Students Explore the Intersection
Politics
Gender
By Melissa R. Michelson, Ph.D., Dean of Arts & Sciences and Professor of Political Science, with Bianca Barros ’21, Victor Garcia ’21, and Rasmia Shuman ’22 I teach a number of political science classes at Menlo College, ranging from Latinx Politics to Civil Liberties to Political Marketing. In all of those classes, I often talk about the role of gender and how it interacts with other identities, including race and partisanship. In general, women are more likely to need to be recruited to run for office (rather than thinking to do so on their own), and often are working in supportive (invisible) roles rather than as candidates for office. When elected, they are more likely to focus on issues of family and childcare, compared to their male peers. Women of color like Senators Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mazie Hirono, former Senator Shirley Chisholm, and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris are role models for many women, and their stories illustrate the multiple challenges of their intersectional identities.
Dr. Melissa Michelson
Having already had a taste of the fascinating ways in which race and gender matter in politics, three of my students approached me with the idea of having a group IDR (individual directed research) class to learn more. Instead of the individual work of a classic IDR, we designed the course as a weekly Zoom where the students would all read some of the same books and papers and could meet with the professors who authored that work to ask them questions. It was amazing. My colleagues were enthusiastic participants, and the small scale of the “class” allowed each of the three students space to explore their specific topics of interest. Their final projects—a magazine, a website, and a series of podcasts—are brilliant, and I’m so proud to share them with the Menlo community.
5 WINTER 2022
