WGS 245: Gender Trouble, Gender Struggles

1 unit
This course traces three current issues within women’s gender and sexuality studies: transgender rights, reproductive justice, and the crisis in care work. Marginalized during much of feminist and lgb struggles, transgender issues have come into the forefront in the last decade. Reproductive rights have been core feminist concerns across U.S. history, but it has been critiqued by many groups, especially women of color. The current definition of reproductive justice is the response to those criticisms. The crisis in care work is a very broad issue that ranges from childcare, parental/family leave through elder care. It is a feminist issue for many reasons but especially since women, poor and BIPOC, are overwhelmingly the paid and unpaid workers in the field. For each issue we will study the definition of the issue within feminist scholarship, the history of the problem, the related activism, any backlash and the current status of the struggles. Students will also decide on one of the issues for their own activism. Franzen