Gender and Politics

Specific Foundation / Core

The course aims to familiarize students with important theories regarding women’s emancipation and gender, as well as with the social and cultural processes of gender construction; help students acquire sufficient understanding of these theories; cultivate critical thinking toward these theories as well as the theories that contradict them; and explore the central role that gender plays in the ways people perceive, reproduce, legitimize, and challenge sociopolitical relations and hierarchical identity structures. Like all department courses, this course also aims to help students acquire reading and writing skills, as well as correct usage and transfer of complex concepts and ideas in a clear and concise way both orally and in writing. The course’s objective is for students to be able to recognize patriarchal and sexist thought processes and actions, even when they are not obvious, both on a wider social level and in the Greek political system, and be able to stand critically against them. Among the learning objectives of this course are the critical analysis of gender-based stereotypes that appeal to “common logic,” and the analysis of gender-related dichotomies and resulting hierarchies (male/female, public/private, culture/nature, society/family, political/domestic). Finally, intersectionality enhances students’ capacity to approach, comprehend, and interpret gender and politics from multiple perspectives.

This is an introductory course on gender and its relationship with politics seen through the main contributions of the feminist theory. In this context, the course explores the concept of citizen capacity as it connects with issues of gender equality, democracy, and political system, as well as the ways in which the feminist analysis critically approaches political theories and practices. It also analyzes identity construction and representation of gender in their historical dimension, focusing on the female body and using the concept of patriarchy as the main analytical tool. Moreover, through the critical reading of feminist and gender theories, the course attempts to explore the relations of power, not exclusively on the basis of male dominance but also in relation to other forms of power. In the context of intersectionality, the course examines the relation between gender and state, race, and class, as well as other contemporary ideologies, such as neoliberalism, to further inform the way in which we comprehend and interpret the world around us, politics, and, in the end, gender itself. For a more comprehensive view of the issue, the course explores the birth of the feminist movement and its main thought currents, the contemporary theories regarding the “female” and gender, and the theories of masculinity and male supremacy. Bringing the discussion to the present, we focus on the anti-feminist counterattack and on the politics of the (far) right in relation to gender issues.

Gender, society, patriarchy, identities, feminism, male domination, emancipation

27-11-2020