If you want to cast some discomfort at the Thanksgiving table or kill the vibe at a frat party, try telling people that you are majoring in gender studies. To most people, nothing is more confusing and, thus, funny, than someone intentionally spending time learning about our relationship with gender and its impacts on society.
It is understandable where the gender studies critics are coming from — perhaps they do not believe any sort of patriarchy exists, or feel it is a waste of time if you want a high-paying, successful career.
I think gender studies is likely the subject of so much criticism because, on top of being a field of humanities study, it is largely pursued by women — a trait often correlating with our society undervaluing a field.
I suppose it is funny to people — especially men — that there might be educational and societal value to studying the relationship and power structures behind our modern idea of gender. At IU, it seems being a student in Kelley, or at least studying something “useful” like computer science, is far smarter and more practical than choosing a humanities degree with no immediately obvious career application.
In a time when college is outrageously expensive and, many of us are taking on debt to be here, it is hard to blame students who feel the only acceptable majors are ones that result in high-paying jobs immediately following graduation in that exact field: accounting, computer science or finance, to name a few. This may be especially true for students who are immigrants or first-generation college students who feel additional pressure to “get their money’s worth” attending college. In a capitalist system, we have little incentive to do things beyond the opportunity to make money, further discouraging people from pursuing more creative or non-pre-professional majors.
Kelley very clearly has a career-focused brand, as does O’Neill, the school which my major is a part of. I have often heard peers scoff at hearing someone is studying a subject like English, philosophy or gender studies. This makes sense — none of these majors have any intuitive connection to a specific job, other than teaching the subject itself.
Even so, many humanities majors provide excellent backgrounds for those hoping to attend law school or other advanced graduate programs. These majors emphasize critical thinking, reading, analysis and nuanced discussion — valuable skills for those who want to work in human resources, social services, customer service or virtually any job requiring writing. If someone is caring, driven and diligent, there is no reason they cannot find career success without pursuing a specifically pre-professional major.
Beyond the career fields I already mentioned, these skills are important for careers in medicine or business — as they require critical thinking and benefit from employees with a deep understanding of our existing social dynamics and the related problems. I would feel confident in a society where more doctors had education in fields like gender studies or sociology that prepared them to address the biases in the medical field which can have disastrous consequences.
Despite what your peers, your parents or anyone else may have you think about which majors are valuable and which ones are a waste of time, the reality is that if you are thoughtful and diligent, there are plenty of worthy career possibilities for any field of study. And beyond that, I want to make a case for building a society that has the capacity to appreciate and value education for just that — education.
Leila Faraday (she/her) is a junior studying policy analysis with minors in geography and urban planning.
