Feminism

1. How do our experiences of birth, motherhood, mothering and the labour of caring line up with our expectations and constructions of motherhood and the labour of care under patriarchy? How does this relate to the “pervasive sense among mothers [and others] of being under surveillance and of constantly being evaluated” negatively? How are these experiences shaped, complicated and undone through living and transgressing these ideals and the dominant discourses around them? Document and demonstrate with examples from your course materials.
2. How does our social construction of difference (gender, race and class) relate to what we see as ‘productive,’ or ‘unproductive’ reproductive labour, the “place” (space) of that labour, and its economic and social valuation and/or marginalization? Explain and demonstrate with examples from your course materials.
3. Explain, document and demonstrate with examples from your course materials how a feminist a “social geography frame” allows us to unpack the dynamics of the global economy, and illuminate changes in the distribution and allocation of the labour market.
4. Building from Pearson, Gottfried argues that although “women’s engagement in paid work does afford [women] more choices and more control over their lives. Much of this work is degrading, underpaid, and exploitive, and informalized” and that we “need to rethink assumption that paid labour automatically translates into empowerment, autonomy or economic security, or is necessarily the main route to achieving gender equality.” Explain. Do you agree or disagree? Why and how (and by implication in the negative)? Document and demonstrate your answer in full.
5. Use an example to explain how, through social closure, “social collectives seek to maximize rewards by restricting access to resources and opportunities to a limited circle of eligibles” “through a process of subordination and usurpation.” Is this social process positive, negative or complicated? How, why, when? Explain, document and demonstrate with theory and examples from your course materials.
6. Does the “interactive service work extension of commodification into the most intimate aspects of who we are, what we do, and how we feel and relate to one another” take Marx’s concept of alienation to a whole new level? How, and or how not? Is this problematic? How might this effect our ability to control and influence the conditions under which we labour, organize, and potentially resist? Demonstrate your arguments in full referencing theory and examples from your course materials.
7. Outline, explore and demonstrate with theory and examples from your course materials how feminist political economy makes sense of “changes in the gendered structure of labour by analyzing how the symbolic power of gender is put in the service of neoliberalism” (Robin Truth Goodman 2013).
8. How and why do your authors argue transnational feminist “resistance is necessary to counter to excesses and negative consequences … of global capitalism, “such as poverty and uneven development”? What makes this possible? What needs to change to make this possible? Document, demonstrate and specifically explain your answer in full building from your course materials.