Gender, Security, & Human Rights

(for Korbel graduate students)

Mondays, 9-11:50 am

Winter 2023

This course examines the gendered dimensions of security and human rights. Gender equality has been at the heart of human rights and development efforts over the past half-century. Yet despite these frameworks, gender-based violations and inequalities continue to exist around the globe with alarming pervasiveness. Moreover, there remain profound gaps between legal provisions aiming to promote gender equality (or better, gender justice) and the lived experiences of women, men, and non-gender conforming individuals in their daily lives. Drawing from critical gender analyses and postcolonial feminist thinking, this class will introduce you to the concept of gendered rights, challenge you to think about intersectionality as a way of considering “rights,” and introduce you to many of the contemporary human rights and security crises unfolding around the world today. Critically, this class will encourage you to think about the gendered insecurity that exists, the strengths (and limits) or current frameworks to address this inequality, and the more radical and bottom-up ways that communities are fighting to secure their survival and wellbeing. Importantly, this class takes an inclusive view of “gender,” examining the security and human rights of all people through an intersectional lens where we map and identify the multiple and overlapping oppressions that keep people on the margins. We will pay particular attention to how power operates to keep these oppressions in place—and identify where and how people are actively pushing back to fight for liberation.