Global Gender

Regimes 

You will each create a Power Point Presentation depicting the Gender Regime of your country (individual).  There is no fixed requirement in terms of length, but 15-20 slides is a good goal.  See my example of the China’s Gender Regime here.

You will choose one country as the subject of your Gender Regime Course Project.  The countries to choose from are listed in parentheses after each geographical region so that you can contextualize your choice by making comparisons and computing regional averages for your chosen country's region.  The regions (countries) to choose from are: Europe (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands,  Norway, Poland, Spain or Sweden)  post-Soviet States (the Russian Federation, any of the Stans, Belarus, Georgia, or Ukraine); South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan); Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Japan, Malaysia, North Korea, South Korea, Thailand); Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Uruguay, or Venezuela); Middle East/North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Morocco, Palestine*, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen or ISIS*- *please email with me about doing Palestine or ISIS - they pose certain challenges); sub-Saharan Africa (Burundi, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Rwanda, Nigeria, South Africa or Zambia).

As we will learn throughout the course, a gender regime consists of the gender repercussions of each region’s dominant religious beliefs, family life, and its economic and political systems. Click here to see the Gender Regime Table:  a tabular description of several kinds of political-economic regimes (listed in the first column).  The first row describes a country with a liberal political-economic regime such as the US.  The rest of the columns would be filled by you if the US was your country to research describing each element listed across the top:  ideals,  as an example, filling all of the columns across it. 

You will produce a Gender Regime Table for your country, i.e., each table will have the top row and then a second row naming the political-economic regime of your country, then filling in the rest of the row to describe each aspect of the political economic regime, religious and cultural norms, gender ideals, and gender regime.

Note that the table begins with descriptions of several different types of political and economic regimes such as Liberal-Individualist, Social Democratic and Marxist-Leninist, etc.  You can invent your own name for the political-economic regime if you find none of those listed quite right.  You may combine modifiers found in two or three of those listed here (e.g., state-building transitional regime) to best describe your country’s regime.  Please feel free to solicit my input as you are working through what labels fit best.  You will include your Gender Regime Table in the Power Point Presentation you post to the Classwide Discussion Board and your Small Group Discussion Board.

Here’s a list of the bases you should be sure to cover: 

1. You should begin your presentation with an overview of your country (map of it's placement in the world, region); basic stats on.

2.  Then move into discussion of gender by presenting information from the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2016 on your country.  Include a screen shot of their radar chart graphic and refer to and EXPLAIN and contextualize the numbers given for each area of the chart:  politics, health, economy, and education. 

3. Present information predominant religion(s) in your country and how its beliefs and authority structures have shaped the status of women over time,

4. Demographics and description of family life, women's power/status within the family.  Data to include here include:  average age of women and men at first marriage; fertility rate (births per woman); contraceptive accessibility, most commonly used methods and rates of usage; abortion rate/laws; sex ratio; other health concerns that disproportionately affect women (some may put information about violence against women here); life expectancy rates for women and men.  You may not find all of these data for your country but make an effort to find them.  Good sources are the Paxton and Hughes book, The Penguin Atlas of Women, the World Values Survey; the World Health Organization, UN Women, UN, Gender Stats at the World Bank and WikiGender.

5. A description and interpretation of statistics on women's participation in the economy.  Look for data on GDP PER CAPITA, women’s workforce participation (part-time, full-time, formal and informal; in what sectors of the economy; women in entrepreneurship, gender pay gap, hours worked per week by women vs. men (paid and unpaid).  In addition to the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report, data can be found at :  CIA World Factbook, ILO, Gender Stats at the World Bank.

6. A description of statistics on women's participation in politics.  You MUST state the PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN SERVING IN YOUR COUNTRY’S LEGISLATIVE BRANCH (LOWER HOUSE OR SINGLE HOUSE) AND COMPARE IT TO OTHER COUNTRIES IN THE SAME REGION AS WELL AS THE US.  See IPU site for the most current data.  You should also determine if your country has PARTY-BASED QUOTAS or national QUOTAS for women in its national legislature.  Rely on Paxton and Hughes for this section, as well.  Finally, remember to do a slide or two on significant women politicians, current or former, from your country, describing their pathways to political power and what their participation in their countries’ politics reveals about the gender regime of that country and what difference their participation in politics made (nationally or internationally).

7.  Regional context. It is helpful for the viewer/reader to put the data for your country into a regional and/or world context.  A place to start is the comparative data given in the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report.  You can then supplement this general ranking by computing regional averages for specific indicators such as age at first marriage, fertility, pay gap and representation in politics. If data is missing for one or more of the countries listed on a particular indicator, simply omit it from the regional average.  You can use the countries listed for each region in the Paxton and Hughes text, p. 119-124, drawn from the World Values Survey, to compute regional averages and to report the data for your country. 

8.  Activism/Empowerment:  Tell us about two of the most prominent indigenous women's organizations (NGOs) in your country.  How did they get started?  What is their agenda?  How are they supported? What role are international NGOs, e.g., AWID, GirlsNotBrides, MaMa Cash, or IGOs such as the UN Women playing in working for women's empowerment in your country?

10.  Remember that since you are not going to orally present your work, your slides have to have all the information you want to convey to your “audience.”  Don’t see this as a reason/excuse to clutter your slides with a lot of words – use MORE slides with FEWER words when in doubt (see my “China” example presentation as a guide.)  You can also use the notes section if needed but tell the viewer to look there and DO NOT cut and paste long sections from outside sources in this space!!!

11.  Aim to make your presentation both informative AND visually interesting, stream-lined and easy to interpret.  Use photos, graphs, maps, etc.  The occasional video may be helpful but these should be SHORT (under 5 minutes).

12.  DON’T FORGET to use COURSE TEXTS as sources – The Atlas of Women of the World has a wealth of data.  Use the glossary, on-line dictionaries, Wikipedia, other encyclopedias to learn and reinforce your understanding of key terms, definitions and indices.

13.  Your last few slides should be your Works Cited.