Ms Turei suggested the classes during a talk she gave, on women in politics, at the Otago University Union building yesterday as part of Otago University Students Association Women's Week activities.
About 30 people attended the 1pm talk.
Some advances towards gender equality had been made, and "things are probably getting better slowly", she said.
Nevertheless, many long-established barriers to full equality remained and more work was still needed to overcome them.
Many young women were training as lawyers, but relatively few women had gained senior posts in the legal profession, for example, as partners in law firms.
In recent years, there had been an overemphasis on viewing people as consumers rather than citizens.
One way of encouraging young people, both women and men, to become more aware of their civic responsibilities and their chance to make a positive difference to their community was by introducing civics classes.
In a later interview, she said useful, values-based educational resources for civic education had been developed in Australia.
Civics education would foster greater awareness about New Zealand's democratic institutions, including parliament, and local government bodies, such as community boards, and would show how people could take responsibility and contribute to others.
Ms Turei, who is an education and conservation spokeswoman for the Green Party, also gave a second talk at the university, at 6.30pm, highlighting the pressures faced by the country's freshwater fish, given climate change and habitat destruction.
