KENTUCKY — Eastern Kentucky University's Women and Gender Studies program acquaints students with the growing research on intersections of gender, race, class, sexualities, and abilities and promotes active learning and social engagement.

The prorgam launched in 1996 as Women's Studies, EKU Women and Gender Studies (WGS) as an interdisciplinary program offering both a minor and a certificate in Women and Gender Studies.

Dr. Lisa Day leads the Women & Gender Studies program at Eastern Kentucky University. She is a faculty advisor of the EKU Alphabet Center and Feminists for Change, and she is a certified instructor of the Green Dot Anti-Violence and Bystander Awareness curriculum.

During this In Focus Kentucky segment, Dr. Day discusses what is feminism and explains the importance of having month dedicated to celebrating Women’s history.

"I think it's vitally important. You know, the first International Women's Day was started way back at the beginning of the 20th century in Europe. But the United States came a little bit late to it with President Jimmy Carter, then followed by President Ronald Reagan, and it has traditionally been a bipartisan federal program that I think is very helpful to the education system, as well as to the mass public, you know. Too often our history books are written by and about men, when women have always been a significant part of the population, and in the case of the United States that population is predominantly women. So I think it's very important for women's history as well as women's current practices and actions to be in the spotlight for at least one month, and hopefully people can learn more about these excellent figures and study about them and and follow them for the remainder of the year," says Dr. Day.