Saint Mary's

Minor in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS)

Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) is a new interdisciplinary minor that allows  students to choose elective courses from their own major, as well as from other programs and disciplines. It is designed to work with major areas of study, helping students develop a range of skills that will enhance their primary academic focus.

Students in the minor will earn at least twenty-four (24) credit hours (8 courses) in relevant courses, including a structured core of four (4) WGSS courses, and four (4) elective courses drawn from an extensive list from a variety of departments and programs. Learn more about the new in the Academic Calendar. 

Courses in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies lead to a fuller understanding of how gender and intersecting variables of power shape individuals and groups, cultures, ways of knowing, and struggles for social justice and change. This involves scrutinizing not just how gender shapes and has shaped everyday practices, but also how sexual norms, racism, class, geo-politics, ableism and age-related power shape people's lives in conjunction with gender.

Students in the program learn feminist theories and methods with which to transform the norms and forms of domination that socially construct women in oppressive ways, and that discourage practices of femininity and masculinity that hinder all genders from participating fully in society. Women and gender studies programs and departments throughout Canada and internationally are widely recognized as playing an important role in broadening and problematizing our definitions of knowledge and helping to amend the bias and narrowness of many academic disciplines and social practices and institutions beyond the academy.

Governments and many large and small institutions and organizations acknowledge the need to work towards gender, sexual and related forms of equity; our graduates demonstrate their expertise in this area through a range of practical and professional applications of their knowledge.