Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies

What is Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies?

Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies is your pathway to becoming a leader and change-maker through dynamic interdisciplinary study that examines history, social structures and current events while building essential skills for transformative careers across all sectors. Our field empowers you to address pressing community issues through groundbreaking initiatives — from our historic Audre Lorde Chair in Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality Studies to innovative programs like our Women in Entrepreneurship minor that builds business leadership skills. 

Whether you're pursuing our bachelor's degrees, our 3+3 track to law school, or our joint degree with the Kent School of Social Work, our distinguished faculty guide you through transformative learning that connects theory with practice through required community internships where you apply research to real-world problems. You'll develop theoretical and empirical perspectives for studying gender and sexuality as crucial categories for understanding the world, learning to apply analysis at both micro and macro levels to inform research and promote understanding. 

Here, your commitment to understanding complex social issues transforms into the analytical expertise and advocacy skills that create positive change in communities, organizations and institutions worldwide — where passion meets purpose to build a future where everyone has a voice and opportunity to thrive.

Career Prospects

Where Passion for Understanding Becomes Your Power to Transform Lives

Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies trains students in one of the most analytically rigorous and socially urgent frameworks in higher education: the intersectional analysis of power, identity and inequality. Those skills are not niche — they are in active demand in healthcare, law, social work, public health, education, policy, nonprofit leadership, corporate DEI and the arts. WGST graduates aren't just prepared for specific careers; they're prepared to lead in any field that involves people, institutions and the question of who gets access to what.

Community and social service occupations project more than 313,700 annual openings — growing much faster than average. Mental health counselors, one of the strongest graduate-level pathways, are projected to grow 17% through 2034. UofL's WGST program also offers a 3+3 accelerated pathway to law school, recognizing the strong pipeline between gender and sexuality studies and civil rights, family law and public interest legal careers.

Whether you're entering the workforce, heading to law school, pursuing a master's in social work or public health, or continuing in academic research, your WGST degree gives you the analytical training and human perspective that consequential careers require.

Explore Career Pathways in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies