Reflecting back on my classmate's presentations throughout the semester, I found that I have learned so much, not only about the cultures they were studying, but about my own culture and my own cultural/political opinions. I am not sure if it was only because we were all females in our class, but we spoke a lot about gender issues, and I found that these weighed heavily on my mind, even when I was not in class. There was so much variation between different countries and cultures and their gender norms/practices. I think this is wrong. I was shocked by Shiksha's awesome presentation on the history of arranged marriage. It makes sense to me after seeing the start of her presentation as to why arranged marriage began. However, it is one of the most power-stripping practices that there is for women. To have no control over who you marry is something that I can literally not even imagine. One must feel like they are doing it for their community, their family, etc... but to not be able to marry for love, that is bad enough. However, to potentially be forced to marry someone who is a bad person, abusive, or even just someone you don't click with, that is horrible to me.
Sweden was on the other end of the spectrum. I enjoyed hearing about the new pronouns they are creating to represent gender non-conforming individuals or people who simply wish to not be identified in speech by their gender. I also thought it was super cool to hear about the different movie ratings that are now coming out to rank movies more highly if they have strong female roles and high levels of feminism. This is so cool! However, it made me wonder what the real reaction to these movements is in Sweden. It is all fine and good if people in other parts of the world approve, but how do people in the actual country feel? Do they really like these changes or do they resent them? I loved hearing about the different directions that gender relations can take depending on the conservative status of a country's history and a country's level of modernity. Israel, I think, is in the middle. Most of it is very modern and westernized, but the very religious parts are probably more like India. Tel Aviv, however, is known as one of the best cities in the world for gay couples. It is fascinating to me that the rights of women - the simple human rights and liberties of more than half of the citizens in the world!!!! - differ across the globe. What a long way we have to go in securing the status of our global citizens.
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