Since its founding as an interdisciplinary Women’s Studies Programme in 1994, the Institute has been committed to research, teaching, gender intervention, policy outreach, and advocacy. Over the past decade, the Institute has sought to expand and implement programs reflecting the following aims and objectives:
- to establish women’s studies as an important and relevant academic field, both at the undergraduate and graduate level, with emphasis on an interdisciplinary approach, mainstreaming gender analysis, and working with colleagues in other fields to bring a gender analytical approach to relevant disciplines in the University.
- to assist Palestinian students to use and adapt the approaches and tools developed by gender studies worldwide to understand and change their own realities.
- to conduct sustained research and promote scholarship on gender relations in Palestinian society, including debating and discussing the results of such research in seminars, publications and workshops that link research results with community needs and policy formulation.
- to contribute to developing equitable, gender-aware and effective policies that address the complex social, economic, cultural and political issues confronting Palestinian women, as well as Palestinian society as a whole
- to produce and develop local expertise in diverse areas of development planning and policy formulation, while taking into consideration that an understanding of socially prescribed gender roles and responsibilities is fundamental to analyzing and modeling developmental strategies.
- to engage, discuss and debate gender and women’s studies in the Arab World in order to increase knowledge of shared issues and learn from mutual challenges.
- to provide assistance and consultation for development programs and policymakers based on in depth research of the various needs and constraints within Palestinian society, to help create a society where equality and justice prevail