where you are and how you choose to separate them, but theyâre all connected,â she said.
For Cooper, who said WGS influences everything she does, said itâs also important to address gender inequity under the broad category of females.
âGender affects every single person,â she said. âMen have a gender too, but male and females are not the only genders.â
Cooper noted OWUâs transition from WS to WGS and said the next focus of the field may move toward a broader study of gender.
âIâm not sure which term is going to be the umbrella category of study, but first itâll probably be gender studies with the incorporation of queer studies later down the line,â she said.
Cooper said OWUâs current WGS department does a good job of encompassing gender and sexuality, which is a byproduct of the third wave of feminism.
âThird wave feminism is deliberately more encompassing of gender, sexuality, race and class,â she said. âItâs intersexuality oriented.â
Feminism unites the generations
Ball, Cooperâs mother, said she couldnât imagine going through a whole curriculum of womenâs studies courses and not identifying as a feminist. For her, learning about social justice and reality require a deeper understanding and advocacy for women.
âFeminism gets under your skin and into your bones,â she said. âIt really becomes part of your essence.â
She said when she was a student, preconceived notions of the âangry feministâ altered peopleâs perceptions of her. In order to combat this, she suggests further education of both men and women.
âI know a lot of men who are very interested in womenâs issues and who are willing to walk side by side with women in our journeys,â she said. âI do think that the more both men and women learn in the subject of WS, the closer weâll get to lessening any divide.â
Cooper said any divisions created by the word feminist have the ability to be overcome.
âPeople should feel more comfortable identifying as feminists and less scared of the term,â she said. âIf you understand itâs really based in a desire for gender equality and advocating for choice in all areas of life, then I think itâs not something difficult to be on board with.â
Ruppel, who said feminism is an integral part of her life, also said stereotypes of the word are perpetuated by the media.
âForty years later we still havenât gotten over the idea of a militant, lesbian, bra-burning, fem-nazi,â she said. âPeople opposed to womenâs studies and feminism largely donât understand what feminism is.â
Ruppel also said feminism has made her a lot more aware of the world around her.
âOnce feminism gets a hold of you it doesnât really let go,â she said.
Waickman said she thinks people who are for womenâs rights and donât identify as a feminist are afraid of the word and the negative stereotypes associated with it.
âIf weâre not allowed to identify as a feminist because of the word, thatâs a totally patriarchal thing,â she said. âIt implies that femininity or womanhood is bad, simply because of the word.â
Stone-Mediatore said identifying as a feminist isnât necessary for the field of study, but a feminist perspective as an analytical tool is useful.
âIt has to do with viewing the world with attention to the ways that gender hierarchies have organized our world and with concern to analyze those hierarchies critically,â she said.
Where have all the feminists gone?
Ball said the evolution of womenâs studies and the major are inevitable, but the history and activism associated with womenâs rights is still important.
âWith the political climate right now, itâs an obvious indicator that we havenât fully arrived as equal human beings with all the rights we should have,â she said. âThatâs true across the world. I donât want to diminish the importance of sexuality and queer theory, but WS is a worthy discipline in its own right.â
For Courtney, the debate over the name of the department is an academic issue.
âPeople shouldnât be sitting around discussing whether it should be called womenâs studies or gender studies,â she said. âWomenâs health issues, but especially reproductive issues, are being attacked again. Seems to me we need to get back in the trenches.â
She said the major should be as inclusive as it can be, but the modern-day attack on women should be addressed first.
âWomen, whatever their sexuality may be, are being attacked from every side,â she said.
Courtney said she remembers when abortion wasnât legal anywhere in the U.S. and when she first came to OWU, the Chaplainâs Office had a fund of money to pay for a femaleâs plane ticket out of state in the incident of unwanted pregnancy.
âWhen I think about those issues, itâs really back to the beginning in a lot of ways,â she said. âFemale students said it would never happen again, but the issues are resurfacing.â
Courtney said the field needs to be more activist, but that proposing a solution in addition to outlining the problems is an important step.
âI think that today, young women expect different things than their male compatriots,â she said.
Ruppel said looking at a newspaper and reading about contraception amendments, Virginiaâs transvaginal ultrasound proposals and other issues, make inequalities for todayâs young woman apparent.
âI think itâs very easy to forget that women still arenât equal,â she said. âWe have a tendency to look at the past and see how far weâve come, but we still have far to go.â
