| Summary: | Over the last few years there has been a escalation of interest in the study
of femineity and women. The term "men" is used as an unmarked omnipresent
category to symbolise humanity in general. Over the last two decades feminists have challenged the ideological and material requirements of such
definite male bias. Feminists have built their position on the notion of 'the
personal is political", feminists have raised a number of questions regarding
the status quo in society. In this dissertation, the researcher does not aim
to fill a descriptive void, but to demonstrate the theories and approaches to
gender as well as suggest further areas for research. In the introduction, the researcher examines the wider academic background to the study as well as raising intellectual and political issues raised by feminists and postmodern theory. A basic axiom is that new intuition into social relations follow the
investigation of cultural categories that have previously been taken for granted.
The chapter on India draws attention to the ways in which femininity produced within the Chipko movement impinged on the relations between colonizer and colonized. The indigenous notions of gendered difference are constantly created and transformed in everyday interactions. Relations of power are constituent parts of these interactions. This experience is never comprehensive, hence it changes over time and space. === Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1998.
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