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Aantekeningen Introducing Gender Theories
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Introducing Gender TheoriesLecture 1: Gender and Gender studies 31-
1-2022
Gender studies feminist movements
- Gender studies a discipline emerged from feminist movements
- Still today: a strong connection between theory and activism, academia and the social field.
o Yet: academia and activism are two different realms
o Gender studies is the academic, ‘scientific’ study of gender
- Not disinterested knowledge production:
o Critical of status quo
o Understanding knowledge production as a site of power
Crucial in the (re)production of hierarchies and inequalities
But also a tool in challenging oppression/inequality
Feminist movements
- Resistance against women’s oppression has always existed in patriarchal societies but
collective organizing in the Western context started only in the middle of 19 th century
inspired by bourgeois revolution and abolitionist movements
A short overview of feminist movement in Western context
- First wave (mid-19th/beginning 20th century) more political
o women’s suffrage (right to vote)
o Legal equality
o Access to education and work
- Second wave (early 1960s until mid-1980s) more social
o Self-determination
o Domestic violence
o Sexuality
o The cultural domain
- Third wave (mid 1990s – beginning 21st century)
o Social movements
o Intersectionality: gender + race/ethnicity + class
- Fourth wave ?
o Social media and the digital
What are gender studies?
- Scientific institutionalization was driven by feminist movements of the 2 nd wave
o However, important pioneers precede the institutionalization of the field
- Women studies first developed in the 1970/1980s
- During 1990s: establishment of gender studies as an interdisciplinary field
- Core issue is the distinction and relationship between sex and gender AND thinking about
knowledge production itself (rethinking objectivity of science)
Central concerns:
- How does gender operate … in society, our individuals lives, in the symbolic realm?
, - How do gender differences come about and how are they related to power?
- How are these gender(ed) differences connected to other differences, whether of
race/ethnicity, class, sexuality, coloniality or others? (intersectionality)
- How is knowledge about sex & gender, masculinity and femininity produced? Which
assumptions and presuppositions shape that knowledge? How can a different type of
knowledge – critical of society and status quo – be produced?
- Gender as an analytic category
o Gender as a lens to study the workings of power.
Gender theories: level of analysis
- Identity construction
- Social structures
- Symbolic representations
“feminist scholars pointed out early on that the study of women would not only add new subject
matter but would also force a critical re-examination of the premises and standards of existing
scholarly work” (Joan Wallach Scott, 1986, 1054).
Gender studies as an interdisciplinary field: sociology, psychology, history, legal, political science,
literary studies, medical sciences, etc.
- They challenge and question everyday ideas about gender
Neutralizing/essentializing of gender differences
- Male/female division of bodies or persons is often seen as natural division, a given part of
the order of the world
o Gender as a natural kind
- Visible bodily differences are often seen as a manifestation of inner characteristics
o Different psychological and behavioural dispositions
Different essences (that which makes a thing the thing it is)
- Shifting scientific interpretations of gender differences
o Sociological stories that explain and justify the gender order of the time.
Everyday common-sensical ideas about gender
- Gender is natural
o It hast o do with bodily features
o Not a question or choice, it is a given
- Gender is innate
o At birth, your gender is known
o Gender is an inherent (inner), characteristic of a person
- Gender is binary
o There are just 2 genders (male female)
o Its an either/or set up
- Gender is complementary
o The 2 genders have very different characteristics and qualities
o For instance: women emotional and caring, men rational and competitive
- Men are from Mars, women are from Venus
,Gender as a social construct
- Notions of masculinity and femininity have to do with social norms, as much as with a
supposedly inborn/natural difference
- Social norms regulate how we behave, and how we experience and understand ourselves
(subject-formation)
- Gender is not just something we simply are, but something we do
o Its meanings are produced (and contested) within the social context.
The sex/gender distinction
- The idea that while sex may be innate, gender is not
o Gender is about that social meaning attributed to bodily sex
o Gender is produced in society & culture, while sex refers to biology/nature
- Is bodily sex actually as binary and simple as we make it out to be?
- Is the way in which we think about bodily/physical differences not also shaped by the social
context?
- Is it possible to fully separate nature and culture, sex and gender
Lecture 2: Feminist epistemology & gender theories 2-2-
2022
- Central focus for gender studies inquires: complex social issues
- Particular focus on non-dominant groups, marginalized interest, power relations
- Look at the world that deviates from the most commonly used standards in scientific
practices. Requires innovative look at knowledge production attuned to inequality
o Can be seen as a critique on prevailing research
o They have argued that the scientific methods and its standards as it has dominated the
scientific landscape since about the 1950s no longer does justice to the changing
realities, technologies in the modern society
o Many of the issues rely on this mode of thinking
- Enter: feminist epistemology (here, specifically, standpoint theory and strong objectivity)
o One of the lenses through which feminist view the world
o However, this is not the only way to look at these issues.
Twofold: problem and solution
- Problem: Science no longer does justice to social reality chapter 1
- Solution: improve science chapter 2
What’s going on here Chapter 1:
- Background for discussing feminist epistemology
- Philosophy of science as it has become dominant in western thought has become irrelevant ,
the way to looking at the world does no longer match with how the world actually works
and it needs to be changed.
- What is going on here?
Science as usual
- Problem
, o Science is intertwined with society and vice versa. If researchers attempt to be
completely value neutral, and even if they follow the strict methods deemed to be
appropriate for scientific research, their findings will still reflect the thought of the
time. As well as the interest of some of the interest of those who have hoped for and
funded the research
She is not saying that whoever is funding research gets to dictate the results.
But they do get to dictate which questions are asked often also how the research is
going to look and which data they are going to use/collect
Sometimes even in which direction they would like the answers
This means that whoever is wealthy or powerful or influential in society at a given
time gets to partially determine which questions scientists of that time get to look
at and from which angle
o Value neutrality is impossible
Not those who fund research dictate outcome
But those who fund research get to decide
- Science pretends that it can prevent bias, she calls this mode of thinking logical empiricism
(traditional form of research)
o The ability of scientist to do the god trick the idea that a scientific study can and
should detach itself from reality, from social political attachment and thus somehow
achieve the most objective answer to questions being asked
Any study that does not attempt to do so is then not seen as scientific
But this complete detachment from reality, the notion of complete objectivity, is
actually by definition impossible.
E.g. there is always already a particular focus chosen in the research question
itself even in natural sciences and pretending otherwise if actually getting rid
of the quality of contemporary research across the board.
o Logical empiricist science pretends that it can prevent bias, but impossible claim,
dangerous to quality of research
How did we get there?
- Historical perspective
o Very US centred.
o Manhattan project (government funded physics project that founded the nuclear bomb
for US military) WWII and onwards
o Before WWII most of the research was actually funded by corporations that sought to
innovate and satisfy or create markets for consumer/public good.
o This changed after the war, then the US government realized that is could get ahead in
the world by funding state of the art research that would make the US competitive
advantage on a global scale
- Scientist had a precarious reaction to this: autonomy of science
o Scientist don’t question our work! don’t interfere in our work.
o Also scientist: keep funds coming! As they liked the money
o Other scientist had already questioned how the ethics and socially embedded nature of
research could be so boldly and completely discarded
- Economic, political & military power vs social movements?
o Why not take social movements equally seriously it is just a corrective to things that
are already done. It is not that far removed from what science is already trying to do
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