Concept Identification Project
INeal
2020917hdf110genderandsexismnotes.docxHDF 110
GENDER PRIVILEGE and OPPRESSION
Some terms related to this concept…
Ambivalent Sexism- A theoretical framework which posits that sexism has two sub-components related to prejudice against women: "hostile sexism" and "benevolent sexism”
Hostile Sexism- Hostile sexism reflects overtly negative evaluations and stereotypes about gender. It involves misogyny, in that it is an exagger ated prejudice towards women and femininity based on the belief that masculine attributes are more valuable and that women should be sub ordinate to men. Misogyny is usually regarded as directed against women by some men, but women can also harbor misogynistic views. Misogyny is often used to justify and reproduce the subordination of women by men (and sometimes women) resulting in social exclusion, dis crimination, belittling, sexual objectification and violence.
Benevolent Sexism-Benevolent sexism represents evaluations of gender that may appear subjectively positive (subjective to the person who is evaluating), but are actually damaging to people and gender equality more broadly (e.g., the ideas that women need to be protected by men)
Patriarchy-In gender politics, the word patriarchy refers to any form of societal advantage that is given disproportionately to men. Many construe this to mean a gender hierarchy in which men dominate or exploit women, but that does not need to be the case.
Institutional Sexism- Is the oppression of women. It includes the negative prejudicial attitudes and stereotypes towards women along with historical, societal, and cultural elements where there is a continued imbalance of power, where men as a class are privileged over women as a class that lead to the power to discriminate against women. The important part often overlooked in this term is that sexism is prejudice and privilege plus power. Thus feminists reject the notion that women can be sexist towards men because women lack the institutional power that men have.
Feminism-
*We will discuss this definition in class.
A FEW KEY PEOPLE AND EVENTS RELATED TO THE MOVEMENT
TOWARDS SEX/GENDER EQUALITY ….
“First Wave”of the Women’s Movement (1848-1920)
KEY FOCUS: Women’s Suffrage, Property Rights,
In July of 1848 in upstate New York, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, met for tea with four women friends. When the course of their conversation turned to the situation of women, Stanton poured out her discontent with the limitations placed on her own situation under America's new democracy. The American Revolution had been fought just 70 years earlier to win the patriots freedom from tyranny however women had not gained freedom even though they'd taken equally tremendous risks through those dangerous years. Stanton women believed that the new republic would benefit from having its women play more active roles throughout society. Stanton's friends agreed with her, passionately. It is unlikely that this was the first small group of women to have such a conversation, but it was the first to plan and carry out a specific, large-scale program.
Declaration of Sentiments- Elizabeth Cady Stanton used the Declaration of Independence as the framework for writing this document. Stanton connected the concepts set forth in this document to the powerful American symbol of liberty. The same familiar words framed their arguments: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
In this Declaration of Sentiments, Stanton carefully enumerated areas of life where women were treated unjustly. Stanton's version read, "The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world." Then it went into specifics: married women were legally dead in the eyes of the law.
Women were not allowed to vote
Women had to submit to laws when they had no voice in their formation
Married women had no property rights
Husbands had legal power over and responsibility for their wives to the extent that they could imprison or beat them with impunity
Divorce and child custody laws favored men, giving no rights to women
Women had to pay property taxes although they had no representation in the levying of these taxes
Most occupations were closed to women and when women did work they were paid only a fraction of what men earned
Women were not allowed to enter professions such as medicine or law
Women had no means to gain an education since no college or university would accept women students
With only a few exceptions, women were not allowed to participate in the affairs of the church
Women were robbed of their self-confidence and self-respect, and were made totally dependent on men.
Horace Greely (New York Tribune) First publicized the event as an ally to the movement, however, significant backlash ensued.
Stanton anticipated "misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule." Newspaper editors were so scandalized by the shameless audacity of the Declaration of Sentiments, and particularly of the ninth resolution, women demanding the vote!, that they attacked the women with all the anger they could summon. The women's rights movement was only one day old and the backlash had already begun.
In ridicule, the entire text of the Declaration of Sentiments was often published, with the names of the signers frequently included. Just as ridicule today often has a squelching effect on new ideas, this attack in the press caused many people from the Convention to rethink their positions. Many of the women who had attended the convention were so embarrassed by the publicity that they actually withdrew their signatures from the Declaration. But most stood firm. And something the editors had not anticipated happened: Their negative articles about the women's call for expanded rights were so livid and widespread that they actually had a positive impact far beyond anything the organizers could have hoped for. People in cities and isolated towns alike were now alerted to the issues, and joined this heated discussion of women's rights in great numbers. (Legacy 98)
As women addressed the issues, the right to vote became a central issue and the women’s suffrage movement was born. The early women’s movement was firmly integrated with the abolitionist movement: The leaders were all abolitionists, and Frederick Douglass spoke at the Seneca Falls Convention, arguing for women’s suffrage. Women of color like Sojourner Truth, Maria Stewart, and Frances E.W. Harper were major forces in the movement, working not just for women’s suffrage but for universal suffrage. However, despite the immense work of women of color for the women’s movement, the movement of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony eventually established itself as a movement specifically for white women, one that used racial animus as fuel for its work.
It took 72 years from the time that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her friends first met to 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was passed allowing women the right to vote.
Equal Rights Amendment was proposed shortly after, and has still not been ratified. The wording of the ERA was simple: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."
Second Wave of the Women’s Movement (1960s-1980s)
Key Focus: Reduce inequality in sex in the family and workplace, passing legislation addressing inequity, reproductive rights
Esther Peterson was the director of the Women's Bureau of the Dept. of Labor in 1961. She considered it to be the government's responsibility to take an active role in addressing discrimination against women. With her encouragement, President Kennedy convened a Commission on the Status of Women, naming Eleanor Roosevelt as its chair. The report issued by that commission in 1963 documented discrimination against women in virtually every area of American life. State and local governments quickly followed suit and established their own commissions for women, to research conditions and recommend changes that could be initiated.
In 1963, Betty Friedan published a landmark book, The Feminine Mystique. The Feminine Mystique evolved out of a survey she had conducted for her 20-year college reunion. In it she documented the emotional and intellectual oppression that middle-class educated women were experiencing because of limited life options. The book became an immediate bestseller, and inspired thousands of women to look for fulfillment beyond the role of homemaker.
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race, religion, and national origin. The category "sex" was included as a last-ditch effort to kill the bill. But it passed, nevertheless. With its passage, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established to investigate discrimination complaints. Within the commission's first five years, it received 50,000 sex discrimination complaints. But it was quickly obvious that the commission was not very interested in pursuing these complaints. Betty Friedan, the chairs of the various state Commissions on the Status of Women, and other feminists agreed to form a civil rights organization for women similar to the NAACP. In 1966, the National Organization for Women was organized, soon to be followed by an array of other mass-membership organizations addressing the needs of specific groups of women, including Blacks, Latinas, Asians-Americans, lesbians, welfare recipients, business owners, aspiring politicians, and tradeswomen and professional women of every sort.
Griswold v Connecticut (1965) Declared birth control legal for married women. (shortly after, another case declared it legal for single woman.)
Title X of Public Health Act of 1970 First federal program specifically designed to deliver federal family planning services to people from low SES and teens. This came about after concerns over the safety of current versions of the pill and IUDs as well concerns about Third World women and women from poor communities being used as “guinea pigs.” Still exists although chronically underfunded and being threatened to be defunded entirely)
During this same time, thousands of young women on college campuses were playing active roles within the anti-war and civil rights movement. Many were finding their efforts blocked by men who felt leadership of these movements was their own domain, and women's roles should be limited to fixing food and running mimeograph machines. It wasn't long before these young women began forming their own "women's liberation" organizations to address their role and status within these progressive movements and within society at large.
The Equal Rights Amendment Is Re-Introduced In 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment, which had languished in Congress for almost fifty years, was finally passed and sent to the states for ratification. To many women's rights activists, its ratification by the required thirty-eight states seemed imminent. When the deadline for ratification came in 1982, the ERA was just three states short of the 38 needed to write it into the U.S. constitution. Seventy-five percent of the women legislators in those three pivotal states supported the ERA, but only 46% of the men voted to ratify.
Third Wave of the Women’s Movement (1980s to 2008):
Key Focus on the “Micropolitics” of gender inequity
New Complex Emerging Issues (these started to come about at the end of the second wave and contributed to the THIRD WAVE):
Women's reproductive rights. Whether or not women can terminate pregnancies is still controversial forty five years after the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade affirmed women's choice during the first two trimesters.
Women's enrollment in military academies and service in active combat. Are these desirable?
Women in leadership roles in religious worship. Controversial for some, natural for others.
Affirmative action. Is help in making up for past discrimination appropriate? Do qualified women now face a level playing field?
Should businesses accommodate women's family responsibilities, or should women compete evenly for advancement with men, most of whom still assume fewer family obligations?
Pornography and Prostitution. Is it degrading, even dangerous, to women, or is it simply a free speech issue?
Sexual harassment. Just where does flirting leave off and harassment begin?
Surrogate motherhood. Is it simply the free right of a woman to hire out her womb for this service?
Social Security benefits allocated equally for homemakers and their working spouses, to keep surviving wives from poverty as widows.
Fourth Wave- Present Day
What remains to be accomplished?
Sexual Harassment, Assault and Misogyny-Raising awareness and demanding consequences for sexual harassment, abuse, rape, “slut shaming.” The pressure for women to conform to a singular and unrealistic body type.
Increasing Role of Women in Government- Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress, in 1916. By 1971, three generations later, women were still less than three percent of our congressional representatives. Today women hold only 20.4% of the seats in Congress (20% in the House, 23.4% in the Senate) and 25% of the state legislative seats. Yet, in the face of such small numbers, women have successfully changed thousands of local, state, and federal laws that had limited women's legal status and social roles.
Business/Professional- Issues of advancement and equal pay for equal work across many occupations.
Family and Social- Issues around household and marital roles, childcare, sports, socialization of children.
Gender role- Denotes a set of behavioral norms that accompany a given gendered status (also called a gendered identity) in a given social group or system. Gender is one component of the gender/sex system, which refers to "the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sex into products of human activity, and in which these transformed needs are satisfied" Every known society has a gender/sex system, although the components and workings of this system vary widely from society to society.
Gender bias-Assumptions about what a woman or a man can or cannot do because of their gender. (i.e. Woman are better at caring for children than men. Men are more capable with regard to mechanics.)
Gender socialization-The process by which society rewards and/or punishes people for behaving in what is considered “normal” or “correct” gender constructs with regards to masculinity for boys/men and femininity for girls/women.
Discussion: What are ways in which gender continues to be an
organizing factor around life in all the various microsystems in which
we interact?
