introduction to women's and gender studies lecture

Intro to Women’s and Gender Studies

Who am I?

• The great-granddaughter of Nancy Rebecca Logan Edgerton, born in mountains of NC in 1877

• Not allowed to attend UNC-Chapel Hill

Who am I?

• The granddaughter of Hope Elizabeth Edgerton Wills, born in 1908.

• Sat in the back of classes at UNC-Chapel Hill. Not allowed to attend.

• Moved to NJ for nursing school.

Who am I?

• The daughter of Nancy Leonora Wills Hudock, born 1940.

• Was in the first class of women admitted to UNC-Chapel Hill as freshman

• Wanted to be a doctor- became a nurse

Who am I?

Who am I?

• Amy Hudock, born 1964 in Chapel Hill, NC

• Attended UNC-Chapel Hill with no question about my gender in a class with numerous other women

Who am I?

• The mother of Sarah Elizabeth Hudock

• A future scholar at UNC-Chapel Hill

• My dream is that she will face fewer problems than I did

Who am I?

• A concerned caregiver of an aging mother

• A concerned mother of a growing daughter

• Working for change to make it better for all of us

What is this course?

• Look at class blog for:– Syllabus– Course Schedule– Events– Discussions– Information

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 women—all people, really—as equals. This equality should be manifested in economic, political, and social equality for both sexes.

First Wave

• 19th century abolition movement gives rise to thinking about women’s equality

• Domestic ideology empowers women

• Attitudes begin to change

• Seneca Fall Women’s Rights Convention produces the “Declaration of Sentiments” (1848)

• Right for women to vote introduced in Congress in 1878 – ratified as the 19th Amendment in 1920

Second Wave

• In the middle to late 1960s, courses explaining and developing feminist theory began to be taught on college campuses.

• By 1970, the phrase “Women’s Studies” was applied to them.

• By 1980, over twenty thousand courses were being taught in that “discipline.”

• Today there are programs at all levels of study—undergraduate minor, undergraduate major, master’s degree, doctorate. It even has its own association, the National Women’s Studies Association, and journal.

Third Wave

• Emerged in the mid 1990’s

• Led by Gen Xers, daughters of 2nd Wave

• Questioned what 2nd Wave had not yet done

• Took feminism more international, more multicultural, and more gender open

• Focus on gender as performed allowing more freedom on gender continuity spectrum

Gender Studies

• Women’s and Gender 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 people’s lives.

• Many school have Women’s 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 Venus—we are all from planet Earth.” Michael S. Kimmel

History of Ideas

• Study of Women– Done by Men

– Views Women as Objects

– Excluded women’s opinions

– Saw women as different than , and usually inferior to, men

• Women’s Studies– Done by Women and men

– Views women as subjects and authorities

– Includes women’s opinions

– Sees women as different from men but disagrees on how different, in what ways they are different, and why they are different

Psychological

• Study of Women– Sigmund Freud

thought women believed women were vengeful, castrating, penis-envying creatures who seek domination by men

• Women’s Studies– Karen Horney

critiqued Freud’s conclusions, arguing that men both fear and “envy” the womb, which accounts for their “need” to dominate women

Terminology

Terms to Learn

Sex Gender

Role Stereotype

Equality Patriarchy

Ideal Feminism

PositionalityMisogyny

Ideology

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, one’s DNA will still hold the original unaltered code). Sex is an ascribed social status.

Gender

• Gender is the social significance of the difference in sex. Gender, according to Professor Lois Self, the Chair of the Women’s 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.

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.

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.

Equality

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

Patriarchy

Most of the societies that we know of have tended to be patriarchal. They are based upon an organizing principle that privileges the males—or the fathers, specifically, from the Latin patrí? family and archós leader—over 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.

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 is—as a hypothetical concept of perfection—unobtainable in reality.

Positionality

The concept of positionality recognizes that people’s perspectives, their perceptions of reality, and their actual realities—their truths—are dependent upon where they are positioned in society. In other words, it sees truth and reality as being relative and multi-faceted.

Misogyny and IdeologyMisogyny 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 ideologies—the “hidden” as well as the explicit values that societies and people hold—to see what people have believed about gender and sex.

Looking Ahead: A Few Key Ideas from Shaw’s Chapter 1

• Different types of feminism

• Some of the myths about feminism

• Role of homophobia in controlling behavior

• Idea of post-feminism

• Relationship of capitalism and advertising with liberation

• Read all the chapter’s opening material, then choose one of the chapter’s essays to write your response. Post and print – bring print out to class. You will share your responses in class.

Analysis

Interview an older woman about what life was like for women when she was young and how things have changed, or not changed. Write up your analysis of this. What did you learn? Post and print. Bring print out to class.