POLS 027. Gender and American Politics (AP)

This course considers the ways in which gender has shaped American politics from the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the present. What is "gender" and what are its implications for U.S. politics? How and why did women gain the right to vote but lose the battle for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)? What would it mean for women if a woman was elected President of the United States? This course considers these questions and more from the perspective of the growing body of literature concerning gender and politics. This course will be divided into four units, aiming to answer different questions. First, we will discuss what it means to talk about gender. Second, we will consider watershed moments in the movements for women's rights, such as battles for women's suffrage, the non-passage of the ERA, and contemporary judicial retrenchment of reproductive rights. Third, we will consider whether it makes sense to talk about women having distinct political preferences, as some scholars have argued. In this portion of the course, we will focus in detail on how political preferences emerge and how/why gender shapes women's experiences of the political world across partisan divides. Finally, we will consider the concept of representation and the stakes of having diverse gender representation in various governing institutions and levels of government.
Social Sciences.
1 credit.
Catalog chapter: Political Science
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/political-science

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