Gender knowledge and gender competence are key qualifications that are becoming increasingly important in today's heterogeneous societies. Students develop a cross-disciplinary understanding of how power and inequality work and the resulting consequences for individuals and society. They can use these qualifications to initiate new processes in research and practice. For this purpose, students are taught interdisciplinary methods and instruments for establishing gender justice and equal opportunities in diverse areas. The students gain a comprehensive insight into the development and different schools of thought in the field of Gender Studies and train the ability to critically reflect on the category of gender for individuals, society and culture in a context-oriented manner.

The subject of Gender Studies can already look back on a long history. In the winter semester 2005/6, Gender Studies was launched at the RUB as part of the 2-subject Master's programme. Today, the programme can be studied at the RUB both as a 1-subject and as a 2-subject Master's programme, and the 1-subject Master's programme even offers the possibility of completing a double degree, i.e. the acquisition of two official degrees at the RUB and the University of Graz, Austria. Since the founding of the Marie Jahoda Center for International Gender Studies in 2019, the two Gender Studies programmes have formed one of the three pillars of the center, alongside the Gender Lab and Gender in Society.

At the RUB, the core teaching of Gender Studies is made up of the teaching offered by the three faculties of Social Sciences, Philology (especially Media Studies) and History. Due to the interdisciplinarity and intersectionality of Gender Studies, this offer is supplemented by alternating courses from other subjects, e.g., Protestant and Catholic Theology, Sports Science and Psychology. The global networking and long-standing international teaching and research cooperations of the chairs involved in the course offer are also reflected in the course content. The students thus gain an international view of the research field of Gender Studies with regard to its terminologies, schools of thought, challenges and possibilities.