Performing Gender roles and consciousness Spring 2008
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Unit 2-3-4-5-6 each has several "issues" or chapters Inner Circle - one issue per student Outer Circle - one part of one issue per student
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INNER CIRCLE
Inner Circle dates and pages: Max 3 p paper - highlighted - and 1 page of talking point notes if you like
| 1 |
Innate differences - Extra Credit |
April 09 | 1-56 |
| 2 |
Results of differences |
April 14 | 57-116 |
| 3 |
Families: new and old |
April 21 | 117-174 |
| 4 |
Work: gender |
April 28 | 175-238 |
| 5 |
Sexuality: double standard |
May 5 | 239-310 |
| 6 |
Can we change our body or our mind |
May 12 | 311-371 |
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¤
Inner Circle
you have been assigned one. No late papers.
you become a discussant that day. 1. overview: statement of conclusions and method (building blocks) of author. You do not have to agree with the author you cover. State how she substantiates her argument and what she omitted. 2. What creative or innovative observation does this argument bring to you? 3. Resources: what book, film, story, video, observation, power points, YouTube, or "quiz" for class--might highlight or enliven discussion? COVER SHEET for group: everyone's names & responsibilities the way you divided them up; resources references. CITATATIONS if you use them: ASA format. They are not absolutely necessary.
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Outer Circle: 1 PAGE.
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(any Unit you wish-but on the day of discussion. No lates.) The 1 page may be a succinct summary of the position or it may focus on one issue, one study, one observation that, for you, casts a clear light on the issue. |
Arrive 5 min early on your day.
Set up computer or
anything else you need -
You might wish to write an
outline on the blackboard, for example.
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COVER SHEET – (names appear twice) Unit 1: Definitions and Cultural Boundaries
ISSUE 1 ANATOMY DESTINY - Is it in our genes? Ann Cambell (Psychology Journal) YES, it’s in our genes that the sexes are different and it’s a war. Men’s and women’s chromosomes do very interestingly different things. We can only study fruit flies, though. Richard Wilson, same journal, NO. The genetic code is not half what it is cracked up to be. Culture shapes us. NAME Wendy Barrales both Campbell and Wilson ISSUE 2 IS GENDER IDENTITY INNATE Coolidge et al, in academic journals: biology Golden says it is socially constructed. She’s got two interesting terms: WE problematize some forms of gender expression and privilege others. NAME Irena Minasyan YES NAME Cory Crofton NO ISSUE 3 MATH AND SCIENCE AND THE SEXES– BIOLOGICAL OR NOT? Yes Pinker (man) this is biologically based. No Spelke (woman) this is due to social circumstance. NAME Catherine Nguyen "Cat" NAME Anita Singh ROLES 1. Cover sheet creator Tabor 2. Board –outline – drawings – clarity Irena 3. Technical support Tabor/Cat 4. MC – agenda Wendy 5. Time keeper Cory C 6. Help data resources - 7. Help data resources - 8. Help data resources - 9. Help data resources - Spontaneous Synopsizer à MC Tabor/Garvey Ngo (Outer)
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Two Sample Summaries
fathers’ genes are concerned with making a bigger body and mothers’ genes are concerned with making a bigger brain.
c. 85% share genes with dogs
HIGHLIGHT your "markers" - your "talking points"
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UNIT I paper I. Humanist Change To Augment the Best of Both Sexes Science tells us how we got here. Faith and religion try to help answer the question of why we are here. Ethics, of which feminism is one branch, asks what we should be doing here. The question is not nature vs. nurture. It is a question of what have we done and what shall we do? Dominance dominates. We see it among humans; we see it among fruit flies. Without intervention, the lesser-dominant struggles and sometimes even dies. The cultural habit of marriage has been put in place to protect women and children. Has that protection come with a price? Do women still want that protection? Culture is an intervention against our baser, more bestial or animalistic nature in favor of our higher or more humane ideals. Now that women are beginning to equalize their standing in the marketplace and their salaries, how does the institution of marriage shift? What are the functions of marriage and relationship across two diverse interests when both parties could, in theory, “go it alone?” Will we shift our relationships to guide and develop us in new romantic waters when we no longer need each other for survival? |
HIGHLIGHT or make bold your "markers" - your "talking points"
I. Leveling the Playing Field: Action and Analysis - Tabor
Social science has focused on men and ignored of women’s unique participation in the making of cultural history. This is evident in our common textbook notion that the human response to stress is “fight or flight”. Shelley Taylor, “Biobehavioral Responses to Threat” includes women in the analysis and finds a second way humans respond to stress: “tend and befriend.” This is a natural adaptation for mothers protecting babies and it spreads to women bonding with women in times of stress and need. How wonderful to be reminded that a basic human instinct is to bond, not to fight.
We forget that when we study history, as feminists writing pointed out since the 70s, we study only the history of men. We see only a half a human or only half the capacities of humankind. Thought two adaptations to stress—fight or flight and tend and befriend—may be distributed by sex, now that we’ve found them, but each sex is capable of both. As with almost everything looked at with a feminist lens, a “correction” to the cultural myth of how we are - which rests more on how men are since we studied men - would help release the potential of both woman and man. Men, too, not only women, are enclosed and sometimes reduced to stereotypes when gender is as bifurcated as sex is.
We tend also to divide the sexes by how they approach romance, as if women like it more than men. But myths, studies, and rituals belie empirical findings. Men like and appear to benefit from marriage more than women do. Or do we each just look at it a unique way? One study in progress (citation withheld) is by a woman Sociologist who proposed the following: the reasons why women fall in love and feel loved at the beginning of a romance differ from the reasons why men do, and the woman’s reasons and man’s reasons flip and change over time, with men and women losing and winning in sex-specific ways. If this hypothesis interests us, we can do a survey and discover if we fit the patterns.
Love is a mystery. It takes us as it will, breaks down, and reorganizes gendered way of being into something new. In the marketplace, there is rarely a setting where we can discern if different potentials inhere in men and women because the playing fields have not been level if. One study of ‘blind’ personal ads tried to level the playing field between women and men. This study shows us that men and women, when romantically interested, adapt to one another like two spoons, with one the instrumental and the other the expressive. Instrumentality and Expressiveness do not necessary "stick" to a gender. There is a desire to “fit” depending on how one another seems is rather than by their gender. If we are capable of both, let’s stop labeling one sex one way and the other the opposite, and let’s find what makes us human and keeps us together.
With aggression, it is certainly fair to remark that most violence and aggression has been at the hands of men, not women. But these days it seems as if some writers wish to report on the growing instances of violence by women and say, “We can, too:” Women can also perpetrate violence, so bully bully for us or bully for them." It is an odd and disturbing to offer women’s potential to be violent as evidence of growing equality. We have even had about 10 women suicide bombers in the past 8 years. This is disturbing because it speaks of a new motivation or level of hopelessness; in some places, women are not even allowed in heaven, let alone have virgins at the ready for them, so 10 female suicide bombers compared with 1000s of men is equal enough. Let’s hang on to the notion that for at least half of us (all women), and then at least half of the other half (at least half the men), violence is not a proper claim to equality in humanity. As women become equals and join with half the men who seek unity and equality, we can change our measures of humanity.
END UNIT 2 EXAMPLE
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Tannen paper - one page Pick one part, e.g., boys and girls, direct and indirect, public talk and private talk. Articulate the meat of that part. Give an example of it happening in your own life – or an example of the opposite happening. Be specific and describe the situation in the terms she laid out. Your example may support it or refute it. How do you assess the general and the specific? Where are we headed? Where do we want to be headed? How might we get there? Are there creative “solutions?” |
» links for "Parts" - be smart - be spirited - add to it - be the solution - it's tomorrow
PART 1 Anatomy Identity Aggression
Left brain or right brain: try it Dancing Girl
Rabbi
Shmuley Boteach
"Kosher Sex, Kosher Adultery, and Shalom in the
Home".
What I don't understand about sex is the fundamental
contradiction it poses to love.
While love deepens
with time and shared experience, sex is stifled by
relationship and routine ...
more.
email: those with sons
PART 2 Communication Styles Stress and Aggression styles
PART 3 Family
8 things no one tells you about marriage
For summary link
PART 4 Work
NEWSWEEK THIS WEEK: WOMEN AND POWER
PART 5 Sexuality - Double Standard - What works long term for romance
Polygamists trial Audio of final testimony
PART 6 Biology- understanding and changing - PMS Transgenderism Repartive
Mon May 5 UNIT 5
Issue 14
Does the “Mommy Track” (Part-Time Work) Improve Women’s Lives?
define the traditional notion of the
“mommy track.” - share experiences with this issue.
Yes:
Hill, Martinson, Ferris, & Baker (2004). Beyond the
mommy track: new-concept part-time work for
professionals...women in professional careers can
successfully integrate family and career by following a
new-concept part-time work model. In contrast,
No: Noonan, & Corcoran, (2004). The mommy track and partnership: Temporary delay or dead end? various costs of the mommy track for female attorneys, inclu lower salaries and decreased likelihood of promotion to partner.
the new-concept part-time work is often only available to women in high-status, career-oriented professions – their sample is more highly educated and higher income than average. How about a factory worker? teaching or nursing? Because this plan works for some, does it work for all mothers?
Noonan and Corcoran:
women in law are not fairing well
Construction? Police? Fire?
US ranks as one of worst in terms of family leave programs
Consider family leave or part-time work options for men. How would fathers having time off or part-time options affect traditional notion of “mommy track?”
Noonan and Corcoran indicate that male lawyers who take time off to care for children fare worse than female lawyers in being promoted to partner. Why?
For all professions or just high-prestige ones? What about men working in stereotypically feminine professions?
Issue 15
Can Social Policies Improve Gender Inequalities in the Workplace?
feminization of poverty must attend to work/family/life policies in the workplace. IS IT really women or just poverty?
Yes: Kahne, (2004). Low-wage single-mother families in this jobless recovery
Kahne argumes that incomplete education and few training programs, rather than gender discrimination, makes it more difficult for low-wage single mothers to raise their earnings.
Kahne suggests that differences in family incomes are not due to the gender of the single-parent but rather the structure and characteristics of the situation. She argues that any single-parent family, regardless of the parent’s gender, will struggle when a relatively uneducated sole provider is also responsible for 100% of the child rearing as well. There is a much higher percentage of female headed single-parent families than male headed single-parent families. Many single mothers are young and lack higher education and relevant work experience. Discuss the reasons for these trends as well as the possibility that they are the cause of the wage-gap.
No: Mandel, & Semyonov (2006). A Welfare State Paradox: AJS.
extensive data from 22 countries: Social policies have the counterintuitive impact of decreasing women’s opportunities for access to more desirable and powerful positions.
suggest employers who adopt “family-supportive” policies are less likely to promote women to positions of authority and power compared to employers who do not adopt these policies. They are unable to separate “family-supportive” policies from employee self-selection.
Issue 16
Is the Gender Wage Gap Justified?
Yes: O’Neill (2003). The gender gap in wages, circa 2000.
No: Lips (2003). The gender pay gap: Concrete indicator of women’s progress tw equality.
Synopsis
O’Neill, suggests that the gender gap is due to nondiscriminatory factors, most notable those associated with women’s choices due to the division of labor in the home. Lips documents the continuing gender gap in wages and argues that a continuing undervaluing of women’s work due to stereotypes and prejudice.
Discussing the Issue
average and median salaries of women are lower than for men. The cause of this disparity has in debate.
Wwage gap is justified (O’Neill) point out that variance in salaries can be explained by differences in job-related experience and types of jobs women take. Those who claim that it unfair, (Lips), cite similarities in educational levels and work performed as areas of concern.
O’Neill : women are not as likely as men to begin working immediately after education; likely to drop out of the labor force to bear children. these factors create a disparity in average length of job-related experience between women and men which affects salary. Women are more likely to seek out occupations that allow for a flexible schedule in order to raise children. Women make these choices. How much choice most people have about work options. Are work choices influenced by race and class issues?
Lips claims that women and men are similar in education levels and occupations. Therefore, the gender wage gap is due to an under-appreciation of the work performed by women. Lips states that even in occupations dominated by women, men earn higher average salaries while performing the same tasks.
historical gender discrepancy in Pulitzer Prize winners. Several empirical studies have suggested that cognitive abilities associated with writing are similar across gender if not higher in women. Despite, men have historically claimed more than 4 times more of these awards than women. Is there a relationship between gender differences in Pulitzer Prize recipients and the gender wage gap? Ask your students to consider the various ways that “doing gender” in the workplace might contribute to a wage gap. Have the students think about how jobs are advertised, hiring and promotion practices, and the role of more informal networks such as mentoring or socializing (i.e., going out for drinks after work).
you do not need to go further down the page than this
Gender Links
¤ Little Red Riding Hood ß how we have changed-or have we? Q: What is the similar and what is different in these versions? Note in GM notebook.
1 New York Times article
2 Find at least two blog-comments that interest you
3 List the 2 (or more) blogger's names and numbers in list
4 Comment if you see a "drift" - or better yet, blog yourself and report back your blog number.
Love is between the ears sears the brain
¤ news story - college & women
¤ single-sex schools scroll down, right hand side to image and "Do boys and girls learn better apart?"
» papers
» projects
physical matters: FGM, other rituals to designate or control physically sex or the sex
wage earning or recognition matters: women in sports, women scientists - nothing yet on men in women's occupations
» weeks - activities
1 - what if
you have been gendered
what if you ungendered
what would you do if you understood the source and function of gendering in you
2 - girls boys unidentifieds all of us
What are girls like? What do girls like?
What do girls need to "work on?"
What is the difference between a girl and a woman?
What are boys like? What don't boys like?
What do boys need to realize?
What is the difference between a boy and a man?
Why are unidentifieds unidentifieds? What do unidentifieds see in identifieds?
What do unidentifieds want?
What is the difference between faith and reason?
What is "in us" What is in our relationships: family, romantic, school, community, work, globe
What is in our social structure
What question needs to be answered first: why? when? who? or what?
3 video on communication styles: Deborah Tannen's "He Said, She Said," based on her book called "You Just Don't Understand.
4 give it to hu? new prounouns? her, him, and hu?
5 families and societies that "do well" are those that thrive on value of traditional gender roles and family. Women's "liberation" has served to minimize family and birthrates among the "liberated"
» concepts The Chalice and the Blade Linking and Dominating
» data in populations where women are no longer subjugated by men, population goes down. Highest predictor of low birth rate: education of women.
» theory
women's vocabulary: is this a stereotype? if not,
what 'reality' does it come from
1.)
FINE: This is the word women use to end phase 1 of an argument.2.)
Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means at least half an hour. Five Minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.3.) Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.
4.)
Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don't Do It!5.)
Loud Sigh: This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing.. (Refer back to #3 for the meaning of nothing.)6.)
That's Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That's okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.7.)
Thanks: A woman is thanking you? Do not question, or faint, just say you're welcome.8.)
Whatever: Is a women's way of saying GET LOST!9.)
Don't worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking "what's wrong", for the woman's response refer to # 3.
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PRIOR SESSIONS: week 3 April 7 and 9 session 5 and 6 WomanThinking? Queen Rania of Jordan YouTube Two sides of brain: from a brain scientist who had a stroke
week 2 session 4 - Wednesday April 2
Assignments clear for all: ¤ dancing girl Which way is she turning - clockwise or counterclockwise? interpretation of dancing girl
ONE In-Class EXERCISE: Left/Right Chalice and the Blade (or maybe all next time) Linking: introduction It requires love & faith in one's self not to compare, but to combine. If you followed ALONG, you already read : Remarks to the U.N. 4th World Conf. on Women Plenary Session
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| FUTURE SESSIONS (you don't need to look further) |
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NOTES
Aristophanes The Jessie Law Groups and papers - example with Part I and then all groups Values based - Feminist thought is values based from the outset (not "value free") Dominance dominates
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session 1 3/27 download NEW SYLLABUS - clear, simple, less one assignment You have been gendered Gender Moment Notebook Assignment: elders - difference, value |
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session 2 1 the myth of gender - exercise (halves) 2 dancing girl here she is (above): ASK YOURSELF ... Which way 3 elders and MM 4 the audacity of gender - exercise (3 groups)
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