A Reflection on Summer School on the Topic “Women in Europe: an Unfinished Revolut ****************************************************************************************** * Tereza Vrbková ****************************************************************************************** Článek v PDF ke stažení [ URL "LM-812-version1-reviews.pdf"] This short essay is a reflection on one particular student summer school focused on gender target is not to evaluate summer schools on gender topics in general or to give an objecti this specific summer school but to describe and reconsider the way of presenting the gende this specific school from an anthropology student’s point of view. The summer school titled “Women in Europe: an Unfinished Revolution?” took place at Univer in Madrid from June 29 to July 4, 2014. The participants were mostly M.A. and Ph.D. studen of discussants and experts from law and justice, think tanks, politics, NGOs and universit various gender issues. The panels and working groups were supposed to debate questions of prostitution, gender and religion, gender equality, gender violence, same-sex marriages, s gender and many more. The main program was drafted as lectures of professionals followed b and discussions of students. M.A. and Ph.D. students also had an opportunity to present th research or thesis and therefore to get feedback from scholars, NGO representatives, prose other students. The topics were not viewed primarily from the anthropological perspective interdisciplinary. Besides the scientific approach the topics were discussed from the poin media, politics, religion, an activist approach and mainly from the perspective of feminis From to the title “Gender summer school” I expected an equal gender approach to the latest The key words in the title “Unfinished Revolution” naturally bring up many expectations an my question was whether to expect a scientific analysis of gender relations transformation perception of women gaining power at the beginning of the century. One of the first discus called “All Women, Not all Men?” which tends to anticipate equal inclusion of both genders on the divisions of social roles. Most of the lecturers were women who focused their atten on women’s issues describing the topics exclusively as the problems which bring inequality to the detriment of women. Every topic was presented with the prejudice of oppressed woman presented fields. Women’s rights in the perspective of public policy were described as pri through the evaluation of the number of mentions of the word “woman” in law books. The pan identity and heritage was composed of topics that did not fit into other panels like women poetry, lesbians and women migrant house workers. The panel on women in education and soci statistics of female professors in schools and some examples of female literature authors lesbian poetry and prose. Summarizing the content of the panels question “All Women, Not a unanswered to me. First, I miss the issue of men in discussing gender roles and relationships. Furthermore I objectivity in presenting “oppressed” women, which is the fact that only strengthened the man in the debate topics. To support the conclusions of the roles of women in Western soci often used statistics. Those were mainly figures of women working in various sectors, thei in politics, numbers of women scholars, numbers of women artists presented in art gallerie statistics were carefully selected concerning mainly the sectors where the women seemed to from some point of view. Very often I missed the interpretation of the whole context that other related factors of described social reality. For instance the women presenting their in galleries were analyzed as “unrepresented” and later even “ignored” based on the statis museums obviously not well known. The historical context of the cultural era in which the were active was omitted. Another interesting issue concerned the LGBT community and their rights. Surprisingly, alm only lesbians were discussed in terms of adoption, same-sex marriage, lesbian poetry and l authors. Again, where are the men in this gender topic? The next topic was naturally the e women and men. These were compared in a table, but without regard to the type of occupatio leaves were also presented as disadvantageous for working women but nothing was said about leave and its practices in European countries. One of the most interesting and important t was domestic workers. A movie about Philippine women migrants working in Chinese household was screened. But because of the lack of time only parts of the movie were presented, so t issues of this phenomenon were skipped. Not much time was assigned for the topic of remitt chains, transgenerational and gender relationships and roles that are being transformed af migration. The summer school was not drafted as exclusively anthropological; the topics were presente perspective of more scientific disciplines and there were not only scientific points of vi but also other non-scientific fields. Therefore I am not in a position to evaluate the pro the anthropological perspective. But still it is interesting to consider what attitude ant a scientific discipline would hold in those issues compared with the feministic and activi of this summer school. The lack of social context in the statistics and gender relations i has already been mentioned. There were more obvious issues where anthropology would emphas relativism rather than activism. One example is the question of female circumcision in som Africa. There was a movie screened on the topic of female genital mutilation in a few trib Ethiopia, Congo and Egypt. Afterwards a discussion was held which led to the consent of al participants that this is an unforgivable act that should be stopped immediately. Their ma that most of the male actors in the documentary were also against the act of genital mutil that the perspective of the camera can be very selective and the informants who performed in the movie were mainly from the educated social class did not play any role for the disc summer school. The perspective of cultural relativism was completely left out and the gend gender system of Western society (there is the question if there is any common system) was system of different cultures in an effort to stop female mutilation. The argument that fem only one pattern in a whole complex of social and cultural practices so to stop only the a would strongly disrupt the social system was unacceptable. Other phenomena concerning equa roles or gender identity also lacked the emic perspective and immersion in the social prob was always the activist attitude held by Western female academics. On the other hand this summer school was a great opportunity for M.A. and Ph.D. students t projects concerning gender topics. There was a ground for discussions and feedback on thei final thesis. About thirty students attended but only two presentations were anthropologic them was on the topic of transgenerational relationships between two generations of Vietna the Czech Republic and the second one was on female songs about relationships in the north Afghanistan. Neither of the presentations held any activist perspective; both tended to th non-judgmental interpretation of social reality. Tereza Vrbková [ URL "LM-426.html "]