“Pale, male, and stale”? An analysis of introductory readers in political science

Abstract

Scholarship indicates that women and gender are underrepresented in Political Science textbooks, particularly those in American Politics. We complement those analyses by focusing on the “companion readers” often paired with textbooks. Readers give students a glimpse at “real political science,” showing how the field is studied and what political scientists value. Do the readers convey that “women also know stuff,” women are political actors, and gender is a relevant construct? The answer to each of these three questions is a resounding no. Analyzing women and gender representation in readers for three introductory sub-fields (American, Comparative, and Global Politics), we find a strong preference toward scholarship by men. Our results indicate only a small proportion of women authors and an even lower percentage of articles that focus on women. Moreover, the readers have not changed over time resulting in readers that are still “pale, male, and stale.” Because readers offer a snapshot of the field, and may be adopted passively in an introductory course, we argue that the absence of women harms students and political science itself.

Keywords:

• Gender
• curriculum
• textbooks
• undergraduate education
• diversity

Notes

1 While the authors are also interested in evaluating the racial, ethnic, sexuality, and other identities of authors as well as the inclusion of discussions of intersectionality in these anthologies, these concerns are beyond the scope of this article.

2 Gender scholars call this the “add-women-and-stir” approach.

3 In other words, when mainstreaming, not only gender but intersectionality – the notion that people have multiple sources of privilege or oppression based on gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, or other factors and that these intersect in various ways – becomes central to the study of politics (Enloe 2001, 2013, 2016, 2017; Levintova and Staudinger 2018; Smooth 2006).

4 The authors have even had self-identified feminist students in gender and politics classes reveal an unconscious bias of assuming that all authors are male trap, much to those students’ embarrassment.

5 We chose not to include Introduction to Political Science collections, as the readings tended to be a mix of political theory (because of the heavy over-represented men in the “canon”) and comparative politics. Our logic was that we could capture the comparative selections in the sub-field specific text.

6 If a selection was written by an organization, group, or governmental entity, it was coded as single-author; eg UN, Anti-Federalists, SCOTUS, etc.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Becki Scola

Dr. Becki Scola is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University.

Laura C. Bucci

Dr. Laura C. Bucci is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University.

Lisa Baglione

Dr. Lisa Baglione is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University.