Sex and Gender

Where do gender differences come

from?
 SEX GENDER
• Biological difference • Social differentiation based
• Sexual and Reproductive on biological difference
organs

Which one is sex, which one is gender?

• Men have the combination of xx chromosomes, while
women have XY combination
•Women are weaker than men
•Most women have a reproductive cycle of 28-35 days
• Women are more emotional than men
The socialization of gender
constructions
 Gender terms
• Gender Role - the degree to which a person
adopts the gender-specific behaviors ascribed by
his or her culture.
• Gender Stereotypes - the psychological or
behavioral characteristics typically associated
with men and women.
• Gender ideology – a set of norms about gender
internalized by individuals or society
• Gender expressions – gendered expressions or
performance (cross-dressing)
 Feminism
• Is a movement, which advocates gender equality
and justice
• Feminism is not only about women.
• Women became a focus as there are widespread
and structural injustice, inequality and structured
violence against women.
• Gender injustice crosses lines with other forms of
discriminations (based on class, political and
cultural background, race, ethnicity, religion etc)
 Poverty has a woman’s face
• Class issue is closely
connected to gender
discrimination
• Why are there more
impoverished single
mothers with children
across the globe?
• Who get the child support
in work force? Who has less
payroll?
 Patriarchy
• A system which prioritizes men and put women as subordinates

Where can you find Patriarchy?

• Where men and women who do the same job are paid differently
• Where women are discriminated because of their sex (in job
selection, priority of schooling)
• Where baby boys are prioritized than baby girls
• Where women are restricted in their choice of profession
• Where women are restricted in their political and public
participation.
• Where women do not have basic rights as human being

PATRIARCHY is supported not only by men but also by women as it is

the dominant system in society (e.g. Patriarchy in women’s
magazine, women’s institution and the practice of mothering)
 Heteronormativity
• A system which only acknowledges two sexes: male and
female and constructs gender ideology based on the two
sexes.
Where can you find Heteronormativity?
• Where people are expected to do certain things based on
the gender binary.
• Where people are discriminated because of their sex and
gender (in job selection, priority of schooling)
• Where people are restricted in their choice of profession
based on sex or gender
• Where people are restricted in their political and public
participation based on gender or sex.
• Where people of certain gender do not have basic rights as
human being
 Where does Patriarchy operate?
• In social relations (between male and female)
• In myths, stories, legends, literature (culturally
available symbols – Adam and Eve, Virgin & Seducer,
Dewi Sri etc)
• In social institutions (family, school, religion, law, State,
workplace) that reinvorces normative framework
(what is good and bad, right or wrong)
• In social and cultural praxis (ritual, traditions, specific
local praxis like segregrated space)
• Individual subjectivities (internalized by individual,
reflected memoirs, autobiographies, individual blogs)
FEMINIST MOVEMENT AND
FEMINIST LITERARY CRITICISM
 Globally there are several ways of
feminist movement
• First wave : demanding rights as political subjects (to vote, to
own property, to get education) – 19th century/early 20th
century
• Second wave: demanding structural adjustment in
social/political power relations in public as well as private
spaces
“the personal is political” -- 1970s
• Third wave: women of colors demanding their rights (class,
race, ethnicity, religion and other forms of discrimination).
Critique of essentialism (white women universalism) – 1980s
onward
• Postmodern feminism: “girl power”, celebration of being
“female”, relations to urban consumption and life style
• Critique of Heteronormativity, Queer theory, critique of gender
binary
 Feminist approaches to literature
Critique against Patriarchy
• Exposing Patriarchal/ Gender
biases/heteronormativity (including stereotypes) in
literary works:
a. How are women/man/LGBT represented in
literary works
b. How is masculinity and femininity
constructed by literary works?
c. Canonization: why women’s writers get
ignored or considered as less literary? (belonging to
the genre of popular and not serious literature)
• How gender issues intersect with other issues of
cultural identity and relations of power
 Gender and Power
• Gender is primary way of signifying power ...
Gender is primary field within which or by mean
of which power is articulated (Scott, 67)
• Organizations of equality and inequality and
hierarchies
• Connection between gender and politics (of
domination) in colonial powers, in monarchies
and authoritarian societies, and in
subordination of the lower classes.
 Gynocritic
• Gynocritic: Tradition of women’s writing and
the way women construct their world , share
their experience and vision:
– Do women writers represent women’s role,
subjectivities, identities differently from the
dominant patriarchal norm? Do they internalize
patriarchy, or do they resist or negotiate power
differently through their writing?
– Do they have different forms of writing?
GENDER CONSTRUCTION
IN FAIRY TALES

• The Concept of Ideal

Beauty
The Concept of Ideal
Woman and Evil (bad)
Woman
•The Concept of
Masculinity

•What gender ideology is

at work behind the above
concepts?