Course Contents

1. Introduction to Gender Issues in Psychology: • Early Psychology as a gender biased discipline • The study of individual differences versus gender differences • Nature and Nurture: Sex and gender 2. Emergence of women’s movement and men’s movement: • Feminist movement and psychology 3. Historical emergence of gender related thought: Myths and archetypes: • Homer, Parmenides, Old Testament 4. Sophocles: Oedipus, Jacosta, and Antigone: • Plato’s The Republic: Equality of women • Aristotle: Ethics, virtue, and gender 5. Early modernity: • Shakespeare, Milton, Descartes, Social Contract Theory: • Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Mary Wollstoncraft 6. The 19th century Liberalism and Romanticism: • Hegel, Mill, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzche, The 20th century scientific approach: • Woolf, Mead, Sartre, De Beauvoir. 7. The 20th century scientific approach and the psychologists: • Woolf, Mead, Sartre, De Beauvoir, Freud, Jung Horney, 8. The Modern Thinkers: • The psychoanalytic approach to gender development • Kaschak, Chodorow, Millet, Ortner, Gilligan 9. Social Theories of Gender Development: • The social learning, cognitive developmental, gender schema, and gender script theories. • Gender stereotyping and sex typing • Gender , health, and aging 10. Gender, Health, And Aging: • Gender And Aging: Physiological and psychological aspects • Gender differences in aging 11. Gender and Health promoting behaviors: • Physical Fitness and Exercise • Uptake of medical facilities 12. Gender and Health Problems: • Coronary Heart Disease • Gender and Cancer • Gender and HIV/ AIDS • Obesity, and Eating Disorders: a social phenomenon 13. Problems associated with women’s reproductive health: • Dysmenorrhoea • Pre menstrual syndrome (PMS) • Menopause • The phenomena of male menopause 14. Gender and mental health: • Gender, Stress and Coping 15. Gender and health compromising behaviours: • Drug abuse • Accidents • Crime 16. Violence as a health issue: • Forms of violence • Consequences of discrimination and oppression • Combating and coping with violence

Course Synopsis

Course Description: Health Psychology is one of the most popular areas of Psychology today. The main reason being a global understanding that health enhancement and illness prevention both can be managed and manipulated through psychological interventions. At the same time there is a growing interest in gender issues and gender differences in all spheres of people’s socio- psychological existence. Yet another area that requires the attention of researchers is the fact that average age of people has increased in all parts of the world. This further implies that we need to look into the life and related issues of the elderly. This area was not as important a few decades ago when the elderly segment of the population was not as large as it is today. Also, the perceptions of growing age have changed and need to be looked into. Forty years of age was considered to be quite old some decades ago while today it is commonly seen as an age of independence and growth. The present course has been designed in a manner that the students will be able to explore at least three new, yet interrelated, avenues of doctoral research; Gender, Health, and Geriatrics Objectives: • To introduce the students to three new areas in which in depth research needs to be done; gender issues, health enhancement/ disease prevention, and aging • To generate a realization of the way gender may have an impact on health/ illness behaviours and experiences of aging • To create an awareness that today the process and experience of aging is not seen and understood the way it was done 30-50 years ago. • To develop an understanding in the students that the psychologists can play a significant role in improving the quality of life of the elderly • To review how psychologists and other researchers have approached these phenomena • To enable students to critically analyze the existing body of research in the focused avenues

Course Learning Outcomes

After completion of the course the students: • will have a better understanding of the phenomena of gender and its impact on health behaviors as well as geriatric experiences • will be able to identify areas that need to be explored by psychologists • will be able to think of and put forth research questions pertaining to the relationship between health behaviours, growing age and gender • will be in a position to adequately critically evaluate and relate with the existing body of research knowledge pertaining to gender, health, and aging