I wasn't talking about the debate with allowing men into a class.  I 
also wasn't aware that it is against the rules of the ecofem list to 
present a new topic of discussion, which is single-sex education.  My 
statistics are correct.  You can go to any women's college web site and 
find them.  I doubt that this is a national conspiracy to get women to 
go to women's colleges by offering erroneous statistics.

You rarely saw a woman defer to a man?  Congratulations, you live in a 
perfect egalitarian fantasy land.  Study after study has shown that even 
the presence of one man in a classroom will change the dynamic, turning 
normally talkative women silent.  Professors (yes, even female 
professors who are aware of gender dynamics) call on men more and ask 
them harder questions. Occasionally I will have a man in a class through 
my school's exchange program with other colleges, and the results are 
obvious.  His remarks are not challenged by classmates the way other 
women's remarks are, women who are usually outspoken keep quiet, and I 
receive uncomfortable and rude looks when I interrupt him and question 
him (the way he does me).  

And simply having more female professors isn't going to change things. 
We have to change the entire way society thinks, including women.  My 
favorite female professor even admits to deferring to men when she 
taught at a coed university.  It's ingrained, it's so normal we don't 
see it, the way you are not seeing it.  

Hayley



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