INTRODUCTION
From the first moment that babies are wrapped in pink or blue blankets, or even when prospective parents are planning the nursery. Society begins its inexorable moulding of male and female individuals into one of the two “appropriate” gender roles. And to me as a Frequent Flier the flight attendant’s cheery question “chicken or beef?” seems like an extension of that colour coding. I am always on the look out for someone to challenge the expected pattern. A red-wine-with-beef-woman for example is always refreshing, though vegetarian pasta with sparkling water seems to be growing in popularity for everyone.
As our gendered experience begins at or even before birth we are all, in a sense, life-time gender experts. On the other hand as gender is such a core element in our identities most people take it as a given; as something that does not even need to be analyzed and understood.
It could be said that we are all actors with a less than full understanding of the script we have been handed. Occasionally, we get some whispered instructions from the prompter’s box, in the form of “nice girls don’t…” or “a real man wouldn’t”. But that’s about it all the help we can hope for.
You might well ask, What is the point of increasing gender literacy? Why not leave well alone?
One good reason for being a gender literate is that gender differences affect everything we do whether we like it or not, and we should all understand that process. Gender literacy gives us a better understanding of the world around us, by enabling us to decode some of the less obvious messages, as well as by making us more discriminating consumers of the vast amount if information and misinformation in the popular media on women and men and gender issues in general.
We should be able to make up our own minds as to whether Men are from Mars, and Women are from Venus, or not?
Over the last three or four decades an ever-increasing body of professionals has emerged who have as their actual full-time career, expertise in some aspect of gender equality; women’s human rights, labour and pension laws, gender and Free Trade Agreements, gender and HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence , media effects on gender stereotypes and so forth.
As gender has become increasingly recognized as a field of expertise the information and the language it is couched in have become increasingly specialized and esoteric. It was ever thus. The same is true of course of lawyers, doctors, accountants, IT specialists. The difference is however that unlike these other fields…medicine, law, accountancy, information technology….. we are all gender practitioners, and expertise in gender is something that none of us can do without.
The purpose of this site is to bring to the surface this unconscious expertise and at the same time to “domesticate” the expert knowledge which has become paradoxically arcane and inaccessible .It is not (primarily!!) intended as a pulpit from which to proselytise but hopefully will provide some food for thought and perhaps a roadmap whenever you find yourself at a gender crossroads!
It is fundamentally intended to be fun.
Hopefully some gender experts who have become highly specialized in some aspect of this complex field will also find here some useful resources.
I’ll also be inviting some of “our own correspondents” in different parts of the world to share their views and activities in this space. Cambodia and Kosovo are already signed on & I hope more will follow.
And lastly we have the News page where I’ll be posting items of topical interest and inviting your comments.
Looking forward to seeing you all soon!
Jane Hailé