History & Career Opportunities

Women's Studies History

Women's Studies is an interdisciplinary field with its beginnings in the Women's Liberation movement of the late 1960's. Women's Studies arose from the curiosity of faculty and students about their history, their lives, and their fellow women, rather than from a nineteenth century disciplinary base. As the field has expanded, from compensatory or recuperative scholarship to work increasingly devoted to complex theoretical and empirical studies, Penn State Altoona has developed the Women 's Studies minor with a common pedagogical vision and orientation.

Areas of study include gender theory, classical philology, international relations, and empirical work across interdisciplinary areas. Women's Studies is one of the fastest growing fields of inquiry to emerge in higher education in the past thirty years.

Careers

Women's Studies examines the diversity of women's lives, experiences, and voices in our multicultural and globalized world. We question traditional scholarship by asking: how have women been represented? how are knowledge and creativity influenced by gender, class, race, sexuality, and nationality? and how has knowledge been used to dominate and control?

Emerging out of the women's movement, Women's Studies explores issues of oppression and social transformation, ranging from the seemingly personal world of the home to the far reaches of economic and cultural globalization. At the heart of Women's Studies is the concept of gender as it is shaped by race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and nationality. We seek to discover the ways that diverse women - whose lives are formed at intersection of these differences - shape their worlds of meaning, creating, and sheer survival.

What kinds of careers will Women's Studies prepare me for?
Many corporate employers recruit applicants with a concentration in Women's Studies. These students have gone on to successful careers in a variety of fields, from media to medicine to mathematics. Many choose to pursue an advanced academic degree. Moreover, a number of fellowships are available for students with an academic background in Women, Gender, and Sexuality.  These days, many corporate employers also recruit applicants with an interdisciplinary background.

Career Possibilities for our Majors:
(some of these occupations may require additional or specialized coursework)

• administrator of nonprofit women's organization
• affirmative action officer
• attorney
• community organizer
• computer software designer
• coordinator of women's programs in government and business
• counselor
• editor
• environmental activist
• international development worker
• journalist legal assistant
• lobbyist for women's issues
• political advocate
• psychologist
• rape crisis specialist
• researcher on women's projects
• social worker
• teacher
• union organizer
• urban planner
• women's center director
• women's health care specialist
• public policy specialist
• writer

Contact: Dr. Roselyn Costantino
Associate Professor of Spanish and Women's Studies
Office: 127 Hawthorn Building
Phone: 814-949-5245
E-mail:
WWW: http://www.personal.psu.edu/rxc19