I am Maria Udén and I'm a lecturer at
Luleå University of Technology
in this lecture I will talk about the
concepts man woman and sex so
how do we relate to these concepts in a
professional way?
Well first we should consider that the
categories man
and woman are central in human society
this means they appear in the
organization of societies
around the world as constitutive for the
organization
second we should consider that these
categories are complementary
men are men because women are women
and the other way around, women are women because men
are men, third we should consider that
the category a person belongs to
tends to follow him or her
throughout life and regardless of
situation or company.
If one is a man or a woman
this will be something constant
it's not that the division between men
and women is the only way in which we sort people
in societies but it makes
a difference for quite many things to
which of these categories we belong
depending on these categories there are
expectations from society
on our behavior on our duties
and if we think about it
we too expect certain things from others
depending on who they are
is this other person a man or a woman
our own expectations are
as much as that of everybody else
different
depending on if the other person is a
man or a woman
then the question turns up what is a man
what is a woman it's probably not so
easy to define either of these
categories
but there is lots of interest
in trying to find definitions and
in trying to describe and prescribe
what a proper man and a proper woman is
or should be at least religions as we
know
tend to be normative there are so many
examples throughout history
of texts and and different
cultural productions where these issues
are brought forth just to pick something
out of the heap
the old greek philosophers the the
fathers of
philosophy so to speak they spend quite
some efforts on on this issue
in in um popular media around us today
we find quite lots of of this as
as well i i've written in this slide the
art of becoming a good girl
or or a real man um
in in tv productions in in journals in
in blogs talking between friends
there is quite a lot of interest in
these
concepts the categories man and woman
and who what they are
and what they should be also in language
there are
traces of this interest for instance the
word
unmanly which is common in the english
vocabulary
and I've written also in this slide that
a suggestion is that you make a search
on the internet
on the world uh word unmanly and there
are
quite many dictionaries and
and well interesting material you can
find here
so when relating to these concepts
professionally we can also consider that
regardless if people believe that
woman and man are completely social
constructions
or if people see them as given
by nature or by god people probably
expect that a certain effort must be
spent to keep
the order of these two categories alive
efforts by society and by
individuals so the difference between
these views is if people think that
um the categories woman and man
are socially constructed solely
we see all these efforts being spent on
on
definition and prescription and so forth
as
creating difference so this this would
be
the social production of these
categories
and on the other hand when people think
that
the categories woman and man are given
given by nature or given by god
for instance um these efforts
are seen as organizing a difference that
already
exists so we have a difference
the difference between woman and man and
what we do
when we describe and prescribe and so
forth
is that we organize this already existed
difference so so this is the distinction
between these views really
if we have two categories men
and women why is it that in certain
certain circumstances there is much more
focus on
women well there are two um
sides of this coin one is that in
general organizations in in supposedly
neutral
settings organizations
actions and so forth women are often
either excluded or overlooked or both
so women do not have access to
participate
in decision processes it's difficult for
women
women to get their voices heard because
of the
legislation or practice or both
of course that's that's the one side of
the coin
the other side of the coin is the
vulnerability of women
and i'm not here speaking about um
physical vulnerability mainly
but the social vulnerability it is well
known that
there are practices where girls are
selectively aborted
because the families just don't want
girls
they they want sons we also know that
sometimes new born girls
are killed because the families would
have wanted them to be boys they they
want
to have sons rather
there is an expression for this it's
called gender side
a fairly new expression anyhow
if one is less valued
of course this has consequences
out of the world's poorest of the poor
the absolute majority are women
so of course this is an expression of
the social vulnerability of women it is
very difficult for women to negotiate
because it is considered normal that
women are less valued and on the other
hand we also have the consequences
if one is kept up with work
if one is poor one has very little
income one has very little property
then once bargaining power is
low it's very difficult to to have a say
in decisions about how the future should
be
so therefore it's needed to pay
particular attention to women's
situation
we should also keep in mind that
women being poor means children being
poor
for every woman in poverty there are
four
dependent children according to unicef
statistics
we have this view of man and woman
as complementary categories and
therefore it is
easy to assume that for every woman
there is there is a man
and in every family there is a male
provider but on the contrary especially
in developing countries and
very much among the poor
the woman is the sole provider of the
family
so the children are totally dependent on
the woman's income
and this affects of course both sons and
daughters
well this was the end of the lecture
thanks for listening
we have talked about very simple and
basic things here
nevertheless uh the basics cannot be
ignored and it's very useful to
to take some time and think over
uh think it over how how these basic
concepts make a difference in
society in in our own lives thank you
