Wmnst 106 PSU Midterm SP18
women's studies - ANS-interdisciplinary field of study devoted to topics concerning
women, gender, and feminism, with these goals:
-review women's roles as citizens, workers, consumers, producers, etc, through
development of human culture and history
-understand role of "social location" or "positionality" denoting the relative position of an
individual within a power structure
-critique/reassess political and cultural assumptions regarding sex and gender - study
ideological formations that devalue women as less than human
-explore barriers to women's equality, then and now
women and GENDER studies - ANS-goals:
-focus on "gender arrangements" - the ways society creates, patterns, and rewards our
understandings of femininity and masculinity
-focus on gender, and its intersection with multiple categories (race, ethnicity, social
class, age, sexuality)
-understand how gender functions as a performance
-study of gender as a central aspect of human exisence
why women's, gender, and sexuality studies? - ANS-field of women's studies 1960s-70s
- present
gender and sexuality
different kinds of women
men too
race-class-gender
sexuality
women studies as content - ANS--political movement: history of women's movement
and activism
-intellectual movement: study of feminist/woman-centered ideas and thinking
-historical movement:recovery of women's lives and experiences through history;
moving away from androcentrism and patriarchy
-study of similarities and differences in experiences of various categories of women
(white/non-white, LGBT+, etc)
-comparative study of women's literature, art, and other forms of cultural appropriation
patriarchy - ANS-system where men and masculine bodies dominate because power
and authority are mainly in the men's hands
, women's studies as methodology - ANS--exposing foundational tenets of a particular
ideology (western capitalism) that create conditions for construction of unequal power
relations within a society
-exposing ways where dominant class/group maintains its privilege over others
-focus on beliefs concerning nature of sex and gender, in relation to broader cultural
power formations and natural gender roles of femininity and masculinity
-understanding what constitutes a normative body
normative body - ANS-body whose appearance falls within cultural norms that dictate
how one should look and act, with and through one's body
body ideal - ANS-dictates what most of us think (consciously or not) we should look like
feminist critique - ANS-"understand how the category of women, the subject of
feminism, is produced and restrained by the very structures of power through which
emancipation [from sexist evaluations of women's capacities] is sought"
waves of feminism - ANS-1: 1790-1920; "vindication of the rights of women";
anti-slavery; women's rights convention; 19th amendment
2: 1950s-1970s; civil rights movement; "the personal is political"; legal, political, social,
and economic change; anti-discrimination policies and equal privileges: legal,
education, social, parental, employment, reproductive choice, personal victories; black
feminists
3: 1990 - present?; individual movement; women are of many colors, ethnicities,
nationalities, religions, and cultural backgrounds; intersectionality; queer
4th wave??
intersectionality - ANS-flexible analytical tool for gauging how social categories such as
gender, race, class, sexuality, age, ability, and other social categories position each
individual within a system supporting inequality and/or oppression
feminism - ANS--POLITICAL DISCOURSE for analyzing interlocking systems of power
in a society's institutions, social structure, and political structure
-PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH that teases out deeply embedded sexist conceptions of
identity, knowledge, authority, and privilege
-ongoing HISTORICAL MOVEMENT of consciousness-raising and activism
-PRACTICE as conscious engagement of feminist principles as one goes through one's
day, world, to make visible to one's self and others where and how social, political, and
gender ideology work to diminish and disempower individual agency