Centre for Gender Studies

The Centre for Gender Studies (CGS) was established at the Faculty of Arts at Comenius University in June 2001. It was established as the first centre of its kind within Slovak academia. The object of interest and activity are issues of gender identity, gender specific differences and symbols, which in their fundamental way affect the structure and character of relationships between men and women and cause inequality between them. The centre’s interdisciplinary programme focuses on gender relations in various parts of life and in theory. It follows a ten-year tradition of similarly-oriented teaching and research activities undertaken at the Department of Philosophy and the History of Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts in cooperation with specialists from other disciplines. The establishment of the CGS also followed the intention to bring education and research at the faculty closer to those countries where gender studies is a legitimate part of social sciences disciplines as an expression of the democratic politics of education.

The centre tries to open space for interdisciplinary discussion on gender issues from a historical perspective as well as from the perspective of women and men in contemporary society.

The activities of the CGS take shape in many areas – education (courses of elective lectures for students at the faculty and the whole university and lectures for the wider public), coordination (the creation of teams of lecturers and the organization of specialized seminars for members of the CGS), research (the undertaking of research in this area and the initiation of interdisciplinary research in gender studies), consultation (specialized consultations for students and the wider public), expert advice (analysis of conceptual materials for governmental and non-governmental institutions for a gender perspective), publication (the publication of research, translations and study material), organization (the organization of presentations by lecturers from Slovakia and aboard, and cooperation with partner institutions), media (cooperation with the media on making the public aware of gender issues) and documentation (archiving of yearly, Master’s, doctoral and habilitation works, and the documentation of all activities connected with the activity of the centre).