The Women's and Gender Studies Program at UNC Charlotte explores the ways that gender influences social structures and individual experience around the world.  We view gender as a category of analysis that includes women, men, transgendered individuals, and other genders.  Using a feminist perspective, the program seeks to understand the cultural, political, and historical processes that gender human identity and society.  In our research, teaching, programming, and service we explore gender as it intersects with multiple categories, such as race, ethnicity, social class, age, ability, nationality, and sexuality.  Recognizing that gender varies widely over time and space, the program emphasizes a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, with faculty employing a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches.

The Women's and Gender Studies Program at UNC Charlotte offers an undergraduate minor in Women’s and Gender Studies and a Graduate Certificate in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies.  We also sponsor a first-year learning community called “Gender Excellence: Where Academics Meets Activism.”  Our curriculum prepares students to understand how gender has shaped their own lives, the lives of others, the production of knowledge, and social institutions.  Our undergraduate and graduate coursework also emphasizes the link between theory and practice and encourages applied learning through internships, community involvement, and service learning.   Our curriculum is designed to develop a gender-sensitive perspective that will influence students’ academic, professional, and personal development.  It is our hope that this gender-sensitive perspective will lead students to ask the kinds of critical questions that are essential to imagining and creating an inclusive and equitable society.