Declaring a Major, Honours, or Minor
The Department of Women's and Gender Studies offers 3-Year major, 4-Year major, Honours major, and minor degree programs.
Learn more about declaring a major, entering the honours program, and declaring a minor.
For WGS degree requirements, please consult our academic calendar entry.
The Department fosters an awareness and appreciation of the realities and diverse experiences of women, men, and transgender and two-spirit people, and develops a critical consciousness of the societal inequalities affecting people, including those based on gender, race, class, age, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and religion.
The Women's and Gender Studies Department is interdisciplinary, drawing significant connections among disciplines. It is also multidisciplinary, bringing together studies of sex, gender and sexuality with analyses by specialists in various other disciplines.
Women's and Gender Studies promotes an intersectional approach to understanding social problems and phenomena. It pays special attention to the ways sex, gender and sexuality are shaped by colonialism, racism, ageism, homophobia and transphobia, as well as by constructions of difference based on class, (dis)ability, religion, ethnicity and culture, among others. Our department brings these perspectives to the university, and represents feminism in the academy. In our classes, students learn about feminist movements to end sexism and related social oppressions. The department encourages diversity among its students, welcoming women, men and trans and two-spirit persons from all cultural backgrounds. Through our curriculum, we also offer the means to contribute to social change.
Currently, there is a demonstrated need for people with training in Women's and Gender Studies to take up work in such areas as social services, education, policy development, welfare, health care, counselling and therapy, law, media, advertising, public administration, politics, finance, management, and the arts. In addition, a Women’s and Gender Studies Honours degree prepares students for graduate studies.