Women's Studies

Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and of Ethnic Studies at Berkeley, University of California serves as Founding Director of the University’s Center for Race and Gender (Glenn 2). It is a leading American center in the study of intersectionality amongst genders, class social groups, institutions and race. Her scholarly work includes focus on the dynamics of gender, race and the prevailing processes of inequality and exclusion in class structures in the social setting. Her earlier work included the documentation of neglected women employed in the domestic services sector, due to their skin color (race) and that of women holding clerical posts. This led her into historical research on the issue of gender structure and race in the structural makeup of the local labor markets and hitherto consequences of the American labor market on the positions of the workers. This included the forms of resistance/ self-preservation available to them. She has also engaged in the comparative analysis of gender and race in the construction of citizenship and labor across the United States of America.

Her upbringing greatly influenced her critical thinking and perspective of the world, due to her racial background and the situation of the time. In the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor tragedy, her parents were among thousands of other Japanese Americans imprisoned in American internment camps. The war pitted the Axis powers against the Allied forces, with the latter eventually emerging the victors. This shaped the political and philosophical thoughts of the time with Liberalism emerging as the dominant theory of the time. Others that were to subsequently emerge were in one way or the other linked to this thought with some aspec...

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... same character traits. Proper and sequential legislation addressing these issues should be passed based on them either as a grouping or in their individual aspects. This is to ensure better understanding, appreciation and acknowledgement of every human being that composes the global community.

In conclusion, Evelyn Nakano Glenn’s scholarly work includes focus on the dynamics of gender, race and the prevailing processes of inequality and exclusion in class structures in the social setting. She considers Liberalism, as a political thought, entails the plurality of actors in the international political arena and Republicanism as an Ideology that is embraced by the citizenry of a republic. This has been exemplified by the widely held ideal of the American “worker citizen” as being the twin attributes of ‘whiteness/ blackness and ‘masculinity/feminism.