Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies

Sex, taboo, and family conversation

Simran Chand's thesis, “Familial Sexual Education for South Asian American Undergraduates and its Implications on Sexual Wellbeing,” used qualitative and quantitative analysis to determine the experiences of parental sexual communications among second-generation South Asian American Penn students.

Kristina García

Alice Paul’s mysterious manuscript

Heather J. Sharkey and three students transcribed a hand-written manuscript of the doctoral dissertation by Alice Paul, who earned her Ph.D. from Penn in 1912. As part of a virtual symposium, they joined John Pollack of the Libraries to discuss their efforts.

Louisa Shepard

The history behind International Women’s Day

Kristen R. Ghodsee, professor of Russian and East European studies, talks to Penn Today about the global holiday’s history, and why America has been late to embrace it.

Kristen de Groot

Why don’t women promote themselves?

Wharton’s Judd Kessler co-authored a study, “The Gender Gap in Self-Promotion,” which measured confidence and self-promotion among women about their performance at work.

Penn Today Staff

Less and later marriage in South Korea

Sociologist Hyunjoon Park sheds light on why marriage rates are falling in South Korea, particularly among highly educated women and low-educated men.

Penn Today Staff

Alice Paul and the ERA

After almost a hundred years, the Equal Rights Amendment may finally be ratified as an amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. Mary Frances Berry, Kathleen M. Brown and Maria Murphy discuss what ratification could mean.

Kristina García



Media Contact


In the News


Philadelphia Inquirer

A Taylor Swift-themed addiction recovery group started in Philly and became ‘a community with the vibe of a Taylor concert’

Jessa Lingel of the Annenberg School for Communication says that online music fandoms have always been places where people make sense of stigmas.

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Associated Press

Women’s Day events highlight major gaps in gender equality

Kristen Ghodsee of the School of Arts & Sciences says that International Women’s Day has a history of promoting progressive, socialist causes within the entire working class.

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Technical.ly Philly

An LGBTQ health initiative at Penn just launched a 5-year partnership with investing group Gaingels

The School of Nursing’s Eidos LGBTQ+ Health Initiative has partnered with Gaingels to leverage academic, intellectual, and research resources across Penn and promote health within queer populations.

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Chicago Tribune

Review: ‘The First Homosexuals’ at Wrightwood 659 captures the emergence of a ‘new identity’

A review examines “The First Homosexuals,” an exhibition curated by Jonathan D. Katz of the School of Arts & Sciences and colleagues including Pavel Golubev, a visiting scholar taking refuge at Penn.

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Times Higher Education

Europe is ahead of the U.S. on gender equity. So why is abuse in HE rife?

In an opinion piece, Susan B. Sorenson of the School of Social Policy & Practice contrasts Europe’s pronounced efforts to reduce gender inequality with recent studies which find alarming rates of gender-based violence in European universities.

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The Washington Post

What Iran’s protest slogans tell us about the uprising

Fatemeh Shams of the School of Arts & Sciences says that Iranian protest chants have shifted emphasis from male political figures and systemic reform to teenaged female martyrs and rejection of any form of autocratic rule.

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