WE ARE NOT OUR BODY PARTS A Pamphlet on Gender Politics
GENDER ≠SEX What are the difference between sex and gender? The words sex and gender are commonly used in place of eachother, but many linguists would argue that their usage should be quite distinct. Sex refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that one is born with. Geender on the other hand refers to behaviors, roles, and expectations that are placed upong one by society.
Sex refers to male or female, while gender refers to masculine or feminine. The differenent sexes do not vary around the world, but the idea of gender does.
Example Characterists of SEX Females have a vagina.
Males tend to have deeper voices than females do.
Males have a penis.
Females can get pregnant.
Male newborns tend to weigh more than female newborns.
Males have testicles.
Females can breastfeed their babies, while men cannot.
Females have ovaries
Example Characterists of Gender Women are expected to do more house work than their spouse. Nursing is often seen as a woman’s job, while men are expected to become doctors.
In some countries women have to cover their heads when they go outside the house 120 years ago women were not allowed to vote in elections.
Article Courtesy of: http:// www.medicalnewstoday. com/articles/232363.php
BOYS WILL BE BOYS Aggressive Independent Not easily influenced Dominant Active Worldy Not easily hury emotionally Decisive Not talkative Tough
Less eensitive to Other’s feelings Rarley cries Logical Analytical Cruel Blunt Not nurturing
SWEET LITTLE GIRL How to act like a lady: Not aggressive Dependent Easily influenced Submissive Passive Home-oriented Easily hurt emotionally Indecisive Talkative Gentle
Sentive to others feelings Cries a lot Emotional Verbal Kind Tactful Nurting
MORE PAY Women Make Up a Majority of the U.S Populartion Women are 50.8 Percent of the United States population. They earn almost 60 percent of undergraduate degress, and 60 percent of all master’s degrees. They earn 47 percent of all law degrees, and 48 percent of all medical degrees.
They earn more than 44 percent of master’s degrees in business and management , inluding 37 percent of MBA’s. They are 47 percent of the United States labor force, and are 59 percent of the colleg educated, entry level workforce.
And Yet: They are only 14.6 percent of executive officers, 8.1 percent of top earners, and 4.6 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. They hold just 16.9 percent of Fortune 500 board seats In the financial services industry, they make up 54.2 percent of the labor force, but are only 12.4 percent of excutive officers, and 18.3 percent of board directors. None are CEOs.
They account for 78.4 percent of the labor force in health care and social assistance but only 14.6 percent are executive officers and 12.4 precent of board directors. None, again, are CEOs. In the legal field, they are 45.4 percent of associates, but only 25 percent of nonequity partners and 15 percent of equity partners.
SAME WORK Futhermore: Although women control 80 percent of consumer spending in the United States, they are only 3 percent of creative directors in advertising. Women’s image onscreen is still created overwhelmingly by men. Women account for
just 16 percent of all the directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors who worked on the top-grossing 250 domestic films in 2013, and were just 28 percent of all offscreen talent on broadcast television.
A Stalled Revolution The last decareds of the 20th century brough considerable progress in womens professional advancement in the United Sates. The gender wage gap narrowed, sex segregation in most professions greatly declined, and the percentage of women climbing management ranks steadily rose. Although the
rapid rate of change of the 1970s and 1980s began to slow in the 1990s and 2000s, as the narrowing of the gender wage gap stalled and the percentage of women in management jobs stagnated, a notable increase in women’s represntation in very top positions did contine.
Article Courtesy of: https://www. americanprogress.org/issues/women/ report/2014/03/07/85457/fact-sheetthe-womens-leadership-gap/
ACT LIKE A BOY Grayson Bruce Outraged parents say their son’s elementary school told their 9-year-old to leave his “My Little Pony” backpack at home after the boy complained that he was bullied for bringing it to school. Noreen Bruce said she became alarmed earlier this month when her son, Grayson, refused to get out of the car to go to school. “Everybody hates me,” he said. “I don’t feel I belong here.” Shaken, she asked him why.
His classmates at Candler Elementary School in Candler, N.C., were bullying him because of the My Little Pony backpack he’d been using for about a week, he told her. Bruce complained to school officials, whose response, she said, was to forbid Grayson from bringing the backpack to school.
The Harm of Gender Roles on Children Zebra Shoes Pink zebra-patterned ballet flats, I should add — because the details matter — which a five-year-old boy named Sam reportedly fell in love with at the shoe store, and then wore to his first day of preschool several months ago. Last week, his sister posted a photo of Sam’s shoes on Facebook’s “Have a Gay Day” page, noting that when her mom had pasted his picture on her own Facebook page, a number of relatives had come forward to lovingly warn
that the shoes were “wrong,” would “affect him socially” and might “turn him gay.” This infectious concern then went viral, with mom-blogger Mary Fischer wondering if the mother in question, however well-meaning, was perhaps setting her son up for a lifetime-scarring dose of “insults and ridicule” that a more reasoned choice of footwear could have prevented.
Articles Courtesy of: http://www.today.com/ parents/bullied-boy-allegedly-banned-bringingmy-little-pony-backpack-school-2D79406114 and http://ideas.time.com/2012/12/14/the-lesson-ofthe-boy-in-the-pink-ballet-flats/
Breaking
them
What can you do? What determines your destiny? That’s a big question with what should be a complicated answer. But for many, the answer can be reduced to one word: anatomy. Freud’s assertion in 1924 that biology is the key determinant of gender identity, and was, for years, a hegemonic idea in both law and culture. Ever since Freud made this notion famous, critics have been objecting to body parts as central predictors of one’s professional and personal path. Many now believe that identity isn’t solely the domain of nature or nurture, but some combination of the two. Still, Freud’s theory isn’t yet dead; enduring gender norms show us that the bodies we’re born into still govern the lives of women and men across the world. But according to some recent research, its influence may be fading. In one new study, a majority of millennials surveyed argued that gender shouldn’t define us the way it has historically, and
individuals shouldn’t feel pressure to conform to traditional gender roles or behaviors. Enforcing norms can even have health risks, according to another study. Some women’s colleges are now reportedly rethinking their admissions policies to account for gender non-conforming students. And even President Obama is getting in on the norm-questioning trend: While sorting holiday gifts for kids at a Toys for Tots in December, the president decided to place sporting equipment in the box for girls. “I’m just trying to break down these gender stereotypes,” he said in a viral video. But will continuing to challenge gender norms and document their harmful impacts lead to their extinction? To answer that question, we need to first consider another: What’s so bad about traditional gender norms and the way we currently categorize men and women? For one thing, the way we categorize gender is far too facile, explained Alice Dreger, a leading historian of
DOWN science and medicine, in a 2010 TED Talk. “We now know that sex is complicated enough that we have to admit nature doesn’t draw the line for us between male and female… we actually draw that line on nature,” she told the audience. “What we have is a sort of situation where the farther our science goes, the more we have to admit to ourselves that these categories that we thought of as stable anatomical categories that mapped very simply to stable identity categories are a lot more fuzzy than we thought.” Fuzzy – and maybe not entirely real in the first place. “If there’s a leading edge that is the future of gender, it’s going to be one that understands that gender is relative to context,” said author and gender theorist Kate Bornstein at a recent New America event, noting that geography, religion, and family attitudes are all contextual factors that can alter one’s perception of gender as a determinant of identity. As
long as we hold onto the notion that gender is a constant, “we’ll keep doing things to keep the lie in place,” she said. But the fact is that “it doesn’t stand on its own, and is always relative to something.” Bornstein argues that the trick to stripping these norms of their harmful power is to mock and expose them for both their flimsiness and stringency. Some artists are addressing this problem already. Sophia Wallace, a photographer, attempts this with her work. Girls Will Be Bois, for example, is a documentary of female masculinity, featuring women who have traditionally “un-feminine” occupations – bus driver, boxer, basketball player – and a sartorial masculinity (baggy pants, and bare-chested). But it’s not as bad as it once was. Wallace thinks that photography is evolving – that some gender-focused imagery is less tinged with ignorance today. “There’s so much that I’ve seen that has been hopeful,” she said.
Articles Courtesy of: http://time. com/3672297/future-gender-norms/