Minor in Women's and Gender Studies

A Women's and Gender Studies minor can be a component of any undergraduate degree granted at MU.

Women’s and Gender Studies is an interdisciplinary field that establishes gender, sexuality, race, class, and dis/ability as fundamental categories for understanding social structures, cultural norms, and power dynamics. Combining research methods from the humanities and social sciences, the WGST minor strengthens critical thinking, writing and research skills and highlights multiple forms of knowledge. 

When students graduate with a Women's and Gender Studies minor they should be able to:

• Apply cross-cultural and global awareness to "big questions" about women and gender
• Have a comprehensive grasp of intersectionality and matrices of domination
• Think critically: i.e. consider an issue from multiple perspectives; locate, evaluate and interpret diverse sources, including statistics; engage in critical self-reflection
• Construct arguments with evidence obtained from research
• Work collaboratively
• Recognize sexist/racist writing and thinking
• Connect knowledge and experience, theory and activism, Women's and Gender Studies materials with other courses
• Communicate effectively in writing and speech
• Apply knowledge for social transformation, citizenship
• Use gender (and other identity categories) as a category/ies for analysis

Requirements

A student minoring in Women's and Gender Studies is required to fulfill all requirements for their major degree program, and in addition complete at least 15 credits of Women's and Gender Studies courses: A minimum of 9 credits must come from WGST core courses (courses taught by WGST faculty and instructors), in addition 6 credits are required to come from 3000 level or higher courses. For current course offerings see the WGST website.

A minor consists of at least 15 credits, including at least 6 credits numbered 2000 or above, 9 of the required credits must be taken in MU course work. This requirement can be reduced from 9 to 6 at the discretion of an individual department. Students must meet the minimum GPA requirements for a minor, which in no case can be lower than 2.0. In addition, a student cannot receive a grade lower than a C- in any course applied towards a minor in the College. For more information, please see Requirements for Optional Minor.