Enloe Reflection

One of the most profound and incredible rewarding experiences for me about writing reflective journals is that it invokes in me the ‘ahaa moment’, the moment of Newton’s apple or even perhaps, the eureka moment of Archimedes. Increasingly, I have realized, with excitement that each time I engage in a deeper reflection I always have a sudden awareness and an insight about the readings vis-à-vis my own experience which I have never thought about.

Such is the case when I read Enloe’s Chapter on Crafting a Global Feminist Curiosity. After my third reading of the chapter and upon reflecting on it, I suddenly said to myself ‘ ahaa, so, all the masculine design of agricultural tools, equipment, manufacturing factories, jobs, science laboratory equipment, and science experiments that we often take for granted are indirectly reinforcing the masculine hegemony. On further reflections, the question that came to my mind is: if we want to get more women and girls into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), what have we done to ensure that the tools and equipment used in those places are not designed with a male user in mind?

The answer, though not readily available, lies within Enloe’s feminist curiosity. For me, this is not any ordinary curiosity, I see it as a kind of curiosity that goes beyond the everyday practices – the surface – the obvious performance and doing. It is time, I started to look deep beyond what is visible. The most important difference between now and then is the multiple layers of analysis I would be engaged in. It is time, I began to interrogate what I called the “behind the scene stuff”. These may include why and how certain roles, jobs, beliefs come to be the “accepted norm’’ or the “standard