Comprehensive WGST 200 Midterm Practice: Feminisms, Gender, Power & Representation

What is the definition of feminisms in the course?

Feminisms are multiple, contested, historically and culturally situated traditions examining gender in relation to interconnected systems of power.

What does feminist analysis as 'learning to see' focus on?

It questions what is treated as natural, neutral, or merely individual, making visible the institutions and power relations that produce social life.

What does a Black feminist or Indigenous feminist framework most directly address?

It notices structural intersections of race, colonization, and gender that white liberal feminism often overlooks.

How are interlocking systems of oppression best understood?

They interact directly to produce unique social conditions that cannot be separated or understood in isolation.

What does analyzing gender as a 'social structure' mean?

Gender is personally lived and organized through social relationships, institutional norms, expectations, and power systems that shape the distribution of resources.

How does structural power differ from interpersonal power?

It operates through the systemic organization of advantage and disadvantage embedded in laws, institutional practices, and cultural norms, without requiring bad actors.

How should a 'neutral' attendance policy that penalizes working-class student caregivers be analyzed?

As an example of how 'neutral'-sounding rules reproduce unequal outcomes automatically through structural power.

What is epistemology?

The study of how knowledge is produced and validated, including who is recognized as a legitimate knower and what counts as valid evidence.

What does saying knowledge is 'socially produced' imply?

Knowledge is shaped by historical, social, and institutional contexts: who asks the questions, which methods are funded, and whose accounts are deemed credible.

What does feminist epistemology say about traditional claims of 'pure objectivity'?

They often hide dominant group biases while presenting a situated viewpoint as universal.

What is the function of theory in feminist praxis?

To provide conceptual frameworks that reveal hidden structural patterns and power relations in everyday life.

What does Donna Haraway's concept of 'situated knowledge' state?

All knowledge comes from a specific, partial, situated location in the social world; there is no unmediated 'view from nowhere.'

What does the 'god trick' in feminist epistemology refer to?

The myth of an unbiased, disembodied 'view from nowhere.'

What is the most accurate statement about Standpoint Theory?

Social location shapes what a person is positioned to experience, notice, and know; marginalized standpoints can reveal systemic power invisible to dominant groups.

What does valuing lived experience as knowledge entail?

Lived experience can provide critical empirical insights, especially where dominant knowledge systems have erased or mischaracterized marginalized lives.

What does Allan Johnson mean when he says patriarchy is 'an it, not a he'?

Patriarchy is an ongoing social system organized around male dominance, male-identification, and male-centeredness that everyone participates in.

How does media representation participate in knowledge production?

It actively constructs cultural norms for what is desirable, respectable, natural, or deviant, and reinforces power relations.

How do stereotypes function to maintain structural inequality?

They are institutionalized representations that naturalize hierarchy and justify differential treatment of social groups.

What does Allan Johnson mean by patriarchy being 'an it, not a he'?

Patriarchy is an ongoing social system organized around male dominance that everyone participates in; it cannot be reduced to personal sexism.

Why do stereotypes maintain structural inequality?

They are institutionalized representations that naturalize hierarchy and justify differential treatment of social groups.

What should one examine to critically analyze media beyond 'good vs. bad' images?

Examine who owns the media and whose interests the framing serves.

Why is identity considered 'relational and historical'?

Identity is formed through social interaction and historical processes; its meaning can shift over time.

What is the key distinction between identity and social location?

Identity refers to self-understanding, while social location refers to structural positioning in systems of privilege/oppression.

What does a micro-level analysis of gender examine?

Immediate, face-to-face interpersonal interactions, such as conversational interruption patterns.

What type of analysis is examining how national paid family leave legislation shapes gendered labor market exit rates?

Macro-level analysis.

How does transnational feminist analysis resist Western imperialist assumptions?

By avoiding imposing Western standards and examining how global capitalism shapes gendered conditions.

What did Kimberlé Crenshaw originally conceptualize intersectionality to explain?

How interlocking systems of power generate distinct structural locations and legal exclusions.

Why is the additive model of oppression theoretically inaccurate?

Power systems transform one another; experiences of oppression differ qualitatively.

How can structural inequality persist without individual prejudice?

Systems can be biased by design, producing unequal outcomes through institutional policies.

What does applying a rule 'equally' to unequally situated people risk?

It can reinforce existing advantage, as equality of treatment does not equal equity of impact.

How does heteronormativity operate in daily institutional life?

Through silent defaults and structural omissions, such as assuming 'spouse = opposite sex'.

How does 'queering' differ from simply adding LGBTQ+ representation?

Queering exposes and destabilizes normative assumptions rather than merely increasing inclusion.