First Revision Workshop

1. First Revision Workshop International Perspectives on Gender, Week 21

2. Workshop Aims • introduce the exam • provoke thought about your revision strategies • identify key concepts on the module • draw connections across the module • convince you that you already know more than you think • start thinking what you would need to know about in order to write on some term 1 topics

3. The Exam • When? Thursday 6 June, 9.30am • Where? Westwood Games Hall • Duration? 3 hours, answer 3 questions • Rubric? Section 1 Essay = 1 section 1 exam ?, 2 section 2 Section 2 Essay = 2 section 1 exam ?s, 1 section 1 No barring • Section 1:  UK (1 question), Soviet Union/Russia (1 question), China (1 question), Nationalism/Orientalism (1 question), South Africa (1 question) • Section 2: India (1 question), Hindutva/religious fundamentalism (1 question), Islam (1 question), Ireland (1 question), Gender and global capitalism (1 question)

4. Why do you do exams?

5. Revision Strategies • Write down what you got right in your revision strategy last year (or earlier) and how you achieved it. • Write down what you want to improve on in your revision strategy this year and how you’re going to do it.

6. Key Module Concepts • Write down as many key concepts as you can think of from the module: eg. nationalism; gender division of labour; apartheid

7. Key Module Objectives • What follows are 16 module objectives • Working in pairs, read through them, discuss what you think they mean and identify which module topics they are most associated with (many of them cover more than one).

8. Key Module Objectives 1. Resisting the idea that there is one ‘female’ point of view, or one ‘male perspective’ on any issue. 2. Recognising that while gender is an important difference (generating patterns of (in)equality; (lack of) opportunity; status etc.), it is cross-cut by other differences. 3. Generating critical perspectives on any idea that gender relations are ‘natural’, inevitable, outcomes of biological difference etc.  4. Insisting that gender can only be understood in relation to social, cultural and historical processes, ie. that it is contingent.

9. 5. Examining the symbolic importance of gender and extent to which it is at the centre of the religious and political ideologies and state practices that have dominated the last 100 years: colonialism; apartheid; nationalism; socialism/communism; religious fundamentalism 6. Paying attention to the way gender prescriptions (ideas about what gender relations should be like) have been a resource through which to legitimate the present as well as to imagine the future. 7. Examining and critiquing the idea that the level of gender equality is a short-hand marker of ‘civilization’. 8. Appreciating why women (and men) may not speak ‘gender oppression’ - through that their whole society/ethnic group/ class etc. may be judged.

10. 9. Promoting reflexivity, ie. asking where ‘we’ are in the ‘knowing’ process about women and men’s lives around the world. Asking what sort of relations are entailed between us as ‘knowers’ and those we ‘know’ about? 10. Emphasising women’s and men’s agency and capacity for resistance and change, while not ignoring structural barriers to agency. 11. Demonstrating the need to continually disaggregate the categories women and men, through the diversity of their experiences around the world. 12. Contesting universalisms - the idea that there is one type of oppression of women, and one solution to it.

11. 13. Recognizing and critiquing gender stereotypes, eg. the Muslim woman. 14. Recognising that some women can oppress other women, that some women can oppress men, and that men can work for gender equality and women’s empowerment. 15. Emphasising the need for specific, historical analysis on a case by case basis, at the same time as recognising patterns (eg. the gendered ‘scripts’ of nationalist movements; gendered work). 16. Recognising the need to ask gendered questions about social change, eg. globalization.

12. Topic by Topic Revision • Work in small groups of 3/4 • From what you can recall about each topic, try to come up with three bullet points that reflect the major learning points for those weeks. What are the three key points (e.g. the conclusions from the lecture) that you would need to think about when revising this topic? • You won’t remember everything – don’t worry, it’s not a test. It’s a starting point for your revision (and you know more already than you might feel like you do) • Sex-Gender is filled in below to give you the idea

13. Sex and Gender • Sex = biological marker of sexual difference • Gender = socio-cultural content/meaning attached to this biological marker. • Where sex is privileged in analysis, the differences between men and women’s status/skills/character etc. are generally put down to biology and are seen as fixed, natural and inevitable. • Where gender is privileged in analysis these differences are seen as variable, products of society and culture and capable of transformation.

14. UK - Education and Work

15. UK – Family and Sexuality

16. Marxism and Soviet Union

17. Post-Communist Russia

18. China

19. Orientalism / Nationalism

20. Next Week… • Continue topic by topic • Making links between topics • Tips on survival in the exam room