Introduction to Gender Studies

Gender Studies – An Introduction

• ‘Gender’ is a grammatical term borrowed from linguistics; it is the collective term for the categories of masculine, feminine or neuter.
• At first, the gendered roles in society were assumed to be the natural result of one’s sex. However, cross-cultural studies demonstrate that while sex is a universal condition; gender roles vary across culture.
• Gender refers to the role in a cultural or social setting; it is characterized by:
• Attitudes
• Feelings
• Behaviors

Difference between Sex and Gender

Sex

• Sex refers to a person’s biological and physiological status. It is typically categorized as male, female or intersex.
• There are a number of indicators of biological sex:
• Chromosomes
• Gonads
• Internal reproductive organs
• External genitalia
• Secondary sex characteristics

Difference between Sex and Gender

Gender

• Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities and attributes that a society deems appropriate.
• Gender allows us to see human roles and personalities based on social factors instead of nature.

Difference between Sex and Gender

Gender Studies

• Gender studies investigates the biological differences between men and women but focuses on these differences in a socio-cultural context.
• Gender studies is an interdisciplinary field. It draws upon academic areas such as:
• History
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Anthropology
• A woman is not only a woman but she also has a certain place in our society and gender studies tries to understand this place.

Women Studies

• Women studies is an academic field devoted to topics concerning women.
• Feminist theory
• Women’s history
• Women’s health
• Women’s fiction
• Focuses on women and their struggles and achievements.
• It started as a discipline during the second wave of feminism.

Difference between Gender and Women Studies

Gender Studies - Development

• Short history – emergence in 1960s after the second wave of feminism started.
• During the 1970s, differences and inequality between men and women came to the attention of sociologists (especially women sociologists).
• Initially, the studies focused on ‘filling in the gaps’ in knowledge about women but later shifted to significant aspects such as women roles in a society and the issues they faced.

Gender Studies – Multi-disciplinary Nature

• In 1991, the National Women’s Studies Association announced that women’s studies and women’s studies programs are fundamentally interdisciplinary.
• Gender studies explores women’s past and present contributions to societies as persons, creators and thinkers.
• It also explores the cultural, racial and economic diversity of women’s experiences.
• Gender studies draws upon methods from a wide range of disciplines including:
• Anthropology
• Literature and Arts
• Biology
• Economics
• History
• Political science
• Psychology
• Religion
• Sociology

Gender Studies – Multi-disciplinary Nature

• The goal is to study gender from a feminist perspective and recognizing women’s experiences and ambitions.
• It also explores the ways that femininity and masculinity affect an individual’s thought process.
• It analyzes how gender plays out in politics, intimate life, culture, technology, health, science, etc.
• The increasing global concern about equal rights of sexes, their obligations and their opportunities has brought attention to gender studies.
• It also provides critical thinking skills.

Gender Studies – Multi-disciplinary in Nature

• History has overlooked women contributions due to wars, conquests and display of brutality. Gender studies tries to highlight women’s role in history like in industry, agriculture and creativity.
• A separate gender studies discipline that is linked with other disciplines will help highlight issues of women and also not deprioritize them.

Autonomy vs. Integration Debate

• A debate in the US states whether to make an autonomous department in universities for Gender/Women studies or to incorporate it as a subfield into traditional disciplines.
• During the late 1900s, women studies came out as a discipline and it was taught in two ways:
• Teaching in Women Studies Centre
• Teaching within many disciplines.
• This launched a debate whether the institution of women studies should be integrated or autonomous.

Autonomy vs. Integration Debate

• Autonomy arguments:
• Identity to the institution of women studies
• Separate decision-making body
• Separate budget and resources for teaching
• Separatists believe that women studies is an entity in itself and should be studied as a unit rather than it being scattered across different disciplines.
• Integration arguments:
• Autonomy would reduce impact of women studies
• Gender blindness will remain in other disciplines regardless
• Lead to ‘academic ghettoization’
• In the end, Jean Fox O’ Barr concluded that it is both a discipline and interdisciplinary field.

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Status of Gender Studies in Pakistan

• History of women activism goes back quite a long time to the 18^th century when women expressed themselves through oral traditions of storytelling, singing, etc.
• The major turning point for current struggles was the era of Zia-ul-Haq and the Hadood Ordinance which were a series of discriminatory laws that affected women:
• Zina Ordinance
• The Law of Evidence 1984
• Qisas and Diyat Ordinance
• Hadood Ordinance alienated large sections of society and only pleased one particular section.

Status of Gender Studies in Pakistan

• Impacts of Hudood Ordinance:
• Women beaten, sold, murdered in the name of Karo Kari, Swarah and Vani.
• Poor rural women in jails
• The government created the Ministry of Women’s Development (MoWD) and its main purpose was ‘mainstreaming gender issues through integration into all sectors of national development’.
• In 1998, Nawaz Sharif endorsed the National Plan of Action (NPA) prepared by MoWD which focused on:
• Law
• Human rights
• The media
• The girl child
• Education
• Domestic violence against women

Status of Gender Studies in Pakistan

• Education:
• Institute of Women Development Studies (1994)
• Gender/Women Studies Department of Allama Iqbal Open University (1997)
• Women Study programmes in Karachi University
• Gender/Women Studies Centre, University of Balochistan (defunct)
• MA programme at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad ( made but not started yet)
• NGOS:
• Pakistan Gender/Women Studies Association (PWSA)