POL 222: Women, Politics & Public Policy

The College of Liberal Arts (CLA), like all other colleges at Purdue, has a set of core requirements that must be met in order to graduate. The College of Science requires a computer science course, all majors require a communications course, and the CLA requires a gender issues course. Of the many options under this gender category, one included is Political Science 222 -- Women, Politics, And Public Policy. The course description is as follows:  “An introduction to women’s participation in politics, with an emphasis on America. Structural and attitudinal conditions limiting women’s political roles and contemporary efforts to change women’s status in society through politics.” Having passed the course this preceding fall semester, I can attest to its structure and content: some areas of the course were exceptional, while others made me wonder why such a course would be in the CLA core curriculum.

Any course can be evaluated on many variables. There are the technical and structural aspects, such as the delivery of the course through available media like Blackboard, course websites, handouts, the instructor, and teaching assistants. There is also how the distribution of content is spread out over the semester, at which points are exams taken, and the calculation of the grade, relative to the student’s performance on other assessments (e.g homework, projects) in addition to the exams. The base of the course, the part which determines if the other aspects are worth investing time in, is the content. Whereas the course excelled in the structural aspect, the content of the course deviated from the course description, and was without a doubt heavily biased. The degradation of content hinders the effectiveness of a properly structured course.

Lost in the liberal bias of the course was an objective presentation of the feminist movement, criticisms and all. Over the duration of the course, there were at times brief mentions of the idea that men benefit from the feminist movement, as well as the idea that there are variations of feminism. Nothing further was said on those topics, nor was anything similar discussed. Due to the lack of opposing viewpoints discussed in lecture, there was little opportunity for critical thought outside of the feminist movement. The extent to which critical thought was incorporated was determined by the final paper, a policy proposal regarding some aspect of women’s rights. Although critical, the criticism was left to discovering problems in the feminist movement that could be improved in that direction – not of feminism as a whole. The syllabus from the section that I was in even stated, “Students should develop their own perspectives on course material by critically reading, writing, listening, and discussing the arguments and evidence presented.” Well, the problem is that not much was presented, aside from one of the required texts which did present both sides. Yet, the texts never covered more than a few questions on the tests, and class discussions on the text were strongly guided by the instructor towards the feminist perspective. All of the guest speakers, needless to say, were left-leaning instructors in the Political Science department. Could it have not benefitted the student to hear the arguments of a right-leaning professor (do those even exist?) from a different school or department? 

Also lacking from the course was an overview of women that have had a prominent role in politics. As stated by the course description, “An introduction to women’s participation in politics, with an emphasis on America”. There was no mention of Nancy Pelosi, Condoleezza Rice, or Hillary Clinton. Granted, most of us have heard of them, yet few of us know the name of the first woman to run for president. If some of the topics that were needlessly repetitive had been compacted, there could have been room for some non-feminist, politically-centered lecturing. The goal being to educate us, it would seem in the CLA’s best interest to ensure that students receive as much out of the course as they can: anything from facts, to new ideas, to politically-centered and balanced critical thought.

It need not be said that the points raised in the class are incongruent with traditional conservativism. The role of the mother has always been to take care of her family and maintain the household. Even in nature, the young need to be with the mother for a certain amount of time before they can go about on their own. But circumstances have changed over the last couple of centuries, and other areas regarding the family and women need to be viewed accordingly. When women couldn’t vote, little attention was paid to the abusive husband. Since things are different, it is inappropriate for conservatives to take a purely anti-feminist viewpoint. Women should be allowed the freedom to have equivalent access to the resources that men do, and have means of protection from genuinely abusive men. The question is to what extent can we implement policy regarding these issues without burying ourselves in such a massive amount that we end up retrograding? The policy needs to end at some point.

Not to get too in depth with the conservative argument against feminism, I will say that the intent of this was to highlight areas of this course that seemed to need improvement. Though there was much done right in the course (i.e., the instructor was knowledgeable and helpful, the course was set up to allow students to find ways to actively participate in women’s issues, and international concerns were a focus), it could have been that much better with a broader look at women in politics, feminism, and allowing the student to see all perspectives and make unbiased personal judgments of the movement.