Blog One
Hello all! My name is Anna Wakefield. I'm a second year student hear at the University of Minnesota. My major is currently undeclared. My academic interests are varied. I have a history in performance and theatre. I am extremely interested in learning about the way women fit into the world. I took a Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies course last year and I really enjoyed it. From the topics we discussed in that course I would conclude that gender is a term referring to the social constructs surrounding the biological sexes. The idea that one sex should be one way and the other another way. Gender is the way we turn males into men and females into women. Sometimes, the sex we were born with does not necessarily reflect the gender we know we are or aspire to become. Power is still a bit tricky for me, but as it relates to gender I would say that power is represented in relationships. In the relationships we have with members of our sex, the opposite, and everyone in between, the balance of power can vary. We see these different relationships all the time in everyday life. This past year, for example, we have seen women represented in the presidential race more greatly than ever before. For a long time we saw the race dominated by men but now, we are starting to see a shift in the power relationship. If we can even seriously entertain the idea of a woman in the White House other than a First Lady, we have already begun to witness the shift towards a more balanced power relationship between men and women in this country.