Is this another example of the difference between women’s and men’s experience of college life? I received this message today from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration: Spring Break: Smart and Healthy Choices for Women.
I probably received it because I subscribe to some notification email alerts about women’s health issues, but I’ll let you know if I see any message about making Smart and Healthy Spring Break Choices for Men.
Here is the full report of the Women’s Initiative at Duke University, which gave us the phrase “effortless perfection” to describe the way many women feel they are supposed to perform femininity. You can read the whole thing online, or down load a pdf.
This is a one-page handout [pdf] I made for our class that summarizes some of the findings about single-sex education, pro- and con-, with references. Those of you interested in more detailed analysis may want to check out this systematic review prepared by the U.S. Department of Education in 2005.
In our class discussion this morning of gender expectations and pressures on college campuses, we talked about the role of athletics in the college experience and Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments in making sport opportunities more equitable for male and female student athletes. A couple of you asked me to post some more information here.
We talked about how Title IX applies to far more than just athletics, and also that within athletics, it’s not just about equal numbers of sports teams for women men. It’s about equity across the board — publicity, practice time and space, locker facilities, tutoring, travel support, etc. — regardless of which sports have more fans; for instance, just because a sport is revenue-producing or has more spectators, these facts cannot be used as an excuse for treating male athletes better than female athletes. Many people want to justify providing more resources to football by claiming it’s money-maker, but at 64% of all Division I and Division II colleges, the football program loses money.
You can read more surprising facts about Title IX and college athletics at the Women’s Sports Foundation web site.
In class I mentioned the increasing number of states in the U.S. that have legalized same-sex marriage as an example of structuration — the theory by Anthony Giddens that explains how individual acts reproduce and modify social structures. I mentioned in particular the speech Maureen Walsh, Republican from Walla Walla, delivered on the floor of the Washington House of Representatives two weeks ago.
I have finished marking your midterm exams, and you can check your scores in the online gradebook. (Remember to use your student i.d. number as your password for the gradebook, rather than your password for the rest of this site.) I will bring them to class on Wednesday, of course.
I think I could have graded them faster if y’all hadn’t felt it necessary to re-write the question in so many of your answers. 
My afternoon class (CMST/WMST 419 – Sex, Sexuality, and Communication) watched this excerpt from the 1997 movie, In & Out, in the context of an entirely different discussion on Wednesday, but it’s also illustrative of some of the concepts we discussed this morning in Gender and Communication. It shows how gender is embodied and performed through kinesics, clothing, paralanguage, gesture, and other channels of nonverbal communication.
In case you missed it in class on Monday, or just need another copy, here’s a PDF the study guide.
Because of Leslie Knope/Amy Poehler!
In this famous scene, “I’m Just A Girl”, Leslie employs nearly every stereotype of femininity. (Sorry – you’ll have to watch a commercial first to see this clip from the second season of one of my favorite TV shows).
In class today, I mentioned some research on humor by Mary Crawford, and quoted specifically from a summary of women’s and men’s responses to different types of humor. Here’s a table that summarizes those findings [pdf], from her book Talking Difference: On Gender and Language (Sage, 1995).