North Carolina Central University (NCCU) is set to offer a new minor in the fall of 2016. Women and Gender Studies will make its debut at NCCU and the school will be the first historically black college and university (HBCU) in North Carolina to introduce such a minor.

Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Carlton Wilson believes that the minor will allow students new chances to research how events– current and in the past — are identified with women and gender.

In essence, this minor may be viewed as a subtopic of intersectionality where as one theory or subject may not be properly studied without the other. While the two words women and gender are certainly separate, it is tough to dismember each because of the power structures that are connected to them.

For example, we cannot gain context of what it is to be a woman without examining how hyper-masculinity, or just masculinity in general, has affected women. The same goes for gender.

The minor will delve deeper than what I just mentioned as African diaspora, women and their global experiences, equality, and more will also be studied by students who choose to select Women and Gender Studies as a minor.

Women and Gender Studies will be available to all students to select, and hopefully many will choose to do so. Courses attached to minors like this will teach students to think critically about issues and areas that impact them or their social structures directly. Race, class, sexism, religion, and so much more will be better understood once students successfully move through the coursework associated with Women and Gender Studies.

It will also give men who take the course a better understanding of just how privilege and masculinity creates avenues of opportunities for them that may not be the same for women. I look forward to hearing more about the program once it launches.