Week 2 Teaching Intro to Women’s Studies

Friday’s class was cancelled due to flooding but we were given the go ahead for the Saturday morning class. You’ll recall the Saturday class is the large class with 28 students!!!

It was clear after handing out the reading comprehension quiz that the majority of students did not do the readings. I even had some students tell me they didn’t have the book so what should they do? Do the best you can on the quiz is what I said. The quiz was no surprise given we had read aloud the syllabus on day one and talked about them. Oh well.

After the quiz I drew the patriarchy tree by Allan Johnson and deconstructed it into it’s different parts. From that diagram I introduced the idea of social locations and the oppression wheel. I had two students place themselves on the oppression wheel and talk about where they are privileged (white, able bodied, heterosexual, male) and where they experience oppression or lack of power (person of color, uneducated, working class, etc.). I think it was a powerful real-life example for the class to relate to.

Finally we did a gender literacy exercise were in groups of 4 the students were asked to name 10 male directors and then 10 female directors; 10 men of power and then 10 black women of power and so on... They struggled, of course with the female directors and black women of power. When I asked them why they thought I had them do this exercise they honed in on the fact that there are few of those people in positions of power and understood how the patriarchal structure limits access to people who are not white, male, middle to upper class and straight. They are starting to make sense of why things are the way they are...very cool.