'Yeah, the boys are .... powering' Charlie (not her real name) says to me in a group chat during remote learning this week. The ellipsis is telling, and she's done it purposefully, in a good humoured way. Boys are many things at this age. At sixteen and seventeen they can be smelly too, and best kept at a distance because they can also be annoying. Girls do mature a little faster, and learn that boys can also be quite distracting.
I have the luck to have a bright class this year. For the most part, they are at a higher standard than I'd expect at the beginning of Year 11. They are not scared to take risks, to engage in intelligent group discussion, and communicate with me like we're all adults in this learning journey together. I fell in love with them in the first class, if not the first 15 minutes - they were personable, funny and warm.
But as usual, the boys were the show stealers, the vocal ones, the ones who would drown out the smaller voices in the class. The girls simply didn't fight - don't fight - for this vocal space. And if they do talk, which some will, the boys voices soon drown them out, almost speaking over the top of them to assert dominance. It's not malicious, just boisterous, and symptomatic of a social demographic - and cultural - that allows this. The girls often give up and don't fight for their space. They shrug and ignore it, see it as the norm, roll their eyes. But it bothers me. What happens next?
I think about how this becomes the well practiced social norm. It feels as if it fits the stereotype. Boys are loud, girls are quiet. Boys grab the floor and hold it. They appear to have a lot more social power than girls, and this carries through their lifetime. According to some studies, female bosses are more often interrupted by male subordinates, and hold the floor more (if they can get it at all) and their points are not taken as seriously. In this context, it's easy to understand why we see woman as powerless victimes and men as undermining, excluding and demeaning. Now my boys don't mean to behave this way - they're generally polite and raised with equality as a cultural and social value. But they're also socialised to be dominant. Gender identity starts young.
How interesting I find the social stereotype that woman are more talkative when I see the opposite in a classroom discussion situation. The stereotype boys are more competitive seems to ring more true to me - this plays out as they fight for attention in the classroom space. Girls seem to read things a little better and learn when it is best to keep quiet (there's no point as I will be shouted down, I'll ask a question later when I can get her one on one).
But I'm just as much to blame for this behaviour. It's really common for teachers to pay more attention to the voice that's the loudest. Ask a question, and you're hardly going to ignore the voice that's shouted out. Sometimes you're just so grateful for any incisive comment you don't care that it's from the same group of students (in my case, boys) all the time. Boys are pretty darn good at getting attention.
It's also hard to generalise and come up with a firm solution as there are so many factors involved in addressing this. It also varies culture to culture, country to country. For example, in some countries co-peration is a culture value, and competition is not. That might be the kind of classroom that is more considerate in class discussion. Some classes might have quieter boys, because girls are known to be talkative, so speaking up might be seen as 'too girly'. A discussion in an English classroom might look different to one in a Physics class.
But I want to know to what extent am I co-constructing a culture that disallows woman's voices. Am I providing all of my students with the equal opportunity I would expect in any social situation or in any workplace I participated in? And if you're a parent, education obviously starts at home and for home edders, continues there. How do YOU create space for equality? Are you concious of what you might allow a boy and not a girl, or vice verse? What do you do to address it? And if you are a male teacher or parent, how important is this to you? What are you teaching your boys and girls?
I may be in institutionalised education, but I still like to think I am unschooling mainstream narratives even in small ways. How do I play a part in subverting gender norms? How do I hold space for all genders, equally?
When I look at my own practice, I do - I raise discussion points and then pointedly look at the girls for a response, reprimanding the boy for calling out (or the girl, for that matter, before the men in the room get narky at me here) and praising the 'hand up'. I encourage co-operation over competition. I celebrate and congratulate more considerate behaviour. And at times, I have those hard and uncomfortable conversations with these students about the impact of their behaviour and, restorative justice in mind, lead them to consider how it might feel to be silenced, to be interrupted, to be spoken over the top of.
We've create a little girls only safe space in Teams, almost against my better judgement because I feel uncomfortable about dividing along gender lines. Solidarity and support in a safe space seems to be in order: if you want to talk, girls, you can here. It's not ideal, and this year I'm setting firmer goals for myself and the students for how to be considerate, and how to hold space for each other's viewpoints and ideas.
Wish me luck. Advice welcomed.