Message from the Chair

Get Career Ready with GWS!

As acting chair, I want to pass along some great news. A 2025 report demonstrates that graduates with Gender and Women’s Studies (and other degrees that emphasize a blend of cultural analysis and evidence-based research) get a good return on their investment in higher education. “Our Graduates’ Successes: What the Data Tell Us About the Value of Gender and Women’s Studies Degrees” examines government data including the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook, which was based on a 2022 survey. It found that GWS graduates’ top skills are reported as active listening, reading comprehension, speaking, writing and critical thinking. 

These skills are reported to be the very skills that most employers are looking for. In addition, Gender and Women’s Studies as an intellectual tradition has always combined different disciplinary perspectives and trained students to consider lived experience, properly analyzed, as a way of naming and documenting problems that usually don’t get documented. (After all, if you can’t name a problem, it will never get solved.) Guess what? That interdisciplinary emphasis on lived experience is also a selling point to employers. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, “More than nine in 10 employers cite the importance of hiring graduates who have gained knowledge through interdisciplinary study and addressing 'real-life' problems while in college.” Read the whole report here.

Best,

Professor Mason