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Perez, Mariel Antoinette L.SA 21 U143 1388 February 2015

The topic I wish to discuss is about the Gender and Participation in My Classes. This paper aims to find out if the female gender is generally shy and overshadowed by the opposite gender. Just like in the essay Throw Like a Girl by Iris Young, I am going to state and compare the behavior and actions of both genders inside and outside the classroom. In the four classes that I had observed, I subdivided them into two groups. Both groups consisted of two classes each. The concept behind the groupings was that they were divided in such a way that the set of students in the classes of the first group was more or less the same, and the same applied for the second group.The first group comprised of the courses Filipino and Chemistry. Both professors are males and my classmates in both classes have the same major as me, which is Chemistry. First is my Filipino class where recitation and active participation is a very important component of our grade. This is probably the main reason why the boy to girl ratio of those who raise questions or recite in class is 1:1. The professor does not call unto someone to answer his questions. He waits until someone raises their hand to answer or raise a question, and calls that person to recite in class. The professor, however, does not memorize the names of the students in his class, which is why he keeps a class seat plan. He always looks at the seat plan whenever a student recites, but from what I have noticed, there are at least four students in class 4 boys and 2 girls whom he does not need the seat plan to check for their names. This type of behavior of the professor showed that these six students, with a 2:1 boy to girl ratio, recite more frequently than the others in class. With this information, I was able to make two possible hypotheses: One, it is pure coincidence that there are more boys than girls in class that recite often, and this imbalance can more likely be attributed to the fact that these students might simply have a penchant for the said subject. Two, boys are at least more daring than girls in such a way that they are not worried whether their answer is right or wrong.The second one is Chemistry class where I have noticed that the students always ask questions regarding the topic being discussed, regardless of gender, and I think this behavior could be explained in such a way that since this was our major, we were all mostly interested in the matter. What caught my attention about this, however, was that there would always be a male student who would interrupt not just a female student speaking, but sometimes the professor as well, and every person in class would not be able to interrupt because that students voice is louder than the rest. The observation that I have conducted, however, did not end inside the four walls of our Chemistry classroom. Right after our Chemistry class, I stayed within the area of the door to our professors office to observe those who go to individual consultations. Since the office of the professor is almost beside our classroom in Chemistry, it was easier to observe the behavior or pattern of those who go to individual consultations right after class. Outside, I have observed that the number of boys and girls who go to individual consultations were relatively the same, however, the manner in which they go was what stood out the most for me. The students of the male gender go to individual consultations alone while those of the female gender usually go in pairs or groups of three, seldom alone. This could mean that those of the female gender are shyer than those of the male gender and they are more comfortable to be in groups then they are alone.The classes of the second group are quite different from those of the first group. The two classes are English and Literature where both the professors are females. The ratios of girls to boys in English class and Literature class are 3:10 and 7:17, respectively. For my English class, I observed almost zero volunteerism in class participation from the female gender, however, when the professor asked a particular student directly, the student recited without hesitation. In Literature class, however, that was not the case. Three out of the seven girls in class volunteer to recite frequently, while the other four recite without hesitation only when they are called. In a certain situation in class, when a student posed a statement which the teacher said was wrong, the two genders reacted in different ways. A student of the male gender just kept on trying to defend his case even though he knew there was nothing to become of his argument. It only stopped after the professor got tired and asked him to sit down. While a student of the female gender just rested her case after a single try of defending her statement with no avail. This supported the second hypothesis of that of the Filipino class wherein boys are generally more daring than girls that they do not care whether they are right or wrong.After gathering all the observations that I have noted down, I was able to put them all together in at least one piece. The gender of the professor did not matter for the students because as seen in the observations, both genders acted indifferently whether or not the professor was a male or a female. The first key point that I saw was that the majority of the female gender would like to be regarded first rather than volunteering for something which was actually mentioned by Iris Young in Throw Like A Girl where I quote, Men more often move out toward a ball in flight and confront it with their own countermotion. Women tend to wait for and then react to its approach rather than going forth to meet it. The second point that I noticed was that the female gender generally lack the confidence and thus need the company of other females to help boost their self-assurance.

Sources:Iris Young, Throwing Like A Girl, pp. 206-210.