SMU students could be taking classes that could count toward a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) without even knowing it.

The department program consists of only one faculty member who is based in WGS, Josephine Caldwell-Ryan. The other faculty members specialize in other subjects, from English to economics.

Caldwell-Ryan said WGS is able to offer a wide variety of courses because they cross with other studies and  can fulfill cultural formations credits.

Because of this variety, Beth Newman, director of Women’s and Gender Studies and associate professor of English, said many students may be enrolled in Women’s and Gender Studies classes without even realizing that they are taking them.

“Adding the gender perspective is like adding another power to the microscope,” Caldwell-Ryan said. “It just gives more insight.”

Originally called Women’s Studies, the departmentprogram is the academic arm of the U.S. Women’s Rights Movement. The program was established in the early 1970s by the late Betty Janette Maynard, former professor, sociology department chair, associate dean of Dedman College and president of Faculty Senate.

Newman said the program’s name was changed in 2008 to reflect the field’s evolution.  

“So much work had been done on women who had previously been neglected in traditional academic study that it made sense to put them back into a system and think about masculinity too,” Newman said. “So we started talking about gender.”

Although, she said the word “women” was kept in the program’s name as acknowledgement of the original inquirers into the study and “not to erase women all over again.” Newman said to take women out of the name would be tantamount to women’s re-erasure.

A unique aspect of the WGS program is the Women’s and Gender Studies Council, made up of faculty, staff and students. Newman and Caldwell-Ryan are part of the council.

Caldwell-Ryan said that the council enables the WGS program to sidestep bureaucracy, and it has done so since the program’s inception.

Caldwell-Ryan said that the more democratic approach goes back to the very idea of women’s studies – what was done in the past is not necessarily how it needs to be done in the present.

All students in the WGS program are pursuing a minor but one: sophomore Rebekah Boyer. The WGS program is not a regular major offered, and does not have a predetermined course list. Boyer said this is the reason she became interested in it.

She created a personalized 36-hour plan for her WGS major after becoming frustrated with the constraints of other majors. She said she went through the course catalogue and highlighted all of the classes that intrigued her to come up with her degree plan. The major she created has some required classes, but the rest are focused on her interests.

The Women’s and Gender Studies major is not a stand-alone major. Newman said that the inter-disciplinary program is designed to be a second major and recommends interested students to apply early in their sophomore year. Boyer said all that is needed to take advantage of the program’s major is initiative, elbow grease and highlighters.

Boyer said the study of gender in the context of society and culture complements her second major, art history. She said she sees art as a reflection of culture and through her class readings, concluded that gender is also a prevalent way to view oneself in relation to society.

“Everyone can get something out of women’s studies,” Boyer said. “It’s not just for women and [not] – I’m going to drop the f-bomb – feminists.”

Boyer is also vice president of the Women’s Interest Network (WIN), which is run out of the Women’s Center for Gender and Pride Initiatives.

“We’re kind of like buddies… the way I see it,” Newman said about the women’s center. The WGS program is the academic branch, and it is complemented by the Women’s Center that serves students.

The Women’s Center, like women’s studies, was opened in the early 1970s. Also like WGS, the Women’s Center has evolved to include gender issues as well as women’s issues. Newman said that when there is a discussion about gender, sexual orientation inevitably comes up.

Val Erwin, the program director of the Women’s Center, said the center is a safe place for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and women to feel welcome.