07f-01
GENDER STUDIES IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

Beverly Anne YAMAMOTO (School of Human Sciences)

Objective
  - To develop an understanding and awareness of gender as an analytical tool.
  - To encourage an understanding of key concepts related to gender theory and practice.
  - To explore the various ways in which gender theory and analysis have been applied to understanding the dynamics of different social settings.

Course Outline
  When we study human relations or social institutions, gender emerges as an extremely important analytical category along with socioeconomic status, socially perceived categories of race or ethnicity, age and disability. Yet at the same time, the idea that gender equality is a desirable goal is highly contested in many societies at the present time, including Japan. There is a lack of agreement even over what gender equality means. In this course we will begin by taking a theoretical approach to gender as a category of analysis and then move on to looking at how gender operates in social institutions and human relationships. A key question raised in the course is how has gender been constructed in modern/contemporary Japan.

Course Schedules
1. Orientation: What is gender and does it matter?
2. The history of ideas about sex differences
3. Gender as ‘category’ and key concepts
4. Is gender a useful analytical tool?
5. Understanding gender inequality
6. The gendered person
7. Gendered organizations and institutions
8. Midterm presentations and discussion
9. Gender, childhood and family life.
10. Gender in the school classroom and playground
11. Gender issues in higher education
12. The gendered work place
13. Gendered workers
14. Representations of gender in the media
15. Deconstructing gender differences and inequality

Required Readings
  Required readings will include, but are not limited to, chapters from the following texts:
  Allison, Anne, Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club, The University of Chicago Press.
  Bem, Sandra Litsitz, The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality, Yale University Press.
  Carter, Cynthia and Linda Steiner, Critical Readings: Media and Gender, Open University Press.
  Connell, R.W. Masculinities, Polity.
  Gelb Joyce, Gender Policies in Japan and the United States, Palgrave Macmillan.
  Kimmel, Michael S., The Gendered Society, Oxford University Press.
  Martinez, Dolores The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures, Cambridge University Press.
  Ogasawara Yuko Office ladies and Salaried Men: Power, Gender and Work in Japanese Companies, University of California Press.
  Scott, Joan Wallach Gender and the Politics of History, Revised Edition. Columbia University Press.
  Yoshio Sugimoto, An Introduction to Japanese Society (Second Edition), Cambridge University Press.
  NB: Students will be expected to read a minimum of 2 book chapters or journal articles for each class.

Assessment
  Attendance: 10%
  Pop quizzes: 20% (2 @ 10%)
  Mid-term presentation or report (2000 words): 30%
  Final report: 40% (2,000~3,000 words)