Abstracts

Madeleine Arnot: Gender Equality and Citizenship Education

This article illustrates the ways in which citizenship education can contribute to the marginalisation of women. It focuses particularly on the form of citizenship education recently implemented in England and Wales to demonstrate the gender assumptions of liberal and civic republican traditions, especially the privileging of individualism over collectivism, rationality over the affective domain and difficulties associated with the notion of gender difference. Some of the consequences of the separation between public and private civic spheres are to be found in the marginalisation of sexuality, lesbian and gay citizenship, and violence against women. Alternative conceptualisations of citizenship education would engage in the controversial changes in family life and in gender relations, would 'recognise diversity' and promote notions of female power and agency. These gender-sensitive educational agendas would contribute more effectively to creating mature democratic societies.

Christian Boeser: Gender Issues and Civic Education – the Discussion in Germany

In Germany gender-specific aspects of civic education have been discussed since the early 1990s. Since then some scientists (both women and men) have dealt with this topic, but research is still at the very beginning. The present article gives a summary of the most important contributions and studies. It stresses the relevance of this topic, but also warns against dramatizing it. That is why civic education should aim at enhancing individual skills and scopes of activities for pupils of both genders.

Eva Cyba: Social Inequality and Gender

In traditional sociological theories of inequality, the basis for an unequal distribution of social goods and life chances are classes or social strata, which have been formed by the employment position. Since not all women are integrated in the employment world, the problem arose that the disadvantages of women could only be explained by supplementary assumptions about their role in the family, or they would have to be excluded from the sociological analysis altogether. As a criticism to this unsatisfactory situation, feminist scientists developed new explanatory approaches which influenced the development of analysis of sociological inequalities. First, after a comprehensive definition of the phenomena "social inequality," some important aspects of inequality between the sexes will be presented. Second, the central arguments of traditional and feminist theoretical approaches explaining gender-based inequalities are discussed. Third, against this background I outline the main features of my own approach based on the supposition that inequalities concerning gender cannot be attributed to other types of social inequalities, taking into consideration their empirical variety. Finally, I discuss to what extent changes in gender-based inequalities can be explained.

Carmen Leccardi: Gender, Time and Biographical Narrative

It is a well-known fact that the analysis of the time dimension represents a useful instrument both for charting the complex field of social changes in which we find ourselves, as well as for defining an efficient code for interpretation. In particular, a reflection on time and gender allows us to bring to the foreground relevant dimensions of these changes. By making use of the results of some of the research on young women’s biographic construction, the article aims at highlighting the relationship between gender, the acknowledgment of the multiplicity of human times, and the present restructuring of biographical narratives.

Mechtild Oechsle/Karin Wetterau: Gender Issues and Social Science Education - An Interim Report

This article discusses the relevance of gender issues for social science education and gives an interim report on developments in the field. We explore the significance of gender differences in political attitudes and preferences for certain topics of instruction, consider differences in the learning needs of male and female students, and analyse the curricular challenges involved in incorporating the gender perspective in the classroom. Deficits in the curricular coverage of gender issues reflect the fact that the didactics of social science is still hesitant in its response to the findings of women's and gender studies, and has yet to integrate gender issues as a core element of social science education.

Katrin Späte: The Forgotten Documents – Gender and Curricula Work in Civic Education: The Case of Germany

Only seldom in discussions on didactics in Germany curricula are researched as relevant documents for the theory and practice of civic education. Their influence is often wrongly estimated as insignificant. But it becomes clear, especially from a gender-theoretical perspective, how significant "curriculum work" is, even for the construction of social realities.

Brigitte Young: Globalization and Shifting Gender Governance Order(s)

This article analyses the different ways globalisation affects women, showing clearly that the theoretical as well as empirical analyses of globalisation processes remain insufficient without a gender perspective. Based on the thesis that the transformation of specific historic systems of capitalism goes hand in hand with the reconfiguration of gender governance orders, essential elements of this process are described: the decline of the family wage model, the reconfiguration of the public and the private spheres, the increasing polarisation among women and the reprivatization of social reproduction. These changes do not imply only negative consequences for women; they also have the potential of weakening and dissolving local, patriarchal cultures and systems of male domination. Using the examples of the emerging economies in East Asia, the article demonstrates the ambivalence of shifting gender governance orders and emphasises the necessity of future research that includes the gender perspective.

© 2006 sowi-online e.V., Bielefeld Leading editor of JSSE 2-2005: Mechtild Oechsle WWW-Presentation: Norbert Jacke Processing: Claudia Hartmann, Hans-Erich Webers URL: http://www.jsse.org/2005-2/abstracts.htm Publishing date: 2006/02/24