Building a Gender and Methodology Curriculum: Integrated Skills, Exercises, and Practices

Abstract

In this article, we develop an argument for better integrating the political science curricula on methodology with gender politics. We demonstrate how these two areas are presently distinct and nonoverlapping with an analysis of commonly used methodology and women and politics textbooks. We examine the implications of these results for female students’ engagement with political methodology—an area in which women are persistently underrepresented—by drawing on research from STEM educators. Stereotype threat (Steele 1997; Steele and Aronson 1995) provides a framework for thinking about the myriad of ways the curriculum influences learning outcomes for female students and highlights the utility of greater crossover between the two subject areas. To facilitate better integration of methodology and gender politics, we identify opportunities for instructors to incorporate methods into courses on gender and gender into courses on methods. We also develop a number of different in-class activities and resources to help faculty to bridge the gap between gender and methodology.

Keywords:

• gender
• methodology
• pedagogy
• stereotype threat
• textbook analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Lauren Santoro for her assistance with the project and Tiffany Barnes and Bas van Doorn for comments on various drafts.

Supplemental Data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15512169.2014.985106

Notes

Some of these books did not meet with our Amazon search criteria. For example, Babbie’s (2013) text is a general social science text. We opted to include these texts given their prevalence in our syllabi sample.

One of the texts did not have an index and is thus not included in these counts.

Four of the texts were not available on Coursesmart but were available through other sources. We compared texts that had both Coursesmart and these other searches available with identical results.

We use the terms “women and politics” and “gender politics” and other names for the courses interchangeably. Of course, while there is likely overlap between these kinds of courses, these terms are not necessarily interchangeable. For example, a class on gender politics might include a section on gay or transgender rights or even focus on male gender identity and would therefore be substantively different from, for instance, a class on Women and Politics in the United States. However, given the extant research on the separation between these types of courses and methods content, we expect similar levels of separation, regardless of the substantive focus of the course.

To create the database, we started with the Center for American Women and Politics syllabi resources and downloaded all syllabi that met the criteria of being a women and politics, gender politics, or sex and politics class, as well as subtopics, like women and American politics or women and political leadership. We then searched on the Internet for additional syllabi through several key phrases, including “women and politics syllabi” and “gender and politics syllabi.” Finally, using the participants in the 2011 American Political Science Association “Teaching Gender Politics: The View from the Field,” we searched for each person’s name, plus the search terms. All searches were conducted in December 2011. We sorted the syllabi by class title: 41 were titled “Women and Politics” or some close variant (like Women And Politics in Global Perspective); 22 were titled “Gender Politics” or some close variant (such as Gender, Politics & Power); and 16 syllabi did not fall cleanly into either category, such as Feminist Theory. The most comment course name was Women and Politics. We use a different method of collecting syllabi for the methods and gender politics classes for two reasons: First, there does not exist a large online database of methods syllabi like there is for gender politics syllabi (although several small collections are available). Second, searching for research methods syllabi produced unsatisfactory results; that is, methods courses go by a diverse set of names and many nonpolitical science syllabi were found, in attempting to search for the syllabi.

“Hypoth*” was used as the search term to allow for singular or plural uses of the word.

Two additional textbooks were used by more than two classes but did not have indexes; they were discarded from the evaluation.

Many of the texts contain tables and figures that could be an opportunity to incorporate methodologically substantive content and reference this content in the index.

We limited our searches to four books because they had full texts available online and were survey texts rather than books covering a single topic.

We have found that this activity works best when students maintain complete silence. Also, the instructor should emphasize that if students feel uncomfortable revealing their opinion on a particular issue, they are welcome to sit down or stand in the middle of the room. In a smaller class, students might get into groups first and generate five policy areas where women and men differ in policy attitudes.