We will ask two central questions throughout this course: 1. What difference does gender make? 2. For which women does it make a difference? Which women?
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of understanding the impact of gender on individuals and highlights the need to explore the differences it creates.
Estelle Freedman probes the significance of gender in shaping experiences and identities. By posing these two fundamental questions, she urges students to critically analyze how gender influences various aspects of life and specifically which women's lives are affected differently, prompting discussions about equity, representation, and the social constructs surrounding gender.
In practice
In a lecture on gender studies, a professor might use this quote to frame the discussion about women's experiences.
Teenagers have more intense reading experiences because they've had fewer of them. It's like the first time you fall in love. You have a connection to that first person you fell in love with because it was so intense and unprecedented.
Solicitous care for living things affords satisfaction to one of the most lively instincts of the child's mind. Nothing is better calculated than this to awaken an attitude of foresight.
Schools should take part in the great work of construction and organization that will have to be done.
My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church.
To teach details is to bring confusion; to establish the relationship between things is to bring knowledge.
How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)
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