Liberating or indoctrinating? Surveying students’ perceptions of a Womens’ and Gender Studies requirement

ABSTRACT

This article offers new insight into students’ responses to Womens’ and Gender Studies (WGS) classes by overcoming the self-selection bias hitherto inherent in the field. Exploring the experiences of 1406 students (770 women, 636 men) of a university with a WGS requirement across all study programmes, we examine the prevailing discourses on WGS, participants’ (dis)agreement as well as personal and professional benefits gained through WGS. Additionally, we evaluate the perceived value of WGS for themselves, in society, and of WGS opportunities in higher education. Findings reveal a gender bias regarding discourses, experience, benefit, and value, with 70.1% women and 32.4% men supporting the idea of WGS as a mandatory subject. Women’s support indicates a need for tools to negotiate gender issues, while men’s resistance serves to defend male privileges. We conclude that a requirement of WGS classes amplifies the potential for both – resistance and change.

KEYWORDS:

• Education policy
• equality
• higher education
• critical pedagogies
• gender mainstreaming
• curriculum

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ilona Horwath is a Professor for Technology and Diversity in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Paderborn.

Christian Diabl is a Journalist and Editorial Director of the Bezirksrundschau Linz.

Notes

1 The rise of backlash and anti-genderism is not limited to JKU, but reflects a broader development in the Austrian society.

2 From 2004 to –2016 the first author was WGS lecturer at JKU.

3 It should be noted, however, that we did test for significance. Results indicate, that all gender differences reported in Table 1 are significant (p < .05), except for items 4 and 8 in Table 1.1.

4 A low response rate is not unusual, especially since members of our list receive survey invitations frequently.