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Gender and Women's Studies, Second Edition: Critical Terrain

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WMST2010

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Gender and Women\'s Studies

ender and Women’s Studies provides an essential introduction to key issues, approaches, and concerns of the field. This comprehensive anthology celebrates a diversity of influential feminist thought on a broad range of topics using analyses sensitive to the intersections of gender, race, class, a...

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wmst 2010
gender and womens studies second edition

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INTRODUCTION
Mapping the Terrain of Gender and Women’s Studies

Another world is not only possible, she’s on her way. Maybe many of us won’t be here to greet her,
but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.
—Arundhati Roy, War Talk (2003, p. 75)

The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.
—Gloria Steinem, “‘Women’s Liberation’ Aims to Free Men, Too,” Washington Post (1970, p. 192)

A s we thought about this introduction, we were
reminded of these two quotations, the first by
Arundhati Roy, who describes herself as an “Indian
process: the unpacking of prior knowledge and
assumptions is important in making space for new
versions and visions of social realities.
novelist, activist, and world citizen,” and the second This volume engages with these practices: unlearn-
by American feminist activist and journalist Gloria ing/learning and envisioning change. We aim to offer a
Steinem. Roy opens us up to the transformative broad selection of writings from a range of authors and
potential of social justice and solidarity by prompt- perspectives to help introduce you to a field that is at
ing us to hold fast to the belief that another world is the forefront of critical thinking about inequalities and
possible, that there are alternatives to inequalities that social justice. This introduction provides students with
Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved.

are deepening the new global world order. We have an entry point to consider what gender and women’s
to keep alive visions of gender and economic justice; studies involves, how it has changed in recent years, and
they can move us, inspire us, sustain us, and galvanize why it continues to be a meaningful and socially relevant
us as thinkers and activists, as global citizens and as area of inquiry. In what follows, we focus mainly on
members of local communities, working for change. gender and women’s studies in the North American
Steinem’s words signal that the road ahead is not context, which itself has been shaped by broader global
easy, that it involves a process of critical examination shifts within both feminism and the political and eco-
of many of our most taken-for-granted truths and nomic landscape. We discuss some of the main goals
belief systems about the world around us. It is through and theoretical developments of gender and women’s
unlearning as much as learning that we begin to see studies, and highlight key features of this book. We
how inequalities have been created and hence how conclude with some thoughts about the process of crit-
they can be challenged and undone. Unlearning and ical thinking and how it might apply to your reading of
learning are intertwined in a continual, connected the material in the text.

Gender and Women's Studies, Second Edition : Critical Terrain, edited by Margaret Hobbs, and Carla Rice, Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/brocku/detail.action?docID=6318365.
Created from brocku on 2022-11-09 00:39:55.

GenderWomenStudies2e-interior-final.indd 1 4/24/2018 12:11:35 PM

, 2 Introduction Mapping the Terrain of Gender and Women’s Studies

WHAT IS GENDER AND broad fare, taking you through gender and women’s
WOMEN’S STUDIES? studies across a range of themes, issues, and contexts.
Despite the differences in our approaches and
As students coming into gender and women’s studies perspectives, there is considerable overlap in what
introductory classes, you will have different ideas of instructors in North American universities and col-
what to expect. While some of you may have been leges are trying to accomplish as they introduce you
introduced to gender and women’s studies perspec- to what has been, and continues to be, a powerfully
tives through a course, extracurricular involvement at influential and transformative field. A number of
high school, conversations with family and friends, years ago, we conducted an informal survey of course
or social media and popular culture, for many of you outlines and website descriptions of introductory
this is your first conscious engagement with this field. gender and women’s studies courses. The following
You likely have many questions: What is this field list highlights some commonly shared goals guiding
variously called “women’s studies,” “women’s and gen- the teaching of entry-level courses in gender and
der studies,” “gender and women’s studies,” or other women’s studies:
similar names? (For a brief discussion of the shift
from women to gender in the title of many programs • To introduce students to women’s/gender studies
see Hobbs and Rice, 2011a.) How does what I learn as a broad, dynamic, interdisciplinary, and global
here differ from and add to what I am studying in my field of inquiry, and to familiarize students with
other courses? How relevant is gender and women’s some of the major issues, debates, and approaches
studies to my own life and to my future? Will these in gender and feminist scholarship and activism
perspectives be useful to me in the workforce? Will • To complicate commonly presumed understand-
the topics and approaches introduced in this class ings of concepts like “women,” “sex,” “gender,”
reflect or revise my understanding of local and global “race,” and “disability” by examining how these
social relations and structures? How might my values categories have been “constructed” (or created by
and world view be enriched? What is feminism and society) and how they shape ideas and experiences
do I have to be a feminist to take this course? of human difference
As you begin this journey, you should know that • To analyze and challenge hierarchical and inter-
gender and women’s studies is not one thing. It is not secting relations of power influenced by gender,
one perspective or one analysis but many, expressed sexuality, class, race, ethnicity, ability, and other
Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved.

differently by scholars and activists whose ideas and categories of difference
approaches differ from one another, shaped by their • To understand how power relations are embedded
own backgrounds, interests, training, experience, and in institutions and in everyday, taken-for-granted
understandings of the world. Not surprisingly, then, social relations, practices, and values
introductory courses in this field are also diverse. Some • To highlight affinities and differences among
professors might choose to introduce you to the field self-identified women and gender non-conforming
through a few specific themes, perhaps highlighting people, both within North America and world-
gendered analyses of popular culture or recent writings wide, and to analyze intersecting social, cultural,
from the “third wave” of feminism. Some might engage political, and economic systems that shape their
more with international contexts and others with North lives and agency
America, and some focus mainly on the present while • To explore the multiple pathways and forms of
others explore women’s historical experiences as well. individual and collective resistance to injustice
Most introductory courses, however, aim for fairly and inequities in the past and the present, and to

Gender and Women's Studies, Second Edition : Critical Terrain, edited by Margaret Hobbs, and Carla Rice, Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/brocku/detail.action?docID=6318365.
Created from brocku on 2022-11-09 00:39:55.

GenderWomenStudies2e-interior-final.indd 2 4/24/2018 12:11:35 PM

, Introduction Mapping the Terrain of Gender and Women’s Studies 3

analyze creative visions and strategies for change CURRENT TRENDS IN GENDER
in local and global contexts AND WOMEN’S STUDIES
• To inspire and empower students to develop their
knowledge of feminist scholarship and to engage Gender and women’s studies courses, and indeed this
critically in their communities at local, national, textbook, have been shaped in important ways by
or global levels recent debates and new insights emerging from fem-
• To develop students’ skills in critical thinking inist scholarship. The ideas and the tools they suggest
and analysis, reading, and writing, and to create also come out of women’s and social justice movements,
classroom environments that support learners’ from diversely positioned and marginalized people
respectful debate and disagreement and grassroots communities, locally and globally, at
the forefront of feminist thought and action.
These goals reflect a vision of gender and women’s Below we describe four of these major trends
studies grounded in knowledge that is continuously that together are making gender and women’s studies
shifting as the field develops and its insights deepen. perspectives more relevant than ever before in the
Feminist scholars in the past and present have explored critical task of understanding the world in which we
how ideas about gender work at interpersonal and live and the major challenges we face as a human
institutional levels to shape social relations and the community. This list is not exhaustive; there are many
lived experiences of diverse people. Their explorations other trends shaping the field and the curriculum
of gender, in relation to other social categories of iden- itself. Exciting feminist work is currently coming
tity and other axes of power, have been transforming from disability studies, fat studies, and posthuman
the so-called traditional disciplines such as history, studies, and we anticipate that scholarship in these
philosophy, politics, psychology, biology, and sociol- areas will significantly reshape gender and women’s
ogy, while also producing new syntheses of knowledge studies over the next decade. In the meantime, it is
that we call interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary. important for instructors and students alike to reflect
When women’s studies courses and programs upon and engage with the following four distinct,
emerged in North America in the 1960s and 1970s, though overlapping, trends:
a period of widespread protest against social and
economic injustices, they joined other scholars—for 1. The concept and practice of intersectionality
example, in Canadian studies, Native studies, and 2. Queering gender and women’s studies
Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved.

labour studies—who were similarly interested in 3. Indigenizing and decolonizing gender and
pressing beyond the limits of the older disciplines. women’s studies
Like these other interdisciplinary fields informed by 4. Globalizing, internationalizing, and transnation-
critiques of social inequalities and visions of social alizing gender and women’s studies
justice, women’s studies aimed to understand social
relations in order to change them. You will notice from 1. The Concept and Practice
the goals summarized above that the field continues to of Intersectionality
offer tools, wisdom, and perspectives enabling a critical
engagement with the world and its power structures. “Intersectionality” is a concept and an approach to
At the same time, gender and women’s studies offers understanding the lives and experiences of individuals
pathways through which we can better understand and groups of people in their diversity and complexity.
ourselves, our diverse experiences and identities, and Emerging as a theoretically important and challenging
our relationships with others in the wider world. term in feminist scholarship, intersectionality is often

Gender and Women's Studies, Second Edition : Critical Terrain, edited by Margaret Hobbs, and Carla Rice, Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/brocku/detail.action?docID=6318365.
Created from brocku on 2022-11-09 00:39:55.

GenderWomenStudies2e-interior-final.indd 3 4/24/2018 12:11:36 PM

, 4 Introduction Mapping the Terrain of Gender and Women’s Studies

used to describe the idea that women, men, and gen- created constructs. In response, women’s studies,
der variant people live multiple layered identities and which initially placed women squarely—some say
simultaneously experience oppression and privilege. narrowly—in the centre of analysis, is broadening
The Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement its focus, and engaging more fully with issues and
of Women explains an intersectional approach as explorations of masculinities, queer and sexuality
attempting “to understand how multiple forces work studies, and “transfeminism.” At their heart, gen-
together and interact to reinforce conditions of inequal- der and queer theory involve critically analyzing
ity and social exclusion” (CRIAW, 2006, p. 5). the binary (either/or) categories of woman/man
Intersectionality is not a new concept. The term and femininity/masculinity by calling into question
itself was conceived in the early 1990s by African “the notion of two discrete tidily organized sexes
American feminists and critical race scholars Patricia and genders” (Scott-Dixon, 2006, p. 12). This rich
Hill Collins (1990) and Kimberlé Crenshaw (1994), theory base has arisen out of gay, lesbian, bisexual,
and the ideas associated with it have since been adapted, and trans (GLBT) studies, itself a fairly new area
developed, and debated by feminist scholars, activists, of academic inquiry that seeks to understand and
and organizations in North America and elsewhere. contextualize gendered and sexed bodies/identities
Intersectionality critiques the limitations of perspec- and erotic desires and practices in different times
tives that look narrowly at social relations through a and places (Meem et al., 2010; Stombler et al.,
gender lens alone, and encourages a wider view focused 2010). GLBT studies, along with gender studies,
on the multiple components of identity and intersecting has done much to explore sexual diversity, showing
“axes” of power that constitute individuals’ experiences how dominant ideas and norms about sexuality,
in the world (Karpinski, 2007; Yuval-Davis, 2006). sexed bodies, and sexual practices and identities are
Intersectional theories and methods work, for example, not rooted naturally in the facts of biology, but are
to explore the specific ways in which factors such as socially constructed in various ways by different soci-
gender, sexuality, Indigeneity, class, race, disability, eties. Queer theory goes further, aiming not only to
geography, refugee and/or immigrant status, size, interrogate sexuality norms, but also to turn upside
and age interact to shape people’s social positioning. down the very idea of “the normal”; namely, “every-
Such differences are also examined in the context of thing in the culture that has occupied a position of
the larger social and political forces and institutions privilege, power, and normalcy, starting with het-
that create unequal access to power and privilege. erosexuality” (Bacon, 2006, p. 259). Adding another
Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved.

Colonialism, capitalism, neo-liberalism, the World layer of nuance and complexity, transfeminism has
Trade Organization (WTO), and social welfare policies emerged at the intersections of feminist and trans
are all important examples. By examining the complex- theory as a vibrant gender-inclusive field dedicated
ities and specificities of identities and social locations, to ending the oppression of all gender crossing,
intersectionality explores how women, men, and gender gender diverse, gender non-conforming, and gen-
non-conforming people occupy many different and der independent people (Scott-Dixon, 2006). At the
contradictory positions in social relations of power. same time, Indigenous thinkers who self-identify
as “Two Spirit” and queer have worked to reclaim
2. Queering Gender and Women’s Studies their bodies and erotic lives from colonial systems
that attempted to impose sexist structures as well as
Recent developments in gender, queer, and trans sexual and gender norms onto Indigenous peoples as
theory and activism across North America have an integral part of colonization processes (Driskill
placed a spotlight on gender and sexuality as socially et al., 2011).

Gender and Women's Studies, Second Edition : Critical Terrain, edited by Margaret Hobbs, and Carla Rice, Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/brocku/detail.action?docID=6318365.
Created from brocku on 2022-11-09 00:39:55.

GenderWomenStudies2e-interior-final.indd 4 4/24/2018 12:11:36 PM

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