Introduction to Gender Studies

Gender

• Originally ‘gender’ is a grammatical term borrowed from linguistics; it is the collective term for the categories of masculine, feminine or neuter.
• A given culture associates certain attitudes, feelings and behaviors with a certain sex - this is called gender. The cultural basically expects a person to behave according to the gender (social role) assigned to them. If that behavior is compatible, it is called gender-normative. If that behavior is incompatible, it is called gender non-conformity.
• At first, the gendered roles in society were assumed to be the natural result of one’s sex. However, cross-cultural studies demonstrate that while sex is a universal condition; gender roles vary across culture.
• Significance of Gender: Our society is filled with problems like gender subordination and gender discrimination. So if gender is a social construct, then change is possible and these problems can be addressed.

Difference between Sex and Gender

• Sex refers to a person’s biological and physiological status. It is typically categorized as male, female or intersex. There are a number of indicators of biological sex:
  • Chromosomes (Males: XY, Females: XX)
  • Gonads
  • Internal reproductive organs
  • External genitalia
  • Secondary sex characteristics
• Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women.
• Gender emphasizes that masculinity and femininity are products of social, cultural and psychological factors and are acquired by an individual in the process of becoming a man or woman. Hence, gender is a product of socialization rather than being something that is natural.
• John Money, a psychologist, distinguished between:
  1. Sexual Identity: the physical identity at birth.
  2. Gender Identity: the self-consciousness of one’s own gender.
  3. Gender Role: the public expression of gender identity.
• Basic Terminologies:
  1. Cisgender: A person who is born with male characteristics and identify today as a man or vice versa is called cisgender.
  2. Transgender: A person who is born with male characteristics and identify today as a woman or some other gender is called transgender.
  3. Sexual Orientation: Classification of individuals as heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual based on their emotional and sexual attractions.
  4. Heterosexual: Attraction to people of the opposite sex.
  5. Homosexual: Attraction to people of the same sex.
  6. Cross-Dresser: Transgenders who dress in clothing of the other sex.
  7. Transsexual: People whose sexual identity has been changed by sex reassignment surgery or hormone treatment.
  8. LGBTQ: Lesbians-Gays-Bi-Trans-Queer

Sex	Gender
It is natural	It is a social construct
It is a universal term	It is variable as it changes under the influence of time, geographical and socio-cultural settings
It is biological	It is social

Introduction to Gender Studies

Definition

• Gender Studies investigates the biological differences between men and women but focuses on these differences in a socio-cultural context.
• It is a remarkable discriminating tool in the distribution of:
  • Labor
  • Care
  • Possession
  • Income
  • Education
  • Organizational qualities
  • Diseases

Understanding Gender Studies

• Some questions asked by the discipline of Gender Studies:
  1. How do stereotypical models of men and women develop?
  2. How do they change over time, and what factors contribute to changes?
  3. What impact do such stereotypes have upon actually existing men and women?
• Men and women do not exist in isolation from their other social roles and positions.
• A woman also has a caste, class, creed, religious identity, etc. All these aspects are a part of her life. They need to be studied with respect to gender. Does gender have a influence on these aspects or not?

History and Evolution

• At first, the concept of ‘Gender Studies’ did not exist. The subject emerged as Women’s Studies due to the lack of knowledge and interest in women. It was considered necessary to study the situation of women and fill knowledge gaps.
• Emergence of Gender Studies has been possible due to the presence of women studies.
• Women argued that access to education doesn’t ensure educational equity.
• Goal of women in academia was to prevent bias and ignorance in knowledge base about women, leading to injustice in society, politics, etc.
• The first Women’s Studies course was apparently created by American historian, Mary Ritter Beard, who in 1934 constructed a course titled “A Changing Political Economy as it Affects Women”. It was never taught but it did lay down the foundations for women as a subject of academia.
• Women’s Studies, as an area of academic study, came into being during the emergence of feminism’s second wave:
  • First Women’s Studies program in San Diego State University, USA (1970).
  • MA in Women’s Studies was offered at the University of Kent, UK (1980).
  • India established vigorous Women’s Studies research in the early 1970s.
• Establishment of women studies was a logical step towards development of feminist epistemology.
• Some twenty years later, more than 600 such programs existed, including both undergraduate and graduate programs.
• A number of disciplines across the social sciences, the arts and humanities began to pay increasing attention to gender after the second wave of feminism. Before that, these disciplines largely ignored gender.
• Western intellectuals and male critics called this emerging discipline a fad that will die down with time and it had no intellectual merit.
• In the US, the first accredited Women’s Studies course was held in 1960 at the University of Kansas. The first two Women’s Studies Programs in the United States were established in 1970 at San Diego State College. As of 2012, there are 16 institutions offering a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies in the United States.
• Presently, Women’s Studies is engaged in a heated debate over the move to eliminate the term Women’s Studies and replace it with Gender Studies.
  • The change to Gender Studies suggests that the field needs to be paying attention to the relationships between men and women rather than focusing predominantly on women’s experiences and knowledge itself.
  • The main argument against the change to Gender Studies is the claim that this shift will undo the past forty years in bringing women and women’s standpoints to the forefront in research, knowledge, and cultural production.

Important Events in the Discipline

• 1953: Rise of the second-wave of feminism brought on with the help of the English translation of Simon de Beauvoir’s book The Second Sex.
• 1970: First official Women’s Studies program was at San Diego State University.
• 1977: The National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) is created.
• 1978: US Congress includes educational services in the Civil Rights Act designed to eliminate sex bias in school and society.
• 1979: The first meeting of the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA)discusses the subject of whether Women’s Studies were a discipline in its own right.
• 1980: MA in Women’s Studies was offered at the University of Kent, UK (1980).
• 1990s: Development of “queer theory” moves to include sexuality studies in Women’s/Gender Studies.
• 1990: Rise of third-wave of feminism.
• 2000s: The great naming debate over Women’s Studies versus Gender Studies.

Difference between Gender Studies and Women Studies

• Gender Studies includes Women’s Studies, Men’s Studies and Queer Studies.
• Academic experts argue that Gender Studies is a better term for Women’s Studies as analysis of both roles is important and how they play off one another.
• The idea behind Gender Studies is that it is not enough to study women as a unique group to come to a true understanding of women’s situation, we need to account for men’s role as well.
• In practice, however, there is little that differentiates between the two disciplines or what is taught. Every curriculum is different but both Gender Studies and Women’s Studies use feminist theories, discuss gender and the issues faced by women in the society.

Women Studies	Gender Studies
Restricted to feminism	No restrictions
Focus on women issues	Focus on gender relations
Exclusive to women	Inclusive of all genders
Focused study: women and their roles in the society	Diverse study: roles in society, how they are shaped, their impacts, etc.

Multi-disciplinary Nature of Gender Studies

• Global warming is at the same time an environmental issue, a scientific phenomena, a public health issue and a political discussion.
• In the same vein, Gender Studies borrows knowledge of other disciplines such as:
  • Sociology
  • Psychology
  • Biology
  • History
  • International politics
  • Anthropology
  • Economics
  • Literature and Arts
• One of the basic guiding principles in Gender/Women’s Studies is that all knowledge is deeply inter-related and cannot be compartmentalized into separate subject areas.
• Multi-disciplinary research, in essence, involves two or more disciplines, each making a separate contribution to the overall study.
• As early as 1976, Florence Howe, in her introduction to High School Feminist Studies, announced that “all Women’s Studies courses are, by their very nature, interdisciplinary.
• By 1991, the National Women’s Studies Association announced that year that Women’s Studies programs are fundamentally interdisciplinary.
• Why is it multi-disciplinary?
  • The goal is to study gender from a feminist perspective and recognizing women’s experiences and ambitions.
  • It also explores the ways that femininity and masculinity affect an individual’s thought process.
  • It analyzes how gender plays out in politics, intimate life, culture, technology, health, science, etc.
  • The increasing global concern about equal rights of sexes, their obligations and their opportunities has brought attention to Gender Studies.
  • It also provides critical thinking skills.
  • History has overlooked women contributions due to wars, conquests and display of brutality. Gender Studies tries to highlight women’s role in history like in industry, agriculture and creativity.
  • A separate Gender Studies discipline that is linked with other disciplines will help highlight issues of women and also not deprioritize them.

Autonomy vs. Integration Debate

• There is a debate whether to institutionalize Women’s Studies as an autonomous department or to integrate it into traditional disciplines as an academic subfield.

History

• By the end of 1960s, Women’s Studies was offered in some universities in US which were taught by Women Studies Centers. This model inspired otehr countries to start such centers.
• While these centers were being made, Women’s Studies was also being offered within disciplines.
• In the 1970s, less than 20 Women’s Studies courses existed in the US.
• In 1998, there were 9 PhD programmes in the US and Canada.
• The National Women Studies Association (NWSA) was founded in 1977 as a communication network for syllabi and research regarding women. The first session of NWSA in 1979 discussed the topic, “Is Women Studies an Academic Discipline?”

Arguments for Autonomy

• Separate decisions, hiring and resources will cultivate the subject better.
• Visible professional identity and power-base.
• Institutional marginality is necessary to counter historical patriarchy in academics.
• Women’s Studies is an entity in itself; it should be studied as a unit rather than scattered throughout all disciplines.
• Autonomists believe that men will automatically be attracted to the discipline once it is separated as it will reflect power and self-control.
• Separate Women’s Studies departments will not de-prioritize the feminist perspectives. Even today, Women’s Studies is neglected and marginalized in most countries. The only way to solve this is to take control and separate it.

Arguments for Integration

• Autonomy will lead to academic ghettoization. Every topic and issue will want to become a discipline and it will divide academia.
• Need to confront gender-blindness by including feminist perspectives in each discipline.
• Need to ‘mainstream’ Women’s Studies which can’t be done if the discipline is isolated.
• Integrationists fear that men will no longer have access to women issues if the discipline is separated.

Conclusion

• Over time, the debate led to a both/and strategy - both integration into disciplines and a development via interdisciplinary centers.
• Jean Fox O’ Barr, American feminist teacher and scholar, concluded that it is a both a discipline and an interdisciplinary field.