What has Changed for Gender Norms? Interview with Dr. Zwingel
From even the 1960s, there's been a lot of different conversations about men and women and so forth. When it comes to gender, it's not often the easiest thing to talk about, it's a wide spectrum with many different aspects to get into and it's been an ongoing topic since. Being able to talk about gender norms with Dr. Susanne Zwingel, an esteemed expert in the field offers valuable insights into the impacts on individuals and society at large. They've been heading this kind of conversation and even adding to it with their research on international women’s rights, global governance, and gender.
I most often expect more eyes on this kind of subject because it’s what makes up our society, so I’m glad i got the chance to go deeper into the gender norms topic with Politics and International Relations Professor Dr. Zwingel and widen mine and hopefully anyone willing to lend an ear. Dr. Zwingel dives into their beginnings with their profession, their research to the disparities when it comes this topic, what her female students have to deal with when it comes to opportunites and the decreasing support of learning about International Relations.
Have a listen:
Avonte:
Can you share your academic journey from gaining your PhD in Political Science from Ruhr University to your current role at FIU?
Dr. Zwingel :
So as you saw, I did my PhD ina university in Germany University. So I’m also German myself. So I did my, you know, I studied in Germany and I did my BA, MA and PhD in Germany, everything. So I’m a political scientist/ International Relations scholar. But I’m also have always been very interested in Women and Gender Studies and Feminist theory and feminist thinking. So I decided to do my PhD about the women’s rights convention. That’s a human rights treaty at the United Nations. There are several other human rights treaties also. But I wanted to learn more about this particular convention. It’s a tool that can be used by states, but also by women’s movements to advance women’s rights basically, and to eliminate discrimination against women.
And I was very interested in that. And I did an internship at the UN and I traveled to several countries to interview people, to investigate how this convention is, has been used and what kind of an instrument it is. And that was very interesting to me. And in that context, I also got much more internationally interested. So I, you know, I spent a lot of time in New York at the UN, and I was fascinated by it. And then I also, during my PhD journey, I spent like three months, no, six months actually in the US in Massachusetts, and in Washington, DC. And through that I learned a little bit more about the higher education system in the US. And I thought it was very interesting. And when I was done with my dissertation, I applied to a job in the United States.
And that Job was not here in Miami, but in upstate New York, in the SUNY system, to SUNY Potsdam. And they needed someone who did international relations and women and gender studies. So I fit that job description very well. Yeah, and that was actually a really great situation. And big luck for me, because I didn’t apply for very many positions. But I did get that one. And you perhaps know that the academic job market is very tight, and many people apply to many, many jobs. And don’t get anything. And I was lucky to get that one. And it was also interesting in a way, because, you know, I was a German and the German system was different. So some things that the job description required, I didn’t have. So I was sort of lucky to get that job.
I think I had at that time, I was a single mom of a one year old child. So I transferred my whole life with her from Germany to the US to upstate New York, it was very, was actually was very hard. But it was also good, because I encountered a very nice, tight knit community who helped me a lot. And it was it was good to be a mom there, and also found a partner later on there. So I’ve stayed actually, for eight years in upstate New York at SUNY Potsdam, which is a four year college, where I taught a variety of courses in international relations, and also women in gender studies. And then I really, really wanted to also work with graduate students, and there were no graduate students at SUNY Potsdam, and a job opened up at FIU in Miami, which I learned about because a colleague of mine actually had that job before. And that was also a job for international relations and feminism and gender studies. So I applied, and I was also lucky to get the job, and that was in 2014. And that’s exactly 10 years ago, and since then, I’ve been here.
But yeah, it has helped me a lot. Because, you know, first and foremost, I had to learn a little bit more about the US higher education system. And I did wish I sort of, you know, my dissertation was about this women’s rights convention. And I then also worked on our first book on that women’s rights convention, which I started in Potsdam, and I completed here at FIU. So I sort of kept that research trajectory. It was a little bit harder to do research there because it was a very teaching oriented job. So I learned more about the teaching and about, you know, getting acquainted with the US American higher education system. And that helped a lot for here. Because, you know, there were a lot of things that I knew already and I didn’t have to learn that I could apply here.
A:
You did bring up international women’s rights. The research spans that I believe, and the global governance and gender in total. Can you discuss a specific one area or project within your research that you find fascinating or crucial?
Dr. Zwingel:
I think, you know, there’s different ways we could go there. But let’s say you’re looking at different issues, right. So I think violence against women is a very interesting issue, globally speaking, because, as of today I think we are at a stage where we recognize that violence against women, and gender based violence is a pattern that is something that really happens in every country in the world, and of course, in different forms, and also in different intensity. But like in the 1980s, and nobody spoke globally about that, that was just not a thing.
You know, people either knew that was happening, and they didn’t care very much. And they thought like, this is just how things are, or this is just how, you know, particular countries, cultures and traditions work, or it was hidden altogether, and people just didn’t know about it. So it really took until the 19.., late 1970s, early 1980s, for mostly women’s organizations to bring this issue and many other issues or bring this issue into a global space into a space where global governance organizations take that seriously. And when they say this is really something that affects almost half the population around the world, or let’s say a very large, very large percentage of half of the population around the world, we have to be much better in combating that. And this doesn’t mean that it’s ended, but there’s so many more initiatives to reduce violence against women, I mean, all states by now they have lot about all states have laws about it.
That didn’t really didn’t come about before the early 1990s. So that was sort of there was a, you know, global concern, a global recognition that something needs to be done. And after that many, many states started to formulate those laws. And they have also many other measures, like, you know, safe houses, restraining orders, all kinds of things. So I think that’s, that’s a very good process. Again, it doesn’t mean that this problem, unfortunately, has stayed with us. But I find it very fascinating how, and through the work of many organized women and women’s organizations, this became a global concern. I think that’s a fascinating thing, and it has spread into different into different areas. Now we talk about feminist foreign policy, we talk about gender issues in security policies, and defense policies and environmental policies. So, it has sort of permeated into many different areas.
And often times, when we start talking about what is gender and our what’s, what’s gender roles, what’s what, what do you learn from home? What is normal? Is this equal? Is it hierarchical? What is it, I get a lot of stories, especially from my female students, and they tell me like, “Okay, I grew up, you know, in a very conservative household, and I was supposed to clean up after my brother, and all those kinds of things. And you know, the things that my parents don’t want me to do, because I’m a girl, and so forth.” And I find this very... I mean, sometimes I’m a little shocked, to be honest, because I feel like this is a new generation, you would think that the young women these days have more opportunities, but I feel sometimes they have less than I had when I was young. Right?
And that this just goes to tell you that different cultural contexts are very, very important in how you see the word and, I think for them, it’s even more important for me to talk to them about gender as being a social construct being something that’s not naturally there, and that you can, you know, the female agencies important to change things. And I think they take that often times with them. And sometimes I also give an assignment like, you know, talk to someone in your family about what you learned in this class. Write this up for me, how was the conversation? And that’s actually really fun assignment. I mean, they’re oftentimes, you know, the moms tell, to tell their daughters things that they didn’t know before. And so I think it’s important for them to, you know, take the things that we do in the classroom, and, if possible, it’s not possible at any time, right? But take this and take it out into your life and see it, apply it, and see if you want to change something, or if that helps you change something. You know?
A:
I’m sorry, it’s a lot to think about because I’ve had an aspect of this. It’s called othering. From one of my teachers, and it’s actually hitting home now like hearing a more in-depth explanation of it, that this is what’s really going on. And-
Dr. Zwingel:
Yeah, I mean, especially if you have this, I mean, the other incomes it comes I think when you know, a sort of dominant perspective says, you know, what, what you do what you stand for, your traditions, where you come from, that sort of wrong, Right? I’m right. I understand it. And I will just really with this translation thinking, I want to recognize that’s actually wrong. I mean, you have to be much more sensitive of making meaningful connections and meaningfully translate concepts in a way.
And I think it’s also okay, okay, if people rejected I mean, for example, this whole gender equality notion that I’m so interested in, of course, there are a lot of cultures and states and religions that say, we don’t want them you want actually gender difference? We don’t want it. Right. So what do you do?
A:
What advice do you have for students going into international relations?
Dr. Zwingel:
First and foremost, do it because we have sort of a drop in enrollment. I’m sad about that. I think it’s so important these days to understand the world, okay. It’s also I mean, I’m a migrant, you’re also a migrant. And it’s, I think it’s great to be able to learn about different cultures and to be with different people. And it’s just I think it helps to understand the plurality of humanity. And I think that’s what we totally need. We are so much into, into this, you know, mindset of separation and bipartisanship and all of those, you know, sort of separation in a way that us versus them. I think that’s very problematic. And I think learning about the world and about other states, about other societies is really important for us to create a more peaceful world.
