WGS EXAM 1 2026/2027 | WOMEN'S & GENDER STUDIES STUDY GUIDE,
PRACTICE QUESTIONS, ANSWERS & EXAM REVIEW
What are women's and gender studies (WGS)? - ANS ✔✔Interdisciplinary academic field devoted to
topics concerning women, gender and feminism
-focuses on gender arrangements (the ways society creates, patterns, and rewards our understandings of
femininity and masculinity) and examines the multiple ways these arrangements affect everyday life
What is Androcentrism? - ANS ✔✔a confusion of maleness with humanity, putting men at the center
and relegating women to outsiders in society
What is the relationship between the founding of women's studies and androcentrism in higher
education? - ANS ✔✔There was an absence, misrepresentation, and trivialization of women in higher
education because men were the focus of society. Women's studies responded to this absence
What are Elizabeth Minnich's four "errors of knowledge"? - ANS ✔✔1. Faulty Generalization
2. Circular Reasoning
3. "Mystified" concepts
4. Inability to discard or correct old knowledge systems
Faulty Generalization - ANS ✔✔"the dominant few...defined themselves...as the norm and ideal"
-Androcentrism: male-centered, man = norm
-1970s Broverman study: "mentally healthy man=mentally healthy adult"
-asked doctors to describe mentally healthy man, women and adult
-men and adult =independent, confident
-Women= gentle, dependent
Circular Reasoning - ANS ✔✔traditional knowledge is justified based on standard imbedded in that
knowledge (the conclusion is one of the premises used to arrive at the conclusion)
-medicine/psychology ("general" studies involving only white men)
- sociology ("deviant" behavior = behavior different from white middle-class men)
-History ("important" history involves white men)
- Philosophy (includes only "great white men"
Attachment to "mystified" concepts (feed and result from first two errors) - ANS ✔✔Familiar and
unexamined
ex: "masculine and feminine", the way society understands and defines sexual differences (gets confused
with biological, inherent traits)
-heterosexuality= only "normal" way to be
Inability to discard or correct old knowledge systems (perpetuated by previous 3 errors) resulting in: -
ANS ✔✔-partial/incomplete knowledge: the result of asking and answering questions within the
dominant tradition alone
-parable of the elephant
-we are only wrong if we think we are right, if we think we know enough from any one perspective to
judge the whole
, -perpetuation of the dominant, hierarchical order (and injustice)
-and a rationalization of inequality
What is the history of WGS in academia? - ANS ✔✔• Late 1960s and early 1970s students and faculty
began demanding that the knowledge learned and shared in colleges around the country be more
inclusive of women's issues, and they asked to see more women in leadership positions on college
campus.
• First, it rebalanced the curriculum. (add women and stir)
o Women as subjects of study were integrated into existing curricula thru the development of new
courses about women
o Shifted the focus on men and men's lives to women's lives and concerns by developing courses such as
"Women and Art" and "women in US history"
• Second, it resulted in a transformation of traditional knowledge
o People began questioning the nature of knowledge, and how knowledge integrating the perspectives
of marginalized people
o This strategy involved a serious challenge to traditional knowledge and its claims to truth
Differentiate between first wave, second wave, and third wave women's movements - ANS ✔✔First
wave:
-mid 19th century
-women's rights and suffrage (voting) activity, which sought to overturn legal obstacles to women's
participation in society, and more contemporary "third wave" movements
Second wave:
-1960s 1970s
-refers to this 20th century period of social activism from the 1960s thru the 80s that addressed formal
and informal inequalities associated, for example, with the workplace, family, sexuality, and reproductive
freedom
Third wave:
-refers to several diverse strains of feminist activity and study, whose exact boundaries in the history of
feminism are a subject of debate, but are generally marked as beginning in the early 1990s and
continuing to the present.
Intersectionality - ANS ✔✔the ways all people's experiences of gender are created by the intersection or
coming together of multiple identities like race, ethnicity, social class and so forth
Patriarchy - ANS ✔✔a system where men and masculine bodies dominate because power and authority
are in the hands of adult men
Elizabeth Cady Stanton - ANS ✔✔refused to "obey" in wedding vows and kept her last name "cady"
-Seneca Falls convention 1848
Lucretia Mott - ANS ✔✔Quaker teacher, minister, abolitionist
-opposed slavery and refused to by slave made products
Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 - ANS ✔✔organized by Lucretia Motta and EC Stanton
"Declaration of Sentiments" - ANS ✔✔-declaration of sentiments (E.C. Stanton)
-"all men AND WOMEN created equal" from dec of independence
PRACTICE QUESTIONS, ANSWERS & EXAM REVIEW
What are women's and gender studies (WGS)? - ANS ✔✔Interdisciplinary academic field devoted to
topics concerning women, gender and feminism
-focuses on gender arrangements (the ways society creates, patterns, and rewards our understandings of
femininity and masculinity) and examines the multiple ways these arrangements affect everyday life
What is Androcentrism? - ANS ✔✔a confusion of maleness with humanity, putting men at the center
and relegating women to outsiders in society
What is the relationship between the founding of women's studies and androcentrism in higher
education? - ANS ✔✔There was an absence, misrepresentation, and trivialization of women in higher
education because men were the focus of society. Women's studies responded to this absence
What are Elizabeth Minnich's four "errors of knowledge"? - ANS ✔✔1. Faulty Generalization
2. Circular Reasoning
3. "Mystified" concepts
4. Inability to discard or correct old knowledge systems
Faulty Generalization - ANS ✔✔"the dominant few...defined themselves...as the norm and ideal"
-Androcentrism: male-centered, man = norm
-1970s Broverman study: "mentally healthy man=mentally healthy adult"
-asked doctors to describe mentally healthy man, women and adult
-men and adult =independent, confident
-Women= gentle, dependent
Circular Reasoning - ANS ✔✔traditional knowledge is justified based on standard imbedded in that
knowledge (the conclusion is one of the premises used to arrive at the conclusion)
-medicine/psychology ("general" studies involving only white men)
- sociology ("deviant" behavior = behavior different from white middle-class men)
-History ("important" history involves white men)
- Philosophy (includes only "great white men"
Attachment to "mystified" concepts (feed and result from first two errors) - ANS ✔✔Familiar and
unexamined
ex: "masculine and feminine", the way society understands and defines sexual differences (gets confused
with biological, inherent traits)
-heterosexuality= only "normal" way to be
Inability to discard or correct old knowledge systems (perpetuated by previous 3 errors) resulting in: -
ANS ✔✔-partial/incomplete knowledge: the result of asking and answering questions within the
dominant tradition alone
-parable of the elephant
-we are only wrong if we think we are right, if we think we know enough from any one perspective to
judge the whole
, -perpetuation of the dominant, hierarchical order (and injustice)
-and a rationalization of inequality
What is the history of WGS in academia? - ANS ✔✔• Late 1960s and early 1970s students and faculty
began demanding that the knowledge learned and shared in colleges around the country be more
inclusive of women's issues, and they asked to see more women in leadership positions on college
campus.
• First, it rebalanced the curriculum. (add women and stir)
o Women as subjects of study were integrated into existing curricula thru the development of new
courses about women
o Shifted the focus on men and men's lives to women's lives and concerns by developing courses such as
"Women and Art" and "women in US history"
• Second, it resulted in a transformation of traditional knowledge
o People began questioning the nature of knowledge, and how knowledge integrating the perspectives
of marginalized people
o This strategy involved a serious challenge to traditional knowledge and its claims to truth
Differentiate between first wave, second wave, and third wave women's movements - ANS ✔✔First
wave:
-mid 19th century
-women's rights and suffrage (voting) activity, which sought to overturn legal obstacles to women's
participation in society, and more contemporary "third wave" movements
Second wave:
-1960s 1970s
-refers to this 20th century period of social activism from the 1960s thru the 80s that addressed formal
and informal inequalities associated, for example, with the workplace, family, sexuality, and reproductive
freedom
Third wave:
-refers to several diverse strains of feminist activity and study, whose exact boundaries in the history of
feminism are a subject of debate, but are generally marked as beginning in the early 1990s and
continuing to the present.
Intersectionality - ANS ✔✔the ways all people's experiences of gender are created by the intersection or
coming together of multiple identities like race, ethnicity, social class and so forth
Patriarchy - ANS ✔✔a system where men and masculine bodies dominate because power and authority
are in the hands of adult men
Elizabeth Cady Stanton - ANS ✔✔refused to "obey" in wedding vows and kept her last name "cady"
-Seneca Falls convention 1848
Lucretia Mott - ANS ✔✔Quaker teacher, minister, abolitionist
-opposed slavery and refused to by slave made products
Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 - ANS ✔✔organized by Lucretia Motta and EC Stanton
"Declaration of Sentiments" - ANS ✔✔-declaration of sentiments (E.C. Stanton)
-"all men AND WOMEN created equal" from dec of independence
