In the current frenzy of cost-cutting and budget slashing, many administrators are quick to blame what they determine are “less valuable” programs like the humanities and social sciences and cut funding to those programs accordingly—witness the governor of Florida recently saying that the state didn’t really need more anthropologists, anyway. Similarly, North Carolina governor Pat McCrory recently said in a radio interview that gender studies courses “have no chance of getting people jobs.”

Well, don’t tell Carol Colatrella, who writes in the newest issue of Academe that all sorts of different fields benefit from the research in gender studies that she and other gender studies faculty work on. For example, many academics and politicians alike are currently working on getting more women interested in studying STEM fields—and Colatrella argues that gender studies can be an invaluable way of looking at that persistent problem. In her article, “Why STEM Students Need Gender Studies”, she explains this and many other ways that gender studies benefit campus communities and women in all fields. Read it now in the May-June 2014 issue of Academe.