The Master’s Degree in Women’s, Gender and Citizenship Studies: Its significance for gender studies in Catalonia

Abstract

This paper explains what the creation of an official interuniversity master’s degree at the initiative of the women researchers of the Interuniversity Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies implied for gender studies in Catalonia. The origin of this degree, as a result of a favorable political context and of the commitment of the eight participating universities, explains why it is a reference for women’s and feminism studies in the Catalan university system. Its markedly multidisciplinary program offers students a specialization in feminist epistemologies together with a transversality of the gender perspective in traditional disciplines of the humanities and social sciences. A critical assessment is made of these clearly consolidated studies, emphasizing some of their shortcomings and pending challenges. For a master’s degree presenting a great diversity of teaching methodologies, this paper proposes, within the framework of the Education and Gender course, a way of implementing the postulates of critical and feminist pedagogies.