Gender Sensitivity in the Classroom
From UCSB English Department Knowledge Base
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Advice from the UCSB Women's Center
Ways of Conducting Class That Can Discourage Women Students
- Ignoring women students while recognizing men students, even when women volunteer to participate in discussion.
- Calling directly on men but not on women.
- Calling men by name more often than women.
- Addressing the class as if no women were present, e.g., "When you were a boy..."
- "Coaching" men but not women in developing a fuller answer by probing for additional elaboration or explanation.
- Waiting longer for men than for women to answer a question before going on to another student.
- Interrupting women students (or allowing them to be disproportionately interrupted by peers).
- Asking women students questions that require factual answers (lower order questions) while asking men questions that demand personal evaluation and critical thinking (higher order questions).
- Responding more extensively to men's questions or comments than to those of women.
- Crediting men's comments to their author (e.g, "as Bill said...") but not crediting women's comments (or only hearing women's comments when they are repeated by a man).
- Making seemingly helpful comments that imply women are not as competent as men.
- Stereotyping character, roles, abilities, etc.
- Using the generic "he" or "man" to represent both men and women.
