LESSON 3: GENDER AND SEXUALITY AS A SUBJECT OF INQUIRY

Gender studies

As an area of knowledge, is about looking into, analyzing, and examining society

so that we notice power relations in the seemingly “simple things.”

Gender Role or Sex Role

It is a social role encompassing a range of behaviors and attitudes that are

generally considered acceptable, appropriate. It is a “sets of culturally defined
behaviors such as masculinity and femininity”

Diversity and Inclusion

Society, through a lifelong process of normalization, encourages or reprimands

behaviors to make a child adapt to the social expectations.

LGBTQ+ people are often do not fit in the traditional binary gender roles so they
are often reprimand, bullied, and discriminated, Subjected to violence and hate
just because they do not fit in what society calls “normal”.

Gender Studies and Research

Research process identifies problems, making hypotheses and assumptions,

gathering data, and making conclusions.

Approaches in Research

Qualitative approach- focuses more on the meanings created and interpretations

made by people about their own personal vicarious (observed) experiences.

for example, if you want to know how women, men, or LGBTQ+ live their lives on
a daily basis and how they make sense of their lived experiences, then the
qualitative approach is fitting.

Methods used in the Qualitative approach are as follow:

 Phenomenology- conducting intensive interview with individuals who have

experienced a particular event and understanding their “lived experience”;
 Hermeneutics- understanding the meaning of texts (literary works, art
works) and what they convey about human realities; and
 Ethnography and Ethnomethodology- immersing in a community and
taking note of their experiences, beliefs, attitudes, and practices.
Quantitative approach- focuses more on characterizing a population (total
number of individual) or a sample (a sub-group within the population), making
generalizations about the population based on the behavior of a sample.

For instance, if you want to know how many Filipino adolescents are engaged in a
romantic relationship or how many of them still believe in marriage, then a
quantitative approach is appropriate.

Methods used in the Quantitative approach are as follow:

 Survey- collecting information from a sample; and

 Experiment- creating actual set-ups to observe behavior of people in an
experimental group (a group receiving treatment such as training or a new
experience) and comparing it to the behavior of people in a control group
(a group without any treatment).

Ethics in Gender and Sexuality Research

Ethical principles make sure that people involved in the research are protected
from harm. Ethics is a prerequisite to a properly conducted study.

Four principles to remember in conducting gender and sexuality research:

 Informed Consent- Researchers should make sure that the participants in

the study are aware of the purpose and the process of the study.
 Confidentiality and anonymity- Researchers should not reveal any
information provided by the participants, much so, their identity to anyone
who are not concerned with the study.
 Non-maleficence and beneficence- A study should do no harm (non-
maleficence) to anyone. Especially in researches involving humans, a study
should be beneficial (beneficence) for it to be worth implementing.
 Distributive justice- Any study should not disadvantage a particular group,
especially the marginalized and the oppressed (e.g. poor people, women,
LGBTQ+, the elderly). The benefits of a study should be for all.

Gender, Sexuality, and Human Ecology

Human Ecology, as a field, recognizes the interplay among internal and external
environments, physical, socio-economic, cultural (Bronfenbrenner 1994; Bubolz
and Sontag 1983). In the context of gender and sexuality, a human ecological
approach looks at human sexual lives and experiences at various levels and
spheres of analysis.