Gender Representation in the American Politics Canon: An Analysis of Core Graduate Syllabi

Abstract

Core graduate-level seminars, in many ways, establish the “canon” literature for scholars entering a discipline. In the study of American Politics, the contents of this canon vary widely across departments and instructors, with important implications for the perspectives to which graduate students are exposed. At a basic level, the demographic characteristics of the authors whose work is assigned can have a major impact on the diversity (or lack of diversity) of viewpoints presented in these introductory courses. Using a unique dataset derived from a survey of core American Politics graduate seminars at highly-ranked universities, this project assesses the gender diversity of the authors whose research is currently taught—overall and within a comprehensive list of topics and subtopics. We also assess the “substantive representation” of women (and other underrepresented groups) within the American Politics canon by examining the frequency with which gender, racial, and other forms of identity politics are taught in these introductory courses.

Making women visible. Gender bias in Colombian Economic History Courses

“…Recent studies find that female-authored readings are significantly less represented than male-authored readings; suggesting that a lower proportion of women as faculty members is correlated with this outcome. In fact, they observe that women appear to be more reluctant than men with regards to assessing their investigations as compulsory readings which may indicate that even with a lower proportion of women in departments, an additional effort could be made to include more women-authored readings (Colgan, 2017;Diament et al, 2018;Hardt et al, 2019;Phull et al, 2018). The readings for a course are not only a matter of distribution of authors but are referents of a "canon" and a role model as the authors that students must read can significantly impact the diversity (or the lack thereof) of viewpoints represented in these courses.…”

“…The former, relevance refers to whether the gender issues are visible in economic history, either in the syllabi, explicitly, and/or in discussions in-class. We associate relevance with three main elements: the notion of the hidden curriculum (Bailey & Graves, 2016;Barrera, 2001;Ramírez et al, 2019) current stereotypes in the field of economic history (Colgan, 2017;Diament et al, 2018;Hardt et al, 2019;Phull et al, 2018;Stevenson & Zlotnik, 2018); and the self-awareness of women in economic history (Ferber & Nelson, 1993;Gómez et al, 2015;Grant & Sleeter, 1986;Nelson, 1995;2016). The latter, gender bias in terms of participation refers to the relative weight of women in the field as teachers, in academic production, and as researchers, as a great part of the literature refers to an unbalanced participation in the field, in accord with the contributions of Perona…”

“…The second analyses each reference author and variables such as gender, academic career, places where they studied, among others. We gathered 444 observations, and the methodology used here is in line with the works of Colgan (2017), Diament et al (2018) and Hardt et al (2019, who implement a syllabus analysis to address the participation of women in other fields. While we are aware…”

Having female role models correlates with PhD students’ attitudes toward their own academic success

“…Though personally unknown to most students, authors appearing in syllabi act as role models; a citation in a syllabus signals that the author has conducted research worthy of emulation. However, scholars cite the work of female scholars infrequently, relative to women's professional presence [20][21][22][23][24]. In political science, for example, women constituted only 19% of first authors of the citations in Ph.D.-level syllabi and reading lists; by contrast, women had authored 27% of articles in top ten political science journals and comprised 27% of US-based tenure-track political science faculty positions [23].…”

Gender, Race, Age, and National Origin Predict Whether Faculty Assign Female-Authored Readings in Graduate Syllabi

“…If faculty teaching PhD courses (henceforth, “instructors”) largely omit female authors, students may become less likely to cite female-authored work, and they may develop implicit stereotypes regarding the quality of female scholars’ research. Indeed, recent studies confirm that female authors are underrepresented in syllabi in two subfields of political science: international relations and American politics (Colgan 2017; Diament, Howat, and Lacombe 2018; Phull, Ciflikli, and Meibauer 2018).…”