Teachers are often unaware of the gender distribution of talk in their classrooms. They usually consider that they give equal amounts of attention to girls and boys, and it is only when they make a tape recording that they realize that boys are dominating the interactions.
Dale Spender, an Australian feminist who has been a strong advocate of female rights in this area, noted that teachers who tried to restore the balance by deliberately ‘favouring’ the girls were astounded to find that despite their efforts they continued to devote more time to the boys in their classrooms.
Another study reported that a male science teacher who managed to create an atmosphere in which girls and boys contributed more equally to discussion felt that he was devoting 90 per cent of his attention to the girls. And so did his male pupils. They complained vociferously that the girls were getting too much talking time.
From here, where there's a lot more. Via
I'd love to see more research done on this. I try to make sure that everyone gets a chance to speak when I'm in conversations at work, and I bet that the men still out-talk the women (with a couple of notable exceptions who are good at not being shut up by people talking over them).
Edit:
Just chatted about this with Julie, and considered it from my history of an all-boys school. Where the conversation in the class-room would always be dominated by a few people. I suspect that if a teacher tried to make sure that the lower-status boys got equal talk time with the higher-status boys they would run into exactly the same problem.
Original post on Dreamwidth - there are
2013-02-02 02:51 pm (UTC)
2013-02-02 02:53 pm (UTC)
2013-02-02 03:46 pm (UTC)
I do notice certain men at work are very bad at acknowledging women's contribution to discussions - talking over them or ignoring their input. Fortunately it is getting less frequent.
2013-02-02 04:58 pm (UTC)
So, while I think it would be normal to have something like an 80-20 rule for 20% of kids getting 80% of attention, this should distribute evenly across groups (10% of women get 40% and 10% of men get 40%).
I think it is most likely a sign of cultural bias and an external mechanism causing a difference if females are statistically significantly quieter than males. [You could argue other things, higher pitched voices harder to hear or some vague "it's genetic"... my belief is only a belief.]
2013-02-02 05:10 pm (UTC)
2013-02-02 05:26 pm (UTC)
That is, is the problem "Women are getting too much attention" or is the problem "I'm getting less attention than usual, who is getting more than usual?"
Edit: Of course the core problem is the bias in "usual" -- but why does restoring the balance cause an issue?
Edited at 2013-02-02 05:26 pm (UTC)
2013-02-02 05:29 pm (UTC)
"The talkativeness of women has been gauged in comparison not with men but with silence. Women have not been judged on the grounds of whether they talk more than men, but of whether they talk more than silent women."
Which basically agrees with what you said :->
And I suspect that any change causes people to notice, and then get grumpy about it, because they aren't getting as much. Any move towards equality of any kind tends to cause the people at the top to complain that The Natural Order has been upset and Now We're All Doomed.
2013-02-02 06:20 pm (UTC)
2013-02-03 04:20 pm (UTC)