Gender-Specific Behavior Patterns - Essay Example

Stereotypes of Gender Roles 2008 Gender is different from sex, the latter being a biological phenomenon while gender is a social construct thatdefines roles and responsibilities of men and women, regulating the role of sexuality, choice of occupations by men and women and the stereotypes. In the social, economic and domestic scenario, women are expected to play stereotypical roles that are quite different from men. As a result, gender justice eludes women in the western as well as the eastern world. In this paper, I will discuss issues regarding the stereotypes of women's roles in society. Typically, men hold positions of power even in democracies. Only 14 percent of the countries have achieved 30 percent representation of women in the parliament, as set out in the Beijing Declaration on Women in 1995. Women have less access to and control of economic powers, rewarded for less remuneration than men for the same work, treated differently in global trade. Women receive less education than men; have to walk long distances to collect drinking water in poorer countries, thereby falling vulnerable to violence; sexual and reproductive health problems result in illness and disability to women; more number of women being victims of HIV/AIDS because of restrictions on women being able to practice safe sex and having access to HIV testing and care services; women become victims of gender-based violence and cultural taboos. On the whole, the mainstreaming of gender has generally failed because the approach towards 'integrating' women in the society does not challenge existing power equations. Women have continued to be offered stereotyped jobs, not receiving equal training and education and insufficient resources for women's mainstreaming (Oxfam). With globalization, the traditional economic relationships, including gender relationships, are crumbling down. The classical patriarchy, dependent on the male property ownership and family headship notion, had given rise to the urban "fordist gender regime" - male bread earner/ female house maker - in the western world in the 1950s and 1960s, also duplicated in some parts of the developing world. Economic development and increased competition has meant that the male salary earnings are not sufficient for the increasing consumption patterns. Brenner (2003) notes that incorporation of women in the workforce and their increased access to education and literacy has brought feminism in the forefront of organized politics (cited in Dhawan, p2). Women activists are not increasingly becoming more vocal in national politics but also on global issues. At the same time, marginalized women are becoming even more vulnerable to global capital reorganization. Worldwide, women are facing the brunt of longer working hours, impoverishment, economic insecurity and forced migration and urbanization. Working class women find themselves in the crossroad of development and reactionary policy and continue to remain, if not become increasingly so, victims of fundamentalism, economic insecurity and a complex web of power relations (Kaplan, 1999, cited in Dhawan, p3). Pressures of structural adjustments imposed on many Third World countries have given rise to fundamentalism, which stem from the traditional patriarchal powers and victimize women even more. The emerging capitalist structures of many of these societies have eroded the protection of the traditional patriarchy that women used to have earlier. Women in the Third World are at the crosshead of two powerful forces: one, the nationalist agenda that is inherently masculine in which women are expected to follow traditional roles while the men are free to participate in the political arena, and two, global capital, which forces women to participate in the economic field, overpowering the nationalist agenda. While in the west, women of color feel that the feminist agenda is essentially white-oriented, in the Third World, the political interests of working class women are marginalized. Over and above this, women from the South are dominated over by the women of North (Mohanty, 1999, cited in Dhawan, p4). As Saunders (2002) says, "What is clear is that from the very founding of women, gender and development the "women's point of view" was not singular but heterogeneous and multiple. This continue to constitute a challenge to the dominant western feminist will to enforce a gynocentric philosophy and practice, which centers and magnifies patriarchal power and marginalizes other vertical social relations" (quoted in Varela, p2). In matters of education, gender has always played an important role. Most early theories of education essentially followed a male approach, the main purpose of which was development of the individual as well as the civil society, but with no specific gender perspective. The first feminist thinker to incorporate gender into the philosophy of education was Jane Roland Martin (1985), who researched education theories in the 1970s and 1980s and said that education philosophers so far had largely ignored the role of women, both as learners as well as educators (Rice, n.d). Since then, feminism has influenced the philosophy of education greatly, perhaps due to more women being involved with feminist thoughts, philosophy as well as education. However, feminist thinkers have adopted a wide range of philosophical strands to develop their own theories although the basic principle is to incorporate women's thoughts and experiences in the purpose and process of education, thereby transforming the patriarchal forms of education and teacher-student relations. Feminist philosophers of education are typically concerned with education as a means of developing ethics of behavior. For example, Nodding (1984) is concerned with ethics and morality as the central role of education that develops a strong interaction between the 'carer' and the 'cared for' - both 'natural caring' or maternalistic and that driven by the purpose of social justice. As Nodding says, the purpose of education is to develop in the minds of the learners an attachment for care as a sense of social justice: "As one-caring, I am not seeking justification for my action; I am not standing alone before some tribunal. What I seek is completion in the other - the sense of being cared-for and, I hope, the renewed commitment of the cared-for to turn about and act as one-caring". Nodding (1984) brings in the feminist perspective by drawing attention to the epistemological difference between man and woman in child-birth and rearing. While recognizing that what may be regarded as 'natural care' in one society may not be so in another, Nodding (1984) says that the basic purpose of education is the development of the ethical behavior of caring. Jagger (1992) shows that ethics, or moral philosophy, that did not incorporate the women's private realm, is essentially incomplete. The feminist interest in education relate largely to the pragmatist philosophy that attempts to relate theory with practice, incorporating social, cultural and political perspectives. Developing on the early theories of philosophers like Dewey who advocated education as a way of non-confrontationist attitude between the subject (teacher) and the object (student), Maxine Greene defines education as a practice of freedom by which "opening up of spaces" that would "tear aside the conventional masksthat hide women's being in the world" (quoted in Stanford Enclypedia on Pragmatist Feminism) and would allow one to think in radically different angles. This pluralistic viewpoint essentially depends on the feminist approach of incorporating women's views on their public and private lives. Thus, in education, women are prepared to play the maternalistic role as the carer in later life. In classical literature, women are usually portrayed as meek and submissive characters, reflecting the social expectation from women. In the Gothic novel (the first science fiction written by a woman writer), Frankenstein (first published in 1818), Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly (whose mother, one of the first wave feminists, was the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a feminist article urging women to think for themselves), women characters are all portrayed as meek, passive, those who suffer in silence, wait to have attention from their husband, scare their lives for their children and when denied with justice die without protest. Female sexuality is abandoned, whenever the situation demands, be it a human being or be it a monster. The novel only allows the astoundingly mammoth male ego (Victor Frankenstein and his own creation, the monster) to run amok all though it. Despite nearly two hundred years of history, women's literature, enriched and endowed with many attributes and critical insights, is still branded as the voice of the man-hating feminists. Theorists like Helene Cixous and Julien Kristeva attempt to answer the questions that many women writers may have themselves tried to find. Why have women's voices been missing in a plentiful practice of language that crosses over two thousand years Is it just because women are not allowed in the realm of education that would have enabled them into the speech-society Or, is there in fact a separate way of communication in the woman's world, in a unique language, that has made it hard for women to connect with the world-at-large (Jasken, engl.niu.edu) "Every woman has known the torture of beginning to speak aloud", laments Cixous and says,"..heart beating as if to break, occasionally falling into loss of language, ground and language slipping out from under her, because for woman speaking - even just opening her mouth - in public is something rash, a transgression (Cixous, 1975). In the essay, "Sorties", she indicates the traits of a woman's language and how that language differs from the traditional image of serous male language. Thus, the concept of gender is complex and eternal. While the political aspects of women's exploitation and the effects of globalization are understandable, the attitude towards women has remained patriarchal. Even though women's voices have been raised louder in the present days, they are still a marginalized lot at home, in national politics, education and literature as well as in the global area. In all private and public spheres, women are expected and encouraged to behavior in a completely different manner from men. Works Cited Brenner, Johannna (2003). Transnational Feminism and the Struggle for Global Justice, New Politics, 9(2) Cixous, Helene, Sorties, in The Newly Born Woman (1975, English translation, 1984). Retrieved from http://www.ac.wwu.edu/pamhard/338Cixous.htm Dhawan, Nikita, "Transnational Feminist Alliances and Gender Justice", Second Critical Studies Conference, "Sphere of Justice": Feminist Perspectives on Justice, http://www.mcrg.ac.in/Spheres/Nikita.pdf Julie Jasken, "Helene Cixous". Retrieved from http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/cixous_intro.html Kaplan, Caren, et al, ed. (1999). Between Women and Nation: Nationalism, Transnational Feminism, and the State, Durham, NC, Duke University Press Saunders, Kriemild (2002). "Introduction: Towards a Deconstructive Post-development criticism". In Kriemild Saunders (ed). Feminist Post-Development Thought. Rethinking Modernity, Post-Colonialism and Representation. London/ New York. Zed Books. Page 1-38 Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein, complete text downloaded from http://pd.sparknotes.com/lit/frankenstein/ Julie Jasken, Helene Cixous, http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/cixous_intro.html Cixous, Helene, Sorties, in The Newly Born Woman.(first published in1975). English translation, 1984 retrieved from http://www.ac.wwu.edu/pamhard/338Cixous.htm Greene, Maxine. The Dialectics of Freedom (John Dewey Series), Teachers College Press, 1988 Jaggar, A.M. Feminist ethics. In L. Becker and C. Becker (eds.), Encyclopedia of Ethics. New York: Garland Press, 363-4. 1992 Noddings, N. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1984 Stanford Encyclopedia of Education, Pragmatist Feminism, retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/femapproach-pragmatism/ Read More