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Perez, Mariel Antoinette L.

SA 21 U

143 138

8 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

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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

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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.