By Brooke Ackerly (Vanderbilt University) and Liza Mügge (University of Amsterdam)
Gender is essential for the understanding of politics in all its diversity. Concepts of democracy and peace, themes of race and inclusion, or methodology are better understood through a gender lens. Therefore, we need to utilize a gender in our teaching across the discipline. This symposium provides accounts of how scholars demonstrate rich pedagogical reflection as they incorporate gender into their teaching across the discipline. They supplement their articles with syllabi, in class exercises, and sample assignments available online. The result is inspiration and guidance for all politics professors to integrate the insights of gender scholarship into our teaching. Gender mainstreaming in the classroom 1) provides student-citizens with a critical view on political equality, 2) reaches out to the entire student population, 3) cultivates critical analytical skills, 4) develops substantive knowledge about gender research, 5) creates awareness of the power of gender hierarchies, and 6) challenges gender hierarchies in part by not reinscribing them. By integrating gender into political science education, we prepare students – women and men – to be part of a democratic citizenry capable of transforming its most tenacious systems of power, of which gender is one of the most cross-cutting.
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PS: Political Science & Politics / Volume 49 / Issue 03 / July 2016, pp 541-545, Copyright © American Political Science Association 2016