I found the Rickly piece interesting first because of reasons she states up front — our own anecdotal evidence about gender divides in the classroom. I’ve taken a lot of online classes, particularly creative writing classes that depended on a message board structure for critiques, and taught classes as well online as well, in which I’ve used chat rooms as well as message boards, and because I’ve often paid attention to the gender breakdowns of student respondents in online discussions, I was very interested in the comparisons I could draw here. Particularly revealing was the notion that women who were classified as more feminine were quietest, which matches my perception of and experience in all class types, but also what she said about women helping conversation along rather than actively participating. I’d really like to see research on that in message board settings, particularly with multiple replies to one thread — true conversation, replicated there as best as it can be — if women are responsible for most of the posts help revive conversation that is limping.

As for the other study, oh did I have questions and thoughts. First, that women were less likely to respond to opposition bears out in other spheres (women are less likely to resubmit to a creative journal that rejects them while asking for another submission, for instance), but I wondered about women receiving multiple answers to open questions. I wanted the quality of those responses analyzed, because I wonder if there were any dogpiling effects.

*Also, Sam, note that Dale Spender is mentioned here. We should have known!