An Introduction to Women's Studies - Lesson Overviews

Lesson One

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:26:36 -0800

Hi there! I'm Natalie- or cybergrrl- your instructor for this course. Welcome to the Instructor Blog, where I will be introducing each new lesson. When the lesson opens, you will start by reading over my post which won't appear until we arrive at that topic. So on Wednesday, you'll see the link for the Lesson 2 Overview and that will signal the start of a new lesson. You are welcome to follow some of the hyperlinks that are imbedded in the post if you are particularly interested in the content. You don't need to follow every link, but some of them are quite fascinating and make for great post material as well as juicy conversation fodder for next weekend's party.

Lesson Two

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:20:02 -0800

So what is Feminism , anyway?

How many times have you heard a woman say “ I'm not a feminist, but …” and go on to identify with some feminist position? So what does “being a feminist” really mean? What, exactly, is feminism?

Lesson Three

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:19:41 -0800

The battle over equality for women is the longest revolution on record, and one that's caused a fair bit of anxiety. In fact, it has aroused (and continues to arouse) more fear, dread, and resistance than any other group of people fighting for equal treatment in society. Seems like every 50 years, it shows up again, wearing a new outfit but dressed to fight the same war. And when it arrives, it fights hard for10-20 years—it comes on strong with amazing vision and power. Then the visionary dies, the movement fades and it hits the dressing room to change into new garb to fight the next battle.

Lesson Four

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:17:41 -0800

We have all heard the critiques of that tall, blond, thin icon known as Barbie . And while we may chuckle at Barbie's unrealistic body type or her painted-on smile, we may not realize that in all of her plastic glory, Barbie sends a variety of subtle messages to young girls.

Consider for a moment the Barbie Liberation Organization . A while ago, Mattel came out with a new Teen Talk Barbie who giggled: "Math is hard!" "I love shopping!" and "Will we ever have enough clothes?" Conveniently, the Talking Duke G.I. Joe doll, or ummm, “action figure” had just been released. Inventive people around the country loosely formed the Barbie Liberation Organization and embarked on what they called a stereotype change operation—switching the voice boxes of the two dolls before repackaging and returning them to the stores. The surgically enhanced Barbie now shouted, “Vengeance is mine!” and G.I. Joe suggested, “Let's plan our dream wedding.” The myriad messages that children receive from toys, media and parents quickly teach kids what it means to be a woman and a man in today's society.

Lesson Five

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:17:20 -0800

Ah, the media. From Reality TV to the pages of Glamour Magazine, we repeatedly see thin and mostly white women's bodies as normal, standard, accepted. And most of the time, we can't get enough of it. We pour billions of dollars into an industry that keeps us enthralled with skinny girls and their celebrity successes. Because without the media, where would we learn about how to get a guy, how to drop 10 pounds, how to apply blue eye shadow and all those other tricks that make one an officially successful woman?

Lesson Six

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:16:54 -0800

What's the first word to come into your head when you think about feminism? My guess is that it's not sexuality, ‘cause for some reason feminism has (for many) come to be seen as the most un-sexy thing around. The truth of the matter is that feminism is all about sex and aims to make it as spicy (or as sweet) as you want it.

Lesson Seven

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:16:30 -0800

When people talk about Reproductive Rights today, there is just one word that comes to mind: Abortion . I don't think that Jessica and Nick's divorce got as much airtime as the a-word is getting these days. Let's figure out what all the hullabaloo is about.

Abortion has only been legal here for 33 years. It became legal after that monumental Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling and allowed women in every state access to safe, legal abortions and guaranteed their constitutional right to privacy. Unfortunately, ever since it was legalized, there has been a steady attempt to roll back the access to abortion that the Roe decision established. It started early on with the Hyde Amendment , which denied access to abortion for low-income women on Medicaid. That was followed by a number of cases which allowed states to establish additional legislation to limit access to abortion, and as a result we've seen many states adopt policies that require a mandatory waiting period or parental consent for a minor . Even now, the Supreme Court is still in on the action, and recently decided to hear a case involving the federal ban on late term abortion . So the Judiciary is really central to what's going on with abortion—all these battles are fought through the Judicial Branch of government. Not surprisingly, many have wondered if Justice Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court will change the outcome of future cases that wind up at the Supreme Court. What does Justice Alito's confirmation mean for the future of abortion in this country and for the future of women's reproductive rights in the US ?

Lecture Eight

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:15:57 -0800

So it seems like we're back to talking about sex. In particular, sex for sale in the form of porn and even prostitution. But it's hard (no pun intended) to know what exactly we are referring to when we talk about pornography. Today's porn seems to run the gamut from the ‘lad magazines' of Playboy and Hustler to the down and dirty dvds and videos to virtually everything on the web. Some have suggested that porn is much more pervasive and is part of our mainstream culture —from the “Porn-Star” baby-Ts for adolescent girls to the glossy pages of slinky-clad fashion mags. So really, that makes all of us consumers in some way—and who hasn't gotten turned on by a sexy ad or a steamy sex scene? The question isn't really about porn being either morally reprehensible or politically correct. Instead, we need to ask, as we always do, what does porn do? What does it teach men and women about sex, pleasure and desire? What role does prostitution serve in our society? And, as always, what do these particular issues have to do with the relationship between gender and power?

Lecture Nine

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:14:39 -0800

What's the first word that comes to your mind when you think of birth—of the actual labor and delivery of a baby? If you're like most people, it's PAIN. Searing, burning, ripping you body to shreds kind of pain. Insurmountable pain. P. A. I. N. Funny thing is, when we look at women in different cultures who grew up with different messages about birth, their first words aren't pain. That doesn't mean that they don't think the whole thing won't hurt like the Dickens, but they just don't associate the process with mind-blowing pain. So we're going to dig into this a bit more and figure out just why this is, where do we get these messages, who benefits from this sort of thinking, and what it all means for women.

Lecture Ten

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:14:17 -0800

It should come as no surprise that women are disproportionately affected by poverty. Many of the issues that we've discussed in this class (and a number of issues that we haven't) are explicitly or implicitly connected to poverty. Women are the shock absorbers of poverty, both in the US and in the world. American women are nearly 40% more likely to be poor than American men and 70% of the world's poorest people are women. In fact, the poverty rate has been going down for the last several decades. Unfortunately, the majority of those escaping poverty have been men, and the number of women and female-headed families who live in poverty continues to increase. This trend is often referred to as the feminization of poverty and continues to be a problem for women living in the US and for women globally.

Lecture Eleven

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:13:33 -0800

You've come a long way, babycakes. In the last century, the number of women in the workforce went from 5.3 million women to 65 million women—and today, about three-fourths of all working women are working full time. So what work are women doing? What are the barriers that they face and the challenges they are up against? How do they navigated these obstacles and succeed at their jobs?

We know that there isn't much work that women haven't signed up to do. They are working in all segments of the labor force, even those dominated by men. Interestingly, however, they are much more likely to be found in some sectors than other and are—for the most part—crowded into a small number of fields . I'm sure that you can guess these off the top of your head—more women work as teachers, secretaries and cashiers than any other line of work. Most jobs that involve care-giving and cleaning are thought of as “women's work,” while jobs that involve working with machines and things are imagined as being “men's work.” The fact that women and men often work at different jobs termed horizontal segregation, meaning that the vast majority of us follow this social distinction between men's and women's work. This segregation isn't problematic in and of itself, but becomes troubling when we realize that what gets called “men's work” is usually compensated much higher than, well, what society sees as “women's work.” Is it fair that a childcare worker earns about $300 less than a truck driver or $475 less than a mail carrier, when they all have about the same skill level? And as you well know by now, gender isn't the only thing that keeps the workforce segregated—race has come to be seen as a tougher barrier than gender in the workplace. Today, only 8% of African Americans and only 5% of Hispanic workers (men and women) hold jobs that could be classified as professional or managerial .

Lecture Twelve

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:11:01 -0800

So, you may be asking, what about women in the rest of the world? Is feminism global? The answer is a big juicy emphatic YES! In fact, all of the issues that we've touched on in this course (ranging from the differences in the education and socialization of boys and girls, limits on women's reproductive choices, barriers to economic advancement, poverty, racism, intolerance, patriarchy, etc.) have relevance in a global context, and women of every culture, color and class are claiming different aspects of feminism for themselves. Different women's movements around the world have made significant gains— increasing women's services , passing laws that help women , and just generally improving the quality of women's lives . The vast majority of this activism happens at the grassroots level, meaning that it begins with small groups of local, dedicated women and men organizing around a particular issue. Each issue is relevant to a particular region, but all connect to the broader goal of equality for both women and men. Whether it's ‘carpet grades' in Uganda or criminalizing domestic abuse in Chile or ending the practice of female genital mutilation in Senegal. Eygpt and Sudan , it's amazing that a small group of concerned citizens can make such a difference in the world—feminist activism is rarely a single concerted effort and is much more likely to be a few committed individuals working slowly, and often tediously, to make small changes. But global feminism is more than just the separate development of feminism in different parts of the world. It is also the development of a global perspective that reflects an understanding of diversity, because we all need to learn from each other—especially from women who have different experiences, challenges and ideas of what's important.