The Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum and the Politics of Bad Policy

• In Event: Gender & Inclusion: The Profession & Beyond

Abstract

The Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum Act of 2020, enacted in December 2020, which Congress tucked into the year-end appropriations must-pass legislation, was enacted without major floor debates and without any comprehensive plan for what exactly is the established narrative of women’s history in America. Political science has distinctive perspectives which can inform an American women’s history museum from insights into how women entered political science and added to its pedagogy, to the role of women in American political development, to understanding of feminist and women’s movements and collective action historically, to policy analysis and assessments of gendered institutions and the role of political polarization in both defining and masking the policies of women’s history. All of these aspects are missing from public dialogue around the new museum. As a social science discipline, political science can provide needed leadership to rethink, restructure and reconnect. Curiously, at a time when the political parties are polarized over women’s issues, the public policy of creating a congressionally authorized museum on women’s history has been declared by both Democratic and Republican elected officials to be a bipartisan issue. Yet, under the guise of bipartisanship, this new museum has been hobbled with distinctive policy constraints that fail to reflect the direction of American women’s movements, thereby replicating and freezing existing gendered power imbalances. Unlike other recent museums added to the National Mall (with the singular exception of the National Museum of the American Indian (NAMI) (created following a scandal over the repatriation of bones)), the founding of the American Women’s History Museum not only lacks foundational mission and vision, but the planning lacks ties also to organized history groups or scholars who have worked to define women’s history. Instead, the Smithsonian is to be advised by a 25-member Council that is required to ensure the “equal representation of the diversity of the political viewpoints held by women.” Further, the legislation 1) fails to ensure that the Museum will strengthen existing women’s museums, and 2) lacks a directive to add to the study of women’s history. By comparison, the Museum of the American Latino (also authorized in the same appropriations bill) and the National Museum of African History and Culture) has these provisions. This paper examines the curiously partisan history of the legislation, from early legislative efforts centered around the privately incorporated advocacy group, the National Women’s History Museum, Inc. (NWHM) (which is not a museum despite the name) to the Congressional Commission to the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum Act of 2020 and provides a case study of the policy history, issues and coalitions, as well as outlining some of the distinctive aspects and controversies of women’s history. This case study provides an analysis of the politics underlying the bad policy implications of the current legislation and draws conclusions about the characteristics that typify these types of policy problems.

Author

• Denise L. Baer, Strategic Research Concepts