When we joined our Women and Work in the Gulf course in Fall 2021, we were surprised to find out that none of our peers in the classroom were cis male-identifying. Over the semester, we found out that while this was an anomaly, cis male-identifying students tend to take gender-studies related courses in much lower numbers than female-identifying and gender expansive peers.

Last semester, I (Sanam), wrote a research paper for “Gender and Society” where I defined gender and sexuality (G&S) courses as those that fell under eight keywords (gender, feminism, motherhood, fatherhood, family, sex, sexuality, women, and men) in the undergraduate list of classes and found 33 of them. By asking students to self-report the gender makeup of the G&S classes they were in, I was able to collect data on 39 sections of courses from Fall 2016 to Spring 2022. The average percentage of female-identifying students in these sections was 82 percent. However, for lack of another way to collect data, the numbers were reported by students who may have assumed their classmates’ genders. I worried I was doing more harm than good — my research categorized people into a binary. I was frustrated that friends who did not identify within the binary would not be able to see themselves represented in my work.

Visualization by Sanam Parwani

Graph 1: The plot above shows the 10 courses from Spring 2022 that fell in the keywords above. The top row has classes that have the keyword “Gender” in the title while the bottom row shows classes that have ‘Women’ in the title. All courses show an uneven representation of gender, but there is no conclusive difference between the classes with “Gender” versus “Women.” The average gender in the Spring 2022 classes with “gender” in the title was 63% female as compared to the classes with “women” or “feminism” in the title which was 83%.

Visualization by Sanam Parwani

Graph 2: The classes I had the most long-term data for were Women and Work in the Gulf and Women and Leadership, which have been offered for 5 and 4 semesters respectively. The plot above shows a possible increase in the enrollment of male-identifying students in Women and Leadership, but there is not a large enough sample to determine this. Women and Work in the Gulf’s enrollment patterns do not show an increase in male-identifying students. Course enrollment can be determined by other courses offered at the time, the course timing, and the number of friends someone has taking a class, among other factors.

Visualization by Sanam Parwani

Graph 3: The plot shows a general increase in how many G&S classes are available for students. However, the increase is not significant and would have to be measured over a longer period to make conclusions about the increase of available classes at NYUAD.

While my findings weren’t conclusive, I was able to confirm an uneven representation of gender and explore more: if G&S courses had increased at NYU Abu Dhabi over time (slightly), if gender distribution across majors played a role in the enrollment in gender classes (yes), if the gender distribution had become more equal over consecutive semesters for a single course (no) and if gender distribution was more equal in classes that had a course title with “gender” rather than “women” or “feminism” in it (no).

As learners who have remained invested in studying and (un)learning gender, it would be amiss to begin this piece without practicing reflexivity and vulnerability. Even as we write this article, we are aware that talking about gender is always personal, and always messy, Yet, we are students at a university where power, positionality and other factors of privilege form a significant part of our learning and unlearning experiences.

We know that our curriculum and the teaching and learning practices are limited by scope and by broader disciplinary paradigms. While this article is an attempt to complicate and unpack what this means, it is still dependent on and situated within those frameworks.

“I think it is crucial to me as a human being to be aware of what positionality means … especially in terms of gender,” explained Antonio Azevedo, Class of 2024.

For many, studying gender isn’t just about studying gender. It is also a matter of taking responsibility to educate oneself when one is afforded the opportunity to, especially about things that may be uncomfortable to ask or address in other situations.

“These classes are important spaces to ask a lot of questions that frankly, people don't, that people are really afraid to ask because they're scared of being canceled … And I think that a safe academic space to actually learn and discuss these things and build a critical awareness of positionality is really important,” explained Kaashif Hajee, Class of 2021.

That said, as our data demonstrated, cis male-identifying students do tend to be underrepresented in gender studies classrooms, for reasons that extend far beyond NYUAD-specific dynamics.

“Most world societies are still predominantly patriarchal. It's institutionalized. And so naturally male-identifying students, students who have less interest in thinking about gender, not because … it's a personal thing of disliking the issue, but simply because of the roots of the societies that these students have grown up in. They're more wired to think about other things as being more important, like making more money or becoming a better STEM scientist or what not,” argued Azevedo.

Azevedo cited the lack of flexibility within some majors as a potential reason for not taking a gender course. “Unless I'm personally driven to take a gender class, which I am in some forms, but not 100%, then I can take the class, but otherwise it would be really difficult.”

For others, the lack of enrollment was a question of privilege more so than exposure. Matthew Tan, Class of 2021, argued, “If you're the privileged stakeholder, you don't feel a need to understand your condition or like to, because there's no need for like, change, I suppose. Right? Like, why aren't white people taking Race and Caste with Toral [Gajarawala]?”

At the same time, it is also true that popular perceptions of gender studies as a discipline and ongoing conflation with feminist movements and women’s rights may be discouraging. In a global context where feminism is an increasingly fraught term, cis male-identifying students feel a dissonance in understanding the need to engage with gender studies.

“Because language is so important, gender is now suddenly becoming synonymous with the fight for women, for women's rights instead of the idea of gender being kind of for a spectrum of genders, you know, not just men and women. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that a lot of cis male-identifying students would have that kind of … preconceived notion,” explained Saba Karim Khan, author, filmmaker and Instructor of Social Science at NYUAD.

This misconception might partly be the reason why there is a consistent record of the under enrollment of cismale-identifying students in gender studies classrooms; more somber versions of this belief might manifest as anti-male sentiment within gender studies courses, as reflected upon by multiple students.

“Especially now like 20 years ago, I don't think the classes would be so female-dominated. But now, I feel like men are intimidated,” explained Yousef Alankar, Class of 2023.

William Mlekush, Class of 2022, argued that men are aware of the anti-male sentiment, but tend to respond in conflicting ways. “This definitely exists, but men have also earned this through a history of being poor wielders of power.”

For Saba Khan, the absence of cis male-identifying students from gender studies classrooms is actually the most visible part of a problem that runs deeper, involving many of the factors above.

While gender studies is most definitely not only the study of feminism, misconceptions surrounding feminism also do find their way into classrooms. Anyone who may feel like an outsider to the movement may feel like an outsider in the classroom too. The question of positionality is pertinent not just in terms of power and privilege, but also allyship. How do cis male-identifying students who have been in gender studies classrooms feel in these classrooms?

“I guess the reality is that we don't want to be put in an uncomfortable situation where you will be asked uncomfortable questions … where you're voluntarily enrolling in a school of unlearning and saying alright … I've grown up with a certain socialization. Am I happy to exit that comfort zone and try and find my positionality within that space, because I would imagine, hypothetically, a lot of guys would be thinking, ‘What am I going to do there? What is my place?’” explained Khan.

Many cis male-identifying students echoed this sentiment whether for fear of saying the wrong thing or to give space to others; performing allyship perfectly was often on their minds.

“The only thing that was kind of difficult is it was me and another guy compared to 15 girls. So it was kind of I had to think not twice or three or four times before saying anything,” reflected Alankar.

“There are some occasions where I think it's best to stay quiet and not engage in the discussion. I'm listening actively, but I'm not trying to actively speak up about something because I think it's more important for the women in the class to tell us about their experience rather than me speaking,” explained Abdullah Yusuf, Class of 2024.

Still, questions about the performance of allyship within the classroom underpin the experiences of not just cis male-identifying students, but also their counterparts.

“I would say there's many ways in which you can be an ally and show support, particularly through engaging in conversations with, you know, the women in your class,” explained Tala Asiri, Class of 2022. “I feel like because this is such a patriarchal world or just an unequal world, it's good to feel that like other people … from other gender identities are also supporting you and hearing your narrative and engaging in healthy conversation with it, not questioning you and not belittling you or erasing your story or ideas.”

Although we were frustrated with the visible lack of representation in Women and Work in the Gulf, the classroom became a transformative, bold and safe community that was directed not just by Gulf-situated gender theory, but also our own experiences. We must push past a belief, though, that the presence of cis male-identifying students inherently equals a non-safe space; instead, cultivating a classroom as a community that is ready to put in the work to (un)learn together and ask and answer difficult questions is an important learning experience.

“It was like a safe space, but not a brave space. You know, like, no one was really challenging themselves,” said Sofia Delgado, Class of 2022, complicating the notion of a safe space while reflecting on her experience in a gender course.

“It is also getting at the crux of larger feminist questions of, can there be safe spaces for women that don't exclude men? Is that an ideal worth aspiring to or can that only happen at the exclusion of men? And by my understanding, these questions are unresolved,” said Hajee, questioning inclusivity within feminist movements in general.

Indeed, critique of feminist pedagogy that stops at the creation of safe spaces within classrooms does question the viability of these classrooms being safe spaces. Some believe that they are also meant to encourage critical growth and be spaces that allow for contestation in the ways we understand and unpack power and positionality.

And so — is it true that classrooms where some identities are represented more than others are in danger of becoming an echo chamber, especially where much learning and unlearning is dependent on a certain kind of vulnerability?

Though, expecting that a classroom without cis male-identifying students to be both a safe space and an echo chamber disregards the possibility of rich and challenging conversations.

“I think our own experiences, our positionality, they all affect the dynamics of the classroom, and I wouldn't say it's just gender. I think it's also your cultural background, the religious philosophies you come from, your class background, your class privilege … I think all these things affect the class dynamic,” explained Professor Sabyn Javeri Jillani, a Senior Lecturer of Writing and Literature & Creative Writing at NYUAD.

Merely expecting that equal representation of genders in a classroom will be ‘progressive’ assumes a strict binary, tokenizes students’ learnings and creates monolithic gender categories. Instead, what remains clear is that there is a need for inclusive pedagogy. Classrooms, regardless of their composition, need to create space where engaging with, confronting and contesting understandings of power, privilege and positionality are encouraged.

“An inclusive class would be seen through indicators of degrees of embeddedness of how engaged people are, of how they are feeling, of how comfortable they are and how kind of [a] 360 the discussion is in a sense that signals inclusivity. So I think a good starting point is to think of improving the numbers,” explained Saba Khan.

Khan questioned, “Are we offering that clarity in our courses when the course is being pitched, when we're putting out a syllabus?” “I mean the fashionable thing to do is to just put out a course that's going to really create a buzz around women's rights, right? And I know people are exploring it more deeply than that now, at a place like NYU, but I almost feel like we need to push the envelope there to say … How do I make this course meaningful for more than one gender?”

Jillani echoed this sentiment, further arguing the need for stepping back and looking at this more holistically. “Do we need to have more courses about women's writing about feminism? Or do we just need to really look at all the courses that we are offering and make the syllabus more inclusive, you know. Bring in the gender balance in the text that we teach, the programs that we have. Make it part of the core or the entire curriculum,” she explained.

The need to decolonize the curriculum has been a frequent conversation at The Gazelle and within the NYUAD community at large, leading to tangible changes in course offerings. However, the need to make our curriculum more interdisciplinary by expanding on the need to study social difference, particularly by embedding feminist pedagogy, remains underexplored.

An important step in building inclusive teaching and learning practices is questioning the binary nature of many gender studies courses themselves, but also of our curriculum more broadly. The consequences of this go beyond teaching and curricula. We may not know how to completely move past the categorical teachings that gender studies sometimes presuppose, which, in a lot of ways, amounts to a kind of erasure. But, at the very least, we must acknowledge and do our best to reconcile the harm caused by teaching within the binary, to students who consider gender and sexuality courses to be their refuge.

“Sometimes the way that gender was [being] talk[ed] about was, super normative, like binary. Everyone just kind of spoke like a gender binary was the only thing that existed, which I found very strange. And the professor never corrected anyone unless I would bring it up,” Mlekush recalled.

Instead, inclusivity within the classroom and creating more critical thinking opportunities embedded within course structures are important not just to gender studies courses, but to courses across the board.

“I think we should also think about how many cis male-identifying students are in classes or in majors outside of Economics and Engineering and the majors that don't require reflection or that aren't taught the pedagogy of reflection and analysis and actual critical thinking about the world around you. We want to believe that no matter your major, if you're an NYUAD student, you're going to come out with more critical insight on the world. I don't think that's true,” argued Hajee. “Actually, I think you can get through most of the majors without that. And I think that's the bigger problem.”

Exploring broader questions of inclusivity and positionality within NYUAD though does not mean that we should not strive to increase the number of cis male-identifying students in gender classes, but just that this is not the finish line.

Regardless of your relationship with gender studies courses at NYUAD, we hope this piece invites you to reconsider preconceived notions and understandings of gender studies. As a result, we hope to see more of an investment into building inclusive classrooms and engaging with them.