What I Learned This Semester in Gender Studies
In gender studies this semester, I learned how gender and understanding gender identity help shape our society, our own individual identities, and our daily lives and daily interactions. Join me as I try to share the key concepts and insights I gained this semester.
Explore Gender Theories
Gender as a Social Construct
Biology vs. Society
Gender is shaped by both biological factors and societal influences. Although gender identity is deeply personal, how we interact with others is also influenced by our understanding of gender.
Impact on Daily Life
Understanding gender as a social construct helps explain differences in family roles, work expectations, and meaningful roles we have across cultures and time periods.
Core Gender Theories

1

Social Constructionism
Explores how gender is created and maintained through social interactions and cultural norms.

2

Intersectionality
Examines how gender intersects with other social categories like race, class, and sexuality to create unique experiences of oppression or privilege for all of us.

3

Perspectives
Contrasting views of gender inequality based on cultural, religious, or traditional norms vs pushing for social, political, and economic equality for all genders.
Assignments that required critical thinking
Gender: Ideas, interactions, institutions
The book wasn't written as a standard textbook. Each chapter was broken down with clear, relatable examples to help you understand the intersectionality of the gender.
Complex Yet Straightforward Quizzes
Quizzes designed to help you understand and retain key points from chapters, not to trick you.
Expression Opportunities
Assignments like the Creative Project, allows for individual expression. Giving the students the liberty to use any media or design that relates to themselves to rely information.
Personal Experience and Social Structures

Self-Reflection
The class gave me an opportunity to take an inner view of myself and examine my own biases, privileges, and interactions.

Privilege
Taking a different look at how gender has affected my own opportunities in education, career, and personal life.

Perspective Shift
Understanding that gender and gender identity play a huge role in society and our daily lives adds to my personal toolbox for my established and future relationships.
Applying Gender Studies to Real Life
Build Relationships
Having a better understanding of gender and the role it plays, will improve in building personal and professional relationships.
Creative Expression
Being comfortable to challenge gender norms in new ways in daily interactions.
Personal Reflections
Learned to self reflect on both my evolving understanding of gender along with my own responses to interactions.
What and Why I Created This.
I created this as a sort of webpage. I wanted to create something that was new to me and still kept the information within it simple to follow. I really enjoyed this class, so I wanted to touch on the different elements within the course that I enjoyed or felt most impactful for myself. Additionally, I also wanted to potentially encourage others to take the course if they happened across my presentation somewhere. I truly did learn a lot in this course, the most impactful thing for me personally being the intersectionality portion of the course. I had never heard of this concept and found it to be understandable and important but widely unknown. If we can (as a society) understand that not everyone has the same privileges or barriers and that our paths towards goals are complex and individualized, then maybe we could get along better. I'm not sure exactly if I am explaining that correctly, but essentially, classes like this give me hope for a better world. Lastly, I tried to incorporate different topics, learning methods, and visuals to try to make the whole presentation and subject manner catchy to anyone, or at least to most.