WAN offers the “Women's Studies/Gender Studies Doctoral Dissertation Database”, a database of doctoral dissertations written based on women's studies and gender studies. The database was established in 2013 and has 1,640 dissertations registered as of 1 September 2024. In addition, WAN has so far hosted seven “Dissertation Meetings”, an event where registered dissertations are picked up, introduced and reviewed.

Dr. Kazumi Naito, who led the establishment of the database, described its purpose at the time as follows. “The creation of a database of doctoral dissertations specifically for WS/GS will make it easier for WS/GS researchers and postgraduate students to obtain coherent research information. It could also contribute to the interaction between studies and the promotion of historical documentation and validation as a discipline by adding one new aggregation mechanism.”

Please make use of the database.
“Women's Studies/Gender Studies Doctoral Dissertation Database”
https://wan.or.jp/hakuron/search/

[Remarks]
This database provides bibliographic information on doctoral dissertations that meet the following criteria.
・The author was awarded a doctoral degree from a Japanese university and their doctoral thesis is registered in the National Diet Library - National Institute of Informatics Doctoral Dissertation Database, or the author was awarded a doctoral degree from a foreign university and their doctoral dissertation was published as a book in Japan.
・Can be searched by the National Diet Library database “CiNii Dissertations’ Find Japanese doctoral dissertations”, by using the search terms described below.
・By reading the abstracts, it is possible to confirm that the articles includes theorising from a female party perspective (including men’s study as a development of this) or an awareness of issues that lead to the clarification or elimination of gender bias.

* In addition, with the aim of obtaining information faster, we regularly check the repositories of 20 universities with WS/GS related programmes across Japan for newly published dissertations.

[Search terms]
DV, LGBT, 女/女性/婦人women, 家族 family, 家父長制patriarchy, クィアqueer, ケアcare, ゲイgay, ジェンダーgender, 主婦housewives, 少女/女子girls, ストーカーstalkers, 性同一性障害gender identity disorder, 性別分業gender division of labour, セクシュアリティsexuality, 男女men and women,　男性学men’s studies, 男性性 masculinity, 父father, 同性愛homosexuality, パートタイマー part-timers, バイオレンスviolence,　買売春buying prostitution,　母mother,　ハラスメントharassment, 平等equality,フェミニズムfeminism, 暴力violence, ポルノpornography,　マイノリティminorities, レズビアンlesbians, and so on 〔name of researcher〕

[Reference]
Naito, K. (2014). Joseigaku/jendaa kenkyu hakushironbun detabesu wo tsukuru [Creating a database of women's studies/gender studies doctoral dissertations]. NWEC Jissen Kenkyu,４, 144-157.
https://nwec.repo.nii.ac.jp/records/17123

Written by Midori KOJIMA
*This article has been translated from the original Japanese using machine translation with some minor edits.