Women’s Studies and Gender Studies Celebrates 45th Anniversary

About 100 students, faculty members and friends gathered in Mundelein Center’s Palm Court March 20 to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Women’s Studies and Gender Studies program at Loyola. 

The initiative was founded in 1979 and has since grown to include a major, minor and three graduate programs. Around 25 students major in WSGS while 75 to 80 students minor in it, along with 15 to 20 graduate students, according to Director Betsy Jones Hemenway.

Jones Hemenway and Associate Professor Héctor García Chávez co-hosted the event. Jones Hemenway began directing the program in 2007 and will retire in June, leaving the position to Classic Studies Associate Professor Leanna Boychenko.

Attendees mingled over drinks and appetizers before listening to short speeches from past and present WSGS professors and students. The mood was optimistic, but speakers acknowledged recent threats to the field of gender studies, including President Donald Trump’s campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

“It’s an understatement that we’re living in challenging times,” Jones Hemenway said in her introduction.

Jones Hemenway said words targeted by the Trump administration — including “feminism,” “gender” and “women” — are essential not just for the program but for people’s identities as well. She urged the audience to insist on using those words, inserting them wherever they can and using them to build up their communities.

“Be kind to one another, listen to music, sing, make art,” Jones Hemenway said. “In the face of a deluge of new decrees and edicts, we need to start small.”

Attendees were able to do exactly that, with a table of button-making materials and instructions providing the opportunity to make art at the event. At another table, a laptop played the documentary “A College of Their Own” by Bren Ortega Murphy, a former WSGS director and School of Communication faculty member who died in 2021.

The bookstore Women & Children First — which recently celebrated its own 45th anniversary — also hosted a booth at the event. The bookstore had trivia cards about Mundelein College, which was founded in 1930 by the Sisters of the Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and merged with Loyola in 1991, The Phoenix previously reported.

“I am grateful that we are living and working in a Jesuit institution that sees our program as essential to its mission,” Jones Hemenway said.

Spurred by the women’s rights movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s, universities began incorporating the field into their curricula. Cornell University offered the first accredited women’s studies course in 1969 and San Diego State University began the first women’s studies program in 1970, according to the National Women’s Studies Association.

Loyola’s program was notable because it was the first of its kind at a Jesuit university, according to former WSGS director and professor emerita Pamela Caughie.

Caughie, who directed the program from 1998 to 2003, attended the anniversary celebration. She began teaching English at Loyola in 1987 before retiring in 2022 and said women’s and gender studies and the school’s Jesuit Catholic mission share a commitment to services, activism, the arts and the humanities.

“When we were trying to rebrand ourselves, I said, ‘Why don’t we call it, Loyola, the first feminist Jesuit university?’” Caughie said, laughing. “People weren’t sure how to take that, but feminist pedagogy and Ignatian pedagogy overlap in many ways.”

Students were receptive and enthusiastic about the new program, Caughie said, but the faculty and administration were “hit-or-miss.”

While humanities programs were generally committed to incorporating gender studies into their lessons, the sciences and professional schools were often hesitant. With the help of then-Vice President Larry Braskamp, the program created the Memorandum of Understanding — a contract which helped faculty commit to teaching cross-listed courses once a year or every other year.

Securing funding was the key to getting the program off the ground. Caughie said she was so invested in the program that after she was brought on to direct the undergraduate programs, she volunteered to direct the graduate programs for free. Funding was and is still tight, with the program’s base budget being $3,000, The Phoenix previously reported.

Caughie led a graduate class last semester which created a website documenting the history of feminist thought, including a history of the program at Loyola. She said while combing through files for the website, she found an email from a dean at the time who’d stalled funding for the graduate program.

“He was giving all these excuses of why we really couldn’t do it at this time and fund it, and I saw in the margin that I had written — excuse my language — ‘Bullshit,’” Caughie said.

Another challenge for the program was and is resistance from beyond the university. When students performed Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” in the 2000s — making Loyola the first Jesuit university to hold such performances — then-president Rev. Michael Garanzini, S.J. enlisted students to respond to angry emails from Rogers Park residents, Caughie said.

“It was funny and outrageous and, for some people, scandalous, but what it did was it allowed people to talk about topics that were usually prohibited — vaginas and menstruation and menopause,” Caughie said.

The performances began in Mundelein’s Underground Theater, but were so popular they moved to the main stage, according to Caughie.

“We actually violated probably every fire code in the city because so many people wanted to see it,” Caughie said.

The Trump administration has sought to dismantle the Department of Education and eliminate what it calls “gender ideology.” Caughie said the WSGS program is more protected than those at other schools due to Loyola being a private university and the program’s stable faculty with joint appointments and student placements.

“The interdisciplinary nature of gender studies can make it resilient in times of need,” Caughie said. “When you’re diversified as an interdisciplinary program is, I think you can withstand a lot of that.”

Jones Hemenway said despite feeling angst about the future of the program, she believes it will continue and hopefully grow.

“If we didn’t have this program, the university would not be what it claims it is,” Jones Hemenway said.

García Chávez said Loyola’s mission statement, which identifies the school as a diverse learning community, aligns with WSGS’s focus on the lived, human experiences of sexuality and gender identity.

“Our program is fundamental because it speaks to marginalized voices, who have a space at Loyola,” García Chávez said. “When you see structures around you that were ‘permanent’ and were part of the democratic culture in this country wavering, then we have to remain strong together.”

Caughie said the program has grown to include transgender studies, masculinity studies and global studies. The program, originally called Women’s Studies, changed its name to Women’s Studies & Gender Studies in 2008, maintaining its roots in the women’s rights movement while acknowledging diverse perspectives.

García Chávez pointed to a new course he teaches with anthropology Assistant Professor Christopher Hernández about decolonization focused on Mexico City, which will celebrate its own anniversary this year, 700 years since its founding in 1325.

The celebration ended as the setting sun shone through the atrium’s glass windows, professors and students chatting and hugging. Jones Hemenway said people came up to her afterward and said they cried.

“We have students who want this education, they want that major, they feel like our space is a safe space, whereas out in the bigger world, they don’t always feel safe,” Jones Hemenway said.

Fourth-year WSGS and English major Carly Spagnuolo said she enjoys the flexible, yet engaging classes offered by the program, especially the Queer Theory course she’s taking this semester, taught by García Chávez.

“It’s really applicable to everything,” Spagnuolo said. “It’s just super fun to think that no matter what I do, I bring this new, unique point of view to it that other people don’t.”
WSGS is currently hosting the spring 2025 edition of its feminist lecture series. From April 4 to 6, it will host its inaugural Transdisciplinary Colloquium of Gender, Queer and Trans Studies.

Editors note: This story was updated March 26 to provide updated information on compensation Caughie recieved for her roles.