Practicing gender equity for men means, in part, keeping ourselves accountable. However, for what are we being held accountable?¹ I contend that one approach that men can take to advance gender equity is for us to develop critical frameworks to help us (i.e., men) interpret when women are being marginalized in the political science discipline in everyday social moments.

In my own lived experience, more often than not I have failed to live up to feminist principals of gender equity. For example, I participated in a debate with two colleagues, one a woman and the other a man. Our conversation centered around economic mobility in the Unites States. The woman and I disagreed with the man’s claim that “no other place in the world can someone be poor and become rich but in the United States.” As the woman countered his claims, he would cut her off in mid-sentence. I sat purposefully quiet because I did not want to talk over her. However, I grew frustrated because I felt that she was not getting to the point, so I interjected—even though she was in the middle of her argument. Soon after, the conversation ended. I apologized to the woman for interrupting her and, although she was surprised, she told me that it was okay. I expressed that it was not okay because I felt it was more important to be in solidarity with her in that moment than talking over her. I pointed out how I have been told by many women that they are constantly being spoken over by men. She agreed. In this case, both men in the room enacted problematic behaviors, an example of how men can behave in ways that create and reproduce gender inequity in political science and academia.

Scholarship on gender disparities shows how sexism exists in academia in a multitude of ways. Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Nadia Brown, the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy organized a special issue, #MeTooPoliSci, dedicated to survivors of sexual harassment and individuals who support them in the political science discipline (Brown Reference Brown2019). Along with #MeTooPoliSci, we see that gender inequities exist in other aspects of academia. For example, women are cited less often (Aksens et al. Reference Aksnes, Rorstad, Piro and Sivertsen2011; Davenport and Snyder Reference Davenport and Snyder1995); between 1980 and 2010, Black women and Latina faculty increased from 4.3% to only 6.1% and from 2.3% to 3%, respectively, whereas white male professors did not decrease less than 71% (Alexander-Floyd Reference Alexander-Floyd2008; Reference Alexander-Floyd2015); many graduate syllabi are less likely to include women’s scholarship (Smith et al. Reference Smith, Hardt, Meister and Kim2020); men benefit more from coauthorship compared to women (Djupe, Smith, and Sokhey Reference Djupe, Smith and Sokhey2019); men are likely to be the gatekeepers of professional networks whereas 75% of whites have only a white network (Cox, Navarro-Rivera, and Jones Reference Cox, Navarro-Rivera and Jones2016; Van Den Brink and Benschop Reference Van Den Brink and Benschop2014); and women are more likely to be negatively evaluated for jobs in academia (Quadlin Reference Quadlin2018).

From reading feminist critiques and listening to women, I learned how—in the context of everyday moments—women are marginalized by men vis-à-vis being cut off or silenced, belittled for their comments, degraded, or their ideas stolen. The current scholarship points to inequalities that exist for women in varying positions in the academy. From this, I developed a framework to recognize these inequities in everyday moments. However, even with this framework, I still must keep myself accountable. This article makes the normative argument that one approach for men to advance gender equity within the discipline is to develop a framework with principles that, for example, contextualize systemic oppression and practice accountability.

A framework is a collection of guiding principles that establish a specific way to understand ideas. A framework can give meaning to everyday interactions. For example, being a feminist can have a multitude of definitions based on an individual’s principles. Some feminists lack a class analysis or may not recognize the way women’s experiences are different based on cross-cutting identities.² Within political science, men having a framework for gender equity is extremely important because we (as men) are creating and re-creating gender inequities, whether or not intentionally. If our goal is ending gender inequity, then we (as men) must remove the burden we have placed on women. We need to lift as well, part of which is connecting the interpersonal dimension to larger principles that create a framework, a praxis. To help us create this framework, I turn to the conversations of women of color scholar–activists. I suggest the following four principles to inform this framework: (1) meaning of our actions, (2) viewing women as equals, (3) not competing in “Oppression Olympics,” and (4) accountability.