UGEC3203 Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Society

(UGEC3203 is double-coded with GDRS3005.)

This interdisciplinary course introduces and examines gender and sexuality from a contemporary and regional perspective. Based on a cross-cultural perspective, we will read and analyze different meanings of gender and sexuality, and how these meanings are constructed. In a context of modernization campaigns and globalization processes, this course illustrates how gender relations and sexual politics are related with historical backgrounds, cultural heritage, market expansion, ideological shifts, and capitalist dynamics. The topics of gender and sexuality will be interwoven with that of migration, work, family, popular culture, mass media, and consumerism. The course will help students to understand issues of discrimination against women and girls, unpaid care and domestic work, access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, and equal rights to economic resources, and to reflect on how to promote gender equality (SDG5 among 17 Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, in the 2030 development agenda). Students will be encouraged to explore localized knowledge and living experiences of gender and sexuality, and to think critically about how to reduce inequality (SDG10) related to social systems of sex and gender.