SACE Stage 2 Women's Studies study guide
SACE Stage 2 Women's Studies · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
Women's Studies is a Stage 2 subject in the South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE), listed with the code 2WOM20 and a value of 20 credits. It is designed for senior secondary students who want to examine the world from the perspectives of women, exploring the diversity of women's experiences and their relationships to others while promoting an inclusive and just society. The subject asks students to identify complex and contradictory ideas about femininity and masculinity, and to consider how being a woman or a man may shape an individual's experiences and expectations. Assessment is split between school assessment, worth 70 per cent, and external assessment, worth 30 per cent, so most of the result is built through work completed and moderated at the school level rather than in a single final task. Topics on this exam: School assessment and External assessment. The SACE Stage 2 Women's Studies study guide has 2 sections and about 798 words.
01School Assessment: Building and Evidencing Your Folio
School assessment in Stage 2 Women's Studies is where you build the evidence base that external assessment later draws on. The assessed tasks typically combine a folio of responses to sources, a negotiated investigation, and a practical or advocacy product, all judged against performance standards that reward knowledge and understanding, application, analysis, and evaluation. You must be able to name and use the core concepts: gender as a socially constructed category distinct from biological sex; patriarchy and structural power; intersectionality, meaning that gender never operates alone but intersects with race, class, ability, sexuality, and culture; feminism as a plural tradition rather than a single position; and agency, the capacity of women to act and resist within constraint. Add representation and discourse, since so much evidence you will analyse is textual or media based.
413 words, about 2 min02External Assessment: The Examination and Investigation
External assessment in Stage 2 Women's Studies tests whether you can apply concepts to unfamiliar material under time pressure, and whether you can sustain an independent investigation. Expect source-analysis questions built around a short extract, an image described in words, or a set of statistics, plus extended responses requiring a reasoned argument. For source analysis, the concepts you must command are representation, discourse, stereotype, gaze, and power. Ask of any source: who produced it, for which audience, what is shown and what is omitted, and whose interests the framing serves.
385 words, about 2 min