In reference to Mallendo’s post about gender in the discipline and in the classroom, I run into the same problem. Approximately 65 percent of the students on my campus are female and my classes mirror this gender ratio. I don’t specifically address gender in my comparative politics course but I do make an effort to include literature written by people who are not Caucasian males with U.S. nationality. In terms of female authors, this has included:
- Terry Lynn Karl’s “‘Not On Your Vita’: The Relevance Of Comparative Politics For Public Life”.
- Theda Skocpol’s 1976 article “France, Russia, China: A Structural Analysis of Social Revolutions” in Comparative Studies in Society and History.
- Samantha Power’s 2001 article in The Atlantic, “Bystanders to Genocide: Why the United States Let the Rwandan Genocide Happen”.
- Zarah Ghahramani’s My Life as a Traitor, published by Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2008.
- Jasmin Darznik’s 2012 op-ed in The New York Times, “Home is Where They Let You Live“.
In the past I have also assigned some of Elinor Ostrom’s work in a graduate course. But in general, it’s been difficult finding high-quality literature relevant to my course written by women in a field that is dominated by men.