Kansas State offers $140k salary for Women's Studies chair

The Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at Kansas State University is seeking a new Department Head, offering a salary of up to $140,000, plus benefits.

According to a recent job posting, the new Department Head will teach two classes per year and oversee the department’s other course offerings, which include classes such as “Gender and Sex in Sci-Fi,” “Black Sexualities,” and “Food Justice.” 

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The new hire must demonstrate a “commitment to diversity, intersectionality, and social justice,” be able to mentor both students and professors, and qualify for tenure in the department at the rank of Associate or Full professor. 

Though a PhD in Women’s Studies or a related discipline is a minimum qualification, the department says it is also interested in hiring someone with a research focus in fields such as “Queer of Color Critique, Woman of Color Feminisms, Transgender Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies, or Native and Indigenous Feminisms.”

Another imperative is that qualified candidates must have “a significant research contribution to GWSS and have an ongoing research program that extends critical feminist inquiry at the intersections of gender, women, and sexuality studies with categories of analysis such as race, ethnicity, class, nation, colonialism, imperialism, and disability.”

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Students who major in women’s studies can enjoy careers such as “FBI/CIA Agent,” “Bank Officer,” and “Real Estate Agent,” according to the department’s website. 

“If you are planning on business, gender, women, and sexuality studies can help you,” the website tells prospective students, explaining that “understanding that market research and advertising may be based on sexist interpretations that are ‘bad for business’ is useful in product development.” 

Similarly, “knowing that product design may reflect views of gender behavior no longer appropriate to vast segments of the market is essential for good business,” the page adds. 

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Aspiring educators would also benefit from taking women’s studies classes, the department claims, asserting that “to teach about women and men in non-sexist ways is one of the biggest challenges faced by teachers and professors at all levels of education.”

Campus Reform reached out to Kansas State University for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication. 

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @Toni_Airaksinen