Birth of a Gender Studies Program
Gail Caputo is the founding director of a new major at Rutgers-Camden that examines the role of gender in all its incarnations
Before the Women’s Marches and the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements made headlines and brought issues of women's rights back to the forefront, Rutgers scholars had been working for decades as ardent advocates through their research, teaching and outreach. Over the next several weeks, Rutgers Today will be highlighting many of the women whose work is making a noticeable impact.
It was going to be called “women’s and gender studies,” a new major at Rutgers University-Camden starting in the fall of 2018. But for Gail A. Caputo, the times seemed to be dictating something different.
“Students today,” says Caputo, a professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice at Rutgers-Camden, “have a different view of the world than we did at that age or even students I had 10 years ago. I see them as more comfortable with their own sexuality and gender identities.” She began to consider a program that incorporated women’s studies but went way beyond it, to examine the role of gender in all its incarnations. And so the gender studies major was born.
The program – the first of its kind in southern New Jersey – rolled out this September, with Caputo as its founding director. An interdisciplinary 30-credit major, it examines the role that gender plays in the lives of heterosexual men and women as well as members of the LGBTQIA community. The program, for example, delves into the ways in which boys are socialized and the roles that sports and violence play in their lives.
“It explores how each of us interacts with the world and how our particular identities – our gender, ability, religion, etc. – affect who we are, how we are viewed, what happens to us, how we think, and how we go about our lives,” says Caputo, 1989 graduate of University College-Newark, a 1993 graduate of the School of Criminal Justice, and a 1995 graduate of the Graduate School-Newark.
Though Caputo is a criminologist by vocation, the segue into gender studies seemed entirely natural to her. “My work deals with women in conflict with the law, including women working in the street-level drug economy and women in halfway houses, all of it tied together by the ideas of patriarchal oppression and resistance,” she says. “Women’s other identities, like race and sexuality, also impact how they experience the world. So, it just made sense to jump in and build a program that brings in intersectionality to the interdisciplinary study of women and gender.”
The program includes three required courses, “Introduction to Women’s Studies,” “Introduction to LGBTQIA+ Studies,” and “Masculinities,” as well as electives like “Gender, Health, and the Environment,” “Sex Discrimination and Title IX,” “Transgender Studies,” “Gender and Work,” and “Study Abroad: Community Service in South Africa.” Reflecting Caputo’s own scholarship, the program also offers courses like “Queer Crime” and “Gender and Sexuality in Crime Thrillers.”
“It explores how each of us interacts with the world and how our particular identities – our gender, ability, religion, etc. – affect who we are, how we are viewed, what happens to us, how we think, and how we go about our lives.” – Gail Caputo
Caputo is hoping that the major will influence the thinking of this more gender-savvy generation of men and women. “I hope we can give them the confidence, knowledge, and tools to interact with people in ways they never have, and to make change happen.” Students will be asked to focus on a real problem that the campus community is dealing with, then research across the university and recommend specific changes.
The program has been greeted with what Caputo characterizes as “an explosion of student interest,” from a cross-section of the student body, including first-year, first-generation, and male students. They are studying a range of subjects such as biology, nursing, psychology, criminal justice, and social work. Students nearing graduation, Caputo says, “are taking extra courses just to be able to graduate with the new major.”
When she was envisioning the major, Caputo had three priorities. The first was to make it clear that the field of gender studies is “about all people and relevant to everyone in all academic disciplines and fields of work. It is not anti-men, anti-heterosexual, anti-conformity,” Caputo says. “It is inclusive.”
She wanted, too, to create a program that would foster awareness of matters affecting Rutgers students, like sexual violence, racism, and implicit bias (ingrained, automatic, and largely unconscious attitudes regarding ethnic minorities, the LGBTQIA community, or other socially marginalized groups). And she wanted to celebrate the accomplishments of those who’ve worked on behalf of marginalized individuals and to help students put their knowledge to work in the real world.
And finally, she worked to put together a program that would help to advance not just gender equality, but also justice and inclusion for all identities. “Because we are more than a program about women and concern ourselves with all identities,” Caputo says, “we seek to dismantle privilege for some to advance inclusion and understanding of all diversity.”
Read the Rutgers Magazine #WeToo story profiling Rutgers scholars here.