Study Guide 1 WGST 200
Winter 2013

1. What is the path of least resistance and path of active resistance? 2. Why is there a need for women studies? 3. Know two of the identifying references from the cycle of socialization; where is socialization taught?
4. Newspaper editors were unsupportive of the Seneca Falls Convention and wrote scathing reports, these reports intended to be negative actually helped to publicize the women’s cause in a way they had never imagined or could have managed if they had tried. The news editors through their editorials made the convention a national event. 5. What defines a dominate group and subordinate group? 6. Dominant groups do not know the experience of the subordinates, 7. Oppression is difficult to recognize because women are dispersed and assimilated into the system of class and race that organizes men. Women have roles as executives, researchers, and lawyers, these advantages can blind us to the lack of opportunities for other women because of race, class and ability. 8. What did women want? To control their own property, be treated like a rational/viable human being, to work and keep their earnings, to have a voice in decisions regarding their children. They insisted to have a real education and entrance into professions closed to them. 9. Many men and women felt that women’s mental capacities were inferior to men, therefore men and women could not be educated equally. 10. In the reading “What Does a Woman Want” what was stated as the purpose of a woman and where would her fulfillment be found? 11. During the Civil War women’s rights efforts stopped. The lack of activism by the women’s coalition resulted in the New York Legislature repealing sections of law which gave mother’s equal guardianship of their children and widows certain property rights. Suffragist and first wave feminist did not want to stop their campaign for the right to vote because of World War I.
12. The Seneca Falls convention was the beginning of First Wave feminism what was the focus/purpose of the meeting?
13. Patriarchy is a hierarchy of male power. A family, religious group, or society in which men hold power and are dominant can be defined as patriarchy.
14. A type of privilege is “unearned entitlement” this can be described as; all people should feel safe in public spaces or working in a place they feel they belong and are valued.
15. What are the three characteristics of systems of privilege?
16. A couple of realizations by the author, Peggy McIntosh in the article “White Privilege, Male Privilege” are: Privilege allows members of the dominant group to receive daily signals and messages that the dominant group counts and to accept that others either did not exist or were trying unsuccessfully to be like the dominant group. White privilege is like an invisible knapsack of special provisions
17. Unearned entitlement is one type of privilege, what is a second type of privilege?
18. Silence means consent; it can be called “passive oppression” allowing for inequality to maintain its hold on thoughts regarding equality and equity. Silence protects unearned advantage and conferred dominance.
19. Privilege allows the dominant group to deny that systems of dominance exist.
20. Who were the two major organizers of the Seneca Falls convention?
21. What was an unusual aspect of the leadership of the convention?
22. Women were granted the right to vote in 1920 with the passing of the 19th amendment, 72 years after the first initiation of efforts to gain voting rights for women.
23. The end of the Civil War was hoped to bring the resolution of women’s suffrage, suffragist fought for women’s voting rights with the 14th amendment, both Negroes and women lost.
24. The fifteenth amendment granted the right to vote to black men but did not include women.
25. What is a suffragist?
26. In the reading “The Cycle of