Gender studies essential to a well-rounded education

Experts at the UAE Gender and Women's Studies Consortium say such courses should be a crucial part of students' education to foster social development of the country.

DUBAI // Gender and women's studies should be considered a basic part of students' education, experts said at a conference in the city.

The UAE Gender and Women's Studies Consortium was the first of a series of efforts to create an academic network that can develop new initiatives in the field.

Women's studies were under-represented in UAE curricula, said Dr Nawar Golley, an associate professor in Literary Theory and Women's Studies at the American University of Sharjah (AUS), who organised the event.

"If we do not emphasise it, the knowledge we are giving to our students is actually lacking," she said, adding that teaching the subject would help not only its academic standing, but also the position of women in society.

"When you start educating people with issues related to justice and inequality on a theoretical level, then change is likely to happen faster on a practical level."

Students who took her courses often described them as "eye-openers", Dr Golley said. "They feel they have become better thinkers and better people when they know that they have now looked at themselves and their lives and their society from this perspective."

Meenaz Kassam, an assistant professor of sociology at AUS, also teaches a course on women's empowerment. She said the course was popular not only with women. "You'll be surprised how many men come to that course," she said.

Dr Karen Sivertsen, who teaches women's history at AUS, with a focus on women's history, often asked the men in her classes why they chose it. The response, she said, "is more of 'I don't really know what women go through and their experiences'".

"And you have to give these guys credit for waking up and realising that there's a part of the other sex that they really don't understand and that they're doing something about it."

Christina Richards, the former head of an Australian women's rights group, said women's studies courses had an effect not only on a national level but also globally, because they help both genders recognise the impact of women's issues on society.

"If you look at the UN Millennium Development Goals to relieve poverty, most of them focus on women," she said.

"The recognition is that if you empower the women, then poverty will decrease.

"And every study you look at in the West shows that when women are active participants in the economy and the society, poverty and violence reduces."

One of the premises of the World Bank was that it had accepted women's empowerment as the basis of human development, Dr Kassam said. And, she said, the UAE had recognised this and was pushing efforts to empower women.

"What is development?" she asked. "Development is not just economic. Development also means social development. And you cannot call yourself a socially developed country if half your population is not empowered."