Glossary

Here you may find some concepts used in the lesson text that may be complex.

Assertiveness

The assertiveness is the talent to value each one opinion in front of other people without offending them. To be assertive consists in be able to trace and defend an argument, a claim or a position from a self-confidence attitude even if it doesn’t fit with other people say, do or what it is supposed to be correct.

Regarding the style, assertive persons are distinguished from the passive and the aggressive communicators. They have no fear to defend their opinions or try to influence other people, but always respecting the others limits and trying to learn form other opinions.

Self- esteem

Self- esteem is an evaluative feeling of our being and behaviour, of who we are, of the whole body expression, mental and spiritual features that build our personality. We must be ready to see us as beings who are able to face basic life challenges and as happy deservers. Self- esteem implicates self-consciousness, self- acceptation, self- responsibility, self- affirmation, determination and personal integrity.

It makes reference to how a person feels with himself and what is the value he gives to her image. It is a self- portrait, composed by physical and no physical aspects; the addition of every characteristics that describe us and how we feel regarding to them. It is self love.

Social contract

During French Revolution most significant philosophers (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) designed a series of political and economic contracts that constituted the base of the modern occidental democracies.

These contracts build the sexual difference as political difference and they establish the division between public and private spheres, regarding sex: women must be occupied at home and must be in charge of the family (private context) and men must be in charged of politics, culture, etc. (public context).

Nowadays, since the fight for equality of women, there is a feminist claim of a new social contract between men and women that consists in getting equality in every context and to reach responsibility of both: share housework, family responsibilities, job, power and decision making.

Empowerment

Terminus acquired in Beijing’s Worldwide Women Conference to refer to the increase of women participation in decision making processes and in access to power.

This expression also has other meaning: to be conscious of women individual and collective power and that has to do with the recuperation of women self dignity as persons, all along with the increase of self- esteem, personal autonomy, and power acquisition. All these facts, guarantee participation in economic, social and politic contexts.

Lagarde (2007) defines empowerment as the transformation process towards any women, little by little, or by big steps, stops to be a history, politic or culture object, to become subject of her own life and protagonist of history, culture, politic and social life. In other words, it is a process towards a woman develops the consciousness of having rights and to trust in her own capability to get her purposes. This process becomes possible if we take in account the constant disrespect to women and all the barriers they have to capacitate themselves and to feel value and recognized.

Lagarde, M. (2007) Claves para el empoderamiento de las mujeres. I Congreso Mujeres en el Mundo Liderando el Milenio, Valencia Palabras para la Igualdad. Biblioteca Básica Vecinal

Feminism of sexual difference

The thinking stream that defends the not similarity and not overcome of gender duality, but the development of a feminine generic difference in every symbolic order. It considers that it exists by nature to human ontology: the feminine and the masculine, with different essences, different culture, different symbolic word, etc.

It explains that the place we occupy in the world and that defines us is not only determined by the space that society provides us, but also by our woman body with its structures and vital cycles that determine in any way our look about the world.

Its maximum representants are the French psychoanalyst Luce Irrigaría, Luisa Muraro (El orden simbólico de la madre) and the collective philosopher Diótima (Librería de Mujeres de Milán). In Spain, as difference feminists we may mention Victoria Sendón de León (Sobre diosas amazonas y vestales) and Milagros Rivera Garretas (Nombrar el mundo en femenino. Pensamiento de las mujeres y teoría feminista, 1994).

Vocabulario Violeta. Ciudad de Mujeres. http://www.ciudaddemujeres.com/vocabulario/A-H.htm

Feminism of equality

Stream that emerged from women historic claim during the 17th and 18th centuries and lead to the Woman Rights Declaration by Olympe de Gouges (France, 1791) and the Vindication of Woman Rights by Mary Wollstonecraft (England, 1792), where the right to be recognized as equal as men is claimed. This stream is based in the definition of equality, solidarity and freedom, understand as personal autonomy and respect to the other.

It denunciates the elaboration of gender differences, built from a patriarchal reason as natural categories, when they actually are social and cultural taboos. European Union Policies and from democratic countries are based on this equal and feminist idea.

Representative feminists of this stream are Simone de Beauvoir and Seyla Benhabib or the Spanish Celia Amorós (Hacia una crítica de la razón patriarcal, 1985) and Amelia Valcárcel (Sexo y filosofía. Sobre mujer y poder,1991).

Vocabulario Violeta. Ciudad de Mujeres. http://www.ciudaddemujeres.com/vocabulario/A-H.htm

Equality

It makes reference to the equal presence of men and women in the different social contexts (politic, economic, social and cultural). This concept excludes privileges and discriminations and it is related to other terms as equal democracy, which underlines by the equal representation of men and women in political and social context. This equality is reflected in the representation of no more than 60% and nor less of 40% of each sex.

Victoria Camps (1998) wonders if the increase of women in political action is a question of quantity or quality. She thinks that the feminist policy has as objective the increase of the number of women in leader spheres, but also the progress in traditional feminist matters: abortion, social aids, new social contract, etc.

Sau, V. (2001) Diccionario ideológico feminista, Volumen I i II, Barcelona: Icaria.