Renee Lewis
             African Diaspora & World
             Dr. Kathleen E. Phillips-Lewis
             5 October 2000
             Problematize the concepts of sex and gender, and show how paradigmatic shifts are essential in the process of achieving equality. Why is gender of such importance as an analytic category?
            
             In the oral presentation "Gender as an Analytic Category" by Beverly Guy-Sheftall and an excerpt from the book Black Feminist Thought, "Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment" by Patricia Hill Collins both discuss the issues of discrimination in our society. Beverly Guy-Sheftall breaks down the difference between sex and gender and how those differences cause altercations between one another. She also explains that gender as an analytic category is essential in achieving equality between men and women, so that the next generation will have the knowledge to rise above all types of discrimation. Patricia Hill Collins takes the issue of inequality one step further. She analysis the idea of paradigmatic shifts, how they are also essential in the process of achieving gender equality in today's society. Both Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Patricia Hill Collins both advocate equality between all people. They both contribute very good ideas that could help our society com!
             e together as one.
             When dealing with the concepts of sex and gender problems arise, Beverly Guy Sheftall discusses how gender inequality operates within a society. Sheftall first breaks down the difference between sex and gender and how it causes sexual division between men and women. " Sexual authorities are a biological given, but gender as a function of historical process. The fact that some women are assigned the major responsibility throughout the world for nurturing children is due to gender, a cultural construct." Sheftall says that these types of assumptions lead to sexual division between men and women. Society has categorized men and women int...