Lee, V. E., Marks, H. M., & Byrd, T. (1994). Sexism in Single-Sex and Coeducational Independent Secondary School Classrooms. Sociology of Education, 67(2), 92-120.
Well, not quite. Yes, females are given many more opportunities today than they were in past years. However, gender discrimination, in its most subtle forms, continues to this very day. Inside the classroom, particularly in grade schools, a few teachers continue their biased ways, detracting from a learning environment that encourages a...
The once male dominated, corporate, "white collar" America has seen a phenomenal influx of women within the last thirty years. Although a female lawyer, physician, or CEO is no longer considered a rarity in our times, women still face quite a deal of oppression in comparison to their male counterparts. In retrospect, some professions have always been controlled by women, and men have not made a noticeable advance in these fields. In 1970, finding a female lawyer to represent you would be a difficult task, since less than five percent of the profession were women. Today, that number has risen to almost thirty percent. The percentage of female doctors has almost tripled in the course of thirty years. African Americans have not made such a conspicuous progression within the last fifty years, while women have made a tremendous impact on the corporate world. One may wonder, how did women make these extraordinary advances? For the most part, it is due to the education they receive. At the present time young girls are encouraged to enroll in classes dealing with math and science, rather than home economics and typing. As pointed out by Nanette Asimov, in her essay "Fewer Teen Girls Enrolling in Technology Classes", school officials are advocating the necessity of advanced placement, and honor classes for teenage girls, in both the arts and sciences. This support and reassurance than carries over onto college, and finds a permanent fixture in a woman’s life. While women are continuing their success in once exclusively male oriented professions, they are still lacking the respect and equality from their peers, coworkers, and society. The average male lawyer, and doctor make twenty-five percent more money than their female equivalent. Women have always lived with the reputation of being intellectually inferior to, and physically submissive to men. This medieval, ignorant notion is far fetched from the truth. In 1999, high school men and women posted similar SAT scores, being separated by a only a few points. In addition to posting similar scores on the SAT, the average males score was a mere two-tenths of a point higher than an average females score on the ACT. Even though a woman maybe as qualified as a male for a certain occupation , women receive unwanted harassment, and are under strict scrutiny. A good illustration of this would be the women represented in "Two Women Cadets Leave the Citadel.
“Men are from Mars, women are from Venus” as the famous saying of John Gray goes. It is believed men and women are nothing alike in almost every aspect. In Deborah Tannen’s essay “Gender in the classroom: Teacher’s Classroom Strategies Should Recognize that Men and Women Use Language Differently” she focused on how men and women differ when it comes to communicating, with emphasis on how it effects to how men and women behave in the classroom.
Colleges and universities should emphasize the diverse culture we live in. This position can be validated through the passages written by Mike Rose's "Lives on the Boundary" and Adrienne Rich's "What Does a Woman Need to Know." The following two quotes exemplify Mr. Rose's and Ms. Rich's point of view illustrating this topic. A quote from Mike Rose affirms "We are in the middle of an extraordinary social experiment: the attempt to provide education for all members of a vast pluralistic democracy."(Rose, 117) In another quote Ms. Rich states, "For no woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness."(Rich, 69) Our society is made up of various cultural groups. Colleges and Universities are a microcosm of our society. Gender differences, racial, and ethnic backgrounds must not only be encouraged but emphasized.
In the past decade, research showed that in the process of education in some countries, girls do better than boys, this problem was called ‘a boy’s problem’. The Dutch Ministry of Education published the study which examines the boys’ and girls’ position in primary school based on previous studies (Driessen, Langen, 2013). As a matter of fact, this problem is not a new question, and there are many discussions about gender differences. An important part of the problem is that boys’ scores are far below those of girls. In all education, based on some researchers' opinions, involving spatial and mathematical reasoning, skills, boys always doing better than girls, but in the aspects of language application and writing, girls often do better than boys (Bonomo, 2010).
Hartlep, Nicholas D. "The Model Minority?" Diverse Issues In Higher Education 30.2 (2013): 14-15. Proquest. Web. 5 Mar. 2014. .
In the present United States, a mixture of males and females make up a university classroom. In life, males and females have different conversational styles. The ways that they communicate to each other in a conversation, as well as how they communicate with their instructors and peers in the classroom. Although there is a combination of both genders in the classrooms, schools gravitate more towards using learning techniques that are more applicable towards men than women (Tannen 369). When teaching with a mixture of people that learn differently, it is difficult to have a certain technique to use that would help everybody in the same way. Yet it is important that equal opportunities are given to both genders that allows them to do their best and succeed in their academic careers. Educational professionals need to understand the conversational differences in gender and have better teaching strategies that fit both male and female conversational styles.
Gender Matters is a collection of various essays on feminist linguistic texts analysis, by Sara Mills. Mills develops methods of analyzing literary and non-literary texts, in addition to conversational analysis based on a feminist approach. The author draws on data from her collection of essays gathered over the last two decades on feminism during the 1990s. The essays focus on gender issues, the representation of gender in reading, writing, and in public speaking. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of feminists’ analysis of sexism in literature and the relation between gender and politeness. The article is informative for my research paper, as my topic is going to cover language analysis of the text and who women reading and writing differs according to the discourse analysis within linguistic, psychology, case studies audiences and surveys. The book would be helpful, particularly the last three essays that discusses gender, public speaking, the question of politeness and impoliteness in public speaking. Mills’ analysis is not complete without including the idea of global notions of both women and men, to see whether women and men write and read in the same way globally. Therefore, an update would enrich the book’s discussion section. Although, Mills addresses the class and race theme in language and public speaking, I will only look into the role of language that plays a part in doing or reducing gender in literary, non-literary texts and in conversation.
However, what I didn’t know, that was as daunting as the curriculum itself, was that I would be 1 of 3 girls in a class of 30 students. As I walked into class on the first day of school, my discomfort only grew when my teacher seated me with 6 unfamiliar boys. Initially, I was anxious about whether I belonged in that class. However, after doing well on the first test, I realized that because I was a girl didn't mean my male classmates were any more capable. It didn’t mean that I couldn’t work with them through problems and give my input. This new mindset dissolved my insecurity and enabled me to focus on learning. Now, as a senior, I’m proud to be 1 of 2 girls in my AP Java