Evaluating Undergraduate Courses on Women in the Economy
评估了本科女性经济学课程的内容与目标，回应了关于课程跨学科性、意识形态和学术严谨性的批评，并分析了课程在传授经济学工具、探讨女性地位议题及促进建设性辩论方面的成效。
This paper critically evaluates the scope and content of undergraduate courses on the economic status of women. It responds critics who question whether these courses are too interdisciplinary, too laden with ideology, and too soft qualify as economics courses. It details the content of existing courses and investigates how well they meet the following objectives: (1) familiarize students with the economists' toolbox (supply and demand curves, the concept of constrained optimization, etc.); (2) expose students topics of empirical importance in understanding the status of women and topics that pose particular challenges economic orthodoxy; (3) investigate how considerations of gender may lead a restructuring of research questions and economic models; and (4) stimulate and nurture constructive debate on the determinants of the economic status of women by demanding that assertions be backed by analysis and facts. The first objective is a goal of any undergraduate course in economics: teach students to think like economists (John J. Siegfried et al. 1991 p. 199). The second and third objectives serve differentiate this course from other undergraduate courses in economics and acknowledge its feminist perspective. A standard undergraduate course in labor economics has as its organizing theme the study of decisions and constraints faced by individuals engaged in market work. Gender is one of many factors studied. The organizing theme of a course on gender and the sexual division of labor is the study of decisions and constraints faced by women, in some cases as compared with men. With gender as its primary focus, a course on women in the economy devotes more time nonmarket production than does a standard course in labor economics. The fourth objective is protect against the excesses of political correctness from the right or from the left. Every participant in a course on the sexual division of labor has a financial and emotional stake in the issues covered. This has advantages (it is not difficult generate discussion) and disadvantages (biases, prejudices and self interest can easily permeate the discussion). Demanding that students provide facts and analysis support their assertions minimizes this disadvantage, both in classroom discussions and in term papers. To back up assertions with facts, students must learn how access, read, and interpret data on the economic status of women. Information is drawn from two sources: syllabi collected by the author in the fall of 1990 and syllabi compiled by Barbara Bergmann (1991). Twelve undergraduate courses are represented in the sample.' All but one focus on the economic status of women in the United States, and only two are explicitly interdisciplinary. The typical prerequisite is one introductory course in economics.