Abstract:
Проаналізовано історичний розвиток поняття «гендер» та «жіночих досліджень». Розглядаються етапи включення чоловіка та жінки до освітньо-виховного простору Акцентується увага на проблемі гармонійної взаємодії чоловічого та жіночого в соціумі. Аналіз філософських ідей та теорії гендеру щодо становища жінки, сутності чоловічого і жіночого, взаємовідносин статей у суспільстві показує різноманітність та різнобічність поглядів. Враховуються методологічні основи гендерних досліджень у філософії, етиці, соціології, психоаналізі.The issue of sex falls within the field of philosophical problematics since the ancient times, taking its inherent forms of discussions every epoch and enlightening this or that aspect. Every epoch approached the subject in its own way, gradually deleting it from its research field. Only in the end of the 20th century, when changes in the social structure and political life took place, established stereotypes peculiar for the previous century collapsed and moved the issue to the level of theoretical study. Gender theory became one of the directions that study the issue of sex, namely the attitude and status of a woman and man, their social life and acquired life experience, realization of their social and role characteristics and peculiarities, having started gender research.
Gender is something into what society turns physical, anatomical and psychological differences between people. The notion of male and female behavior, masculine and feminine manners, actions, speech are carried by gender constructs, whereas they embody social expectations towards the characteristics of «a real man» and «a real woman». These are not biological facts, they are culturally specific believes that organize social practice one way but not another.
Forming of the gender approach did not accidentally coincide with a wide-ranged discussion of the philosophical issue of correlation between the biological and social nature of a human. The issue of gender identification, defining the role of the social and cultural, on the one hand, and of the biological, on the other hand, became the focus of discussion in the West.
Having started a new thinking paradigm, which focuses on a person’s sex, gender methodology brought new problems of human existence to the foreground of social studies. These problems turned out to be universal, considering that sex — not only as a personal thing, but also as the notion of gender – is a universal characteristic of human beingness. Reconceptualization of the issue showed that this obvious truth used to be ignored in traditional social studies which distanced «sex» and «human» from each other. A man was a «human» with his «sex». Therefore the issue of a human was the primary issue of philosophy, while the issue of sex was the secondary one. Masculinity and femininity are not connected with biological sex; they consist of distinctive psychological features, historically predetermined by cultural peculiarities of a certain social environment.
The difference between female research and studies of women lies in the consideration of female life experience within social and cultural reality as the basis of a scientific research that changed not only the type of argumentation but also brought inquisitiveness to it. Traditional researches about women stopped being studied as scientifically justified statements, which can explain unequal social positions of men and women.
Femininity and masculinity as perfect parts of a whole are complemented with variants of ways of male – female subjectification, which reflect the urge to equal entering the social life.