First-Year Gender & Women’s Studies

WMST 1000Y – Introduction Gender & Women’s Studies

This course provides an introduction to some of the major concepts, issues, and themes that inform the broad field of gender and women’s studies. Throughout the course we challenge many taken-for-granted assumptions about gender relations, feminism, and human inequalities.
We examine the social, historical and cultural construction of “sex” and “gender” in relation to other social categories such as “race”, class, disability, and sexuality. We analyze gendered and racialized media representations of sexuality and beauty, and consider how mainstream media messages are being resisted. We look at how gender relations are shaped in diverse ways by key societal institutions like schools, the family, the state, and by the political and economic forces of globalization and neo-liberalism.

Through a range of issues (like reproductive rights, violence, sexuality, poverty, structural adjustment policies) we explore diverse women’s experiences and gender relations more broadly. We also evaluate multiple pathways, both individual and collective, towards gender and economic justice for everyone.

The course is grounded in Canadian examples, while also emphasizing global contexts and contemporary transnational issues and movements. Readings include scholarly articles alongside more popularly-aimed books, reports, newspaper articles, and fictional works. Indigenous women and colonial histories appear throughout the course as foundational to the content and production of gender and women’s studies in Canada.

What’s Up in Gender & Women’s Studies [PDF]

Course Format

Weekly lectures and tutorials

Course Texts

Hobbs, Margaret. (2011). WMST 1000Y: Introduction to Gender and Women's Studies. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press Reprotext.
Anderson, K. (2006). A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood. 4th edition. Toronto: Sumach Press.
Ehrenreich, B. (2008). Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting by in America. Revised edition. New York: Henry Holt.
Philip, M. Nourbese (2003). Harriet’s Daughter. Toronto: Women’s Press.

For More Information

For more information regarding this course offering or if you have any other questions, please contact the Gender & Women’s Studies department.