Table 1. Conclusions from Executive Summary to The Courage to Question, ed. Musil

What is most distinctive about the learning process in women’s studies courses?

• Students link the intellectual and the experiential, creating personalized learning.
  
• Students find women’s studies to be more intellectually rigorous because it challenges them to incorporate new knowledge into their lives.
  
• A women’s studies student culture built on trust and mutual respect fosters personalized learning (2).
  

How does women’s studies affect students as individuals?

• Students feel empowered by the content of women’s studies.
  
• Students move from being objects of study to being subjects with a voice of their own.
  
• Women’s studies courses are structured to encourage students to speak.
  
• Women’s studies creates a link between voice, empowerment, self-esteem, and critical thinking (3).
  

Does women’s studies foster social responsibility?

• Students move from voice to self-empowerment to social responsibility.
  
• Students want to improve things not only for themselves but for other people.
  
• Students continue to translate that sense of empowerment after graduation into citizen action. (4)
  Does women’s studies heighten an awareness of difference and diversity?
  
• All seven participating programs included diversity as a fundamental program goal.
  
• Women’s studies students expect a discussion of difference in their classes and were critical if it were absent.
  
• Students report significant changes in the way they think about people who are different than themselves.
  
• Students find that continued communication about differences is valuable.
  
• Many students developed an analysis of larger systems in which differences were embedded, reinforced, and defined and from which unequal power was allocated and perpetuated. (5)
  

Is there a unified curriculum in women’s studies programs?

• Women’s studies programs teach students a critical approach to knowledge rather than a common set of facts.
  
• Women’s studies programs typically share a commitment to grounding their investigations within interdisciplinary frameworks.
  
• Diversity is at the heart of the current intellectual agenda in women’s studies.
  
• Women’s studies courses posit an alternative to the single notion of men as the norms against which everyone else is judged and compared.
• Integrating scholarship on women and gender into the general curriculum enhances but does not replace women’s studies courses. (6)

Are students in women’s studies encouraged to think for themselves?

• Developing a critical perspective is a means for survival for many women’s studies students.
  
• Students in women’s studies classes debate issues far more frequently both in and out of classes.
  
• Women’s studies professors encourage divergent points of view that challenge students to form their own opinions. (7)

Do students think women’s studies classes are taught differently than their other courses?

• Both students and faculty members think there is a distinction between classroom dynamics in women’s studies and non-women’s studies courses.
  
• Women’s studies classes are usually more participatory, experiential, diverse, and student-centered.
  
• Students are encouraged to view their peers as additional sources of knowledge. (8)
  What about men in women’s studies classes?
  
• Men increase the number of female friends they have by taking women’s studies courses.
  
• While women name empowerment and agency as the most important personal growth outcome of women’s studies, men name a heightened awareness of gendered power relations.
  
• Some men tend to resist the content of women’s studies, but over time undergo significant changes that cause them to engage intellectually and personally with the material. (9).