Something odd happened one week in one of my classes. None of the male students turned up (see my earlier post about them having better things to do than attend class!), and the students who were there suddenly spoke much more and seemed significantly more confident. The discussion was livelier than usual and the students appeared to be having a lot of fun.
This is to say that on a day when there were only women in the room, the class was better. At the end of the seminar, I mentioned the fact that the ladies had been more talkative when no guys were around. The women looked guiltily at each other and finally one said that they didn’t talk as much when the entire group was there because they didn’t want the men to think they were “feminists.” The others concurred and said that if they monopolized the discussion, or even just contributed to it more, the male students would think bad things about them. In other words, women attending a selective university are still afraid to speak up, lest men find them less attractive for doing so.
There’s something wrong with this, isn’t there? How can we change it?
--Curly
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3 comments:
I read an article about this recently on Camels with Hammers. It's a common thing, and even one man in a room full of women can make a big difference. It also means the men don't know how the women are when they're not around, which is a scary thought!
Thanks for the link! It is weird to think that women act so different when men are around. Do men do the same in regard to women?
--Curly
I think men do behave differently when women are around, but being a woman it's hard to say why or how. Sometimes I get the impression that they try to seem more confident when we're around?
Are there any male followers who can enlighten us? :)
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