Part A
Gender is a concept that is strongly emphasized in a majority of the stories, which are presented in the text, Separate Journeys by Geeta Dharmarajan. A very explicit story about gender roles and performance is presented in “Izzat” by Ashapurna Devi. Basanti’s daughter, Joyi is brought to Basanti’s former employer, Sumitra, in hopes of finding a safe place for Joyi to grow into her adulthood. We see gender performance both in the environment where Joyi lives, as well as in the way in which her physical appearance is emphasized by those around her. The reason that Basanti had to bring Joyi somewhere to protect her Izzat, or honor, is because there are males where Joyi lives that are intensely harassing her, almost to the point of there being an attempted assault.
Instead of this dangerous situation being addressed by law enforcement, the young girl who was a victim had practically no option other than to leave her home. A primary reason why Sumitra considers taking Joyi into her home is also because of her beauty. The physical appearance of Joyi is something that is referenced multiple times throughout this story, in a way that makes it seem as if her physical appearance is more valuable than Joyi as an individual. An example of this is on page fifty,
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The colony that is mentioned in this part of the text is overseen by Rambhau, who dictates who is ultimately allowed to come in and out of the colony. When the older woman who is looking for her child declares that the child was stolen by the colony, Rambhau explains that rather than stealing children, they pay “handsomely” to have them live in their colony (Dharmarajan, 2004, p. 75). Even though Rambhau repeats how her daughter surely is not there, a few of the Hijras must empathize with the older woman, as they help in searching to see if the daughter is at the
In today’s society, it can be argued that the choice of being male or female is up to others more than you. A child’s appearance, beliefs and emotions are controlled until they have completely understood what they were “born to be.” In the article Learning to Be Gendered, Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell- Ginet speaks out on how we are influenced to differentiate ourselves through gender. It starts with our parents, creating our appearances, names and behaviors and distinguishing them into a male or female thing. Eventually, we grow to continue this action on our own by watching our peers. From personal experience, a child cannot freely choose the gender that suits them best unless our society approves.
The Kaleidoscope of Gender: Prisms, Patterns, and Possibilities written by Joan Z. Spade and Catherine G. Valentine is a book about the sociology of gender and the construct thereof. The writers use a metaphor of a kaleidoscope to illustrate their interpretations of the topic. A kaleidoscope is a toy consisting of a tube containing mirrors and pieces of colored glass or paper, whose reflections produce changing patterns that are visible through an eyehole when the tube is rotated. Utilizing the similitude of the kaleidoscope, this collection presents gender as a result of always transforming patterns get under way by prisms that underlie change, both straightforward and complex, bringing about an extensive variety of possibilities. The book
Gender Matters is a collection of various essays on feminist linguistic texts analysis, by Sara Mills. Mills develops methods of analyzing literary and non-literary texts, in addition to conversational analysis based on a feminist approach. The author draws on data from her collection of essays gathered over the last two decades on feminism during the 1990s. The essays focus on gender issues, the representation of gender in reading, writing, and in public speaking. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of feminists’ analysis of sexism in literature and the relation between gender and politeness. The article is informative for my research paper, as my topic is going to cover language analysis of the text and who women reading and writing differs according to the discourse analysis within linguistic, psychology, case studies audiences and surveys. The book would be helpful, particularly the last three essays that discusses gender, public speaking, the question of politeness and impoliteness in public speaking. Mills’ analysis is not complete without including the idea of global notions of both women and men, to see whether women and men write and read in the same way globally. Therefore, an update would enrich the book’s discussion section. Although, Mills addresses the class and race theme in language and public speaking, I will only look into the role of language that plays a part in doing or reducing gender in literary, non-literary texts and in conversation.
Where does a boy learn to be a man and a girl learn to be a woman? If is impossible for one to pinpoint the exact moment in time where they learned what it means to be a boy or a girl. The reason? Gender roles are a result of constant exposure to gender socialization. From birth forward, we become susceptible to society’s opinion on what a male or female should consist of. The way we dress, the way we act, the choices we make, and the way we interact with others can all be linked in some way back to the gender roles present in our lives. While that may not seem like such a bad thing, gender roles can prove to be quite detrimental to the growth and development of a child. This is because gender roles provide stringent guidelines that one feels compelled to adhere to, leaving little choice and autonomy for a child growing up in our society.
If I was holding a family meeting on women’s issues I would have those who attend read “The Social Construction of Gender” by Judith Lorber (1994). I selected this reading because I feel gender is one of the most important topics that should be discussed when talking about women’s issues, especially in a room with both men and women. My goal would be to get my family members not only to understand, but also see how gender is continuously created by society every day.
Gender theorists and researchers analyze gender partly to understand the perpetuation of inequality and propose changes to diminish inequality. A central question researchers explore is whether challenges to gender inequality need to occur at the interactional or institutional level. The status characteristic and doing gender approach investigates power, agency and change within social interactions. Gendered organizational theories examine power, agency and structure within institutions. Each approach shifted research and theory on gender in interactions and institutions, and challenged the notion that gender is static. The two approaches scrutinize the social construction of gender, biological determinism created
The young girl in the story is struggling with finding her own gender identity. She would much rather work alongside her father, who was “tirelessly inventive” (Munro 328), than stay and work with her mother in the kitchen, depicted through, “As soon as I was done I ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my mother thought of what to do next” (329). The girl is torn between what her duties are suppose to be as a woman, and what she would rather be doing, which is work with her father. She sees her father’s work as important and worthwhile, while she sees her mother’s work as tedious and not meaningful. Although she knows her duties as a woman and what her mother expects of her, she would like to break the mould and become more like her father. It is evident that she likes to please her father in the work she does for him when her father says to the feed salesman, “Like to have you meet my new hired man.” I turned away and raked furiously, red in the face with pleasure (328-329). Even though the young girl is fixed on what she wants, she has influences from both genders i...
In “Boys and Girls”, the protagonist, a young girl, is caught between her desire to live in a male-oriented world and her mother’s protests to play her part as a female in the family. The girl resists female chores such as cleaning and preparing meals. Finding them “endless” and “depressing”, favoring work done “out of doors” with her father, “ritualistically important”. However, her effort to neglect this gender role does not go without struggle. She listens relentlessly to her mother, claiming “it’s not like I had a girl in the family at all.” The word “girl” becomes a burdening reminder of not who she is, but what the girl is expected and pressured “to become”. With her grandmother’s reminde...
Jon Krakauer’s depiction of masculinity in his novel Into the Wild contributed to the constant gender socialization happening to young men and women across the world. Boys are supposed to go out and explore and then get a job to provide for their families. Girls are supposed to stay at home and obey their parents until they are married then they must obey their husbands. Chis McCandless was a young man who was greatly affected by gender socialization and if he were a woman, Krakauer’s book would not exist for us to study its gender socialized aspects.
Women and gender studies contribute greatly to our understanding of the social and cultural world we inhabit. Studying the complex issues of this field has instituted many key insights. Two major insights that positively affected our society are the awareness through learning and through this awareness activism that can ensue.
Many people have considered gender to be a natural part of our lives, having its own roles and norms that are followed by the people within the categories of gender, male and female. However, these norms receive different views once put in action. In this report, I aimed to answer the question: in a male dominated society, how do female gender norms influence the way one perceives them self as well as they way others perceive them? The patterns, answering my question, which will guide my paper, resulting from the Hindi movie Kahaani, were that whenever a female was displaying feminine norms, she was given negative views by those of the male gender however those feminine roles show her positivity, allowing her to see that strength lies within those roles as well. Kahaani, based in a male dominated country India, is about a pregnant woman, who is actually a spy, in search of her “missing” husband but later finds out he resembles a terrorist. Due to the fact that she is pregnant, she was not viewed as harmful and thus was used and discriminated by the male police officers in order to lead them to the terrorist however she used her gender to her own benefit. In the following research report, I will outline the relations between the norms for a female and how they are perceived by others as well as the one characterizes by the gender, which is the pregnant woman. This will focus on the operationalization of the variables of gender roles, perceptions relating to actions, words and treatments the character receives. From these, I will explain the methods I used in order to obtain the patterns which answered my question after analyzing the movie.
The characters in this story, with the exception of the main character, all follow their gender norm and develop as usual, the main character’s views however, shift and mold to the situation she’s in. The narrator’s grandmother tells her that “’Girls [do not] slam doors […].’ ‘Girls keep their knees together when they sit down.’ And worse still, when [she asks] some questions ‘[That is] none of girls’ business’” (Munro 4-5). The main character still slams the doors and sits with her legs open “thinking that by such measures [she keeps herself] free” (Munro 5). By doing this she is moving away from what her grandmother does and taught her mother to do. She makes her own decision to keep doing what makes her comfortable instead of learning and developing her attitude to meet the female standards her grandmother set for her. Furthermore, the narrator is helping her father outside when a salesman comes into the pens, her father introduces her as her helper and the salesman replies, “’ [could have] fooled me.’ […] ‘I thought it was only a girl.’” (Munro 4). The narrator continues with her work, though she was met with a distraction she would not let it conform her to how a stereotypical girl would have to act. She still prefers and wants to continue learning and helping her dad outside on the farm rather than helping her mom in the house. In
In this chapter Mahasweta Devi’s anthology of short stories entitled Breast Stories to analyze representations of violence and oppression against women in name of gender. In her Breast Stories, Devi twice evokes female characters from ancient Hindu mythology, envisions them as subalterns in the imagined historical context and, creates a link with the female protagonists of her short stories. As the title suggests, Breast Stories is a trilogy of short stories; it has been translated and analyzed by Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak and, in Spivak’s view, the ‘breast’ of a woman in these stories becomes the instrument of a brutal condemnation of patriarchy. Indeed, breast can be construed as the motif for violence in the three short stories “Draupadi,” “Breast-Giver,” and “Behind the Bodice,”
Right from the ancient epics and legends to modern fiction, the most characteristic and powerful form of literary expression in modern time, literary endeavour has been to portray this relationship along with its concomitants. Twentieth century novelists treat this subject in a different manner from those of earlier writers. They portray the relationship between man and woman as it is, whereas earlier writers concentrated on as it should be. Now-a-days this theme is developing more important due to rapid industrialization and growing awareness among women of their rights to individuality, empowerment, employment and marriage by choice etc. The contemporary Indian novelists in English like Anita Desai, Sashi Deshpande, Sashi Tharoor, Salman Rusdie, Shobha De, Manju Kapoor, Amitav Ghosh etc. deal with this theme minutely in Indian social milieu.
Articulate what you have learned this semester about dispelling the myth of "Man the Hunter and Woman the Gatherer", which flourished under the patriarchal influence in archaeology of the early to mid twentieth century. Give a few examples of ways that women contributed in prehistoric societies or contribute in modern tribal societies which were largely overlooked by archaeologists in the past.