December exam Flashcards
1st wave of feminism
- late 19th to early 20th century
- suffrage period
- securing voting rights for women
2nd wave of feminism
- 1960s-1970s
- right to education, work and equal play
- traditional gender roles being challenged
- birth control becomes accessible
3rd wave of feminism
- 1990s-present
- challenged white middle-class orientation
- Broadening the agenda of feminism as a movement to account for the needs of women of colour and working-class women
4th wave of feminism
- 2010s-present
- focus on intersectional approaches to feminism
- the use and the impact of the internet and social media
standpoint theory
- Marginalized people have a unique standpoint based on their marginalized identity
- Women have a unique point of view that can deepen insight into women’s experiences
- critique: There is not a universal experience of being a “woman”
gender and the big 3
conflict theory: How does gender contribute to economic inequality between men and women
Functionalism: what is the function of gender in society (function of gender norms and roles)
Symbolic interactionism: How does gender affect our everyday interactions
tenants of critical race theory
- racism is ordinary - a permanent feature of American society
- Our system of ‘white-over-colour’ serves important purposes for the dominant group
- The social construction theory - race and races are products of social thought and relations
- People of colour have a unique voice, one that needs to be heard
Patricia Hill Collins
- First Black woman to serve as ASA president
- the outsider within
- developed black feminist thought
the outsider within
- focused on the experiences of black women in academia
- presence does not equal inclusion
- black women scholars occupy a strategic position which allows them 3 things
1. objectivity
2. Peoples tendency to confide in strangers
3. the ability to see things that those too immersed cannot
3 themes of black feminist thought
- Self-definition and self-valuation
→ Self-definition – resisting external stereotypes of Black women
→ Self-valuation – replacing degrading images with authentic representation - Matrix of domination/intersectionality
→ coexistence of power and privilege
→ black women are able to look at overlapping systems of power - Importance of BFT for Black women’s culture
→ has the potential to redefine culture
Smith - research through empirical eyes
- Western knowledge inaccurately reflects the histories and experiences of Indigenous peoples
- Western knowledge is rooted in positivism
- western ideas are the most rational ideas, the most fundamental to our understanding of the social world
POSITIVISM
- routed in objectivity
- suggests that phenomena can be observed and researched objectively and that research should not be subjective
- macro
INTERPRETIVISM
- The practice of seeking out subjective meanings and interpretations as a main source of knowledge
- micro
Imperialism
extending a country’s power and influence on another country through economic or political force
Colonialism
Where one country physically exerts complete control over another country
gender and essentialism
- the belief that gender is biologically determined – it is immutable and cannot be changed
Judith Butler
- forefront of queer theory
- Gender trouble 1990
- gender is:
1. socially constructed - (not inherent attributes)
2. historical - shift over time
3. restricted - gender possibilities aren’t open and are restricted by social, cultural and power dynamics
4. performative - determined through its performative nature
Queer theory
- used to define those who fall outside the hegemonic binaries of gender and sexuality
TERFs
- Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists
- trans women challenge gender views of what it means to be a women
- queer theorists challenge the system of oppression and marginalization
critiques of queer theory
- gone too far by focusing on the discursive production of identities
- westernized
- inaccessible
- erased the lived experiences of individual actors who suffer material oppressions
- lost its revolutionary potential
intersectionality
used to analyze power relations and intersecting systems of oppression
Kimberle Crenshaw
- Coined the term intersectionality
- black women have a unique discrimination from being black and being a women
3 realms where women of colour experience gendered issues differently
- structural - How different structures in society (laws, resources, policies) create different experiences for women of colour versus white women
- political - Examines the ways that feminists and anti-racist politics contribute to the oppression of women of colour
- Representational - Identifies how the cultural representation of women of colour fails to account for their experience of both racism and sexism
6 CORE ELEMENTS OF INTERSECTIONALITY
- social inequality
- relational thinking
- power
- social context
- complexity
- social justice
ORIGINS OF INTERSECTIONALITY
- COMBAHEE RIVER COLLECTIVE - Black Lesbian organization active in the 1970s
- promoted intersectional frameworks through activism
ways of knowing
- informal observation
- selective observation
- overgeneralization
- authority
- research methods
informal observation
- when we make observations without any systematic process or assessing accuracy of what we observed
selective observation
- when we see only the patterns that we want to see or when we assume that only the patterns we have experienced exist
overgeneralization
- when we assume that broad patterns exist even when our observations have been limited
authority
- a socially defined source of knowledge that might shape our beliefs about what is true and what is not true
research methods
- an organized and logical way of learning and knowing about our social world
independent variable
- the variable that is manipulated and controled in an experiment