Gender & Public Policy

I typically teach policy-focused courses, such as U.S. Social Policy, Policy Analysis, Gender & Public Policy, and Gender, Welfare & Poverty. My overarching goal is to equip my students with the toolkit necessary for productive policy debate. In my Policy Analysis course, students develop a policy analysis report to address a real-world problem for a hypothetical client. Separately, they also complete a group presentation of a policy analysis designed with a particular client or agency in mind. In my WGSS courses, students participate in the Wikipedia Education (WikiEdu) program. The goal of this assignment is to share their knowledge with the general public, thereby facilitating more productive policy conversations. However, the increasing polarization in the public sphere has led some students to express concerns that these traditional approaches may be too slow or too rigid to effectively solve real-world problems. These recent conversations with my students have fueled my interest in your course development program.

This course serves as an introduction to the study of gender and public policy by exploring how ideas about gender, implicitly or explicitly, shape the formulation and implementation of policies and programs in areas strategic to promoting social equity. We begin with a brief survey of gender theories, followed by a discussion of social citizenship and welfare states, and then familiarize ourselves with the notion of "gender mainstreaming" and critically reflect on its practice in light of intersectional theories. Drawing on a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, this course aims to enrich our understanding of how gender intersects with policy and other systems of power to reduce, maintain, or exacerbate inequality.

Eiko Strader

Associate Professor of Public Policy and Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies

George Washington University