Dr Asiya Islam

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Gender, Policy and Inequalities. This course is available on the MSc in Gender, MSc in Gender (Research), MSc in Gender (Rights and Human Rights) and MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access) and demand is typically very high. Priority is given to students on the MSc Gender, Policy and Inequalities programme. Students from outside this programme may not get a place.

This course aims to equip students with an understanding of how feminist scholars use theoretical and analytic concepts to engage with social policy issues and debates.  The course provides an overview of mainstream theoretical explanations for the structure and evolution of welfare states, and feminist critiques and modifications of that literature.  Students will develop an understanding of how key concepts like citizenship,  work, and well-being have been conceptualized and applied in the academic literature to document and explain gendered inequalities. The use of gender as a category of analysis is examined and attention is paid to the potentially modifying effects of other social hierarchies such as race and class.

This course runs in the AT. This course has a reading week in Week 6 of AT. 

Students are expected to submit a 1,500 formative exercise during AT.

• Bacchi, C. (2017). Policies as gendering practices: Re-viewing categorical distinctions. Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, 38(1), 20-41.
• Bletsas, A. and Beasley, C. (Eds) (2012). Engaging with Carol Bacchi : Strategic Interventions and Exchanges, Adelaide : The University of Adelaide Press.  
• Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 1241-1299.
• Hearn, J., & Hobson, B. (2020). Gender, state and citizenships: Challenges and dilemmas in feminist theorizing. In T. Janoski , C. de Leon, J. Misra, & I. W. Martin (Eds.), The New Handbook of Political Sociology, pp. 153-190).
• Fraser, N. (2016) Contradictions of capital and care, New Left Review, 100, 99–117. 
• Rai, S. M., Hoskyns, C., & Thomas, D. (2014). Depletion: The cost of social reproduction. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 16(1), 86-105.
• Risman, B. J., & Davis, G. (2013). From sex roles to gender structure. Current Sociology, 61(5-6), 733-755.
• Steidl, C. R., & Werum, R. (2019). If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail: Operationalization matters. Sociology Compass, 13, Article e12727.
• Waylen, G. (2017). Gendering Institutional Change. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics.

Project (100%, 3000 words) in the WT.

A 3000 word assessment