F1507 Gender Studies (Cultures of the World core)

(which I am ready to review as per your observations)

1- Introduction
a) Program presentation
b) Theoretical Introduction: what is Gender?
•    GOFFMAN (Erving), “The Arrangement between the Sexes”, Theory and Society, Vol. 4, No. 3, Autumn, 1977, pp. 301-331.
•    DELPHY (Christine), “The Main Enemy”, Feminist Issues, summer 1980, pp. 23-40.

2- Gender and Citizenship
a) The sexual contract: the primordial political exclusion of women..
•    Pateman (Carol) The Sexual Contract, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988 (extract).
b) Does citizenship have a sex?
•    Young (Iris Marion) Inclusion and Democracy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 (extract).

3- Gender and the vote
a) Gaining women's right to vote, a long battle.
Historical perspective with a focus on the countries represented in the class.
Exercise: When did women gain the right to vote in your country? Under what circumstances? Following what sort of campaigns?
b) Voting: a gendered act?
Do men and women vote in the same way? How can we explain the differences (when they exist) when it comes to participation or preferences (e.g. right or left)?
•    HILL (Lisa) "Women's interests and political orientations. The gender voting gap in three industrialized settings" in The Politics of Women's Interests, edited by Louise Chappell and Lisa Hill, New York; Routledge, 2006, p.66-92.

4- Gender and Political Representation -1
a) Political representation theories and gender: does the sex of the representative matter?
•    PHILLIPS (Anne) "Democracy and Representation: Or, Why Should it Matter Who our Representatives Are?", in Feminism and Politics, edited by Anne Phillips, Oxford: Oxford University Press,  1998, p.224-240.
Or
•    MANSBRIDGE (Jane) "Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women? A Contingent 'Yes'", The Journal of Politics, 61(3), 1999, p.628-657
b) World tour of the underrepresentation of women in political elected assemblies (with a focus on the countries represented in the class).
Exercise: assemble data about the sexual composition of the Parliament and/or the Government of your country. Are these numbers controversial? Why?

5- Gender and Political Representation -2
a) Do gender quotas bring equality?
•    KROOK (Mona Lena), LOVENDUSKI (Joni), SQUIRES (Judith), "Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. Gender Quotas in the context of citizenship models", in Women, Quotas and Politics, edited by Drude Dahlerup, New York; Routledge, 2006, p.194-221.
b) Gender and political professionalization
Can a woman be a politician like any other (man)? What stereotypes do men and women have to face in their political careers? Which forms of “masculinity” and “femininity” are allowed and which are not?
Exercise: choose a photo of an important politician from your country (man or woman) that highlights the type of “masculinity” or “femininity” that he-she wants to present. E.g. Vladimir Putin in his hunting gear, Silvio Berlusconi and his very young fiancée, Angela Merkel in a grey suit…). Try to analyse the photo.

6- Gender and activism-1
a) How gender shapes political mobilizations (every political mobilization)
•    MC ADAM (Doug), "Gender As a Mediator of the Activist Experience: The Case of Freedom Summer," American Journal of Sociology, n.97, 1992, pp. 1211-40.
b) Not only gender matters: introducing intersectionality
•    CRENSHAW (Kimberle), « Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color », Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43, No. 6, 1991, pp. 1241-1299.

7- Gender and activism-2: feminine and feminist mobilizations
a) Feminine mobilization: as conservative at it seems? The case of the Temperance Movement (USA).
•    GIELE (Janet), Two paths to women's equality‬: temperance, suffrage, and the origins of modern feminism,‬ New York: Twayne Publisher, 1995 (extract).‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬
b) Feminists Movements
•    WHITTIER (Nancy), Feminist Generations: the Persistence of the Radical Women's Movement, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995 (extract).

8- Gender and activism-3 : mobilization campaigns

a) The Private is political
•    Landes (Joan B.) (ed.), Feminism, the Public and the Private, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998 (extract).
b) LGTBQI Movements
•    TREMBLAY (Manon), PATERNOTTE (David), JOHNSON (Carol) (eds.), The Lesbian and Gay Movement and The State. Comparative Insights into a Transformed Relationship, Burlington, Ashgate, 2011 (extract).
Exercise: what’s about the LGTBQI movements in your country? Which agenda do they have? Exercise: what about the LGTBQI movements in your country? What is their agenda? (decriminalization against homosexuality, same-sex marriage, access to adoption or procreation techniques). Is there a public debate on these subjects? What kind of political actors mobilize themselves in favour or against LGTBQI rights?

9- Abortion, a contentious issue
We will read some theoretical texts to introduce the abortion debate.
•    Boltanski Luc, The Foetal Condition: A Sociology of Engendering and Abortion, Wily, 2013.
Boltanski shows that societies have always practised abortion, and that the silences, prohibitions or tacit acceptation of abortion touch on the troubling question of how societies define a "human being".
•    MacKinnon Catharine A., Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, Cambridge-London, Harvard University Press, 1991 (chapter 10 « Abortion: On Public and Private », pp. 184-194).
A feminist perspective on the abortion issue. Chapter 10 scrutinizes existing abortion concepts and laws in the light of an analysis of sexuality and the private as a realm of sex inequality. The argument that legal abortion is a sex equality right awaits affirmative development

10- Abortion, different meanings in different settings
We will spend some time in investigating the social, moral and political meaning of abortion in different contexts. It is clearly not the same to talk about abortion in Western Europe or USA, where it is a right that women have gained, or in China where forced abortions existed until recently. Examples of articles and books we might use:
•    Jacqueline Heinen, « Onslaughts on the Right to Choose. A Transcontinental Panorama » AG About Gender. Rivista Internazionale di studi di genere. Vol 3, N° 5 (2014), Special Issue « Il corpo delle donne, l’aborto, i diritti riproduttivi. Bilanci e prospettive ».
•    Dorothy Stetson Mc Bride (dir.), Abortion politics, women's movements and the democratic state. A comparative study of state feminism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001 (with cases studies on Canada, Great-Britain, Germany, Italy, the US…).
•    Parliamentary Affairs, n. 2, 1994 (with case studies from the UK, EU Institutions, Germany, Italy, Canada, the US).
•    Hansel Mary, « China’s one-child policy’s Effects on Women and the Paradox of Persecution and Trafficking Note », Women’s Studies, n.369, 2001-2002.
Exercise: find out data about abortion in your country. Is it legal? Since when? As a consequence of what kind of campaign? Is there a pro-life movement?

11- Abortion as an issue of mobilization
Finally, we will undertake the understanding of abortion as a subject of mobilization.
a) The fight for the right to choose
•    Staggenborg Suzanne, The Pro-Choice movement. Organization and activism in the abortion conflict, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991 (extract).
b) Pro-life movements
•    Munson W. Ziad, The Making of Pro-Life Activists, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2008. Chapter 3 « The mobilization Process », p.46-76.
Or
•    Ginsburg D. Faye, Contested Lives. The Abortion Debate in an American Community, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989.  Chapter 3 « The Pro-Life Narratives » p.172 -176 et p.186-193.

12- Focus on the Italian case
a) Gendered and sexual mobilization campaigns in contemporary Italy.
•    Passerini, Luisa, « The Interpretations of Democracy in the Italian Women’s Movement of the 1970s and 1980s », Women's Studies International Forum, n.2, 1994, pp.235-39.
Or
•    Mattalucci Claudia, « Pro-Life Activism, Abortion and Subjectivity Before Birth: Discursive Practices and Anthropological Perspectives », in Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 3(10), 2012, pp. 109-118 (about Italy).
Or
•    Massimo Prearo, « Italian LGTB Activism Confronts Some Political Inopportunity Structures », CriticCom, 8 May 2014. http://councilforeuropeanstudies.org/critcom/italian-lgbt-activism-confronts-some-political-inopportunity-structures/

b) Work in Progress (in which I help the students prepare their final essay):
Bring the notes you took during our field trip (participation in a gendered mobilization). What did you observe? How would you describe it? How can you link your observations with the scientific literature on the subject?

Evaluation will be based on:
•    Class participation (20%), that means not only being there (I will record attendance, class absences will affect your grade), but also being an active participant (you have to read the essays and be able to discuss them in class).
•    Class exercises (20%) that you have to prepare for lessons, 3, 4, 5, 8 and 10.
•    Two reports on our sessions (20%), to summarize the content of the texts we have studied, as well as the discussions and exchanges resulting from them during our work in the classroom. These reports will be available to other students via a common platform or drop-box.
•    Final essay regarding the participatory observation exercise conducted during the fieldtrip (40%).

I will send out PDFs of the readings as the class progresses. These are book chapters, or scholarly articles. Readings must be done on time.
See: Syllabus