Kiksun

I wonder. How good it is to have a section "for women" on a public web portal with news, travel tips, dictonaries, blogs etc. The portal is full of different information and facts and entertainment stuff. And then one can find there a section: FOR WOMEN. I had a look. It is mostly about appearance, flirting and losing weight. To write or not to write about that is another question to discuss but why does it have to be in a separate section called "For women"? It could be under different sections called for example: Appearance, Flirtling and Health.  
 

I just read some gender statistics from European Youth Forum´s (YFJ) assembly in Baku.
There were representatives from National Youth Councils (NYC) and from International Non-Governmental organisations (INGO´s).
Number of participants from NYC is higher than of those coming from INGO´s. Both of them have more men than women, althought INGO`s is much closer to even number of male and female representatives (still not close). I would like to know why. Is the gender question taken more into consideration in international bodies or is it just a coinicidence?
Another interesting thing is that both YFJ bureau and YFJ Secretariat have more females than males. Agan..wanna know how come?
Looking at the chart showing intervention (questions, discussion, reports), one can see that INGO´s are far more active than NYC (would be good to know whether the impression at the spot is the same as the statistic shows) and men were dominating in interventions by approximately 1/3. Meaning - international males talking most if I interpret it right.

 

...I was shopping with Tiina yesterday. She wanted to buy a "plasteline" ("art dough") for her nephew (I hope the nephew is not reading this blog so he will be surprised ;-) heh..) So we ended up in "plasteline" departement and even here in such a gender neutral toys there were plastelines meant for girls in a pink box, with princess figures on it.  Gender -  a great merchandising element!

I promised to publish an abstract of my lecture about gender so here it comes. Feel free to use it or contact me if u have any questions or comments =)

Difference between gender and sex

Sex as a biological construct compared to gender as a social contruct. Why do we mix them? Is it important to differentiate between sex and gender?

 

Theories of gender stereotypes

There are different approaches to gender. Almost all of them support the idea of gender division. What if gender would not matter in our society? Would it work out like that? Or is this division crucial for having a system in our lives? Is it important for effective functioning of the society?

 

Sources of gender stereotypes

If a person decided to "violate" all the traditional gender roles and expectations? Would he/she survive in peace? Is it possible to change gender stereotypes by bringing up children in untraditional way? What is stronger? Media or family?

 

Need of gender stereotypes

Can we give up our gender schemes? Do we need them from our personal point of view? Could we understand the world without them? How would society look like if we were not divided into men and women?

Since I do not know how people follow the comments in my blog I decided to publish one comment which I got from Foxpox and react directly in the blog:

Foxpox wrote:

Hi there
It looks in your coutry it's a holiday today, national holiday of Czechoslovakia, congratulations.

Kristina, you've wrote b4 that in your blog ppl only write things in which they are fully agree with you and never dispute/discuss/debate/etc with you. But if for you to delete a comment it's a normal practice, why to complain?

OK, about this your entry.
"Like the colour of eyes does not matter". For some people it's important. I don't like those "water-blue" half-transparent coloured eyes. And it's not only important for me. For example a great song of german euro-dance project E-rotic "Tears in Your Blue Eyes". If it's not important, then the song was "Tears in Your Eyes - The Colour of Eyes Does Not Matter" ... hm ... there is smth in this name.

Very useful discussion. If we were not divided into men and women ... You REALLY had such discussion? OMG lunatic asylum. What will be your next discussion? Smth like "What would be with world economics if anyone found the easy way of transformation iron into gold and published it in Internet?"

"Gender" fav word of those old mad feminists, UR only 24, 4U it's too early to use it.

That your hint about 'pro' photograph's advice to buy smth for your camera to xmas. Curious. Probly lens or tripod. I'm dummy in photography, really, here's quite interesting book "The Digital Photography Book: The Step-By-Step Secrets for How to Make Your Photos Look Like the Pros'!" by Scott Kelby (I hope no need to tell who is he? If you know what is Photoshop, you know this name). Extremely easy to read with good humour. Info _http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Photography-Book-Scott-Kelby/dp/032147404X

download: http://www.kj7.host.sk/kelby.chm
Good quality, 8 mb.

Logo of 'Active' curious ...

Will write smth good. I like the way you write in your blog, sometimes I read it and your optimism makes me wonder. If I had 5% of your optimism... Good to see that there are so optimistic people like you.

Feel free to delete this comment


Kristina wrote:

Hello Foxpox =)
I really do not remember that I deleted your comment. I once wrote that I would delete it if it was resistic etc. I delete only spam which comes everyday maybe I by coincidence deleted also a real comment. If I did so I apologize. It was not meant like that. And of course i was not going to delete your last comment. I am happy when people come with other opinions that I have (the same opinions are welcome of course).

About the discussion topic. Hihi.. you reacted exactly like my some of my slovak groups =) Why such a useless discussion. I can tell you. The point of discussion was totally else. I wanted to see what gender stereotypes people bring when they are not asked directly: What are gender stereotypes like in your society. So now the secret is revealed =) And thanks to that question I could find many stereotypes and power division conviction. People simply told me everything without being aware of that. I believe that I would get different answers if I would ask directly. Do we have an gender equal society nowadays?

But I also have to defend the question itself. I can imagine such a society where gender in general doesnt matter when approaching people. Where people do not think that a secretary should be a woman or a man should repair cars. And of course a woman can be a secratary and a man can be good at car repairing but it should be an individual feature. Not gender based. And I mentioned just a tiny part of the topic... Not mentioning colours, toys for children, house work, conflcits solving, feelings expressing etc.

You wrote that the eye colour matters. I am not saying that the colour of eye does not exist but I haven´t seen a job announcement: We search for blue eyed managers.

And of course there are personal preferences people have. Some like blue eyes, some brown etc. Me personaly I do not care about the eye colour. But I do care about the specific pair of eyes. I have seen wonderful blue eyes and I have seen blue eyes full of anger and bitterness.

That´s what I wanted to say by gender as well.

About the camera. I would like to buy "fish eye" lense and extra battery holder. But I will check that book =)

Thank you for ALL the words you wrote. Feel free to write more!

This week was full of writing and talking. When I was not writing at work I was writing at home (the thesis). And talking...OK..for me it was more about listening. I have done the last 3 focus groups for my thesis. Each group gave me a lot. And I believe each group gained a lot by discussin it. I have seen many "aha" moments. I could imagine having a discussion tour round different countires. Now I can even reveal the main question of the discussions: How would society look like if we were not divided into men and women (Meaning that there would still exist men and women and all the possible modifications but it would not matter at all. Like the colour of eyes does not matter)

Slovak groups are analyzed. I am right now writing it down. Swedish groups are waiting for analysis. I will come with all the conlusions when I am done.

So far you can think what would be different if gender would not matter. And of course I would like to know what comes to your mind regarding the question.

Such a strange feeling when I do not know the gender of a baby and wanna ask about the name or whatever. How old is she/he? What´s her/his name? It´s embarassing when I do not guess right. Me myself I would not care if someone would ask wrong but I do not know how other people feel about it. One solution is to pretend that I am asking the baby directly "hello babe what´s ur name" and hope that a person who is with the baby will answer..yes..that can be a solution. But in general..why does it matter so much?
I think I will move to Estonia. They do not have gender and future tempus in the grammar. As Tiina says: No sex no future =)
I think it is great. And it changes the way of thinking. Yeah Estonians I hope you will survive =)

I did my first swedish focus group yesterday. I loved it. When I went there I was just tired and wanted it to be over but as soon as we started I just wanted to stop time. It was so so interesting. My predictions were right. Gender discours in Sweden is totally different and it was just a pleasure to listen to those guys talking, discussing and thinking about the reasons and impacts of gender division. I like my thesis!

I will for sure publish some outcomes of it but not yet... 

And I love leading discussion =) When I grow up I wanna be a "discussion leader" hihi..

Som det inte räckte med alla de politiska debatter på TV (som jag gillar att följa), kollar jag på en debatt hela dagn redan. Det är en debatt som jag har arrangerat i Slovakien. Sex kvinnor pratar om könsroller i det slovakiska samhället. Nu är min uppgift att göra transkript och då gör jag det. Mycket intressant och mycket långsamt. Jag har gjort 35 minuter på mer än 7 timmar. Jag tror att jag kan de 35 miniuterna utantill redan. Jätteintressant. Och jättebra att göra transcript för att då märker jag mycket mer än att "bara" lyssna på det. Och..oj vilket patriarchalt samhälle har vi i Slovakien. Där män tillåter kvinnor att göra det de gillar att göra i sin fritid och där män hjälper kvinnor att städa och laga mat. Och kvinnorna är glada för att de är tillåtna att göra det och att de har fått hjälp av sina män. Hmm..Borde jag vara glad att de tillåter och hjälper eller borde jag vara ledsen att poängen med jämtställdheten är lite bort tappad. 
Jag är faktist jättenyfiken hur ska det bli i de svenska grupper.

Inspired by the discussion going on between Kadri and Foxpox I decided to react by a new entry. I know really a little about religion. As far as I know religion appeared as a tool to help to understand the world and life. It was misused as many other human inventions which is very sad. I can´t quotate Bible and such and I see that Bible as all the other holy books and not only holy books can be interpreted in as many ways as many people live on this planet since that´s what´s so typical for us - we all have different background, different experience thus different understanding of everything what´s happening around us. 
If we just take that one thing Foxpox mentioned:  "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply" Genesis (1:28). I do not see any problem with it nowadays. Lesbians and gays can do that too thanks to development of medicine and technology. So in my interpretation of this part of Bible they are all welcome to live together happily ever after.

I actually think in very broad perspective that lesbians and gays should not be mentioned neither at religion lessons nor ethics. I would be happy if they didn´t need to be mentioned as a separate cathegory which needs to be discussed under moral issues for example. We usually do not refer to nongays as to heterosexuals. We refer to them as people, or just boys or girls, women and men. So why is it so important to mention that someone is gay? 

I think there are many other more important things to be taken into consideration...

När jag flög från Köpenhamn till Örebro i tisdags kl. 20.50, planet var helt fullt. Det fanns inte en plats ledigt. Ingen plats för min hadbagage. Vet inte hur många var vi..men kanske 50 människor. Ja det är ju bra för flygbolaget och ingenting ovanligt antar jag. MEN...jag var den enda kvinna där. Och det var konstigt verkligen. Alla businessmän åkte hem från Köpenhamn och andra städer. Jobbar inte kvinnor i Köpenhamn? Eller gillar de inte att flyga?

Btw. Jag tycker att quota system är en bra idé.

Today I have watched swedish TV serie called "Kronprincessan". I usually watch it and I like it. But I am more and more confused after it.
The serie shows a young merried woman, mother to two small children who became a minister of environment. She has a strong moral and wants to change the world. She is really involved, does everything possible to reach justice and the truth is on the first place by her. People and journalists like her. She is becoming more and more popular.
BUT..
The more popular she is, the further from her family she is getting. Her husband is getting frustrated because she is not around when he needs her and all the child care is on him, of course he has kind of love affair (I dont know what will come later), other women in politics more or less compete with her and e she gets in troubles into which she was manipulated in.

And I would like to know what impact does this serie have on other girls and women and in general on other people. Would they dare to have political ambitions after this? What is the aim of the serie? To show the truth? Is this the truth? Is it like that that almost all guys stick together and create a huge coaltion against women and women fight against them by playing with them and competing with the other women around? I am really curious what will come later and how will it end. Will she leave the government and come back to her family and they will live happily ever after?

Why the serie doesnt show men politicians who have problems with their wives? Do they have problems with their wives actually? Or do the wives everything to support their husbands and just smile to make them happy and to live success of their husbands? Where are the myths? Where is the truth?

The main character wants to change the world but is not taking seriously her family sometimes. Would it really happen? Does one exclude the other? I do not believe in it. I simply dont want to believe that the picture the serie brings is the only way how a woman on the high position can end up. But I actually do not know. I have no clue...

Let´s see what will happen in other parts..

Synd att jag inte hade min kamera med mig idag. Annars hade jag tagit en bild och skickad den till Slovakien så de ser hur jämställdhet funkar i Sverige. Även duvar och änder kan existera bredvid varandra, dela mat och promenera i gator av Örebro. Sött!

Idag fick jag veta tack vare Mixmegapol (hundra fyra koma sjuuuuuu) att en riktig kvinna är en grekisk kvinna. Hmm jag blev lite förvirrad..Men det var sagt av en rådgivare som brukar hjälpa människor att göra "rätta beslut" i sitt liv...hmmm. När hon fick reda på att den som ringde var lite lat och ganska bekväm (vet inte om det är det rätt ord) människa sa hon på radio: "Aaa..du behöver verkligen en grekisk kvinna. Alltså den riktig kvinna!"
Hmm..vad för kvinna är jag då?
Så här behåller man genus stereotyper. Grattis!!!!