Global
Gender Regimes Online
Click on photo for story on the pandemic of
violence against Mexican girls and women.
Course Project (40 points of your 100-point
Course Grade)
You will choose one of the five
following countries as the subject of your Gender Regime Course Project:
Sweden, Russia, Mexico, India, or Rwanda.
As we shall learn throughout the
course, a gender regime consists of the gender repercussions of each regionÕs
dominant religious beliefs, family life, and its economic and political
systems. Click here to see the Gender
Regime Table a tabular description of several kinds of political-economic
regimes (listed in the first column).
The first row uses the US as an example, filling all of the columns
across it.
You will produce a Gender Regime
Table for your country, i.e., each table will have the top row and then a
second row naming the political-economic regime of his/her country, then filling in the rest of the row to describe each aspect
of the regime.
Note that the
table begins with descriptions of several different types of political and
economic regimes such as Liberal-Individualist, Social Democratic and
Marxist-Leninist, etc.
It is your task to decide what kind
of political-economic regime exists in your country and to develop the
descriptions you will put in the columns across from that regime type.
You can invent your own name for the political-economic regime if you find none
of those listed quite right. You
may combine modifiers found in two or three of those listed here (e.g.,
state-building transitional regime) to best describe your countryÕs
regime. Please feel free to solicit
my input as you are working through what labels fit best. You will include your Gender Regime
Table in the Power Point Presentation and Gender Regime Summary Paper turn in
during Week 4 of the course.
Power Point Presentation (20
points of your 100 point Course Grade)
You will each create a Power
Point Presentation depicting the Gender Regime of your country. There is no fixed requirement in terms
of length, but 15-20 slides is a good goal. See my example of the ChinaÕs Gender
Regime here.
HereÕs a list of the bases you
should be sure to cover:
1. The predominant religion(s) in
your country and how their beliefs and authority structures have shaped the
status of women.
2. Demographics and description
of family life, women's power/status within the family. Data to include here include: average age of women and men at first
marriage; fertility rate (births per woman); contraceptive accessibility, most
commonly used methods and rates of usage; abortion rate/laws; sex ratio; other
health concerns that disproportionately affect women (some may put information
about violence against women here); life expectancy rates for women and men. You may not find all of these data for
your country but make an effort to find them. Good sources are the World Health Organization, UN Women, UN, Gender Stats at
the World Bank and WikiGender.
3. A description of and statistics
on women's participation in the economy.
Look for data on GDP PER CAPITA, womenÕs workforce participation
(part-time, full-time, formal and informal; in what sectors of the economy;
women in entrepreneurship, gender pay gap, hours worked per week by women vs.
men (paid and unpaid). Data can be
found at :
CIA
World Factbook, ILO, Gender Stats at
the World Bank.
4. A description of and
statistics on women's participation in politics. You MUST state the PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN
SERVING IN YOUR COUNTRYÕS LEGISLATIVE BRANCH (LOWER HOUSE OR SINGLE HOUSE) AND
COMPARE IT TO OTHER COUNTRIES IN THE SAME REGION AS WELL AS THE US. See IPU site for these data and more
on women in politics. You should
also determine if your country has PARTY-BASED QUOATAS or national QUOTAS for
women in its national legislature.
It is also appropriate to highlight significant women politicians,
current or former.
5. Regional context. It is helpful for the
viewer/reader to put the data for your country into a regional and/or world
context. You can do that by
computing averages by region by using the countries listed after the name of
each region to develop regional averages.
If data is missing for one or more of the countries listed on a
particular indicator, simply omit it from the regional average.
Western Europe (UK, Denmark,
France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden)
Post-Communist Europe (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Russian Federation, Ukraine);
Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Peru);
South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India,
Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka);
Sub-Saharan
Africa (Senegal, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana, Democratic Republic of
Congo, South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda).
Of course, YOU DO NOT NEED to
compute regional averages for all of the data you will collect in numbers 2-4,
but it would be nice to include this one or two social or economic indicators
that you feel really shed a lot of light on the situation of women in your
country. The IPU includes a page
with regional averages for womenÕs representation in legislatures so this one
is easy to include.
6. Activism/Empowerment: What seems to be the most significant
barrier to womenÕs empowerment in your country? What are women (and perhaps men) in your
country and around the world mobilizing to address this problem?
7. A final slide showing your
Gender Regime Table for your country.
8. Remember that since you are not going to
orally present your work, your slides have to have all the information you want
to convey to your Òaudience.Ó DonÕt
see this as a reason/excuse to clutter your slides with a lot of words –
use MORE slides with FEWER words when in doubt. See my ÒChinaÓ example presentation as a
guide.
9. Aim to make your presentation
both informative AND visually interesting, stream-lined and easy to
interpret. Use photos, graphs,
maps, etc. The occasional video may
be helpful but these should be SHORT (under 5 minutes).
10. DONÕT FORGET to use COURSE TEXTS as
sources – the Burn (Women Across Cultures)
book is a wealth of data on how to approach the study of women Òacross culturesÓ
as the title suggests. Mine the
appendix for data. Use the glossary to learn and reinforce your understanding
of key terms, definitions and indices.
If you are doing Mexico, make sure to incorporate the findings of the
Wright book (Disposable Women and Other
Myths of Capitalism). If you
are doing India, make sure to incorporate Hudson and den Boer (Bare Branches)
11. Your last few slides should be your
Works Cited page.
Posting and Discussing
Presentations (20 points of your 100-point course grade)
You will post your presentation
in two places. First, to your International Group found under the Groups Button in Blackboard. The International Groups will comprise
one person covering each of the 5 countries (10 points). Second, you will post your presentation
to Your CountryÕs Forum under the classwide
Discussion Board Button. Here you will compare and discuss with
others in the class who researched your same country (10 points).
In both cases, your 10-point
grade will be based on commenting on some aspect of each of the other four
presentations in your group (2 points total - .5 pt
each group). Quality matters! Six
points are based on the quality, depth, reflective and
integrative nature of your comments to others. Good comments will include information gleaned from the class,
i.e., referring to analytical concepts
and measures we have become familiar with and referencing authors we have read in the class. The last two points
in each forum are for the quality of your responses to peopleÕs comments on
YOUR presentations/comparisons.
Gender Regime Project Summary (40
points total)
Taken together, the various
aspects of the Gender Regime Project comprises 20 points of your total course
grade:
20
points for the quality of your presentation
10
points for the quantity and quality of your comments on the presentations of
the other people in your International Group
10
points for the quantity and quality of your comments on the presentations of
the other people in your Country Group