Master of Arts in Political Studies - Gender and Politics

Queen's University

The department offers two MA programs: a twelve-month MA in Political Studies. Gender and Politics is our Department's newest graduate field. The debates regarding Gender and Politics have captured the imaginations of social and political actors over recent decades with increasing vigour, affecting every discipline in the social sciences. Today, Gender and Politics is one of the most energized fields in the discipline of Political Science. The field explores power relations and governance from a perspective that recognizes gender, along with other identity markers, as politically and socially constructed categories. Some of the questions that are addressed in the field of Gender and Politics include: the unequal status between men and women in political, economic and social affairs and processes the nature and implications of same-sex marriage rights and related debates whether and how gender structures public opinion and political behaviour, as well as, political candidacy and political communications the relevance of feminist theory to an understanding of historic and contemporary questions of justice, authority and power the meaning and significance of identities regarding gender, transgender, sexual orientation and sexuality the implications of a gendered analysis of institutions such as the state, international organizations, bureaucracy, the military, political parties, social movements and trade unions the impact of a gendered analysis of development and underdevelopment, international conflict, globalization, migration and citizenship and the gendered nature of public policy in Canadian and global politics.