Not the case here, but often the case. I have no idea what the OPs class or prof is like. Its possible she has a Mary Daly/Andrea Dworkin school of thought professor. In which case, I feel sorry for her, bad women’s studies course. But the reason I hold a women’s study minor is because with the interdisciplinary coursework I took, I was pretty much handed it for declaring it. I have a Women’s Studies minor and took ONE course from a professor out of the Women’s Studies department.
Call off the recession, everyone. Everything’s going to be okay.
Are you incapable of reading? None of Shodan’s suggested alternative questions assumed that globalisation was good. The first has no bias at all, unless you’re going to complain about it not being “is globalisation bad or good” instead, but still asks a legitimate question. The second and third also ask legitimate questions, to which the answer could be yes or no.
Unless the lecturer is openly willing to accept a paper stating that “Feminist Organisation A is working against globalisation and this is a bad thing,” the question being asked of the OP is biased and useless.
I’m probably just generalizing from personal experience. In my last job the resumes from new college grads were filtered out to only have Masters degrees. I’m glad you and your husband’s companies have different policies. Many of the best engineers I’ve worked with had no degree at all.
A better paper would have been “How do feminist organizations view globalization and it’s effect on women”.
If Women’s Studies were this kind of serious field of inquiry all the time, I doubt anyone with any brains would object to it. And, to be fair, the Women’s Studies department at the University of Minnesota (where my daughter, God help me, starts in the fall) has done some work that even I think was interesting and useful, and in the study of the MO of rapists, of all things.
Sometimes Women’s Studies, or MInority Studies, or other Ethnic Studies courses like that, can be a genuine part of education (as seems to have been in your case, Dangerosa). Sometimes it is just games-playing and one-upmanship. Not uniquely so, but more than, say, in computer science or biology.
Regards,
Shodan
I agree. But I’m enough of a humorless feminist to resent the entire field being trashed as a Mary Daly “lets respell woman” or Andrea Dworkin “all sex is rape” field. There are nuts in any field. And I’ll be the first to admit that particularly 1970s era women’s studies was pretty much a walnut tree.
But there is also good work done in the field focusing on economics or sociology or public policy - work that is women centric but interdisciplinary. And work that was non-existent, hidden, or not taken seriously prior to women’s studies become a field of study.
And yes, a much better paper topic would allow you to make your own decisions on globalization and how it affects women. Instead of assuming women are out fighting in the streets against it. The microloan reference upthread is a great example of globalization beng a positive influence on the lives of women - and microloans have been targeted - not exclusively - but targeted - towards women.
I didn’t say that, I just pointed out that seemed to be a generalization. One that I personally have not experienced - and have some personal experience with.
I’m not encouraging my own children to major in Art History - at least not without a plan that follows through with an MBA.
If my hypothetical child wanted to major in Women’s Studies, I’d make sure she (or he) knew that you need some practical skills along with that, or else you won’t be able to get a good job. Those practical skills might be computer science or engineering, or they might be something like law, business, or medicine.
Or being a dental hygienist. Or a plumber. Or leave them a trust fund - just like any other liberal arts focused degree. Nothing unique about Women’s Studies - “yeah, you learn to think, but getting that first ‘real’ job is more of a challenge.”
But the skills I learned reading and writing bullshit for a liberal arts degree come in far handier now when I’m working vendor contracts than the skills acquired in any accounting course I ever took. (Now doing ROI analysis, that I didn’t learn from “Medieval European Women’s History.”)
i·ro·ny1 /ˈaɪrəni, ˈaɪər-/
5. an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.
Nope. It’s definitely ironic. One would expect women to be for globalization because it greatly benefits women. Yet, they are not. That’s contrary to what was expected. It’s ironic. And unfortunate.
What would be the point? You’d still have to find a man to do all the thinking. Might as well do all the typing too. 
So fucking what? Really? That’s your response to concrete laws and policies that have a direct impact on the state of our country today?
You are overgeneralizing and oversimplifying deeply complex political and historical realities. If you think trying to seriously address the problem of disproportionate poverty, illiteracy and illness rates among varying populations is about posters on the wall and designated cultural sensitivity months then you have a lot to learn.
Who the fuck thinks that? That’s a strawman if I ever saw one.
Oh–wait. Do you think I’m trying to say that racial and gender minorities should be taking these courses rather than math and science, and that will solve the problem? That’s not what I’m saying AT ALL. These theory classes are designed for people with a professional interest in addressing systemic problems that perpetuate inequality. This is required coursework to develop the professional skills needed to do my job. Social workers who are more aware of, say, the problem with urban school policies, for example, are more likely to create effective change within a school system. Would you really argue that’s not the case?
All I’m really trying to do is challenge your notion that having such knowledge is worthless. A women’s studies major might be useless if you WANT to do engineering or whatever, but if you want to actually get out there and do something on a grand scale to fix the problem of women’s inequality, knowing things about women’s inequality is pretty fucking useful and is likely to get you hired for the sort of job you want. That said, you MUST supplement that knowledge with a knowledge of how to work within an organization, identify resources, develop capacity, and a whole host of other things. If you want to become involved in microfinance, for example, and you have both a business degree and a degree in women’s studies, you probably are going to have an edge in marketing to women.
FTR, Shodan, I love microfinance and think it is brilliant. I have never in my life heard the argument that globalization is bad for women, so I find the assigned paper topic rather perplexing.
This is not an example of an “outcome of events”, unless you think the founders of womens’ studies programs did so in the hope that their programs would become champions of globalization.
They founded the program to champion things that would benefit women. If globalization benefits women (which is the stated assumption), then it would be ironic.
They did, at least as much as it represents a subset of “things that improve the lives of women”.
Maybe it’s an awesome assignment. If it opens a few students’ eyes to the cons of globalization, and they then go on to become CEOs of their own firms, maybe they’ll take steps to avoid those harms.
FTR: I am decidedly not anti-globalization. As noted above, it’s not all black and white, and not allllll good or alllll bad. In many programmes and projects, unintended gender-based harm does occur. The first step to avoiding this harm (or improving globalization such that it improves overall utility more than it would have othersise)? Increasing awareness and examining the issue. Say it with me: knowing is half the battle. Developing gender metrics and other evaluative tools to discover externalities and other unrecognized gendered impacts is another facet of the practical and pragmatic application of theory.
Full Disclosure: I’ve developed a niche end of our business working with gender-oriented advocacy organizations active in the developing world. This in no way confers any authority to my statements or makes them any more than anecdotal; I’m mentioning it here merely to reveal bias.
I’m not sure that’s really accurate. In my experience women’s studies programs are more about fighting things that do not benefit women than about championing things that do.
But clearly I’m bitter:D
Ideally, women’s studies programs are about STUDYING what effects public policy, politics, history, economics, etc. have or have historically had on women. Not about fighting or championing. To start with an agenda is bad research. Not that it isn’t done all the time.
The research may then be used to champion things (and is used that way - a girlfriend of mine has her PhD in Physics Education - her specialization - studying gender inequality in Science education and then getting girls into Science) or fight things. But championing something is simply fighting something else. The suffragettes championed votes for women - but they fought against the domination of the political process by men.
If there is more to it I haven’t seen it. It’s not rocket science. If you want to succeed you need to:
- Not get pregnant when you are young and single,
- Not use drugs,
- Stay in school, and
- Not get arrested and end up in jail.
The rest is gravy.
Maybe the prof already knows that for most part these organizations are all talk and no action and is just waiting for a bright student to finally come along and announce in a well researched paper that “the emperor has no clothes” so they can give them a well deserved A.
I wouldnt bet my paper grade on it though.