The Gender Friendly Classroom

1
The Gender Friendly Classroom

• FCTL 2003 Winter Workshop

2
Are Classrooms Gender Friendly?

• Disciplines themselves are not necessarily gender
  friendly
• The canon of those disciplines, and the key
  texts from which we work, may not, then, be
  gender friendly

3
Gender Issues in the Classroom

• Classroom Behaviors
• Men talk more than women in class
• Men exert more control over the topic of
  conversation
• Racial dimensions as white men tend to talk more
  than minority men
• Mens participation tends to interrupt or devalue
  womens contribution to the classroom

4
Faculty Interaction with Students

• Faculty address male students more frequently,
  and use their names
• Humorous or teaching references to physical or
  sexual characteristics are more frequently
  applied to females
• Humorous treatment of serious topics such as
  rape, lesbianism, or depression, may be more
  offensive to women

5
Nonverbal Interaction

• Faculty tend to make eye contact more with male
  students
• Minority students tend to feel ignored or put
  down by faculty more often than do white students
• Faculty tend to non and gesture more often in
  response to mens questions and comments than to
  womens

6
Curriculum

• How does one make the classroom gender friendly
  if the curriculum itself is not gender friendly?
• Legitimacy of the material is often questioned if
  it is too woman centered
• Presumes objectivity if it is man centered

7
Examples from Political Science

• Womens Caucus for Political Science textbook
  review project
• Women and Politics Courses
• Polling

8
Women and Health Policy

• Femme Couverte
• Man is the norm-androcentrism
• Woman is the Problem
• Consequences

9
Approaches to the Curriculum

• Womanless Curriculum
• Absence of women is not noted
• Women as an Addition to the Curriculum
• Add women and stir
• Approaches do not change rather, womens
  contributions are examined from those same
  standards

10
More Approaches

• Woman as a Problem, Anomoly of Absence from the
  Curriculum
• Women are outsiders, victims or defective
  variants with no voice
• Women as Different or Women as Equals

11
Other Disconnections

• Fragmentation of knowledge into specialized areas
• Depersonalization of knowledge so that it is
  separate from ones life
• Separation of the academy from the polity
• Elitism and racism within the curriculum

12
A Gender Friendly Classroom?

• Videotape or collegial input
• Curriculum redesign
• Explore interdisciplinary approaches
• Other ideas?