Reading

Paxton, Pamela M., and Melanie M. Hughes. Reference Paxton and Hughes2014. “Ch. 9: Women from Marginalized Groups.” Women, Politics, and Power: A Global Perspective (2nd ed.). London: SAGE Publications.

Classroom activity

The Privilege Walk.

Materials needed

Copies of the Privilege Walk personas, ample space for students to move about. ^{Footnote 3}

Political scientists have long studied cross-cutting cleavages such as race, class, gender, religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. In general, the discipline treats each of these as separate groups in which group members have relatively uniform preferences and outcomes. Looking at groups in this compartmentalized fashion would then imply that women, African Americans, and the middle class are separate and monolithic groups. The problem with this approach is obvious when you consider that a middle class African American woman belongs in all three groups. Is her position in society based on being a woman, being African American, or being middle class? An intersectional approach would argue that her position in society is a combination of all three, plus others such as religion, age, and sexual orientation. Her position is not determined by simple addition (race+class+gender), but by the compounding effects of race, class, and gender. As Hancock (Reference Hancock2007, 64, emphasis added) notes, “intersectionality considers the interaction of such categories [race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.] as organizing structures of society, recognizing that these key components influence political access, equality, and the potential for any form of justice.”

To illustrate how intersectionality works, I offer a relatively simple example: the gap between male and female wages. The wage gap is most often calculated as the ratio of women’s to men’s gross hourly wage (Plantenga and Remery Reference Plantenga and Remery2006). In the US, the gender wage gap is currently reported at 78%, meaning that a woman earns about 78 cents for every dollar a man makes (AAUW 2015, NP). The 78% statistic actually refers to the wage gap between white men and women; this is important because the wage gap is an issue of both race and gender. Consider these race/gender-inclusive comparisons:

• • White men versus men of color: African Americans earn 72% and Latinos 66% of what white men make (Ashton Reference Ashton2014).

• • Men of color versus women of color: African American women earn 90% of what African American men earn and Latinas earn about 89% of what Latinos earn (AAUW 2015).

• • White men versus women of color: the wage gap widens to 63% for African American women and 54% for Latinas (AAUW 2015).

One could counter-argue that the wage gap is not driven by sexism or racism, but by choices regarding educational attainment, career path, and/or family status. However, Ashton (Reference Ashton2014, NP) reports that there are wage gaps between white men and men of color and between men and women of all races at nearly every level of educational attainment. Indeed, Blau and Kahn (Reference Blau and Kahn2007, 12) find that more than 40% of the wage gap between women and men cannot be explained by life choices around education, experience, union membership, industry, and occupation. Thus, even in this simple example we see that gender and race interact to result in larger wage gaps for women of color, and life choices cannot fully explain the gap.

In the US, many discussions about inequality—particularly regarding women and the poor—revolve around the “choice” argument. In these discussions, people insist that women make educational and familial choices that prevent them from getting to the top, while poor people make choices that prevent them from climbing out of poverty (Stephens and Levine Reference Stephens and Levine2011; Weiner et al. Reference Weiner, Osborne and Rudolph2011). The choice rhetoric masks many of the structural impediments that permeate American society; it also allows people to believe that inequality is not a systemic issue. The choice rhetoric also allows some students to deny that privilege accrues to them as a result of race and/or gender. On the first substantive day of class, I challenge the choice dialog by having students complete a modified version of the Privilege Walk. Doing this at the outset sends a clear message about the importance of gender, race, and class in the political arena and tells students that these topics will be central to the course.

In the Privilege Walk, participants line up in a straight line outdoors or at the middle of the room and take steps forward or backward based on their responses to the Privilege Walk prompts; the prompts are largely related to race, gender, sexual orientation, and socio-economic status. These can be sensitive topics, so in a typical Privilege Walk participants do not have to respond to prompts that make them uncomfortable. To circumvent this, I created Privilege Walk personas. Each student is given one of these personas and completes the exercise based on the instructions for that persona rather than their own experience. This class is capped at 30, so I use two of each persona.

The persona approach means that students often receive a persona that is nothing like them; this makes the exercise a very effective way to help students see gender, race, class, and privilege from a new perspective. Also, despite having the same persona two students may end up in slightly different places (due to height/length of step). I use this to incorporate the idea that an individual’s capabilities can affect the person’s relative position in society. After completing the exercise, we discuss the exercise and its outcomes.

Although I typically assign supplementary readings in advance of classroom activities, I find that assigning the Paxton and Hughes reading after the Privilege Walk is more effective. Going through the exercise exposes students to the idea of intersectionality and the reality that a person’s “gender, class, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and sexuality combine to form intersecting social hierarchies” (Paxton and Hughes Reference Paxton and Hughes2014, 224). Students no longer have to try to imagine it; they have seen that the black middle-class lesbian and the white middle-class straight man have very different societal positions despite having similar levels of human capital.

Readings

Fox, Richard L., and Jennifer L. Lawless. Reference Fox and Lawless2014. “Uncovering the Origins of the Gender Gap in Political Ambition.” American Political Science Review 108 (3): 499–519.

Inglehart, Roland, and Pippa Norris. Reference Inglehart and Norris2000. “The Developmental Theory of the Gender Gap: Women’s and Men’s Voting Behavior in Global Perspective.” International Political Science Review 21 (4): 441–63.

Classroom activity

Mind the (Gender) Gap.

Materials needed

Gender gap questions, clickers or polling software

At every stage of political life—from voter to elected official—women and men think and/or behave differently. Of particular interest to college students, Fox and Lawless (Reference Fox and Lawless2014, 501) find that young women are 45% more likely than young men to state that they would never run for public office. I use the Fox and Lawless reading as a lead-in to the topic of underrepresentation of women in political office. I then use the Inglehart and Norris reading to introduce the gender gap in voting and public policy preferences. Tying those together, it is easy to make the point that because men and women have different policy concerns, the global dearth of female representation is problematic.

To illustrate the gender gap I present the students with a set of questions related to issues on which men and women tend to split, like the death penalty or social welfare. Research indicates that individuals tend to believe others share similar beliefs to their own; this “false consensus effect” tends to be strongest around morality issues (Park Reference Park2012). Thus, students are likely to feel that most of the class agrees with them and are likely to be surprised by the results. I first use clickers to poll all of the students. I then re-poll the questions by gender. At the end, we compare both the in-class results and the results reported in the initial studies. To debrief, I ask what students found most surprising in the results; it is rare that I have to ask a follow-up question, as their surprise typically acts as a catalyst for strong discussion regarding why the genders might have different views.

Readings

True, Jacqui. Reference True2013. “Women, Peace and Security in Post-Conflict and Peacebuilding Contexts.” Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre, Policy Brief.

Bekoe, Dorina, and Christina Parajon. Reference Bekoe and Parajon2007. Women’s Role in Liberia’s Reconstruction. Retrieved from http://www.usip.org/publications/women-s-role-in-liberia-s-reconstruction.

Classroom activity

Rebuilding Myappia.

Materials needed

Rebuilding worksheets; Myappia backstory

Women are disproportionately affected by armed conflict both during and after hostilities. Although academics in security studies have been resistant to gendering the field, practitioners have pursued women-centric strategies for rebuilding states that have been torn apart by armed conflict (Sjoberg Reference Sjoberg2009). For example, UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 mandates women’s inclusion in peacebuilding and post-conflict recovery. ^{Footnote 4} Per the UNSCR, women are to be equal participants in peace negotiations, peacekeeping, and humanitarian aid.

Because these are new concepts to students, I have developed an exercise in which students must participate in rebuilding a fictional state (Myappia) that has just come out of a genocidal three-way civil war. ^{Footnote 5} Over the course of three to four weeks, I conduct a series of lectures on relations between different levels of government, democratic executives, legislative systems, and electoral systems; as appropriate, I highlight the ways in which institutional design can affect gendered outcomes (i.e. proportional representation tends to be better for women and unitary systems ensure that the same rights are given to all citizens, regardless of location).

After each lecture, I give the students a worksheet and they work in small groups to determine what institutions they will implement as they rebuild Myappia, keeping the gender aspect of post-conflict rebuilding in mind. Both readings are helpful here; the True reading gives them a basic framework and the Bekoe and Parajon reading gives them concrete examples of how women have participated in Liberia’s post-conflict rebuilding. After each group session, I ask the groups to explain which institution(s) they chose and why they felt theirs was the best choice for rebuilding Myappia. This often generates lively debate between groups that have made different choices.