Gender Issues Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Gender as a term has gained increasing usage in mainstream as well as academic discourse, often confused with sex and regularly thought to be a proxy for a focus on women. Sex, however, refers to biology and anatomy. Gender, by contrast, is a term explicitly meant to focus on both sexes and how they interact. Maleness and femaleness, in the sexual sense, are determined by biological and anatomical traits, including the presence of external and internal sex organs and secondary sexual development at puberty. Gender, on the other hand, refers to a set of qualities and behaviors expected from a female or male by society. Gender roles are nurtured or learned formally and informally, varying widely within and among cultures. The roles and expectations due to gender emerge in such areas as the economic, political, and sociocultural arenas. Lack of a gendered perspective on these issues thus misses truth.

Prevalent Discourse Disproportionately “Masculine”

The views and experiences that often find fullest expression in public and private discourse and action are male or fit culturally ascribed ideas of masculinity. Men have wielded public-sphere power, defined the agenda and content of national and global discourse, and created the world in which we live based on their own lived experiences. Thus, many of the policies and assumptions that guide our understanding of the lives of all human beings ignore the varied reality that women face. A focus on gender issues highlights the need to concentrate on women’s realities to truly understand political, economic, social, and cultural realities.

Understanding the truth behind such pressing issues across the globe as unequal economic opportunities, the persistence of poverty, differing political voices, or measures for dealing with the growing HIV/AIDS pandemic requires recognition of the divergent and complementary experiences faced by men and women. Furthermore, data show that not only is truth gendered, but women’s experiences are different from and disadvantaged in relation to those of men. The existence of gender differences in certain arenas often has adverse consequences on society’s social, political, physical, and economic well-being, as well as on women’s lives, families, socioeconomic status, and health. To combat this oppression of women, the areas in which their gender matters must be addressed.

Role Of Gender In Economic And Political Power

Examples of gendered issues abound, but there are certain areas that warrant particular mention. First, in the economic arena, including employment opportunities, labor requirements, and household provision, there is a root issue globally to which studies of gender turn: public versus private space. This dichotomy also affects a second area that requires gendered attention, and that is the political arena. Women’s economic and political power is circumscribed relative to that of men due to the continued effects of the dichotomy of public-private space, separating men’s productive and political/public arena activities from women’s reproductive and personal/household activities. Cultural expectations, including those espoused by religions, reinforce the idea of man as the public earner and politically appropriate leader and woman as the opposite—a supplementary earner and politically inappropriate leader.

The recognition of economic gender differences is traceable to Esther Boserup, a Danish female economist. In the 1960s, Boserup studied reasons for the failure of international development efforts to have the anticipated positive results in developing regions. She noticed that women were central to economic life, especially in the subsistence agricultural sector, and that male decision makers in international development had created and implemented programs aimed at increasing the productivity of the male worker. Thus, development activities further disrupted gendered divisions of labor to women’s detriment, as had colonialism and modernization policies.

Men were given access to money and resources to improve their cash-crop–focused economic activities. Women’s agricultural work lost land and productivity. Women’s work was, however, vital, because it included growing food to sell for supplementary income and for consumption. The nutrition and economic needs of women and communities were being undercut relative to the cash-crop farming of men. Women slipped further into poverty, and their workload within the home and in the labor economy increased.

Differences between men and women in the economic arena, with spillover effects in the domestic realm, continue today and exist in both developed and developing regions. Women continue to be undervalued and underpaid relative to men and bear the brunt of domestic work despite their employment status.

Role Of Gender In Direct And Structural Violence

Moreover, with an increasing prevalence and shifting nature of conflict around the world, it is imperative that the varied experiences of men and women in conflict situations receive attention. Women both participate in and bear the brunt of the effects of conflict. In the discipline of political science, conflict and security are viewed through the lens of direct violence, thereby overlooking the role of structural violence and insecurities generated by structural inequalities. Women have suffered under each of these types of violence. A gendered view of violence gives a more complete picture of the causes and consequences surrounding conflict and security by bringing the role of passive violence, which exists through structural violence, into the research and conversation. Women bear the brunt of the negative effects of conflict. Some factors of a gendered perspective include women’s role in the care for those who are wounded and for the communities that are left ravaged by warfare, and, increasingly, women as the victims of rape and other sexual violence by combatants. This leads to social exclusion, increased birthrates, and exposure to diseases such as HIV/AIDS.

It also accounts for the role that women play in all forms of conflict, not just as victims but as “warriors” in such struggles as those in colonial Africa against the imperial powers. A perspective on violence that accounts for gender differences, therefore, does not see women only as victims of conflict, and it also does not separate violence at the international, national, and family levels. Gender-sensitive viewpoints on conflict see these as interconnected realms within which violence must be addressed concurrently to move toward true security. In contrast, gender-blind or gender-oppressive worldviews perpetuate poverty and resource scarcity in ways that propagate conflict.

Gender In Health Care

Finally, the lack of women’s rights extends to health care issues. The HIV/AIDS crisis exemplifies gender differences in the health and health care arenas. Women bear the onus of care giving for sick family and community members in both developed and developing countries. This adds to women’s already heavy domestic and economic loads. Women in developing countries, where HIV/AIDS rates are highest, often have little control over sexual or procreation decisions (such as frequency of intercourse or use of condoms), leading to increased health risks for women. Women also risk contracting HIV/AIDS due to economic necessity if they choose or are forced into prostitution to make a living. There is a gendered difference in how health crises play out, and one must take this difference into consideration to truly understand the politics of health care.

Bibliography:

Beneria, Lourdes, and Gita Sen. “Accumulation, Reproduction, and Women’s Role in Economic Development: Boserup Revisited.” In Women’s Work: Development and the Division of Labor by Gender, edited by Eleanor Leacock and Helen I. Safa, 141–157. South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey, 1986.
Boserup, Ester. Woman’s Role in Economic Development. London: Allen and Unwin, 1970.
Boulding, Elise, and Heather Parker. “Women and Development.” In Introducing Global Issues, 3rd ed., edited by Michael T. Snarr and D. Neil Snarr, 179–194. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2005.
Jagger, Alison M. “Is Globalization Good for Women?” Comparative Literature 53, no. 4 (Autumn 2001): 298–314.
Moghadam,Valentine M. “Gender and Globalization: Female Labor and Women’s Mobilization.” Journal of World-Systems Research 5, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 367–388.
Peterson,V. Spike, and Anne Sisson Runyan. Global Gender Issues. 2nd ed. Boulder:Westview Press, 1999.
Thompson, Linda, and Alexis J.Walker. “Gender in Families: Women and Men in Marriage,Work, and Parenthood.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 51, no. 4 (November 1989): 845–871.

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