The 12^th International Conference of
	ISSEI	In cooperation With
	International Society for the Study of European Ideas

Section III: Education, Sociology, Women’s Studies

Workshop: Gender and Thought in Fiction and Science

Chair: Beatrice Puja

The occidental world, heir of European judgment in all areas of thought from literature and philosophy to social, political and experimental sciences, defines democracy in terms of liberty, equality and fraternity, beyond differences in gender, race and creed. Yet, in spite of the presumed abyss that separates them, all disciplines of thought work in synch, in more or less explicit ways, to continue engraining ideas of qualitative differences in gender, perpetuating thinking systems, beliefs and behaviors that value women less than men, thus condemning men to equally as unrealistic and dehumanizing expectations.

Social traditions continue to infuse our world with arbitrary concepts of femininity and masculinity that yield differentiated educational systems, whether in the realms of academia, sports, or the resulting occupational and professional opportunities. Aristotelian views of women seem to still prevail, defining women’s primary role in society in terms of reproductive contribution: whereas in developing countries female reproductive function is constructed around concepts of moral, religious and national integrity; in ‘developed’ societies, concepts of trophy wives and economical success based on ‘marrying well’, and staying married by tying men down with paternal obligations, still do extremely well in reducing woman to a physical entity, a life support system to her reproductive ability.

While medical research has made spectacular achievements in terms of women’s hormonal treatments, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, maternal surrogacy, and various other means of overcoming the fatal ticking of the ‘biological clock’, its achievements are not quite as spectacular in overcoming the devastations of breast cancer and heart disease. The treatment of mental dysfunction leading to eating disorders is still difficult and experimental, while it is only recently that social/legal attempts are made to address the possible origin of this predominantly female pathology in destructive images of femininity, affecting in critical ways how young girls feel and think they should look in order to become successful women.

Most of all, these concepts of the feminine and the masculine, arbitrarily established at the dawn of thought and perpetuated in modern fiction and science, uphold qualitative difference in gender by means of education, social values and economical structures, a process aided and abetted by science and medicine supporting sociological constructs that are not even functional since their operate to the detriment of all human beings.

Beatrice Puja

Beatrice.Puja@gmail.com

[The conference] [Feedback] [Contact us]

Please direct any questions or comments about this website and/or report broken links to Rachel Ben-David