Dokuz Eylül University, Graduate School of Social Sciences, Department of Women’s  Studies was founded in 2013 along with the launching of the Master in Women’s Studies Programme. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of the department, the academic staff consists of  academics from various departments of the University whose research interests focus on women and gender issues with critical perspectives. By interrogating gender issues, the program aims to theoretically and empirically contribute to the solution of the problem of inequality between men and women that affects womens’ social status and critical academic studies regarding gender roles and male-women equality as well as LGBT studies. The current program is expected to become a strong academic reference for deepening the awareness of institutions in and out of the university towards issues related to inequality between men and women and gender in general. Hence, after two semesters of courses for the Master programme, students are expected to specialise by means of a thesis supervised by a relevant academic in the department. Department of Women Studies aims to carry out the extracurricular activities such as national and international projects, academic workshops, conferences and seminars in addition to the postgraduate education and research activities with EU partners.

The Department of Women Studies is under The Graduate School of Social Sciences that has 33 bilateral agreements with different countries (Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, Belgium, Greece, Crotia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovenia) under Erasmus Plus scheme. Our department in particular has recently signed a bilateral agreement with University of Parma, Italy and new international agreements and projects with EU partners are working in progress.