Introduction: What is Gender?

1. Introduction: What is Gender? International Perspectives on Gender Lecture 1

2. Structure of lecture • Welcome • Practical Issues • Overview of module handbook • Concepts of sex and gender • How are gender differences conceptualised? • How the module approaches gender

3. Practicalities • Know your seminar group • Seminars start this week • Check your Warwick e-mail account regularly • Register for IPG on eMR • Module Homepage: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/undergrad/current/progsandmods/modules/ipg • Module Handouts: provided today but in future you download from homepage, or access electronically • Annotate Handouts during the lecture, to personalise

4. Module Handbook • Contents • Core / Additional Readings • Don’t be deskilled – use the library! • Formative Assessment Deadlines • Questions?

16. What did you focus on? • Go through the images and compare notes with a neighbour. How have you described them? What have you concentrated on? As you saw more images, did this change the way you thought about the first ones you saw?

17. Male or Female? Did you consider whether the people in the image were male or female? Typically we decide this very quickly, almost subconsciously We may only be aware of the process when we’re unsure When a baby’s born the first question is male or female? Sentence construction in English requires us to know

18. How did you decide? • Looking back at the notes you made, was one of your responses to the images to decide whether they were of a female or male? And if it was how did you do it? What criteria did you use? What information did you read from the image to decide? How could you classify it under some headings? Discuss again with your neighbour.

19. Reading Sex through Gender • Primary and Secondary sexual characteristics (may not be visible or reliable) • XX and XY chromosomes not visible (not 100% reliable) • We read sex from other signs in the image • The signs, and their meanings, are not fixed • We read sex on the basis of gender, socio-cultural meanings about femininity and masculinity • Sex is biological difference, male or female • Gender is socio-cultural meaning attached to biological markers • Gender differences, often equating to gender inequalities, can be understood as either biologically or socially determined

20. Socio-biological Accounts of Gender Difference • Women are subordinate to men as a result of different biological endowments and capacities • ‘Evidence’ involves finding common factors in very different gender relations • Eg. Men hunt in both hunter-gatherer and industrial societies (meat or money) while women stay at home • Questionable! • Eg. Men have more testosterone than women, making them more aggressive and aggressive achieve more in competitive world • Questionable!

21. Inherent Conservatism • Differences between men and women are natural • Inevitable so futileand morally wrong to try to change them • Using biological accounts as universal explanations of inequalities also re class and ‘race’: • Charles Murray: black people have smaller brains • Concept of the ‘feckless’ poor • Mad, bad and dangerous ideas

22. Socio-cultural Accounts Privileging Gender Differences Globally • Ann Oakley (1972) Sex, Gender and Society • Gender relations are so diverse they can’t be natural • Cites Margaret Mead’s work based on 3 tribes in Papua New Guinea: • Women don’t specialise in motherhood • Women aren’t sexually passive • Women aren’t dependants of men • Men don’t specialise in provision or decision-making • Sex is natural, gender is social • Judith Butler turned this on its head: gender constructs sex • We learn to wear our gender identities so others can read our sex

23. Universal Patriarchy? Privileging Gender Similarities Globally • Mary Daly (1978) Gyn/Ecology • Adrienne Rich (1979) Of Woman Born • Gayle Rubin (1975) The Traffic in Women • Focus on similarities in gender relations • Assert universal patriarchy and need for global women’s movement • Use transcendental ‘we’ and omit historical and geographical context

24. Example and Critique ‘In Mexico, a woman is raped every nine minutes. An estimated 1,000 women are burned alive each year in dowry-related incidents in the state of Gujurat alone, in India. One in ten Canadian women is abused or battered by their husbands or partners.’ (Joanna Kerr in Ours by Right: Women’s Rights as Human Rights, 1993). • Constructs women as passive victims • May contribute to orientalist discourse • Ignores differences between women • Explanation ultimately relies on biological difference • Need to think of Patriarchies, plural

25. What is this module about? • Considering differences and similarities in gender relations and how relate to socio-cultural context and history • Looking at how political and social movements seek to prescribe gender relations • Paying attention to how women and men resist gender inequalities • Recognising importance of intersectionality • Debunking stereotypes

26. Conclusions • We read (and present) gender continually in everyday life in order to define people as male or female • We may only be conscious of this process when we’re not sure how to read someone • Socio-biological accounts of gender differences present gender roles and relations as natural and fixed • Sociologists see gender as socially constructed • Approaches to gender in international perspective may: • privilege differences • privilege similarities and assert universal patriarchy • We will consider both alongside need to disaggregate gender, recognise resistance and emphasise context • Next week: UK