POLS 601, Topics in
American Government, Women and Politics
Tuesday, 3:30-6:10 PM Professor
Barbara Burrell
Dusable 464 753-7050
Office Hours, Tuesday, 1-3, Wednesdays 1-3 bburrell@niu.edu
115 Zulauf Hall
A rich array of research on
women’s participation in politics has developed over the past few decades all
across the various subfields of political science. We will read and discuss
some of the research on women and political life in the United States and take
a comparative perspective on occasion. Our goals will be to become familiar
with the variety of perspectives scholars have taken in thinking about women
and politics and gender and politics, the questions they have raised and to
understand different theoretical arguments and research approaches. What do we
learn by looking at a political question or problem from the perspective of
women’s engagement or lack of involvement in political affairs? Why study women
and politics? How does the study of women and politics enhance our
understanding of the political? What is gender all about?
Required Books
Kristi Andersen. 1996. After
Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics before the New Deal.
University of Chicago Press.1996
Lois Duke Whitaker, editor. Voting
the Gender Gap. University of Illinois Press,
2008
Evelyn Simien.
Black Feminist Voices in Politics. State
University of New York Press.
Cindy Simon Rosenthal,
editor. Women Transforming Congress.
University of Oklahoma Press. 2002
Ronnee Schreiber, Righting Feminism, University of Oxford Press. 2008
Lee Ann Banaszak. The U.S. Women’s Movement in Global
Perspective. Rowman
and Littlefield. 2005
Barbara Palmer and Dennis
Simon 2008. Breaking the Glass Ceiling,
2nd edition. Routledge Publishing. 2008
Journal articles and book
chapters are available either through Jstor or on
Blackboard under our course. If you are
on campus, you just need to type in www.jstor.org
to get to that website and download the article. If you are using a computer
off campus, logon to the NIU website and go the library, go to articles, tell
it that you are off campus, click on General under databases and scroll down to
Jstor.
Schedule
January 13
- Introduction
Part I. Women and Political Participation
January 20 -
Political Participation in the Suffrage
Era
Reading: After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics
January 27. The Gender Gap in Contemporary Political
Behavior
Reading: Voting the Gender Gap
Everyone will read the
Introduction, conclusion and chapters 1-5; individual students will be assigned
a chapter from chapters 6-9 to be assigned in class. The student will be
responsible for leading the discussion on that chapter. You should be able to
present the research question, describe basic concepts, present the research
design and summarize findings. 1-2 page
written summary required.
February 3. The Women’s Movement
Reading: The U.S. Women’s Movement in Global Perspective
Everyone will read the Introduction,
conclusion and chapters 1-6; individual students will be assigned a chapter
from chapters 7-11. The student will be responsible for leading the discussion
on that chapter. You should be able to present the research question, describe
basic concepts, present the research design and summarize findings. 1-2 page written summary required.
February 10.
Intersectionality
Readings: Black
Feminist Voices in Politics
Mary Hawkesworth.
2003. “Congressional Enactments of Race-Gender: Toward a Theory of
Raced-Gendered Institutions,” American Political Science Review 97 (November): 529-550. Jstor
February 17.
Expanding Women’s Voices
Reading: Righting Feminism
Part II. Running for and Serving in Electoral Office
February 24.
Women as Candidates
Readings: Breaking the Glass Ceiling
Irwin Gertzog.
2002. “Women’s Changing Pathways to the U. S. House of Representatives: Widows,
Elites, and Strategic Politicians.” In Women Transforming Congress 95-118
March 3. Women as Candidates, continued
Readings: Richard Fox and
Jennifer Lawless. 2004. “Entering the Arena? Gender and the Decision to Run for
Office.” American Journal of Political Science 48 (2): 264-280 Jstor
Kathy Dolan. 2006. “Symbolic
Mobilization? The Impact of Candidate Sex.”
American Politics Research, 34,
6:687-704.
Christina Wolbrecht and David Campbell. 2006. “See Jane Run: Women
Politicians as Role Models for Adolescents.” Journal of Politics,
68, 2:.233-247 Blackboard
Dianne Bystrom
and Lynda Lee Kaid. 2002. “Are Women Candidates
Transforming Campaign Communication? A Comparison of Advertising Videostyles in the 1990s” In Women Transforming
Congress, 146-169.
Lorna Rae Atkeson. 2003. “Not All Cues Are Created Equal: The
Conditional Impact of Female Candidates on Political Engagement.” Journal
of Politics, 65: 4: 1040-1061. Jstor
March 17. Women
in Office and Representation
The first 4 readings are all
in Women Transforming Congress, Chapters 8, 10, 12, 14
Christina Wolbrecht. “Female Legislators and the Women’s Rights
Agenda” 170-197.
Michele Swers. “Transforming the Agenda: Analyzing Gender
Differences in Women’s Issue Bill Sponsorship.”
260-284
Noelle H. Norton.
“Transforming Policy from the Inside: Participation in Committee”, 316-340
Katherine Cramer Walsh.
“Enlarging Representation: Women Bringing Marginalized Perspectives to Floor
Debate in the House of Representatives”
370-396
Lyn Kathlene.
1995. Alternative Views of Crime:
Legislative Policymaking in Gendered Terms” Journal of Politics 57, 3 (August): 696-723 Jstor
Jane Mansbridge.
1999. “Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women? A Contingent
‘Yes.’” Journal of Politics 61(August):
628-659. Jstor
March 24.
Public Policy
The first 4 readings are
taken from Gender and American Politics: Women, Men and the Political
Process, second edition, eds. Sue Tolleson-Rinehart and Jyl
Josephson M.E. Sharpe, 2005. Available on Blackboard
Janie Leatherman. “Gender
and U.S. Foreign Policy: Hegemonic Masculinity, the War in Iraq, and UN-Doing
of World Order”
Dorothy E. McBride. “Gendering
Policy Debates: Welfare Reform, Abortion Regulation, and Trafficking”
Jyl Josephson. “Gender, social Construction, and
Policies for Low-Income Men and Women”
Sue Tolleson-Rinehart.
“Women Get Sicker; Men Die Quicker: Gender, Health Politics, and Health Policy”
Karen Kedrowski
and Marily Stine Sarow.
“The Gendering of Cancer Policy.” In Women Transforming Congress, Chapter 9, 240-259
March 31.
Women and Power, Executive Leadership
Georgia Duerst
Lahti, 2006. “Presidential elections: Gendered space and the Case of 2004.” In
Gender and Elections, eds. Susan Carroll and Richard Fox, New York, NY:
Cambridge University Press. 12-42. Blackboard
Farida Jalalzai. 2008. “Women
Rule: Shattering the Executive Glass Ceiling.” Politics & Gender, 4
(2) June, 205-231
The following 4 articles are
all from Politics & Gender, September 2008 available on Blackboard
Melinda Adams. “ Liberia’s Election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Women’s Executive Leadership in Africa”,
475-485
Sarah Elise Wiliarty. “Chancellor Angela Merkel—A Sign of Hope or the
Exception that Proves the Rule?”, 485-495
Anne Maria Holli. “Electoral Reform Opens Roads to presidency for
Finnish Women,” 496-509
Marcela Rios Tabor. “Seizing
a Window of Opportunity: The Election of President Bachelet
in Chile,” 509-519
Ronald Peters and Cindy
Simon Rosenthal. 2008. “Assessing Nancy Pelosi” The Forum on Blackboard
Part III. Electoral Structures, Quotas and the
Numerical Representation of Women in National Parliaments
April 7. You may want to peruse http://idea.int
for more information on the different types of electoral systems.
Part I. Electoral Systems
Eileen McDonagh.
2002. “Political Citizenship and Democratization: The Gender Paradox.” American
Political Science Review 96, 3 (September) 553-564. Jstor
Wilma Rule. 1987. “Electoral
Systems, Contextual Factors and Women’s Opportunity for Election to Parliament
in Twenty-Three Democracies.” Western Political Quarterly 34: 60-77. Jstor
Richard Matland.
1998. “Women’s Representation in National Legislatures: Developed and
Developing Countries.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, 23, 1 (February):
109-125. Jstor
Joyce Gelb. “Representing
Women in Britain and the United States,” Chapter 16 in Women Transforming
Congress, 422-444.
Susan Carroll and Krista
Jenkins. 2001“Unrealized Opportunity?
Term Limits and the Representation of Women in State Legislatures,” Women & Politics 23:4: 1-30 Blackboard
April 14. Part II. Quotas
Readings: In Women, Quotas and Politics, Ed. Drude Dahlerup. 2006 New York: Routledge (all in Blackboard)
1. Carol Bacchi. 2006.
“Arguing for and against Quotas, 32-51.
2. Aili Tripp, Dior Konate and
Colleen Lowe-Morna. 2006. “Sub-Saharan Africa: on the
Fast Track to Women’s Political Representation, 112-137.
3. Lenita Freidenvall, Drude Bahlerup and Hege Skjeie. “the Nordic
Countries” an Incremental Model” 55-82
Susan Franceschet
and Jennifer Piscopo. 2008. “Gender Quotas and
Women’s Substantive Representation: Lessons from Argentina.” Politics &
Gender, (4) 393-425
Pippa Norris. 2007. “Women Leaders and Constitution
Building in Iraq and Afghanistan” In Women
Who Lead Ed. Barbara Kellerman. New
York: Jossey Bass. Pp.197-226. Blackboard
April 21: Student Papers:
Informal presentations and discussion of findings
April 28. Studying American
Politics from a Feminist Perspective
Readings: to be assigned
Grading
1.
Weekly Papers (20% of course grade)
Students will be required to
write 8 1-2 page reaction papers that respond to the readings for that week.
These papers should be emailed to me and posted on the Discussion Board of
Blackboard so that other members of the class will be able to read and reflect
on them by
2.
Class Participation (20% of course grade)
This course is a seminar and
as participants in it you will be expected to contribute as much as I do. Everyone is expected to come to class each
week having read all of that week’s readings and be ready to engage in a
thoughtful discussion of them. We will
want to think about various authors’ theoretical focus. What are the big
picture questions they are addressing and seeking to answer? How are they going
about answering them, what have they found and what do they conclude? Where
might their research go next? We will also want to think about how might
scholarly research inform political activism?
No matter how grand your research paper might be and how insightful your
final exam might be if you do not actively make positive contributions to each
week’s class discussion, you will not receive an A in the course.
3.
Research Paper (40% of grade): Each
student is required to write an original research paper on a topic related to women and politics. I must
approve your topic. If you are a Ph.D.
student you might consider this paper to be a preliminary exercise toward a
dissertation even if you have no desire to write a dissertation on women and
politics. If you are a masters student, you should consider this paper as a
possible starred paper or preliminary masters thesis.
Your aim should be to have a piece of original research that could be a major step
toward a conference presentation. The paper is not a research design or a
literature review. You need to have a political behavior puzzle or question
that you wish to answer empirically. You will develop and test an
hypothesis. Once you have your hypothesis and research idea, we will work
together in class periods to brain storm about how the research can be
collected to answer your research puzzle or question and we will consider
theoretical explanations. It may be that in the end you (along with the class)
decide that the data to actually carry out the research is not available, but
your goal will be to set up the research project theoretically so that the data
could be collected. We will present and discuss the papers the week of April
21.
Benchmarks:
4. Take-home final (20% of
grade): The final exam will be written
during finals week. You will be required to choose a research theme and develop
an essay that synthesizes the major questions of the semester and reviews the
research that has been conducted to address the theme that you have chosen.
Academic Dishonesty
Regarding plagiarism, the NIU Undergraduate Catalog states:
"Students are guilty of plagiarism, intentional or not, if they copy material
from books, magazines, or other sources without identifying and acknowledging
them. Students guilty of, or assisting others in, either cheating or plagiarism
on an assignment, quiz, or examination may receive a grade of F for the course
involved and may be suspended or dismissed from the university." The above
statement encompasses a paper written in whole or in part by another; a paper
copied word-for-word or with only minor changes from another soce; a paper copied in part from one or more sources without
proper identification and acknowledgment of the sources; a paper that is merely
a paraphrase of one or more sources, using ideas and/or logic without credit
even though the actual words may be changed; and a paper that quotes,
summarizes or paraphrases, or cuts and pastes words, phrases, or images from an
Internet source without identification and the address of the web site.
Students with Disabilities
Under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, NIU is
committed to making reasonable accommodations for persons with documented
disabilities. Those students with disabilities that may have an impact on their
course work must register with the Center for Access-Ability Resources (CAAR)
on the fourth floor of the Health Services Building (753-1303). CAAR will
assist students in making appropriate instructional and/or examination
accommodations with course instructors. It is important that CAAR and
instructors be informed of any disability-related needs during the first two
weeks of the semester.