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Student in the Writing & Multiliteracy Center

Women's and Gender Studies
BA , Minor

On-campus Online Undergraduate Major Minor

Explore the lives, voices, histories, roles, and ideas of women. Learn how gender, together with race, class, and sexuality, affects all our lives. When you major in Women's and Gender Studies (WGS), you'll analyze how gender structures societies past and present, you’ll study how it affects people at the individual and group levels, and you’ll explore paths to achieve equality for all people.

Your studies will be interdisciplinary, combining core WGS courses with classes in fields such as political science, crime and justice studies, health and society, and history that are taught by WGS faculty or faculty affiliated with WGS.

With a degree in Women's and Gender Studies, you can pursue careers in advocacy, business, communications, education, family services, human resources, law, marketing and sales, nonprofit organizations, and politics.

Student success

A headshot of Jessica Pabón '01 smiling in front of a brown background.

Student spotlight

Jessica Pabón '01

UMass Dartmouth grad becomes President of the National Women’s Studies Association after years of feminist research and engagement

Career Placements

  • Allied Insurance
  • Bright Horizons
  • Crossroads for Kids
  • Franklin Democratic Town Committee
  • Harbor Health Services

3+3 with UMass Law: a fast track to a law degree

Enrollment in the 3+3 joint degree program with UMass Law offers an accelerated pathway to an undergraduate and law degree, enabling qualifying students to substitute the first year of law school for the final year of their undergraduate program, thereby earning both a bachelor’s degree from UMass Dartmouth and a Juris Doctor from UMass Law in six rather than seven years.

Major in Women's and Gender Studies

Our curriculum focuses on core courses in feminist theory and these areas of concentration:

  • Intersectional Gender Studies: Identify and evaluate the social construction of gender and the ways gender intersects with other forms of identity such as sexuality, race, class, ability and age in creating and maintaining structures of inequality.
  • Politics, Justice and Policy: Explain the gendering of our socioeconomic and political worlds and the individual and collective components of social change.
  • Cross-Cultural and Transnational Inquiry: Identify, compare, and evaluate culturally and historically specific ideas of gender, sex, and sexuality; and identify and examine ideas of gender, sex and sexuality that cross cultural and national borders.
  • Politics of Cultural Representation: Apply a feminist perspective to the study of literature, history, and/or the arts, with the aim of examining critically the multiple, situated kinds of knowledge that emerge from cultural artifacts and narratives.

For the major, you'll complete 33 credits, consisting of five core courses, including electives from the above concentrations and opportunities for internships. You'll complete 120 credits overall.

Minor in Women's and Gender studies

With an emphasis on critical thinking and communication, the minor in women's and gender studies can enhance your career prospects and graduate study opportunities.

For the minor, you'll complete 18 credit hours.

Course descriptions, schedules and requirements

Study online

We offer you the option to earn a certificate or complete your degree online.