Radchenko Victor
Postgraduate student, Donetsk State University
Адрес:
E-mail: vvradchenko@yahoo.com
Gender and Social Policy: Perspectives on Family, Economy, and the State
May 2000
This course provides an introduction to gender and social policy. In particular, this course focuses on employment (including «family friendly» policy and childcare), poverty policy (including social welfare policy), policy focused on reproduction (including policies about teen mothers as well as reproductive choice), and women’s activism. It should be clear from the outset that these forms of policy blend into one another — for example, employment policy and poverty policy implicitly and explicitly relate to reproductive policies. Women’s activism has been critical to policy development along all of these dimensions. By using this framework, this course is meant to encourage students to consider the intersections of family, economy, and state from a variety of perspectives.
By exploring issues of gender and social policy in a variety of contexts, we try to avoid suggestions that gender and gender subordination are universal and non-varying. It is only by understanding the variations between groups of women, between countries and regions, etc. that we can begin to theorize more clearly about gender and policy, and design effective tactics for social change. Therefore, we will work to deconstruct the idea of women as a «stable category of analysis» and work instead analytically to «demonstrate the production of women as socioeconomic political groups within particularly local contexts.»
This course is based on active involvement of all participants in discussing the topics we cover. The topics are as followings:
- Gender and Social Policy –– Theoretical Reflections
- Gender and Labor Force Participation
- «Family-Friendly» Workplace Policies
- Child Care Policy
- Gender and Social Welfare Policy in Ukraine and Transitional Countries
- Social Welfare Policy for Lone Mothers
- Gender, Reproduction, and Policy –– Teen Mothers
- Gender, Reproduction, and Policy –– Reproductive Choice
- Gender and Activism: Transitional Countries
- Gender and Activism: Global Perspectives
In this final class session, all of the participants will present (briefly) their papers to the class. Presentations should focus on the major arguments and empirical evidence (if appropriate); other class members will then have the opportunity to ask questions about the paper.
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