Authors Meet Critics: Why Don’t Women Rule the World?

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

Why Don’t Women Rule the World? Understanding Women’s Civic and Political Choices (CQ Press, forthcoming in summer 2019) is a stand alone textbook for a women and politics course, and it is meant to interest women students in pursuing a political career. The book explores the political status of women across the globe, with particular attention paid to women in the American context. It examines the tactics and strategies women use to insert themselves into the male-dominated arena of government and politics, and also describes the way women currently participate in a wide array of political endeavors, ranging from protest politics and voting to running for elected office and serving as public officials. This book also looks at how underrepresentation of women manifests comparatively and how it plays out in policy. The title of this book Why Don’t Women Rule the World? is a tongue and cheek response to a serious question. We know girls achieve as well as boys (often better) in school, but we also know that women are underrepresented in positions of power throughout the world. So why don’t women rule, and why don’t they have more influence over the way the world is structured? Each chapter of the book contains political ambition activities intended to bolster students’ political interest, efficacy, and ambition. The inclusion of these activities is a direct response to recent research by Lawless & Fox revealing that the gender-gap in political ambition first emerges among college students and specifically calling on higher education to be far more proactive in bolstering young women’s political interest and ambition. Therefore, Why Don’t Women Rule the World? functions not only as a textbook but also as an activist intervention in higher education.

As an authors meet critics panel, we hope to begin a larger conversation in the political science profession on how to teach politics in a way that prompts students to think about their gendered assumptions of power and privilege, their role in reifying patriarchal structures, their own political ambition, and the ways they can address gender inequalities in their personal lives and in the broader world.

The authors of the book are:. J. Cherie Strachan (Central Michigan University), Lori Poloni-Staudinger (Northern Arizona University), Shannon Jenkins (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth), and Candice Ortbals (Pepperdine University).

The critics for the panel are:
Meg Rincker (Purdue University - Northwest)
Tiffany Barnes (University of Kentucky)
Janet Johnson (Brooklyn College)
Monica Schneider (Miami University)
Elizabeth Bennion (Indiana University South Bend)

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 10: Political Science Education

Cosponsor

• DIVISION 31: Women and Politics Research

Chair

• Candice D. Ortbals Pepperdine University

Presenters

• Meg Rincker Purdue University, Northwest

• Elizabeth A. Bennion Indiana University South Bend

• Tiffany D. Barnes University of Kentucky

• Janet E. Johnson CUNY-Brooklyn College

• Monica C. Schneider Miami University