Descovering the Meaning of Gender

I remember the first time I heard about gender studies. It was registration day at the University. The usual mad rush. I had chosen Gender in Caribbean Development I and II simply because it sounded and I am not going to lie, a lot more interesting than women’s studies course. I soon discovered that learning about gender is learning about yourself.

Two years have passed. I am now working at the Centre for Gender and Development Studies, UWI, Jamaica. We are no longer in that small cramped office. The head of the department, Dr. Pat Mohammed, is no longer hidden away in an office in the Faculty of Social Sciences. She has her own office. I’ve also gone further in my studies and I am now on my way to an M. Phil in History and Gender. So you would think that with this under my belt, as well after working with publications and outreach projects, and being a tutor in one of the courses, I should have gained quite a bit of knowledge and experience in gender studies.

For me, gender studies are not simply what all the academics have written about in a book. Yes, gender is about masculinity and femininity, but its much more than that and I think much more than we often attribute to it. Gender is about recognizing the importance of human relationships and not just between men and women, between women and women and men and men, as they learn to relate to one another and to define themselves in society.

It is not only about placing women in history. It is not only about elevating the role of women in history. It is not even about arguing that women have been marginalized or that we need to write more about what women have done and less about men. It is about looking into how history has been shaped and defined by both men and women. How each has assisted in the construction of what we today call male and female behavior, understanding why this has developed and how we in our everyday lives continue to be a part of this ongoing process.

As I think back now I wonder what drove me into the field of gender studies in the first place. My topic for the M. Phil degree – “The Effect of Emancipation on Gender Identity in Jamaica” – wasn’t just because I felt obligated to do something in the area I now work. It was because of a far more profound need within myself to understand what is gender: not to understand it from what I have been told, nor based on what I’ve read, but to discover the meaning for myself.

by Shakira Maragh