At the beginning of July, the University of Bucharest continued the “Science for everyone’s understanding” conference series in online format. The first guest of the UB Conferences in this format is Prof. Laura Grünberg, professor at the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work of the University of Bucharest, who spoke to us about gender and gender-phobia.
Addressed to the public and science enthusiasts, the conference “GEN-PHOBIA. Guide to Befriending Gender” invites us to learn more on both gender and gender studies, and the fear of approaching these topics.
The conference starts from the premise that talking about gender is like asking a fish to talk about water (J. Lorber). That’s why, says Prof. Laura Grünberg, it is also difficult to make scientific friends with something that seems so natural: a world in pink and blue, two sexes and two corresponding genders, female and male professions, horizontal and vertical hierarchies. The reality was and is much more complex. Instead of a biological determinism, today we speak of biological potentialities beyond which, norms, values, social, political, cultural (gender) constraints are essential to what we are and become as people with our multiple identities.
Gender studies have succeeded in the last two decades in making strong, interdisciplinary arguments for the importance of treating gender as a fundamental category of analysis of social life (at least as important as race or class). An updated understanding of the concept of gender means among other things: the historical contextualization of gender patterns; understanding the temporal and spatial dynamics of roles and relationships between women and men but also between women and between men seen in their multidimensionality (i.e. as persons of sex, gender and race, ethnicity, class, etc.); acceptance of gender fluidity; critical analysis of stereotypes, prejudices and gender discrimination in the family, education, media, politics, labor market.
Befriending gender comes along with befriending “why”: Why in the course of human history have differences in skin color or gender turned into social, cultural, economic, political inequalities between various groups? Why do we love nature in its diversity but fear the sexual and gender diversity of humans? Why do women live longer than men? Why aren’t there more male nurses? Why is higher education feminized? Why, despite remarkable progress, no country in the world reached full gender equality, namely, a genuine private and public partnership between women and men beneficial to society?
As Laura Grünberg shows, by harnessing the explanatory and theoretical potential of gender we can issue informed, critical opinions on a number of contemporary topics such as: equality of opportunity, affirmative action policies, (representative quotas for minorities), pro or anti abortion policies, sexual education in schools, the rights of sexual minorities, patterns and networks of migration or use of new social networks. Last but not least, we can truly understand the major cultural and social stakes of the answer to the question: “What is it? Girl or boy?”.
The full conference can be accessed here.
Laura Grünberg is professor at the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work of the University of Bucharest. She is one of the initiators of gender studies in Romania, having important sociological research related to the gender dimension of education, civil society, urban space, the body or everyday life. She coordinated the most recent Gender Barometer, Romania 2018 https://centrulfilia.ro/barometru-de-gen-romania-2018/. She is the coordinator of the academic journal AnaLize – Journal for Gender and Feminist Studies (www.analize-journal.ro). Last but not least, she is a well-known author of children’s literature.
