Letters to the Editor
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Gainfully Employed WoSt Undergrad
When I was first out of college, an interviewer told me, as he looked over my resume, that a women's studies major was, in his view, a trendy option for women who don't know what else to do. Which may have been an opinion to suit his previous experiences, but didn't have much to do with me, as I had a second major (English) and a minor (history) and years of internship and extra-curricular experience relating directly to the industry I was trying to break into. Of all the things one could say about me, cluelessness wasn't one of them. I don't think this man was alone in applying his own ideas of the discipline without integrating the information in front of him. (People I knew who graduated with African-American studies degrees had it much worse.)
That said, of course there are plenty of valid criticisms for women’s studies, which is a very new discipline and has changed a lot to meet changing thought, especially in comparison to most academic fields. Women's studies is still defining itself and defining its cannon. Even the name, women's studies, has become outdated in many schools. (I actually graduated with Gender and Women's Studies--GAWS.)
As to employable skills, I hadn't realized that liberal arts students gain those from the subjects in which they take their degrees. I certainly don't think history or English were all that much more practical than WoSt. What I took away was much the same from each--reading, writing, and thinking critically.
I also don't believe that I was forced into a political stance any less than other disciplines do to their students. Sure, in economics one does learn about both Keynes and Marx, but, one is expected to have an opinion before one graduates. Which was my experience with WoSt. I found it much harder, actually, to express a dissenting view point in history classes, go figure.