SOCL 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Gender Studies, Conflict Theories, Escalator
14 Mar 2018
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Document Summary
Conflict theory argues that gender is best understood as men attempting to maintain power and privilege to the detriment of women. Therefore, men can be seen as the dominant group and women as the subordinate group: psychoanalytic theories about gender focus on individualistic explanations for gender differences as opposed to societal ones. Some postmodern theorists question the whole notion of woman as a separate, stable category and question the value and appropriateness of western scholars applying their cultural logic to the study of non-western societies. Middle-range theories may be the most useful in addressing the complicated subject of gender because they connect people"s day-to-day experiences to larger social forces. Black feminists have pointed out that gender doesn"t function in a vacuum and that gender studies must take into account that no single category of women or men exists. Indeed some women are not only more privileged than other women but are even more privileged than some men.
