Vocabulary Terms for Gender Studies and Demography

This set of flashcards contains key vocabulary terms related to gender studies, demography, and socio-political theories, along with their definitions.

Practical gender interests

Women’s gender interests and political demands based on an acceptance of traditional gender roles.

Strategic gender interests

Women’s gender interests and political demands aimed at challenging and rejecting traditional gender roles.

Taboo

Banned for reasons of morality or poor taste or because it constitutes a risk.

Pinkwashing

A government’s strategic use of pro-LGBTQ rights discourse to divert attention from other human rights abuses.

Heteronormativity

Heterosexuality as a natural given; anything else is deviant.

Homonormativity

Privileging and normalizing those aspects of LGBTQ identity and culture that most closely adhere to mainstream heterosexual norms.

Standard of civilization

A means of measuring a country’s or culture’s progress towards becoming modern—for example, by looking at indicators of gender equality or LGBTQ rights.

Heterocolonialism

Historical colonial imposition of heterosexuality as a means of 'civilizing' colonized people.

Homocolonialism

Western efforts to liberate the LGBTQ community from oppressive governments while also limiting it to the 'right way' to be LGBTQ.

Decolonial feminism

Challenges dominant white, Western, patriarchal, and capitalist ways of knowing and being and encourages space for other (including precolonial) ways.

NeoMalthusian

Emphasizes high birth rates and overpopulation as dangerous; builds on an older theory that if left unchecked, humans would reproduce faster than the food supply, resulting in famine and chaos.

Pronatalism

Policies meant to encourage women to have more children and increase the population.

Secularism

The idea that religion should not be involved in government; separation of church & state.

Fertility Rate

Average number of live births per woman ages ~15-49.

Intersex

People born with genitals, chromosomes, and/or hormones that do not fit with a male/female sex binary.

Infibulation

The most comprehensive form of female genital cutting, in which the external genitalia is removed, and the edges of the vulva are sutured together.

Demography

The study of births, aging/death, and migration to understand the changing size, composition, and distribution of human populations.

Global Gag Rule

(aka the Mexico City policy) – presidential order restricting US funding to any group that provides or even counsels on abortion.

The Great Replacement theory

Far-right nationalist argument that white people and western identity are under siege from an influx of non-white immigrants.