Introduction to Gender 2000

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Introduction to Gender 2000

• By 1980, over twenty thousand courses were being
  taught in that discipline.
• Today there are programs at all levels of
  studyundergraduate minor, undergraduate major,
  masters degree, doctorate. It even has its own
  association, the National Womens Studies
  Association, and journal.

• In the middle to late 1960s, courses explaining
  and developing feminist theory began to be taught
  on college campuses.
• By 1970, the phrase Womens Studies was applied
  to them.

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Gender Studies

• Womens Studies programs have been so successful
  as part of an intellectual movement that there is
  now a greater awareness of the importance of
  gender in peoples lives.

• Many school have Womens Studies and/or Gender
  Studies programs
• Women and men are more alike than they are
  different. Men are not from Mars women are not
  from Venuswe are all from planet Earth. Michael
  S. Kimmel

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History of Ideas

• Study of Women
• Done by Men
• Views Women as Objects
• Excluded womens opinions
• Saw women as different than , and usually
  inferior to, men

• Womens Studies
• Done by Women and men
• Views women as subjects and authorities
• Includes womens opinions
• Sees women as different from men but disagrees on
  how different, in what ways they are different,
  and why they are different

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Psychological

• Study of Women
• Sigmund Freud thought women believed women were
  vengeful, castrating, penis-envying creatures who
  seek domination by men

• Womens Studies
• Karen Horney critiqued Freuds conclusions,
  arguing that men both fear and envy the womb,
  which accounts for their need to dominate women

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Terminology

• Terms to Learn
• Sex Gender
• Role Stereotype
• Equality Patriarchy
• Ideal Feminism
• Positionality Misogyny
• Ideology

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Sex

• For our purposes, sex will be used to indicate
  the biological categories within which people are
  typically placed, or the biological difference
  between males and females. Sex is a physiological
  concept and is thought to be natural to a person
  it cannot really be changed (at least not without
  surgery and hormone treatments, and even so,
  ones DNA will still hold the original unaltered
  code). Sex is an ascribed social status.

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Gender

• Gender is the social significance of the
  difference in sex. Gender, according to Professor
  Lois Self, the Chair of the Womens Studies
  Department at Northern Illinois University, is
  the difference the sex difference makes.
  Gender is a social concept. Masculinity and
  femininity are the usual descriptors of gender,
  and they refer to a complex set of
  characteristics and behaviors that are prescribed
  for members of a particular sex category it is
  an achieved social status.

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Role

• A role is the pattern of behaviors prescribed
  for and expected from a person that corresponds
  to their position in society. A person may, of
  course, have multiple positions in society and
  multiple role expectations.

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Stereotype

• A stereotype is a composite image of
  characteristics and expectations pertaining to
  some group. This image is present in the social
  consciousness, but it is generally not accurate
  or is skewed in one or more ways.

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Equality

• Equality is the condition of being alike in
  value, having the same potential for
  accomplishment, and having the same inherent
  worthin spite of individual differences. In
  other words, even though people are not the same,
  they can (and should) be considered and treated
  as equals.

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Patriarchy

• Most of the societies that we know of have
  tended to be patriarchal. They are based upon an
  organizing principle that privileges the malesor
  the fathers, specifically, from the Latin patrí?
  family and archós leaderover the females. In a
  patriarchy, power is held by and transferred
  through men. This can be through educational and
  societal restrictions on women or by laws that
  favor men.

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Ideal

• An ideal is a concept concerning a role, a
  position, or a physical image that contains only
  the most desirable traits or behaviors. It can
  be a standard of judgment, a goal, or both. It
  can contain ideas that are actually exclusive of
  each other, and it isas a hypothetical concept
  of perfectionunobtainable in reality.

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Feminism

• Feminism is a philosophy that holds with this
  ideal of equality. It is the belief that
  although they are different, men and women are
  equal. Feminism recognizes that women have been
  oppressed and repressed in certain societies
  throughout history. It also carries with it the
  commitment to change the attitudes and behaviors
  of those who do not see men and womenall people,
  reallyas equals. This equality should be
  manifested in economic, political, and social
  equality for both sexes.

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Positionality

• The concept of positionality recognizes that
  peoples perspectives, their perceptions of
  reality, and their actual realitiestheir
  truthsare dependent upon where they are
  positioned in society. In other words, it sees
  truth and reality as being relative and
  multi-faceted.

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Misogyny and Ideology

• Misogyny is the hatred of or hostility toward
  women. In a society that subordinates women it
  is easy to understand that people within that
  society would or could hold such beliefs.
• In this class we will analyze cultures in order
  to study their ideologiesthe hidden as well as
  the explicit values that societies and people
  holdto see what people have believed about
  gender and sex.

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Looking Ahead A Few Key Ideas from Kimmels
Introduction

• Gender varies cross culturally. It depends on
  where you are, who you are, and when you are
  living.
• Invisibility is a privilege in another senseas
  a luxury. Only white people in our society have
  the luxury not to think about race very minute of
  their lives. And only men have the luxury to
  pretend that gender does not matter (6).
• Assuming neutrality perpetuates the status quo.