How To Score High in Gender Studies?

It is not easy to get high marks in any subject of CSS. However, in competitive exams doing better than others helps students to take advantage of many things. Most of the time few students score exceptionally high marks in a few subjects. The prime reason behind their good score is in the depth of understanding those arguments they make in papers are better than other students. Meanwhile, it is difficult for any student to make a strong opinion of his own. But, through reading good books and writings of professionals they get a grip on the subjects. 

Foreign Authors are very important to read during CSS Exams. However, it becomes difficult to get enough time to read those Authors and afford their books. I have collected some important key points from very important books on gender studies. You can get notes on these points and use the names of these books to quote references and sayings of their Authors. They will make a difference in your exam and it is a short way to reflect your deep understanding on the sheets.

Takeaways from five recommended books of Gender Studies.

The Feminine Mystique:

A landmark book by feminist Betty Friedan published in 1963 described the pervasive dissatisfaction among women in mainstream American society in the post-World War II period. She coined the term feminine mystique to describe the societal assumption that women could find fulfillment through housework, marriage, sexual passivity, and child-rearing alone. Further, prevailing attitudes held that “truly feminine” women had no desire for higher education, careers, or a political voice; rather, they found complete fulfillment in the domestic sphere. Friedan, however, noted that many housewives were unsatisfied with their lives but had difficulty articulating their feelings. Friedan deemed that unhappiness and inability to live up to the feminine mystique the “problem that has no name.”

“it is an undeniable fact that, in organizing, petitioning, and speaking out to free the slaves, American women learned how to free themselves.”

A vindication of the rights of woman: Mary Wollstonecraft:

The first feminist philosophical work was published in 1792. arguing for the dictionary definition of feminism: a belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.

“I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.”

The Second Sex:

French: Le Deuxième Sexe is a 1949 book by the French existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, in which the author discusses the treatment of women throughout history. Beauvoir asks "What is woman?" She argues that man is considered the default, while the woman is considered the "Other": "Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not herself but as relative to him." She describes women's subordination to the species in terms of reproduction, and compares the physiology of men and women, concluding that values cannot be based on physiology and that the facts of biology must be viewed in light of the ontological, economic, social, and physiological context.

Gender Trouble:

Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990; second edition 1999)[1] is a book by the philosopher Judith Butler, in which the author argues that gender is a kind of improvised performance. Butler criticizes one of the central assumptions of feminist theory: that there exists an identity and a subject that requires representation in politics and language. For Butler, "women" and "woman" are categories complicated by factors such as class, ethnicity, and sexuality. Moreover, the universality presumed by these terms parallels the assumed universality of the patriarchy and erases the particularity of oppression in distinct times and places. Butler thus eschews identity politics in favor of a new, coalitional feminism that critiques the basis of identity and gender. They challenge assumptions about the distinction often made between sex and gender, according to which sex is biological while gender is culturally constructed. Butler argues that this false distinction introduces a split into the supposedly unified subject of feminism. Sexed bodies cannot signify without gender, and the apparent existence of sex before discourse and cultural imposition is only an effect of the functioning of gender. Sex and gender are both constructed.

“Masculine and feminine roles are not biologically fixed but socially constructed.”

“There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; …(gender) identity is performatively constituted by the very “expressions” that are said to be its results.”

GREAT ANCESTORS: Farida Shaheed:

There is a widespread myth both outside and within Muslim contexts that women's struggles for rights are alien to those societies that embraced Islam and a misconception that the contemporary women's movement is exclusively rooted in Western concepts and struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Muslim contexts, this myth discredits women's rights advocates and their cause and, when taken as fact, discourages women's assertions for their rights and justice.

Great Ancestors explodes this myth by profiling women who defied and changed the contours of women's lives from the 8th century to the mid-1950s and provides a very different picture of the past

What do Students have to do now?

1) Learn paper-attempting technique to write and present your paper well

2) Complete your syllabus 

3) Make a fact book about gender studies and note down important statistics.

4) Learn the names of a few books and their perspectives to quote in the exam.

5) Your every answer must carry numeric facts and quotes.

Follow Nearpeer to get all Instant Updates

Tips for CSS - 2024 Preparation by Sir Zohaib Alam: Live Session 

Follow our YouTube Channel for daily updates and Live Sessions: YouTube 

Follow our Instagram for the Latest updates and Free MPT Practice Quizzes: Instagram

Good Luck!