Social Work DB

The Oppression of Women

Female Population

• 50.8% of US, 50.6% OK • Historical Discriminatory Policy: • Voting • Land ownership • Education • Medical leave/childcare responsibilities • Anti- Reproductive Choice

Supreme Court Justices

Income Gender Gap

Sex, Gender, and Gender Identity • Sex: Chromosomes, Hormones or Genitalia

• Empirical studies find greater same sex than opposite sex differences in: • Cognitive Abilities • Personality Traits • Social Behaviors

• Gender Identity: Socially constructed expectations and norms for male and female gender roles • Man-ness – Masculine • Woman-ness - Feminine

• Gendered traits facilitate gender roles • Gender is descriptive and prescriptive • Shifts with cultural norms

• Gender Expression: Presentation of gender through dress, action, demeanor

Gendered Expectations • In Childhood: • Names • Clothes • Friends • Sports involvement • Family roles • Education importance

• In Adulthood: • Pay scales • Professions • Work environments • Caregiving Responsibilities • Leadership Roles

Women and Sexist Oppression

•Intersectionality: examination of intersections between forms or systems of domination of oppression

Feminism • A range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements

that share a common goal: • Define, establish and achieve political, economic, social and personal

equality of sexes. • Establish educational and professional opportunities for women that

are equal to men • Examples:

• Women's rights • To vote • To hold public office • To work • To earn fair wages/equal pay • To own property • To receive an education • To enter contracts • To have equal rights within marriage • Reproductive rights

Male Models of Structured Reality

•Freudian Psychology • Reflect Historical-

sociological context • Male centric

Framework • Anatomy is destiny • Inequality of feminine

gender role

Contemporary Perspective

•Female Identity Development • Females become aware of

and value femininity • Familial and cultural

influences are weighted over biological drives

Social Construction of Madness as Female • Institutional and Structural Classism and Sexism are embedded in the history

of mental illness • Darwanism = Classism.

• Illness is result of poor genes and evil environment • Psychiatric Revolution/ Modernism = Heterosexism

• Gender influences the definition and treatment of mental illness • Rise in hysteria- classic female disorder • Femininity is synonymous with madness

Feminist Epistemologies • Logical Positivists:

• Reality is universal, objective and measureable

• Gender difference are innate

• Subjective Relativists: • Truth is relative and makes

specific social interests • Suspicious about general universal

truths • Emphasize • Politics of the knowledge makers • Impact of social status on knowledge

making • Effect of disparate power relationships

• Feminist Epistemology: • Emphasizes role of gender in

shaping thought and structuring society • Focuses on the forces that exclude

women from full participation • Strives to produce a society where

men and women are seen as both different and equal

Feminization of Poverty