The Institute has three main purposes:  (a) promoting research on women, (b) integrating the scholarship on women and diversity into educational curricula, and (b) engaging in public education and civic engagement related to women and their well being.

Learning About Women

We want to know more about women's experiences -- for example, what happens to women and different categories of women, how do they feel about what is happening, what creations do they make? Looking at what happens to women, and how women think and feel about what they see and do helps us understand all people better.

An original interest in women's experiences eventually brings us to more difficult questions -- what are the patterns -- the social institutions and structures -- that shape women's destinies? And, how do these patterns bring about the consequences for women that we observe?

Prior to the 1970s, traditional academic scholars for the most part were not aware of and did not focus on the experiences women have, and they had little interest in the social-political-economic contexts in which women grow up and  live.  Scholars tended to believe either that women are like men, or that the distinctive elements in women's lives are minor.  Research often included only men as subjects, in the belief that including women would distort rather than reveal the basic patterns underlying human behavior. 

Most people and scholars had viewpoints about women, but men were more often studied -- men's health, men's wars, men's literature, men's economic and political maneuverings -- carefully categorized and analyzed, but often without much reference to the other half of the population. 

Beginning in the 1970s, research on women began to burgeon as a specialty within many academic disciplines, and funding agencies became aware of the need to include women as subjects, and to conceptualize research questions as including women's experiences and contexts.  The Institute was established to contribute to that effort.

Mission Statement 

The Institute for Teaching and Research on Women (ITROW) at Towson University was founded in 1990 to promote research on women and the integration of scholarship on women into the curriculum.  It continues Towson University's thirty-year tradition of experience, program success, and campus commitment to working on women's issues.  Through its activities, the Institute enhances the institutional goals of diversity and inclusiveness as faculty, staff, and students are prepared for participation in the pluralistic society in which we all live.

Goals

The Institute for Teaching and Research on Women has three fundamental goals: