{"id":3193,"date":"2014-10-27T00:19:47","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T00:19:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/10\/27\/teachers-are-often-unaware-of-the-gender\/"},"modified":"2014-10-27T00:19:47","modified_gmt":"2014-10-27T00:19:47","slug":"teachers-are-often-unaware-of-the-gender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/10\/27\/teachers-are-often-unaware-of-the-gender\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"
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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 \u2018favouring\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

In other public contexts, too, such as seminars and debates, when women and men are deliberately given an equal amount of the highly valued talking time, there is often a perception that they are getting more than their fair share. Dale Spender explains this as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, if women talk at all, this may be perceived as \u2018too much\u2019 by men who expect them to provide a silent, decorative background in many social contexts.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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PBS: Language as Prejudice – Myth #6: Women Talk Too Much<\/a> (via misandry-mermaid<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Sadly too true.\u00a0 I do my best to be equal, but I wonder if I manage.\u00a0 At public appearances it\u2019s easier, simply because the majority of audience members are female.\u00a0 This is what makes me like single sex schools.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have to worry.\u00a0 Boys get to ask questions or girls get to ask questions, but I don\u2019t have to count to make sure I don\u2019t favor one over the other.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading <\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[51],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3193"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}