Critical Reading 2

Gender Bias
Summary
The article A Case for Double Standards written by Suzannah Lipscomb outlines the
issue of gender bias in historian scholarship. Lipscomb begins her article by
discussing the severity and importance of the issue and follows up her explanation
of the issue of gender bias with multiple examples of how women she knows in
history education have faced gender discrimination. Lipscomb explains that one of
her female colleagues wrote a popular historical book that included a more stories
from the perspectives of ordinary women and was disparaged on multiple accounts
for her ground-up approach. According to Lipscomb, this discrimination would not
have occurred if the author of the book had been male instead of female. Lipscomb
then describes another account of female discrimination in historical education in
which one of her friends could have had her writing published into a television
show, but instead got her work stolen and said to be of public knowledge that credit
need not be given. However, Lipscomb asks the question Would this have
happened if it were a male professor? She answers her own question with
probably not claiming that discrimination is a challenging issue to prove. Due to
its difficulty to prove, Lipscomb includes quantitative data about the instances, or
lack thereof, of female history author being on the top charts lists. She also explains
how more often than not, if an anonymous publication written by a female is read, it
is less likely to be criticized than if the females name is on it as the author.
Lipscomb closes her article by stating that gender bias in education is an awful,
ongoing problem that needs to come to an end.
100 Word Summary
The article outlines the issue of gender bias in historian scholarship. The article
begins by discussing the severity and importance of the issue, and follows up her
explanation of gender bias with multiple examples of how women she knows in
history education have faced gender discrimination. Lipscomb closes her article by
claiming that gender bias in education is an awful, ongoing problem that needs to
come to an end. A multitude of Lipscombs female colleagues and friends have
experienced gender bias in education and the claim is made that they would not
have been discriminated against if they were male.

Rhetorical Analysis
The author, Suzannah Lipscomb, is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at New
College of the Humanities and the author of The King is Dead. She has experience in
the historical education field and understands the issue of gender bias based on her
individual experiences as a faculty member at a college. Her article A Case of
Double Standards is published in History Today under the section Making History. As
a result of the context in which her article is displayed, the audience she reaches
are historian scholars and others interested in historical awareness and issues. In
addition, Lipscombs audience could be students and people in academia interested
in how gender bias occurs in the higher education system. Lipscombs purpose for
writing her article is to persuade people to make a change in gender bias in
education. She desires that gender bias is reduced and that people make an effort
to increase equality among students and faculty members. Lipscomb uses the
experiences of her colleagues and friends to explain her stance on the matter and
also make the topic seem more applicable to her life than it would if she had used
arbitrary stories of gender bias in historical education. By making the issue more
relevant to her situation, she makes herself more relatable to the audience and as a
result, increases the audiences positive response to her article. Lipscomb makes
the claim sexism is endemic and something needs to be done about it. She makes
this claim because of the absurdities she, her colleagues, and her friends, have
faced as women in historical higher education.
 Works Cited

Lipscomb, Suzannah. 2016. "A Case of Double Standards." History Today 66, no. 10:
53.
Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed March 28, 2017).