Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
World Women Conference- V, Baku, Azerbaycan, 7 - 08 Mart 2023, ss.242
My
paper intends to analyze the issue of gender in relation to power and
inequality focusing on the way in which, through gender, biological difference
and similarity have been incorporated into structures of social inequality. Gender
can be defined as the linking of fields of social practice to the reproduction
division. The division in female and male biological categories is assumed to
be the basis of sexuality and this reproductive dichotomy has been assumed to
be the basis also of our societies and of our social roles as women or men. A
great deal of our culture is built around gender relations: our everyday life,
our imagination, our family life, our literature etc. Yet, a significant number
of limitations brought about by gender inequality outweigh this cultural
wealth: tremendous injustice, inequality, and violence.
Following
a brief review of the many theoretical social analysis frameworks for gender,
the study will veer toward deconstructing gender and its naturalization as the
fundamental driving force behind sexual ideology. The focus of the paper will
then shift to the potential for changing gender relations, which implies two
options: abolishing gender or reconstituting it on new foundations. These two
hypotheses will be assessed in the context of dominant theories of power,
ranging from Marxian and Freudian theories emphasizing class and sexuality to
feminist critiques of sexual politics and post-modern Foucauldian theorizations
of power, leading to R.W. Connel's social theory of gender, Giddens's duality
of structure, and Butler's notion of gender performativity.
In
the conclusion, it will be clear that gender cannot be considered in isolation
but rather must be studied as one of the multiple factors making up the matrix
of domination, as theorized by Patricia Hill Collins in her discussion of the
methodological approach of Intersectionality within feminism in her analysis of
black women’s oppression.
Key
words: Gender, feminism, intertextuality