Minor in Gender Studies

Why is a gender perspective important for understanding how structures of inequality and power relations shape our globalized and mediatized world? In what ways can a gendered perspective serve to combat discrimination and promote social change in working life, academia, activism, the arts, and policymaking?

The Minor in Gender Studies is a 30 ECTS study programme that focuses on theoretical, political, social, and ethical debates central to the interdisciplinary field of gender studies. The Minor consists of three courses that address gender, sexuality, body, power, citizenship, welfare, racism, humanity, and sustainability. Together, the three courses offer analytical tools in qualitative research methods, and transnational, comparative understandings of social and political inequalities.

Learning outcomes

Knowledge

Acquire knowledge about gender studies as a theoretical and analytical framework.

Acquire knowledge of how multiple axes of structural inequality intersect and interact, and how these dynamics may be articulated and discussed in complex ways.

Learn about the dynamics of knowledge production, and how it relates to questions of normativity and power.

Skills

Students should be able to make use of central concepts in the field of gender studies, such as gender, sexuality, normativity, materiality, lived embodiment, intersectionality and posthumanism

Students should be able to compare and contrast key influences and debates in gender studies from a historical and transnational perspective

Students should be able to analyze and critically discuss the various ways in which theories and methodologies of gender studies are used to promote social change.

Students should be able to critically analyze and reflect on the interrelations between knowledge production and bodily, social, cultural and technological norms

Competences

Students should be able to identify and contextualize gendered, sexualized, racialized, classed, ableist and speciesist discourses in the contemporary debate

Students should have the ability to formulate their own opinion on historical and contemporary debates in the field of gender studies.

Students should have the ability to apply theories and methodologies from gender studies to the ways they reflect on dynamics of power and privilege in social, political, and cultural events as well as their everyday lives.

Syllabus

The Minor in Gender Studies consists of three courses:

Transnational Perspectives on Nordic Gender Equality and Welfare investigates Nordic gender equality and welfare models from a transnational perspective. We discuss similarities and differences in the Nordic gender equality and welfare models, the ties to welfare politics in general, and contemporary challenges for politics and policymaking.

Intersectionality: Critical perspectives on Inequality and Power serves as an introduction to the concept of intersectionality and how it has been used as a critical analytic to produce knowledge of the ways in which structural inequality and oppression continues to organize human life.

Transnational Sexualities: Theories, Methodologies, Practices studies the transnational manifestations of sexual and gender systems, both in our contemporary times and in the historical past, with a focus on non-normative understandings of sexualities and genders. It investigates the political and social effects of growing recognition og gender and sexual diversities, the political effects of rights struggles, and the relative applicability of Western theories and methods transnationally.

Career prospects

With a Minor in Gender Studies, students are equipped to work in a range of occupations, including education, public policy, public health, human resources, social work, non-profit organizations, private businesses, and in the fields of arts and culture.

Knowledge about structural inequalities, including gender, sexuality, race and class, is relevant for almost any field of study today. As such, a Minor in Gender Studies provides a solid foundation for pursuing further studies and a research career in the social science and humanities, as well as in health care professions, social work, education, programming and engineering.

Course assessment

The Minor will be assessed every year in line with the UiS System for Quality in Education.