Gender and Conflict Class

Hi, this is Carly Walker and this is my blog for Gender and Conflict at Juniata College.

This first week of class we've been discussing "Doing Gender" and what that means. Our exercise yesterday in class was interesting to me because it was similar to the types of discussions I've had in previous gender classes. The same stereotypes always come up for women: housewife, mother, seductress. The conclusion is always the idea of conflicting standards. What struck me this time around is why everyone always jumps to the same stereotypes when no one claims to be or aspire to those standards, as we discussed already in class. It's almost cartoonish how we think about gender sometimes. When you think about it, how many of your friends or the people you know really have any of the attributes you're describing?

One of our readings this week was called Gender and Race by Nakano Glen. What I took from the article was the difficulties of talking about race and gender in the same frame because we mainly talk about non-whites when discussing race and females when discussing gender. Both groups suffer inequality of power because of social construct, while on the surface it may appear to be biological. I think we should talk more about different racial and ethnic groups and their experiences of gender.