Gender and Politics essays

Gender and Politics essays An area of global politics and international relations has until recently been a place of great concern regarding gender issues. The sensitivity of gender related problems can easily be noticed when we try to analyze the processes which are happening in politics. The sphere of politics has been ignoring women as politically relevant subjects for a long period of time. During the last two decades, gender issues were penetrating into the political reality, influencing practice, theory and global consequences (Jackson and Sorensen, 1999). Great pressures have been present, which neither society nor politics could endure. The concept of gender has now days reached an admirable position on a scale of politically important agendas. Those levels could not even be perceived fifty or a hundred years ago. A great progress has been made, but many things still remain to be done. The basic presumption of the feminist theory of politics is that women are underprivileged and discriminated in politics as well as in society in general. Feminists agree that differences of sex are apparent, but are not enough to undermine womens capabilities to be equal. Sex differences have many layers of socially developed rolls, which feminists call gender rolls. Gender refers to socially learned behavior and expectations that distinguish between masculinity and femininity (Peterson and Runyan, 1993). Gender roles operate in their most powerful, enduring and hard-to-change ways inside households and families. All feminists agree upon a fact that the society favors masculine qualities over feminine ones. This systematic discrimination leads towards a gender hierarchy, which creates deep seeded instability and potential conflicts. Paterson and Runyan try to point out that politics and international relations are succeeding in concealing the position of women by d ifferent statistical indicators of development. The fact is that the pos...