Saturday 23 March 2013

Are Men and Women Treated Differently in the Classroom? - "The Chilly Classroom".


I first heard of the concept/theory "The Chilly Classroom" in a Feminist talk at my university. I can imagine there are lots of people who were like me, had never heard of it. It is a study which has looked at the way faculty staff, both men and women behave towards women and girls in a classroom setting. I have found this quite fascinating and wanted to share my thoughts on the whole concept and my experience of it.

- The Chilly Climate by Bernice R. Sandler [LINK]
- List of Articles related to "The Chilly Classroom" [LINK]
 
  Having been in education for long time like most people I feel I have good experience of class participation and the general environment of education. For me, I have noticed that girls do tend to speak less in class. But so do some boys. Is it just that they are more introverted or shy and find it more difficult to contribute?  that I look back at the 15 years I have experienced in education, I would say that I have a mixed view. I believe I have experienced a behavour from teachers, which have dismissed my contribution. At times thishas prevented me from wanting to take part in the future. Although this study looks at the whole idea on a larger scale. Those who have studied this concept, suggest that as a whole this behavour towards girls in school is reflected back in the society and is having a more detrimental effect that people may realise. 
Many may see the concept that all girls are treated negatively in a classroom setting to be generalising and it is. This theory does not suggest it happens in all classrooms, by all people, but that is happened significantly enough to be damaging to society.

My own experiences:
Throughout school, I can admit that I have enjoyed contributing in class. In subjects I enjoyed and felt confident in I have often been able to state my ideas and opinions easily. However I have found myself often putting my hand, the teacher acknowleging me and asking me to speak when someone would then interupt by speaking out. Now, I have found there is often confusion in class participation, some teachers like their students to put their hands up but then some prefer for students to just shout out ideas. This often causes more loud and confident students to speak more compared to quiter students, that may have something good to say, but aren't given the chance to.
 I have found trying to shout out quite difficult although I think I have done better as I went to A-level and University. That is one example where I see my own experiences reflected in this Chilly Classroom idea.

However recently in one of my university seminars I have noticed the way a lecturer responds to to students in class debate and have found that they are encouraging this chilly classroom effect in an alarming way. I find it quite frustrating. One situation that I found myself in. 
  • Answering a question, the response I get  "Well yes, that is basically what [male student] said" I mean! what? I found it very discouraging when someone's contribution is dismissed and claimed as just repeating someone else. Why then ask the question in the first place?
  • The lecturer/seminar leader "Come on girls, all I am hearing are the guys contributing". Saying this is not going to encourage women to speak.
  • Answers given by women in the class often criticised and dismissed. The guys can say pretty much the same but you get this response. "What do you mean?", Name of student used as encouragement. "Yes, exactly!", " I kind of see what you saying".
 Now, maybe I have just experienced a situation that is not necessarily common, and is not necessary about gender but I feel in my experience that it did play a part.  By dimissing shy people's contribution (male and female) it will make them even more likely not to participate. By highlighing that the males are dominating the discussion and turning it into a competition between men and women is not helpful. grr! 
 Although I don't think this has effected me individually. I can imagine for some girls constantly having to deal with this it will reduce their confidence and self-esteem. Which then reduces the belief in themselves to achieve highly. 

In Summary: Of the select articles written on the topic, it is not about critising those who treat women and girls negatively in the classroom. Firstly, it is clear that it is often not intentional. Many have written of ways in which to "warm up" the chilly classroom. Advice for both teachers and students to prevent women and girls being treated differently in education.
All I would ask is that next time you're are in a seminar, classroom or meeting, just observe what is going on. You may realise it is more common than you think.
 If you have experienced anything similar, please comment, I want to hear!

Tuesday 19 March 2013

Tackling Gender Inequalities Globally + UN Women Commission.


My previous posts have mostly been about the feminist movement in the western world. Now, firstly, tackling the obstacles to equality in the UK and doing so for  women in the middle east, Africa and other areas are clearly very different, although we do see some similarities in the oppression and the treatment women face. Yet I don't believe that this matters when the simple fact is that the Feminist movement as well as all feminists are campaigning equality for women. Even though issues in the uk and a developing country may need to be tackled in a different way, this is not to say that these issues should not be tackled together and as part of the a global movement.

Where do you start in tackling the problem of gender inequality in the developing world? As I notice with the whole topic, it seems very overwhelming, and disheartening in some cases. Will changes to legislation be enough? How can we hope for sudden change when the basic idea that a women is a human being entitled to basic human rights is not understood?! The fact that this even has to be an issue is very sad.

It is in an recent Guardian article ' The UN Commission on the Status of Women unmarks equality's enemies'  by Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) that I realised how severe the problems are across the world. As part of the UN commission it started that all countries should implement that "religion, custom or tradition are not excuses for governments to skirt their obligations to protect all their citizens". Yet it is the Vatican, Russia and Iran that they want to remove this term. Which as Jill Filipovic stated, is surely creating an even more negative association of religion with the rights of women. I really recommend the article as it definitely opened my eyes to the fact that even at the the level of the UN, there are still attempts to restrict the rights of women. Surely we should be beyond that and attempting to tackling individual people's attitudes not the governments stance on the treatment of women!

Although there are so many issues that could be looked out I wanted to highlight a place that was once the center of media attention. It is in Iraqi Kurdistan where women are suffering. Many, I am sure, are not too knowledgable on post-war Iraq. I wouldn't say that I have looked at it much myself, but something I want to look at in more detail. But it was in this article http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/17/broken-dream-iraqi-kurdistan as part of the "Iraq War - 10 years on" series that highlights the suffering of women. It has made it apparent that even after the Saddam's Ba'athist regime that things have not changed. Not only do these women suffer from general inequalities they also face the difficulties that come with their identity as a nation.

There is no real conclusion to this blog post, I hope to write a future post with more detail on international situation concerning women, but these are just my recent thoughts. If you do have comments or extra information I would love to hear them. Thanks

Monday 11 March 2013

Why Feminism is Still Important.


I got the chance to attend a recent talk at my university, called 'Why Feminism is Still Important?' I took alot from the discussion and wanted to express my thoughts on the whole debate. Firstly, I find it kind of sad that mentioning the word 'Feminism' can cause a number of negative reactions. Why can't this movement be represented for what it is, or how I see it, (as I am sure many do); as a desire to change attitudes of both men and women and reform the structures that are limiting equality.

If you type in to google 'Is feminism...?'. Words such as important, relevant, dead and sexist come up. No one would disagree that feminism is not the same as it was in the 1970s and 80s, is this to say it's dead? Does a social movement need to happen in the form of protests and marches for it to make a difference? Surely the influence of twitter, facebook and blogs as well as the growth in feminist societies at universities across the UK suggests that feminism it is still important and is in fact growing. Creating a new wave of feminism for the new generation. But in having to question the whole concept of feminism, this suggests that women themselves, (those you would think would be its biggest advocate) are dissociating themselves from it. Some argue that the movement encourages nothing but victims, that women should stop using this as an excuse. 

I honestly believe that if you support gender equality, then you are a feminist, although I can understand that some may identify more with the label than others. To add to this is the questioned idea of progress. Is feminism no longer important because equality has already been achieved? Has the majority of society become complacent, assuming that now women have the vote, are progressing in education and are gaining high position jobs that we no longer need to bother?

Why we still need to bother:
  • Women are still severely under-represented in government. (X)
  • Women are unlikely to receive equal pay til 2067.
  • Page 3 in 'The Sun' still exists... (Guardian article.)
  • 1 in 7 women are made redunant after maternity leave. (Guardian article)
  • Women and girls still suffer from sexual violence, domestic violence, stalking, trafficking, and harmful practices including FGM (female genital mutilation) and honour-based violence in the UK. (X)
Thanks for reading! :)

Friday 8 March 2013

Happy International Women Day!

Today, I have found my twitter feed filled with tweets about International Women's Day, or #IWD. Now this is partly due to the fact that I follow a lot of people and organisations whose aim is to address the issue of Women's equality  but I have also seen in other places, and it is great to see this day being recognised. Just look at the great Google homepage !
  To be honest, reading and seeing so much about these issues has made me even more motivated and a little overwhelmed. It makes me want to be as informed as I can be about the situation women are in, and not just for women in the UK. It makes it clear in my mind that I can't just sit back and do nothing. I honestly want to be part of the change that I know is essential.
A few things that have read which I think are interesting: 
  • The world's female politicians should inspire British women- (Guardian's Article).
  •  Live chat with a great panel on "Where have all the women gone"  - Link

Wednesday 6 March 2013

22.5% of Women in UK Government. Is that good enough?


The issue of female political representation is something of particular interest to me. At the start of the Spring term I created a create a 3000 word assignment, essential a dissertation plan. I struggled for a while at what I wanted to write about, all I knew is that I wanted it to relate to women in politics. I finally decided to write about levels of political representation. In the end, I am pleased with this topic. Firstly it has a  wide range of work already written on it, which makes it challenging but also gives you more to work with. Secondly the topic is still debated, and the issue is still has relevance today. The question is why in the modern day, do highly developed countries, such as the UK have such low levels of women in government. I don't have an answer yet, but I my approach to this topic is hopefully to research enough to understand why there is such variation across Europe and ways in which these efforts are being made to improve this, both at National and EU levels. 
Many people will agree with me that once you focus on something, there is often not much else you want to read or talk about. But in always being passionate about women's equality as well as my now focused research topic, I became very interested in a UK based campaign which as you will tell, is identical to what I want to change and learn more about.

"Counting Women In" - A campaign fighting for 50/50 gender representation.  Connected to the work of Fawcett society, a gender equality thinktank. 
Key things to take from this campaign:
Here are the simple facts. There are only 22.5% of women in parliament in the UK. Compare this with Sweden which has 44.7% of women in Parliament. Out of 190 countries, we are 57th! (Data taken from this website.)

I hope that once I have begun to fully research this topic, I will then be able to have my own opinion on the matter. There is no question that I believe more women need to be Parliament, while over half our population are women, it makes no sense that our government does not represent our population and therefore its interests. And without sounding like a radical feminist, I don't believe it is right that we have men dominating the political system. 
Whether we should implement positive discrimination, in the sense that we push for increased levels of women through the use of quotas is debatable. I hope that levels can increase because women are actively taking political roles and that the ability to gain positions in government are equally available.

Monday 4 March 2013

PBS's Makers - Women who make America Documentary - My Thoughts.


I recently came across this documentary on a tumblr blog called 'because I am a women'. (A blog I highly recommend by the way). The documentary is part of the Makers website, highlighting the women that have made America. Not only does the website contain the full documentary: a three part series, it also contains a number of videos from well known women such as Ellen Degenerous to people you may not have heard of.  Firstly I want to say that I really enjoyed this documentary. After watching it I felt so much more knowledgable about the history of the women's movement. Not only that, but after watching it, I felt quite inspired and in awe of these amazing women.
It looked at the women's movement from very early on, throughout the 1970s and 80s. This documentary is particular interesting,  containing the testomonies of so many different women, those women that made an active difference to women's position. There number of inspirational women stood out to me, women I hadn't heard of before. Women politicians, lawyers, homemakers, activists and others have who contributed to where we are today.

Gloria_Steinem : A social and political activist that cofounded the Ms Magazine.

I honestly did not know in so much detail the history of women's equality. This documentary really opened my eye to what these women did and the battle they had to go through to get rights, that we take for granted...