Gender studies is an interdisciplinary field that committed to the study and analysis of ideas around gendered representation and gender identity. It includes men studies, women studies, and queer study etc. As an academic discipline, gender studies can be dated to the late 1960s, with its development prompted by the second wave feminism which drew attention to ways in which academic disciplines such as the social sciences tend to ignore gender. Understanding gender and its influence in all spheres of societal life is very important because it helps to build a more inclusive and equitable world where access to opportunities are not restricted based on gender expectations. Gender awareness gives one the ability to view society from the perspective of gender roles and understand how this has affected the needs of men in comparison to the needs of women.
Are you interested in gender studies or just seeking to understand the concept of gender and when and how it can be applied? Here are thirty key concepts you need to know to get you started:
Androcentrism: Androcentrism is a doctrine of male centredness. The term is used to refer to the practice of placing a masculine point of view at the centre of one’s world view, that is, evaluating cultures and individuals based on the masculine standard, perspective, priority and value. In an androcentric culture, the experiences of men are regarded as being generalisable and used as an objective criterion through which women’s experiences are evaluated.
Double Standard: This refers to a set of principles that applies differently and usually more rigorously to one group of person or circumstances than to another. In gender studies, it means assessing the same behaviour of men and women in a different way. For example, what is acceptable for men may not be equally so for women and vice versa.
Engendering: This refers to the act of refuting gender blindness with a vow to perceive the explicit ways gender shape our daily relationships, interactions, systems, responsibilities, and worldviews.
Femininity: The term femininity refers to the sum of socially constructed attributes, roles and behaviours that are expected from/ or associated with women and girls, that is qualities that convey womanhood and feminine.
Gender Binary: This refers to the idea that there are only two gender (man and woman), whether by cultural belief or social system, and that an individual must be strictly gendered as either of them.
Gender Equality: Equality can be defined as a state or condition of being the same, especially in terms of social status or legal/political rights. Gender equality means that individuals of all genders have equitable conditions that lead them to have equal opportunities for realising their full human rights.
Gender Equity: This refers to the acknowledgement that the different needs and experiences related to one’s gender may require different support in order to achieve the equality of outcomes. Emphasis is placed on fairness of treatment according to needs.
Gender Expression: Gender expression refers to the ways in which a person presents his/her gender identity, that is the physical manifestation of one’s gender identity either through behaviours, clothing, mannerism, appearance, voice, body shape etc.
Gender Identity: This refers to an individual’s internal sense of having a gender, regardless of the sex assigned to them at birth. A person may use appearances, behaviours, and clothing to express the gender that they identify with.
Gender Mainstreaming: Gender mainstreaming is a global strategy used in promoting gender equality. It is the incorporation of a gender viewpoint into the development, design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of policies, regulatory measures, and expenditure programs with the goal of promoting gender equality and combating discrimination. Gender mainstreaming entails assessing the different implications for people of different genders of any planned actions, including policies, programmes, or legislation in all areas and levels, to ensure that all genders benefit equally and inequality is not preserved.
Gender Non-Conformity: The term gender nonconformity is used to describe behaviours by an individual or group that does not match masculine or feminine gender norms or expectations.
Gender Norms: This refers to sets of societal expectations about how people of a particular gender should behave, especially according to the notions of masculinity and femininity.
Gender Order: Gender order can be defined as the way society is organised around the responsibilities, roles, contributions, and activities of men and women, that is what is allowed and expected in relation to what men and women do in different contexts. It is through the gender order of a society that codes of masculinities and femininities are constructed and reconstructed, and relations between them are organised.
Gender Pronouns: Gender inclusive or gender-neutral pronouns are pronouns that does not associate a gender with the individual who is being discussed. Gendered pronouns on the other hand specifically reference a person’s gender e.g. he/him/his or she/ her/hers.
Gender Segregation: Gender segregation occurs when men and women are located separately from one another, while otherwise participating in a broadly similar set of activities.
Gender Transformative Approach: Gender Transformative Approach (GTA) are interventions or programs that create opportunities for individuals to challenge gender norms and address power inequities between people of different genders. It examines, questions, and transform inequitable gender norms and power dynamics into positive values that directly enhance gender equality.
Gender: The term gender is a socially constructed concept that is used to refer to the behaviours, codes, culturally defined attributes, characteristics, roles, and entitlement assigned to individuals on the basis of their sex assigned at birth. Examples include men, women, masculine, feminine.
Gender-Based Violence: Gender-Based Violence (GBV) can be defined as any form of violence directed against an individual or a group on the basis of their real or alleged sex or gender. Different forms of gender-based violence exist, some of which include physical, psychological, verbal, and sexual abuse as well as socioeconomic, domestic, forced marriage, forced prostitution, human trafficking, and sexual harassment, among others. The goal of gender-based violence is to degrade and create a sense of inferiority or subordination in a person or group of people and is predicated on a power imbalance.
Gendered: Something can be said to be ‘gendered’ when its character is either masculine or feminine, or when it exhibits patterns of difference by gender. Pink and blue, for example, are gendered colours, the former regarded as ‘feminine’ and the latter as ‘masculine’.
Gynocentrism: Gynocentrism is an ideological or exclusive focus on females and issues affecting them to the detriment of non-female. This is the opposite of androcentrism which is exclusively male centred.
Heterosexism: Heterosexism can be defined as a system of attitudes, discrimination, and bias in favour of male-female relationships and sexuality. It includes the presumption that heterosexuality, that is, male-female relationships are the only standard and therefore superior. In other words, Heterosexism means prejudice or discrimination against non-heterosexual people such as lesbians, gays, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex etc.
Intersectionality: Intersectionality describes the interconnectedness nature of social categorisations such as class, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical ability, and age, especially as they apply to an individual or group. It refers to the idea that different identities interact with each other and cannot be understood separately from one another. In a nutshell, it refers to how an individual’s various identities, such as race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, and other qualities, overlap and impact their experiences of discrimination and privilege in various ways, as well as how they aggravate each other.
Masculinity: Masculinity is the set of social practices, behaviours, attributes, and cultural representations associated with being a man or a boy, and are culturally characterized as non-feminine.
Misandry: This simply means hatred, contempt or prejudice against men. It is in contrast to misogyny which means hatred or contempt against women.
Patriarchy: In a literal sense, patriarchy means a system of society in which leadership is in the hands of the male head of a social unit. However, since the early twentieth century, feminist writers have used the concept to refer to the social system of masculine domination over women. It is used to refer to a society or government in which power rests dominantly in the hands of the men, with women largely excluded from it.
Power: In the most general terms, to own power is to have the capacity to attain whatever is desired irrespective of any opposition.
Sex: Sex is the biological characteristics of an individual, including but not limited to their sex organs, hormones, hair development, chromosomes, and sex assignment commonly given to them at birth e.g. male and female.
Sexual Orientation: This refers to a person’s innate or incontrovertible enduring pattern of romantic, emotional, or sexual attraction to other people.
Socialisation: The concept of socialisation refers to the process whereby individuals learn the culture (for example, language, formal and informal rules of behaviour and sets of knowledge) of the particular society they live in.
Stereotype: Stereotype is a fixed, preconceived, overgeneralised belief and notion about a particular group or class of people.
This is not an exhaustive list as there are so many other concepts used in gender studies. Let me know in the comment section some of the ones you know before now and the ones you just got to know about. You can also recommend some interesting literature that provide an unbiased view of femininity, masculinity, and gender in general.
References
USIP. 2020. Gender inclusivity in peacebuilding. United States Institute of Peace Micro Course.
Pilcher, J., and Whelehan, I. 2004. Fifty key concepts in gender studies. London: SAGE Publications.
Plan International. Our gender transformative approach: Tackling the root causes of gender inequality. Retrieved from https://plan-international.org/eu/blog-alex-munive-gender-transformative-approach, May 5 2021.