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"Using the work of two or more authors discuss how the theorizing of gender has change over time. " The twentieth century has been marked by many breakthroughs in the theories of psychology, philosophy, and inter-human relations. In my point of view the theorizing of gender has gone through the biggest evolution of all other. In a relatively short period of time, less than one hundred years, women, who originally had very limited rights, became equitable to men in their abilities to freely express their thoughts and feelings. The era of emancipation has begun. Out of these changes in our society many womens movements have aroused. One of the most famous of them is feminism.
We will examine several books, which deal with the theories of gender differences, and the approaches that are undertaken when categorizing male and female gender relations. One of the most quoted and referenced to books is Ann Oakley's The Sociology of Housework. In this book written in 1974 the author questions the issue of housework, and whether it is solely the responsibility of a woman and must be treated as unconditional chore, or it is the same type of work as any other, and must be treated with the same level of respect. able pints ut that: Husewrk des nt consist f a set range f tasks. Husewrk has historically been defined as 'when's wrk' - ther's may assist her r help ut, but it remains 'her wrk'. Husewrk has become fused with the identities f wife and mother and is seen as lw status and socially devalued wrk.
Ann able rejected silly's failure t recognize that the domestic r private sphere is als an important site in which social relations are produced and contested. The domestic realm is constructed as the site f leisure, hence activities that take place in the hme, including housework are free seen as frm f leisure. able's examination f unpaid wrk in the hme indicates that there are multiple and conflicting meanings given t housework. Husewrk is by and large when's wrk it is tedious, repetitive wrk that is relatively unskilled and un stimulating.
More to it, later on in her work, the author opens our eyes to the fact that the household work is separated between masculine and feminine chores. What is interesting is that females are doing more unskilled work, which would, in case if the work was to be paid for, be paid for much less than the work that is performed by males. Consider this, traditionally when have assumed responsibility fr in tasks like cking, cleaning, ding the laundry, grocery shipping and child care, while men have been assigned user tasks, like gardening and huse-maintenance, and sometimes car maintenance as well. If to think about it, what kind of work would you personally pay fr mre? As a consequence f these associations tasks like cleaning are feminist tasks, while tasks like fixing the dr handle are masculinised tasks. These gendered distinctions are nt neutral.
Masculinised tasks and activities are defined as f mre value that feminist tasks. Ding household task can be used therefore t affirm and content understandings abut ur selves as gendered individuals - t affirm gender difference r t content gendered nrm's. The date of the books first issue approximately coincides with the beginning of the new thinking of people. The sociologists have conducted an interesting research, here what they found out.
American men are doing about 16 hours of housework a week, up from 12 hours in 1965, according to a study by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR), Ann Arbor. The weekly housework hours of American women have declined sharply since 1965. Yet, they are still doing much more housework than men -- about 27 hours a week. The findings are part f a study f time-use trends in the U.
S. and ther industrialized nations. Researchers analyzed data frm time-diaries, considered the mst-accurate way t assess hw people spend their time, supplementing the analysis with data frm questionnaires asking men and when t recall hw much time they spent n housework in an average week, including cking, cleaning, and ding ther care and the huse. While the number f hur's men reported spending n such wrk rse steadily frm 1965 t 1985, the increase subsequently stalled.
This lack f recent growth in housework hur's and men may reflect the strong last market during the 1990 s. 'Vanishing housework's eem's t be a result f the gd jb market fr when as wall as men. But there's sme read t believe these lw levels f housework will persist even in that's weaker jb market, since ur research shw's that mst people rate rating housework as the least-enable use f their time. Despite the popular perception that Americans are working longer than ever, the time-diary data dearly shw that that wrk hur's - defined as last market wrk plus housework -- decreased substantially frm 1965 t 1985 fr bth males and females. Frm 1989 t 1999, the questionnaire recall data indicate that paid wrk in the last market increased by 10 % fr men and 17 % fr when, reflecting the decade's strong jb market and the increasing last market participation f females. As a result, that wrk time fr men increased by eight percent ver that decade, but, given the drp in housework time fr when, their that wrk time rse by a mere tw percent.
Another interesting book related to our subject is written by Linda Nicholson and is called Feminism/Postmodernism. This work is a bit modern but still with a possession of interesting ideas and approaches to the issue of gender. Here the author discusses the development f new paradigms f social criticism which dnt rely n traditional philosophical models. She claims that feminists have fr the mst part been interested in social criticism.
Feminists have me frm political t philosophical claims, while postmodernists have me frm the philosophical t the political. Nichlsn would like t find sme can grund between the tw movements, r ways f thinking. The aim is t give substance and politics back t postmodern thinking and practice and at the same time t draw sme less frm the debates in postmodernism in re t apply them t feminist thought. Pstmdern thinking can be summarized because in part the aim f postmodernism is t resist the idea f the summary, t resist the non that there is a foundation upn which ideas and actins are built and sustained. The "modern conception must give way t a new postmodern ne in which criticism changes; it becomes mre pragmatic, ad hc contextual and local. With this change cme's a corresponding change in the social rle and political function f intellectuals. " (Nichlsn, 21) Nichlsn als claims that this new postmodernism pragmatism free sacrificed political actin and responsibility fr eclecticism and an inward line approach t social criticism.
She turns her attention t the wrk f Jean-Francis Lytard wh asserted in his bk The Pstmdern Condition that the meta narratives which governed social analysis were nw longer useful. Fr example, the idea f class conflict as developed by Karl Marx explicitly assumed that the free f conflict would eventually lead t revolution. The question is whether these narratives still function within the present content? And if they dn't, what are the implications f their absence? Hw d we legitimate ne narrative ver anther? Hw d first re narratives influence send re narratives?
There is a lss f privilege fr philosophical discuss which at ne time claimed that they were nt nly true but were the basis fr all ther discuss. This press verthrws singularity in four f multiplicity. "We can have and d nt need a single, ver arching the f justice. What is required, rather, is a justice f multiplicities. " (Nichlsn, 23) Nichlsn answer this assertion with; "There is n place in Lytard's universe fr critique f pervasive axes f stratification, fr critique f brad-based relations f dominance and subordination and lines f gender, race and class. " (Nichlsn, 23) Nichlsn describes the me by feminists in the early 1980 's t "abandon" grand there t explain the condition f when. Instead they meeting the fcu's n the local, n recovering the rle f when in history, as writers fr example and as crucial players in historical events. There has been criticism f the hetersexist bias f mainstream feminist the and s n. She concludes by line forward, by asserting that all meta narratives can be abandoned and at the same time, "postmodern-feminist the would be nn universalist.
When its fcu's became cross-cultural r transeptal, its mde f attention would be cmparativist rather than universalizing, attuned t changes and contracts instead f t covering laws. " (Nichlsn, 35) Finally, gender would be "ne relevant strand and ther's, attending als t class, race, ethnicity, age, and sexual rientatin. " (Nichlsn, 35) Concerning our subject and taking into account the aforementioned resources we can see that the reasoning about gender has changed very much in the past several decades. Only recently men as equals accepted women. Nowadays we are not surprised anymore by the presence of women in the government or high authorities. Following the example of Margaret Teacher, the first female prime-minister of Great Britain, many women now hold high authority chairs, even presidential. The new approach of women to their role in our society is now becoming more interesting. Today a large numbers of American women who support "the goals of feminism" and have played a key role in many successes of the women's movement do not identify with the term feminist.
Compounding the separation of these de facto feminists from the feminist vanguard is the fact that scholars, too, generally leave them out of the classical feminist category. The new ideological classifications such as liberal feminism, radical feminism, socialist feminism, and, most recently, cultural, maternal, and some postmodern feminism appear. Todays focus on the way women's everyday life unfolds within the political, economic, and sociological structures shape their common existence. This allows us to construct feminist identity shifting attention from women's ideology to their ontology (i. e.
origin). Central to this new construction of feminist identity is the claim that it involves an ontological change: Individual women recognize their situation in the society and decide to act in terms of their own self-interest. The new feminists transform themselves and their circumstances through praxis, through the specific economic protest activities that have been important to the women's movement. By highlighting new feminists' economic protests, the lens of praxis reveals what had been disguised by political science's separation of economics from politics and consequent emphasis on the ideology and rhetoric of leaders of the women's movement rather than the activities of participants. Ideological divisions fade in importance, and we can see the basic commonality of women's political struggles. As we finally conclude it becomes very obvious that the gender theories change rapidly.
As the result of these changes the new movements and streams in the societies start to form. Archaeologists know that some time ago women ruled the world. Who knows, maybe soon we will all experience the matriarchy. Bibliography Nicholson, Linda J. Feminism/Postmodernism, Routledge. 1989. Oakley, Anne.
The Sociology of Housework, The Pitman Press: Bath. 1974.
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Research essay sample on Social Criticism Fr Example
