As a pre-med student, Jada Okereke never expected to find herself majoring in women’s, gender and sexuality studies (WGS) alongside biology. But after taking her first WGS class to fulfill a divisional requirement, she found herself fascinated with the subject and how it relates to healthcare.
“I liked the way I could look at medicine and also consider the ways that gender and sexuality impact people’s healthcare experiences,” Okereke said.
Even though studying WGS was not in her original plans, she’s been questioning gender norms since she was a kid.
“I’ve always thought critically about gender without really realizing it,” Okereke said. “When I was younger, I learned that when you get married, you take your husband’s last name. I thought, why can’t you just keep your name? Why is this what’s normalized?”
WGS classes gave her the opportunity to explore those questions and many more. She said that classes she’s taken for the major have deepened her awareness of societal issues and critical thinking skills.
“When we talk about issues of gender and sexuality, it’s not just misogyny or homophobia causing issues with queer people,” Okereke said. “It’s a lot of different systems interlocking to reinforce each other. Racism, capitalism, ableism, transphobia, xenophobia—all those systems of oppression benefit from each other and build off of each other. We have to think about all the ways that someone’s identity might impact them, which is called intersectionality.”
One of her favorite aspects of the major is how diverse and widely applicable it is. She’s taken classes covering topics ranging from women of color in politics to studies on fan behavior.
“People hear ‘gender studies,’ and they think, ‘you’re just learning about the different waves of feminism, how could that be applicable?” Okereke said. “But…gender and sexuality apply to so many different things, because gender and sexuality are categories to describe humans, and everything humans do is influenced by socialization.”
From the way businesses market products to the way that doctors diagnose diseases, socialization holds a prominent influence on all behavior, Okereke said.
“Even the way we talk to little babies differs based on the gender,” Okereke said. “When we look at a baby, we are—without realizing it—trying to figure out what the baby’s gender is. Because we’ve been taught that gender is this innate category that dictates how people should move to the world…Gender is socially constructed and it really shouldn’t matter what someone’s gender is.”
Through the WGS major, Okereke learned how to dismantle detrimental ideas about gender and unlearn her own biases, which she believes will help her with patient interactions in her future career.
“When you’re in a healthcare setting, we typically find that women’s pain is not believed as much when they report it to doctors,” Okereke said. “When they have heart symptoms, it’s usually chalked up to anxiety, so they’re not diagnosed for heart diseases the same way that men are.”
Although Okereke said she is still in shock over being a graduating senior, she looks forward to her plans to attend medical school and someday become a practicing physician.
“I’m very excited to be able to be in a school where every class I’m taking is about medicine, because I love medicine,” Okereke said.
She believes that both her biology and WGS knowledge will advance her future career as a practicing physician.
“If you’re a doctor, you definitely want to be able to unlearn these biases that we have about gender and sexuality so you can give your patients the best treatment possible,” Okereke said.
