SUMMARY OF THE SYMPOSIUM

This symposium offers concrete and broadly applicable practical tools that inspire political science faculty to mainstream gender into their courses. The point of all of these courses is not to add “women’s issues” to the list of interesting subjects or to add “feminist theory” to the critical theories section of the syllabus (Di Stefano Reference Di Stefano1997). Instead, these essays inspire us to incorporate gender as a fundamental and politically negotiated dimension of societal inequalities and power relations into all aspects of classroom instruction. Each essay takes one course as its case and describes how it is being taught, including readings and assignments. All but Fiona Macaulay’s “Gender Day” are mainstream political science courses. “Gender Day” is a day-long (or two afternoons-long) introduction for first-year Peace Studies undergraduate and masters’ students.

The first three essays focus on semester-long introductory courses for first-year students. Amy Atchison’s (Reference Atchison2016) essay discusses an introductory political science course for non-majors. She uses three units—gender and intersectionality, political behavior and the gender gap, and women and societal rebuilding in the wake of armed conflict—to engage students in both puzzles in political science that relate to gender and the use of gender as an analytical tool.

Tània Verge (Reference Verge2016) illustrates effective teaching of introduction to quantitative methods. Although the ways in which research questions are selected and the data is collected and analyzed can lead to gender-biased and incorrect conclusions, quantitative methods courses are generally taught in a gender-blind fashion. Verge argues that teaching gender in quantitative methods courses through real-life gender-related topics and research questions, the use of sex-disaggregated data, and gender-sensitive teaching strategies brings about a virtuous circle: statistics anxiety is significantly reduced while the development of gender competence equips students to undertake more refined analyses that are also more critical of social inequalities.

In an introductory course on international relations (IR), Rebecca Evans adapts a text that openly dismisses critical and feminist approaches to IR. Using the example of Dan Drezner’s (Reference Drezner2011) Theories of International Politics and Zombies, she rejects the approach of merely adding a feminist IR unit to the end of an introductory course. Rather, Evans uses feminist analysis of zombie movies as a rejoinder both to Drezner’s reading of zombie movies and to his dismissiveness of feminist IR.

The next two essays provide concrete examples of how to integrate gender into thematic courses. Rosalyn Cooperman, Melina Patterson, and Jess Rigelhaupt (Reference Cooperman, Patterson and Rigelhaupt2016) mainstream gender in the teaching and learning of race politics by revisiting important political events to emphasize the contributions of women as key political actors. The Civil Rights Movement (CRM) is often taught from the perspective that emphasizes the actions of a select group of leaders—all male—as responsible for its success. Their Race and Revolution first-year seminar provides an important opportunity to broaden students’ knowledge of key themes, events, and people in the CRM and to appreciate the agency and role African American women played in the fight for civil rights. Modules from this course may be easily incorporated, in part or whole, to other courses on American political behavior, race, and gender in politics.

Amy Mazur’s (Reference Mazur2016) Comparative Public Policy course teaches advanced undergraduate students the tools of Comparative Policy analysis. Students learn the policy process model approach to policy formation in postindustrial democracies, with a focus on a series of explanatory variables/ hypotheses (institutions, politics, economics, culture, extra national forces, etc.). They apply the model in an intense semester-long research project in which they compare and contrast feminist policy and environmental policy formation across Canada, the United States, Germany, Australia, and Great Britain. At the end of the semester, students present their individual and group findings in a mock policy conference on “Whether Institutions Matter in Environmental and Feminist Policy.” Gender is placed front and center through learning about and then researching the politics of feminist policy formation as compared to environmental policy formation in the larger context of democratic performance.

The final essay by Fiona Macaulay describes a student-focused method of incorporating gender across the Peace Studies curriculum. “Gender Day” is a one-day experiential learning model for first-year students that gives students the tools to bring gender analysis into their future classes and the confidence that such engagement is a welcome and important part of Peace Studies. Her article analyses the impact of Gender Day, an annual, immersive teaching event obligatory for all incoming students in the Department of Peace Studies. Designed in response to a staff–student consultation, Gender Day consists of three sequenced elements. The course uses 1) an experiential session, paired with small group discussions, 2) an introduction of basic theoretical concepts about sex, gender, and sexuality and their inter-relationship, and 3) activity-based gender analysis in politics, international relations, and peace/conflict studies. Afterwards students write a reflective report on what they have learned, with some related research. Analysis of seven years of these reflections underscores the importance of: making gender teaching obligatory, especially to engage men; requiring reflection as well as academic writing; the potential and challenges of discussing gender in a multi-cultural setting (especially around issues of sexuality, and non-binary concepts of gender); helping students see that their personal is political; acquiring a gender lens, as an analytical tool and a precursor to later normative discussions (on feminism, equality issues).

As we have already indicated, these articles are accompanied by online resources, many of which are ready to be used off the shelf or adapted with minimal effort. Combined, the articles and supplementary material contain subject, reading, and activity suggestions. Further, they are written in a way that inspires readers’ own pedagogical creativity.

Each of these contributors utilize different degrees of feminism and different kinds of feminism. All use gender analysis. They differently engage with the literature on the gender differences in learning styles and anxieties. Together, they provide inspiration for conversations within departments, across and within subfields as to how to mainstream gender in political science curriculum.