Covering Gender

Students studying to work in the media are engaged in the business of looking and reporting, seeing and understanding. But one rarely looks and sees innocently. There are ways of seeing that we have inherited from the past and which define vision itself. The gender lens is primary in this context - it frames and naturalises inequality, deprivation, violence, and injustice.

The course argues therefore that gender - as a way of seeing, living and understanding - has to be both unlearnt and re-Iearned, in the interests of equality and justice. To do this, the learner has to implicate herself in what she wishes to analyse, put herself in the middle of her subject of study. This does not mean the classroom turn into a confessional, but it does mean that the everyday that we take for granted be stood on its head and examined critically.

The course demonstrates how we may do this, both conceptually and practically. It begins with an examination of the circumstances in which gender emerged as a category of analysis. It suggests that gender relationships are historically contingent and goes on to demonstrate why and how we might want to deploy gender as a critical category.

The units that follow examine critically those personal, social and public sites where gender routinely 'happens': family, kinship, community, work, sexuality, art, and culture. The last set of units is titled 'Issues in Focus'. This section looks at contemporary concerns using the gender lens: caste and community, political power, poverty, and survival.