Minutes, Mon. January 27 (1/27)

WGSS 302

Rachel Bottoms

I. Business

II. Okin/Gendering Vulnerability

III.  Gender Justice? Okin & Blakely

IV.  Preview of Socialist Feminism

Readings - Susan Okin, chs. 7 & 8 from Justice, Gender, and the Family (1989); Mary Kay Blakely, "Calling All Working Fathers" (1993).

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I. Business—assigned artifact/scribe dates.  Note to Dr. Sparks: remember to give Elizabeth Mack her dates.

II. Okin—

Okin as liberal feminist—liberalism, etymology: freedom, liberty (from the French/Latin ‘liber’); concerned with liberties, freedoms, (individual) rights, (individual) choices, (political/social) equality; division of public/private spheres; emerges roughly with (early) capitalism & religious reformation.

DAVS / Okin:

Description: unjust families; women’s & children’s vulnerability in gender-structured marriages & families

Analysis: 1) assumption that families are just or ideal; 2) misunderstandings of how the personal is political; 3) vulnerability by marriage—a. before, b. during, c. after (e.g.—a. anticipation, social emphasis on marriage, career opportunities limited; b. paid vs. unpaid work & economic dependency of unpaid workers; c. post-divorce standard of living [up for men, down for women]); 4) workplace discrimination.

Vision: a future without gender (or, more aptly [?], a future in which gender is irrelevant – comparisons made by Okin to eye/hair color).  [Values: equality, choice—within a framework that protects the ‘vulnerable.’]

Strategies:  change laws & perceptions—1) facilitate equally shared parenting (e.g. subsidized childcare, flexible hours/work weeks, paid maternal/paternal leave); 2) minimize gender in education (e.g. 50/50 M/F teacher representation); 3) protect the vulnerable (e.g. establish paternity to ensure responsibility/child support from fathers—get those daddies on the grid!!; split paychecks/equal entitlement within each marriage to all incoming funds).

Evaluation/critiques: Middle/upper class focus; strategies don’t attack the “real”/root causes of marital inequality; role of religion?; how to conceptualize same-sex marriage?; many cultural assumptions—white/middle class/(hetero)normative concepts of marriage; essentialism (slippage between cultural/biological, gender/sexuality/sex, etc.); no critique of capitalism (!!!)—seeks only to work within a pre-existing capitalist model.

III./IV. – Upcoming Wed!