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Week 1: Introduction Defining the Terms Dr Sherah Wells Sherah.Wells@warwick.ac.uk Transformations: Gender, Reproduction, and Contemporary Society

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Module Details No Reading Week in Term 1 Class Essay 2,000 words Due at the beginning of your seminar in Week 9

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Key Concepts Reproduce/Reproduction Family Reproductive Rights Motherhood/Fatherhood

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Reproduction GenerationalDaily Reproducing the next generation of workers Ongoing reproduction of workers

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Fredrich Engels, The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State. According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the last resort, the production and reproduction of immediate life. But this itself is of a twofold character. On the one hand, the production of the means of subsistence, of food, clothing and shelter and the tools requisite therefore; on the other, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The social institutions under which men of a definite historical epoch and of a definite country live are conditioned by both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labourand of the family.

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Unequal Divisions of labour Do you agree that women do most of the work daily reproduction, the housework and child-care? Is this just a norm that can be over-turned, with new men arriving to share things 50:50,or even to take it all on? Or while women give birth is it always going to be women doing most of the caring?

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Family Heterosexual couple with offspring: Engels describes as inevitable and natural Feminist critique is that it is constructed to oppress women Question what we mean by family?

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Reproductive Rights What do individuals need to ensure reproductive rights? Information about and access to contraception and abortion Good maternity and sexual health services Negotiation within gendered power relations How are reproductive rights perceived in different social and political contexts? To what extent are reproductive rights inherently gendered?

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Motherhood/Fatherhood What does to father a child mean? What is conjured up by the phrase: He fathered three children? What does to mother a child mean? What is conjured up by the phrase: She mothered three children?

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Abortion Limits

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Legitimate Rape

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Threesome

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Seminars Think about the way in which the themes weve discussed today are played out in the media (news, television, books, radio). Refer to key readings and seminar questions.