Gender Injustice

Session x. (1) Do Women's Disadvantages Amount to Their Being an Oppressed Group? (2) History of Women's Legal and Economic Disadvantages in English-speaking Countries (3) Sexual Double Standards, Objectification of Women, Pornography, Sadism and the Eroticization of Domination--Components of a Global Oppression of Women? (4) Global Violence against Women and Sexual Slavery--Also Components of a Global Oppression of Women?

Read first: Marilyn French, "Introduction," "Systemic Discrimination against Women," The War against Women (Ballantine Books, 1992), READ ONLY pp. 9-51, 99-106

Then: Carole Pateman, "Wives, Slaves, and Wage Slaves," The Sexual Contract (Polity, 1988), READ pp. 119-133 ONLY. [Available on Moodle.]

Then read: Amartya Sen, "Women's Survival as a Development Problem," Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 43 (1989): 14-29

Famously argues that at ordinary sex ratios, we should have expected in 1989 that there were 100 million more women than were actually living. So 100 million women can be said to be missing. Attributes this to the oppression of women.

Then: Catharine MacKinnon, "Sexuality," Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Harvard UP, 1989), pp. 126-154. [Available on Moodle.]

Finally: Ann E. Cudd, "Violence as a Force of Oppression," Analyzing Oppression, READ ONLY pp. 85-98. [Available on Moodle.]

So you'd like to know more…

Marilyn French, "Institutional Wars against Women," War against Women, pp. 127-142

Charlotte Watts and Cathy Zimmerman, “Violence against Women: Global Scope and Magnitude,” The Lancet, Volume 359, Issue 9313: 1232 - 1237, 6 April 2002

Marilyn Frye, "Oppression," The Politics of Reality (Crossing Press, 1983), pp. 1-16. [Available on Moodle.]

Sandra Lee Bartky, "Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power," Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (Routledge, 1990): 63-82. [Available on Moodle.]

Sylvia Walby, Theorizing Patriarchy (Blackwell, 1991)

Warren E. Shibles, "The Myth of 'Patriarchy'," Journal of Value Inquiry 25 (1991): 305-318.

Steven Goldberg, Why Men Rule: A Theory of Male Dominance (Open Court, 1993)

Jessica Valenti, He's a Stud, She's a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know (Seal Press, 2008)