Equal conversational time

[andrewducker]

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 ‘favouring’ 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.

From here, where there's a lot more. Via AndrewHickeyWriter

I'd love to see more research done on this. I try to make sure that everyone gets a chance to speak when I'm in conversations at work, and I bet that the men still out-talk the women (with a couple of notable exceptions who are good at not being shut up by people talking over them).

Edit:
Just chatted about this with Julie, and considered it from my history of an all-boys school. Where the conversation in the class-room would always be dominated by a few people. I suspect that if a teacher tried to make sure that the lower-status boys got equal talk time with the higher-status boys they would run into exactly the same problem.

Comments

[nickys]

There was a suggestion back in the 90s that women could address the problem of men interrupting them at work meetings by using a Buddy System.
Basically it's hard for the person being interrupted to object without being seen to be rude, so the idea is that if a man talks over or interrupts a woman then one of the other people in the room will interrupt them with something like, "Can I ask you to wait a moment, I'd like to hear what Jane has to say first"

I've done it a few times and it does work.

I also used it in a computer shop once when the sales assistant ignored the woman in front of me in the queue and me to go to the next male customer in line...
"Excuse me, this lady was next."

[andrewducker]

I've done this myself, when I've noticed someone get talked over.

But I'm sure I've missed it plenty of times (and talked over people myself).