Kim Jones-Owen said it happens every year. The professor and director of the of women's studies program has seen many people and essays criticize women's studies programs, and - in this case - the program's textbooks.
Christine Stolba, a senior fellow for the Independent Women's Forum, a non-partisan group designed to help educate young women, has published an essay titled "Lying in a Room of One's Own: How Women's Studies Textbooks Miseducate Students."
The essay outlines discrepancies Stolba found within women's studies textbooks, two of which are employed at Ball State. Stolba reported that statistics in textbooks can often be contested, especially in terms of domestic violence.
"I think these texts are misleading, because in a larger sense, too many women's studies professors see their mission as promoting feminism rather than promoting critical humanities education," Stolba said.
Stolba added that the mission of the humanities is to educate students in the full range of art, literature and culture.
"I concluded that these texts were not ideal vehicles for fulfilling that mission," Stolba said. "They seemed more intent on promoting a particular ideology than on imparting knowledge. This is not the mission of the liberal arts educator.
"I would say that women's studies - as the academic arm of feminism - places its own political program before the more important goal of educating students - at least, as evidenced by their texts."
But Jones-Owen said Stolba's complaint is a common criticism of the women's studies program.
"Women's studies is the academic arm of feminism," Jones-Owen said. "I think women's studies experience more criticism than that experienced by other disciplines."
Jones-Owen and Julee Rosser, assistant director of women's studies, read the essay and said the argument Stolba made was misleading.
"I wouldn't accept a paper like this from one of my students," Rosser said. "I read through it, and it is all opinion-based."
Stolba said such opposition to her essay is common.
"I reached the conclusions I did after reading more than a thousand pages of women's studies textbooks," Stolba said. "What emerged from this reading was a consistent bias against views that do not conform to contemporary feminism.
"Some women's studies professors were upset by the report. One even posted a message on the academic women's studies list serve intimating that I was a 'right wing whore.' What didn't emerge was any substantial refutation of the claims I made in the report."
Rosser and Jones-Owen said the method of Stolba's citation was questionable.
Two out of the five texts used in the study were books Jones-Owen and Rosser used in both of their classes. In each of those textbooks, Rosser and Jones-Owen found statistical information to refute Stolba's claims.
One of the topics the professors centered on contained Stolba's statements on domestic violence. Stolba argues that "social scientists continue to debate the validity of (domestic violence) statistics, although you will not find mention of this fact in women's studies textbooks."
Stolba continues to call statements in women's studies textbooks "ambiguous."
"I am amazed at the audacity of that statement," Rosser said. "The sources in our texts are from the Boston Bar Report and the Bureau of Justice."
Rosser said these are two respectable sources - one being an academic journal, the other a government institution.
Jones-Owen said government documents and studies are often cited in textbooks.
Stolba's essay also attacks alleged textbook generalizations about whether men or women are more violent.
The essay said that "women are just as likely to initiate violence against men, although women are more likely to suffer injury as a result of violent encounters."
Jones-Owen said this is where discrepancy in information and statistics exists.
"The essay suggests women are responsible for violence," Jones-Owen said. "The numbers suggest otherwise."
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