Women’s and Gender Studies is happy to announce that it has finally become a department. Benefiting from the political work of ethnic studies and its struggle to become a department as well as the unconditional support of our new dean, Scott Coltrane, in winter 2009 Women’s and Gender Studies was finally recognized as a fully legitimate, autonomous, interdisciplinary intellectual space.

The first course in women’s studies was offered in 1970 by Joan Acker, founder of CSWS and now an emeritus faculty member who continues to be an active member of the UO faculty. 

Approved as a certificate program in 1973, it was not until 1997 that the State Board of Education approved the major in women’s studies. Barbara Pope, founder and former director of women’s studies, noted that even then WGS benefited from the activism of ethnic studies: “The door-openers [to the major] were environmental and ethnic studies, two other heirs of the sixties [student activism] that had been given the go-ahead [to establish majors].”

And now, twelve years after establishing a major, we have been granted departmental status. What does this mean? We now have the right to hire and tenure faculty members within the department rather than locate the tenure homes of our faculty in other departments (such as English, history, or sociology). 

We can encourage our faculty members to conduct the kind of cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research that is at the center of our discipline without worrying about whether they will adequately meet the potentially different standards of the disciplines in which they were to be tenured under the old model. 

Our majors will benefit from the perception of greater legitimacy conferred upon an academic department, compared to a program. 

We hope that the number of our already abundant major, minor, and graduate certificate students will increase with this transition from a program to a department. Thanks to the students, faculty members, and administrators who supported this transition and helped make it 
happen. 

—Ellen Scott, Department Head, WGS