| | Hi Doris.
Here are a few thoughts on your questions.
1)- What is your perception of Women's Studies or Feminism?
I have been following these posts and a few comments by Kat with a certain discomfort, like something nagging at the back of your mind. I keep wondering why people are making such an issue out of all of this. But it is dawning on me that maybe something has gone on over here during the time I was gone - something semi-collectivist and not too healthy.
So I will not comment on what I do not know, but I will on what I do know instead. I presume good Women's Studies and Feminism to be a sub-sub-category of history and sociology. In that context, many interesting things can be learned - just as there are many interesting things to be learned, say, from studying the contribution of Chinese immigrants to building the US railroads in the 1800's. I can't see it as anything more important.
On the femininity issue that Feminism seems to disdain, I have been in a country where a high value is placed on femininity by women, and it shows. They do not have the aggressivity towards holding themselves up as a category as they do here, yet there are many, if not more percentage-wise, Brazilian women holding key positions in business, industry, government, NGO's and in all walks of life. There is even a professional women's basketball league that is followed assiduously (by both sexes) - and as I understand (I haven't checked recently) there is still not one professional women's basketball team in the USA, where the women's movement is supposedly going strong, with specialized studies in universities.
I wonder how Brazil achieved such integration of women in all walks of life, with a very little formalized women's movement and study, yet retained their womanly attributes. Maybe the folks around here are missing something.
2)-What has shaped your perception?
As stated, I have been away, living in and observing another culture.
Another comment I would like to make is that Brazilians in general do not hold American women in too high regard because they think American women overly compete with men. As I have observed, when a woman in Brazil holds a key position in business or government, she performs her job without sex being a part of her mindset. Well... there is generally a barrage of jokes on both sides as Brazilians are tremendously good-natured, but that seems to be where it stops. Both men and women are rewarded and punished equally, and business as usual goes on - either on merit or on office politics...
From what I have observed, many American women go into a job already thinking about how to compete with how a man would do it. I think that is a wide detour from doing a job properly.
3)-How do you perceive women's role in society?
That's easy. In the kitchen... //;-)
Seriously, biologically a man penetrates and a woman is penetrated. Carrying a child to term is a period where a woman is extremely fragile health-wise. On the average, a woman is physically weaker and smaller that a man and has a higher voice. She menstruates and suffers mood swings.
A division of labor with men that takes these issues into account - and others like them - will have a better chance at being successful. Other than things like those mentioned, a woman can do most anything a man can do, and she does.
***
There is one general comment I would like to make. The whole issue of women's studies and Feminism is very distant from my own reality in terms of the importance it has on my daily life. I find it hard to be interested in it or take it too seriously. Sort of like saving the whales or whatever. They are pretty and big and all, but they are way too distant from my daily affairs for me to care too much about their plight...
Women's professional and social affairs are like that. Now women on a personal level, that's another story...
Michael
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