Academic Frauds

Serious Students shouldn’t take women’s studies.
By Carrie Lukas

Summer vacations no longer consist of lazy days on the beach or income-generating jobs. Many college students now dedicate these months to unpaid internships or meagerly compensated opportunities that supposedly provide real-world experience and build impressive résumés. Ambitious undergrads heading back to school should be just as careful in selecting their courses as they were planning their summers. One tip for the serious student: Avoid women’s studies.

One might assume that women’s studies courses are no less relevant to real life than your average college class. A semester of medieval poetry or art history certainly seems like poor preparation for a career in marketing or sales, undoubtedly where many humanities majors end up. But at least in these types of classes students are taught forms of analysis and critical thinking that come in handy in the future.

Women’s studies courses are different. They tend to abandon rigorous analysis in favor of consciousness-raising exercises and self-exploration. One textbook explains that women’s studies “consciously rejects many traditional forms of inquiry, concepts, and explanatory systems; at the same time, it is developing new and sometimes unique traditions and authorities of its own.” Those “unique” traditions include providing students with “credit for social change activities or life experience, contracts of self-grading, diaries and journals, even meditation or ritual.”

This is too flaky for some students. The textbook warns of potential resistance to these teaching methods. Students may commit such sins as challenging facts in an effort to “undermine the credibility of feminist reading materials and instructors.” In other words, students aren’t supposed to read texts critically and reach their own conclusions. They are supposed to accept without question the materials and views of their instructors.

It’s no accident that women’s studies is so different from other subjects. It has an explicit agenda, and the agenda is not simply to provide young women (and men) with knowledge and tools for future learning. Women’s studies is unabashedly political and intermingled with the feminist movement. The National Women’s Studies Association’s constitution, written in 1982, made this link clear: “Feminist education is a process deeply rooted in the women’s movement and remains accountable to that community.” One textbook author writes: “Women’s studies is faced with a vast responsibility…. We must prepare the next generation for its participation in the women’s struggle…”

Recruiting women into the organized feminist movement begins with convincing women that they are victims. Recruits are told that women suffer because of an oppressive societal structure—the patriarchy—which gives men power over women. Marriage lies at patriarchy’s core: Traditional marriage and family is a trap for women. Men are viewed with suspicion, potentially violent and looking to oppress. Salvation lies in an enlightened workplace, with generous paid maternity leave, free onsite daycare, and salaries that ignore factors like the number of hours you work or your job responsibilities, but ensure men and women are all paid the same.

It’s no surprise that women’s studies courses are often unabashedly political. Republicans are described as “overtly opposed not only to women’s rights but to advances in civil rights in general.” Students learn that the 1990s have given us “The Contract on America, the virulent racism and misogyny of the religious and political right, attacks against the poorest and must vulnerable among us — welfare mothers and children…”

Students should hear such a view. But there should be balance: Students should read and hear alternative perspectives. Balance is something most women’s studies classes sorely lack.

Serious students shouldn’t waste their time in women’s studies classes. For a taste of what women’s studies has to offer, pick up the latest issue of Ms.e or read NOW’s latest rant. But use limited class time on something more relevant to the real world, like a course on Beowulf or East Asian art.