Mission

The Gender⁺ Justice Initiative (G⁺JI) aims to build on the long-standing, path-breaking research being done on intersectional gender and racial justice across Georgetown’s departments and campuses; to catalyze scholarship and advocacy in these areas; and to make Georgetown a dynamic hub of knowledge production, community engagement, and policy development on intersectional issues of gender, racial, and economic justice. 

We aim to situate the leading university in the Nation’s capital as a center of research on gender equity through collaborations among scholars, policy makers, advocates and artists in Washington, D.C. and beyond. Building on Georgetown’s schools of law, policy, medicine, and the arts and sciences, G⁺JI seeks to promote an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach to gender justice focused on both scholarly enrichment and policy change. This work advances Georgetown’s Jesuit tradition and commitment to “address the social realities of … injustice and oppression”. The G⁺JI invites faculty, staff, and students from across the University to discuss and to collaborate on issues of gender, antiracism, sexuality, feminism, intersectionality, inequity, and inequality.

Why the “+”? We refer to “Gender⁺ Justice” to signal that our concerns have gender at the core but extend to race, class, sexuality, and other markers of subordination.

Our Background

During the academic year 2015-16, faculty from all three campuses at Georgetown University participated in a set of exploratory conversations about how best to harness and support the work of Georgetown faculty who are deeply engaged in research on gender justice, particularly as it is situated within social justice and civil rights.  Their goal was to envisage the best kind of structure for promoting an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach to gender justice centered at the University. The Gender⁺ Justice Initiative (G⁺JI) builds on the long-standing and path-breaking research already being done at Georgetown and catalyzes dialogue on the impact of sex and gender across departments and campuses.  The G⁺JI invites faculty and students from across the University to engage in interdisciplinary conversations and to collaborate on issues of sex, gender, sexuality, feminism, intersectionality, inequity and inequality.

We envision our work as follows: