Ning Social Networking Website

Hi All,

I have created new social network on Ning. It is a great new forum for discussing and creating ideas for women history instructors. Come check it out.

http://femalehistoryinstructors.ning.com/

Laura

The Videos

I looked at a commercial posted by Robin that showed women’s and men’s perspective of the functionality of a room. I think that her video did a great job of showing how men and women think differently which was a theme that we discussed last week. My only question was did anyone find the video a bit insulting to both men and women?


I peeked around at a few different blog sites and found the videos that were picked to be varied and fun. I liked the video on Vermont provided by Alicia and Ana Marie’s squishy ball video. I love the fact that because of the internet we can find everything from the mundane to the serious interesting.

Working Women

It is hard today for any mom whether they stay at home or they work. I believe that many moms feel a pull to continue their careers and to stay at home to raise their children. We are expected to choose and it is a hard choice. Either path you pick is riddle with regret. I still question why this has to be a uniquely female choice. There is no term for working father but working mom is commonly thrown around. While I believe that progress has been made and men spend more time in the day to day raising of the family it is still skewed.

The following video shows the perils of working mothers but look at the tone throughout the video.
What Is It Like Being A Working Mom? - More amazing videos are a click away


In this video besides shamelessly plugging Pledge the tone to me is infuriating. They are talking about the perils of a working mom and are not questioning the reason why this peril has befallen them. The amount of women who go to sites like the ones mentioned in the video are large. If we have a growing body of women out there who feel overwhelmed and at their wits end there is a problem.

Gender Definitions

We have very prescribed definitions of gender in our western society. Men are seen as dominant and having to provide for the family. Women are seen as nurturing and homemakers. Heaven help anyone who dares to disrupt those gender boundaries too much. For example we can look at the presidential election that we just went through and see the our traditional boundaries of gender very clearly. Sarah Palin a mother of young children was criticized by some for daring to run while she still had child rearing duties to attend to. For Hilary Clinton it was more acceptable to run because her daughter was an adult. We can see our definitions of gender at work yet we can also see change. We had two women running for two of the highest government posts in our country which even ten years ago would have been an unsuccessful endeavor.

I implore that we look at our definition of gender and continue to blur the lines. Women and men can seek to take on each others gender characteristics. Men can be nurturing and women can be authoritative. We see men and women break these prescribed gender notions all the time. I also call for a more complete explanation of women in the world. Because we are put in the home the work that we have done there has been absent. It does not have an economic value. However this no longer holds true. Women have been making social networks, responsible for grass roots change and contributing to the economies of the families since the advent of civillization. Yet they have been written out of our traditional definitions.

Below is a youtube video that does a great job of explaining the western definition of gender. I apologize upfront for the explicit music, you can mute it.