Wonderful World of Academia: Me and Rosabeth Moss Kanter. (also, women in the military)
In less than two weeks time I'm supposed to give a presentation on the sociological aspects of women in the military (a fellow student is going to do a part on the historical background, so that's all covered and I don't need to read any more books on it) and I just finished the essay that is required reading material for that class.
I met an old friend, Rosabeth Moss Kanters and her tokenism approach (for everyone not familiar with it, it's a tool to examine inclusion, exclusion and general integration of one group of people into another. Basially, it's a way of explanaining how groups and organisations deal with minorities (eg. women in predominately male military units) and how being a member of a minority shapes an individual's role and behaviour in said group or organisation).
It's perfect for explaining difficulties arising for women in military units that are dominated by men, those military units having to deal with having to accomodate and contend with female soldiers and why it still doesn't work as smoothly as it should. Basically, if there's less than 15% women in military units, there's no way that one could talk of "complete integration". Being one of those less than 15% women means that you're highly visible, you polarize inside and out and you either assimilate to the group or not (GI Jane is a great and not that uncommon example of fully assimilating oneself with a military unit where every other soldier is male - military women want to be "one of the guys", blend in and make their feminity invisible.).
It has to be noted, though, that not assimilating does not necessarily constitute failure to integrate on the individual's part, just one way to deal with being a woman among male soldiers (exactly what happened with me when I joined - I was practically never a girly girl and I hated shopping for clothes but after joining up, I started to be more careful with the clothes I chose and actually more interested in what I wore and what I actually liked than before. I later realized that apparently, that I kind of became aware of my on feminity as I was surrounded by a lot of men. If that makes any sense).
Now... I'm wondering if I'm going to have to actually explain this to my fellow students who hopefully all read the essay but are mainly historians (who apparently seem to share an annoying disregard and sometimes even distain for sociology - a couple of my fellow students, not all historians) or if I'll insult their intelligence because honestly, the concept is not that hard to understand after reading the essay once, maybe twice and google a couple terms if you're unfamiliar with them. What do you think?
I'm also wondering what else to incorporate. I guess I'll be structuring the presentation into a short introduction on gender studies/gender sociology (because I realized a couple weeks ago that a lot of terms that I'm familiar with - difference feminism, (de)constructivist feminism, privileges approach (that I abhor), tokenism - are all Greek to a lot of other people) and then into macro, meso and micro levels of sociology. Tokenism firmly belongs into the meso level, I think but I'm not sure what constitutes macro and micro.
Macro has always been Greek to me but I think general theories on gender and feminism ("women are better than men because they had to suffer under them for so long" and "men and women are totally and naturally diffferent from each other" vs. "men and women are fundamentally equal and should be treated as such because most perceived "difference" are actually just effects of socialization and education") qualify as macro, yes?
Micro... err... do women as victims of sexual violence (both among friendlies and the enemy, but with an actual emphasis on friendlies) and women as aggressors and torturers qualify as micro? No? Nyah, guess it depends on the approach and the examples, huh?
So, anyway, what do you think? Any additions to Kanters' tokenism approach? Other helpful apporaches? Anything you'd want to know if you were among the people in the classroom listening to my presentation (but please remember that the historical background is a fellow students part)?
I met an old friend, Rosabeth Moss Kanters and her tokenism approach (for everyone not familiar with it, it's a tool to examine inclusion, exclusion and general integration of one group of people into another. Basially, it's a way of explanaining how groups and organisations deal with minorities (eg. women in predominately male military units) and how being a member of a minority shapes an individual's role and behaviour in said group or organisation).
It's perfect for explaining difficulties arising for women in military units that are dominated by men, those military units having to deal with having to accomodate and contend with female soldiers and why it still doesn't work as smoothly as it should. Basically, if there's less than 15% women in military units, there's no way that one could talk of "complete integration". Being one of those less than 15% women means that you're highly visible, you polarize inside and out and you either assimilate to the group or not (GI Jane is a great and not that uncommon example of fully assimilating oneself with a military unit where every other soldier is male - military women want to be "one of the guys", blend in and make their feminity invisible.).
It has to be noted, though, that not assimilating does not necessarily constitute failure to integrate on the individual's part, just one way to deal with being a woman among male soldiers (exactly what happened with me when I joined - I was practically never a girly girl and I hated shopping for clothes but after joining up, I started to be more careful with the clothes I chose and actually more interested in what I wore and what I actually liked than before. I later realized that apparently, that I kind of became aware of my on feminity as I was surrounded by a lot of men. If that makes any sense).
Now... I'm wondering if I'm going to have to actually explain this to my fellow students who hopefully all read the essay but are mainly historians (who apparently seem to share an annoying disregard and sometimes even distain for sociology - a couple of my fellow students, not all historians) or if I'll insult their intelligence because honestly, the concept is not that hard to understand after reading the essay once, maybe twice and google a couple terms if you're unfamiliar with them. What do you think?
I'm also wondering what else to incorporate. I guess I'll be structuring the presentation into a short introduction on gender studies/gender sociology (because I realized a couple weeks ago that a lot of terms that I'm familiar with - difference feminism, (de)constructivist feminism, privileges approach (that I abhor), tokenism - are all Greek to a lot of other people) and then into macro, meso and micro levels of sociology. Tokenism firmly belongs into the meso level, I think but I'm not sure what constitutes macro and micro.
Macro has always been Greek to me but I think general theories on gender and feminism ("women are better than men because they had to suffer under them for so long" and "men and women are totally and naturally diffferent from each other" vs. "men and women are fundamentally equal and should be treated as such because most perceived "difference" are actually just effects of socialization and education") qualify as macro, yes?
Micro... err... do women as victims of sexual violence (both among friendlies and the enemy, but with an actual emphasis on friendlies) and women as aggressors and torturers qualify as micro? No? Nyah, guess it depends on the approach and the examples, huh?
So, anyway, what do you think? Any additions to Kanters' tokenism approach? Other helpful apporaches? Anything you'd want to know if you were among the people in the classroom listening to my presentation (but please remember that the historical background is a fellow students part)?