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Women's studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. It often includes feminist theory, women's history (e.g. a history of women's suffrage) and social history, women's fiction, women's health, and the feminist and gender studies-influenced practice of most of the humanities and social sciences.
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History
Women's studies was first conceived as an academic rubric apart from other departments in the late 1960s, as the second wave of feminism gained political influence in the academy through student and faculty activism. As an academic discipline, it was modeled on the American studies and ethnic studies (such as Afro-American studies) and Chicano Studies programs that had arisen shortly before it. The first Women's Studies Program in the United States was established on May 21, 1970 at San Diego State College after a year of intense organizing of women's consciousness raising groups, rallies, petition circulating, and operating unofficial or experimental classes and presentations before seven committees and assemblies.[1] Carol Rowell Council was the student co-founder along with Dr. Joyce Nower, a literature instructor. A second program followed within weeks at Richmond College of the City University of New York (now the College of Staten Island). In the 1970s many universities and colleges created departments and programs in women's studies, and professorships became available in the field which did not require the sponsorship of other departments.
Current courses in women's studies
Women's studies courses are available at many universities and colleges around the world. Many universities that offer degrees in Women’s Studies offer classes in Gender Issues, Women and Religion, Female Sexuality, and Sex Crimes. Many also include with their program an option for gay/lesbian studies. In 2006, the Artemis Guide to Women's Studies[2] provides a listing of 395 programs in the United States, but may be out of date. Courses in the United Kingdom can be found through the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service[3].
Criticism of Women's studies
 The ties between the women's studies discipline and the feminist political movement have inspired criticism, both of the perceived political nature of the discipline itself, and relatedly of the quality and nature of the scholarship and pedagogy within women's studies departments. See, e.g., Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff-Sommers, Phyllis Chesler, Karen Lerhman, Daphne Patai, and Koertge.] Critics have also charged that the discipline has discouraged, rather than encouraged, internal criticism and critical thinking; been systematically biased in favor of female and against male scholarship; employed questionable methodologies and promoted scholarship based on politics rather than merit. Women's studies academicians respond, in part, that as in all academic fields, scholarly and pedagogical methods vary across individuals, institutions, and schools of thought. In response to the charge of anti-male discrimination, they point out that a significant amount of the valuable scholarship done on women's history, feminist philosophy, and the feminist movement, has been done by women, thus explaining any apparent discrimination.
Criticism has also arisen from within various schools of feminism itself, including allegations that academic women's studies has been too tied to a middle-class white American feminist movement; that is has become too theoretical and dissociated from the realities of women's lives; and that it favors a "victimization" reading of sexism over an "empowerment" model. Implicit criticisms of women's studies have sometimes been read from the development of queer studies, gender studies, and broader interdisciplinary forms of cultural studies that seek to integrate anti-racist, post-colonial studies, and other cultural studies that examine power relations. Women's studies academicians have responded in part by implicitly broadening their own curricular and research agendas, incorporating insights from "descendant" disciplines; and pointing out the tendencies and roots within women's studies that already incorporate these other analyses.
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