Women and Ethnic Cultures Flashcards
Feminism issues
Women relegates to private sphere (birth, nursing, “species behavior”, mental structure closer to nature, domesticated like nature) vs men (monopolized valued skills & control power and economic resources, “cultural projects”). Cultures that treat women as tools for maintaining wealth (preventing division of family assets).
African coming-of-age practice
Female genital mutilation: African coming-of-age that involves removal of clitoris, labia, and/or sewing the vagina shut. Girls and families feel they cannot become adults, performed in secret or in girls’ ancestral countries.
Cultural defense
Justify crimes by misconstruing them as part of culture
Women and multiculturalism
Feminism-women should not be disadvantaged by their sex, should be recognized as equal to man in human dignity, and have opportunity to live a fulfilling and free lives as men.
Multiculturalism: minority cultures or ways of life are needed to be protected through special group rights or privileges. Minority groups tend to facilitate gender discrimination (patriarchal, arranged marriage). Religious rules and cultural practices inordinately affect females; sexuality is repressed
Migrant women
Stereotypes depict as women dependents on male risk-takers. Economic changes lead to female-led migration (outsourcing apparel manufacturing, industrialization, service economy, health care, microelectronics).
Monotonous work, cheap labor, and no complain
Immigration and women
Women contributes more wages to household, more decision making power.
Discrimination from work and community shamed women to recommit themselves to patriarchal traditions. Economic advancement discourages women from pursuing individual careers and retreating to domestic sphere.
Gender, morality, power
Gender: key to radicalized immigrant identity and cultural superiority in place where they are politically and economically dominated. Women as virtuous and white women as licentious. Reinforce patriarchal power by controlling women as means of moral superiority.
Female morality
Dedication to family and sexual restraint; regulate women’s behaviors becomes means of determining and defining group status and boundaries; burden to maintain culture
selves as moral to assert superiority for marginalized communities
White stereotype
Lack strong family ties, no collective identity, less family works and cultural maintenance
Individualistic, selfish, nursing home, throws kids out at 18
Constructing Filipinas
Opposite of white women
Hyper-feminine subservient wives
Only daughters must conform to norms (strict parental control)
Parental Control and Resistance
Determine daughter’s racial-ethnic authenticity; sense of identity
Rebel: marrying whites, less traditional family relations, asserting freedom
