WOST 4402

Week 9 Discussion Questions

1. Is maternalist feminism necessarily separate from other strands of feminism? (see p 108 for an example of the way this plays out in the article)
2. What is Guy’s main argument? Do you find it persuasive?
3. What role does “Western feminism” play in this article?

1. What are the main historical periods Badran examines, and how does she characterize feminism in each era?
2. How did Egyptian feminists approach the issue of veiling? How did this issue change over time? How did different groups of feminists vary in their thinking about the veil?
3. How do Egyptian feminists’ approaches compare to others we’ve studied?
4. At which points did Egyptian men and women make common cause? At which points did their goals conflict?

1. How are “feminism” and “humanism” related? How did the women Rupp studies identify themselves, and what was their reasoning?
2. Towards the bottom of p. 140, Rupp puts forth the argument that “equality” and “difference” are a false dichotomy. What does she mean by this? Do you agree?
3. In Chapter 6, Rupp describes some organizational conflicts. Do you think Guy’s argument from F&I is relevant here? Why or why not?
4. According to Rupp, how did women maintain interest in organizations that were so spread out? How does this compare to the group you’re examining?
5. Rupp also describes the level of commitment to the feminist cause organizations desired in their staffs (p. 165). How does this compare to the group you’re examining?

Women & Politics Book Group

The Women and Politics Book Group will be meeting Wednesday March 23, 5:00pm, in the Freeman Commons, at Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs to discuss The F Word: Feminism in Jeopardy, Women, Politics and the Future, by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner.

Professor Sally J. Kenney, director of the Center on Women and Public Policy, and Mary Rosenthal, DFL Education Foundation, founded the Women and Politics Reading Group in the spring of 2003. Since then, the group meets every other month to discuss books on women and politics aimed at a general audience. We welcome all men and women, students, faculty, and staff, elected officials, community activists, and voracious readers. You may pick and choose among the topics that interest you or come every time. For more information visit our web site.

Questions for the evil Bolt:

1. What do the actions of Margaret Sanger teach us?

2. In this reading, what was the role of the female activists’ husbands? What major relations can you make to the present? (i.e. politics)

3. What was the importance of the 1918 Sex Disqualification Removal Act? (legal, 272)

4. How what were the two outside/worldly factors that British or American feminists could not control, and thus, had to work with or around?

Week 7

Worlds Of Women
Chapter 3
1. How did access to money define who was "in" and who was "out"? p.52
2.Why were there mostly older women involved in the women's international movement? What were the barriers for getting young women involved? p.62
3.Why did non-European women resent the funding coming from America?p.70
Chapter 4
1. Why was the movement considered separatist? p.89-92
2.In the early 20th century "sexual revolution," what if anything was still considered unnaceptable sexual behavior? What was the attitude toward non-married relationships? p.95
Chapter 5
1. What was the definition of internationalism in the 1920's-30's? p.108
Do you think the terms "spirit" and "force" accurately describe the women's international movement? p.108
2. Why was it hard for women from colonized countries to embrace the coexistence of nationalism and internationalism? p. 122

Global Feminisms
1. Why can there never be a singular "feminism"? p.9

Posting to this website

To post to the blog, you'll need to go to http://blog.lib.umn.edu/ (NOT the main blog page for our class). The login option is the first one on the upper left. Log on using your x500 & password. From there, you should see the administrative page for the site. Select "New Entry" and you're good to go. You may want to just write your questions in Word, and then cut and paste them into the text editing window for the blog.

No office hours Thursday, 3/3

I will be out of town starting Wednesday. My office hours are cancelled for Thursday, March 3, and I likely will not respond to email Wed-Sat.