I have no quarrel with the issue of differential impact of war, custom, and law on the two sexes. That is very, often very unfortunately, real. But I do object to the notion that there ought to be a separate field called "gender" studies. From where I sit, "gender" refers to the nature of words and endings in language - men and women are not different genders, they are different sexes.

Are men and women treated differently by different cultures and by the products of those cultures - war, development, etc? Of course! I recall doing my doctoral research in a Peruvian mountain village where the males had acculturated to the national Peruvian standard at a much faster rate than the females. All the men of the village had adopted either Western dress partially or entirely and all spoke decent Spanish. Hardly and of the women dressed in Western styles even partially. Moreover, very few of the women spoke any Spanish at all. Women were clearly subordinate in that subculture but it was clearly something that was in the process of changing. The development activities of the government, aided by female US Peace Corps volunteers, was deliberately accelerating the changes in ways that would promote significantly greater equality between the sexes. Is this "gender studies"? I don't think so. It is the study of development through a process that involved culture change. I was and remain proud of the PCVs and the local women who took leadership roles in making this happen. And, you have every right to feel pride in your students, as we all should. But let's not muddy the real issues by some (of what I would consider) phony pseudo academic discipline.

Cheers

JohnT