This blog was published by Inside Higher Ed on June 27, 2017.
Whether you have known me as one of my students or a colleague, you may have noticed that I am obsessive about timekeeping in meetings, events, and the courses I teach. If you haven’t known me in either capacity, nice to digitally meet you. My name is Danica and I am obsessed with timekeeping. This is because, as I recently had the opportunity to explain to an audience, for me, timekeeping is a feminist issue.
I first learned this from personal experience in a graduate seminar that was, in many ways, fantastic, but with one major flaw. When the end of the semester rolled around, the final few classes were dedicated to people sharing the progress they had made on their final research essays and getting feedback from our brilliant classmates and professor. As someone who is constantly begging for people to engage with my work, I could not have been more eager to present my ideas thus far and see what suggestions my classmates would provide. All semester, our discussions had been so interesting, and I knew that their engagement with my ideas would push my research to the next level. They brought with them knowledge from many different disciplines and were always recommending additional readings that brought the class material to life in unexpected ways. In each of our final classes, during the last hour, three students would present their work, which meant we each prepared for a twenty-minute conversation comprised of brief remarks followed by a discussion. Given this limited amount of time, I painstakingly decided which sections of my project I wanted to share and framed questions that I thought my classmates would be able to help with. However, the day I was scheduled to present my work, I was assigned to go last (by now, I’m sure you know where this is going). I remember sitting in my seat and watching the hands of the clock tick by as the students before me shared their work and engaged our seminar in a lively dialogue. But apparently I was the only one watching the clock, because before I knew it there were only ten minutes left in the class and it still was not my turn. And then there were only five.
I will never forget the feeling of sitting in that chair, fidgeting with sweaty palms and unable to contribute to the conversation because I was so anxious that my turn would never come. And that’s basically what happened.
I share this anecdote not to blame anyone, but as a reminder that timekeeping is not something that comes naturally to any of us. Following this experience, I began to recognize the ways that I was guilty of neglecting time, and therefore not equitably distributing it, in my classrooms as well. I became determined not to ever leave my students or colleagues feeling like I felt that day.
It turns out that research supports my sense that time is not equitably distributed in classroom settings. This survey of research on gender bias in classroom participation describes how male students are called on more frequently than female students, receive more attention from instructors, and speak for longer than female students (further confirmed by research here, here, here, and here). Students of color experience microaggressions in the classroom, reporting that their class contributions are ignored or minimized and that they are made to feel inferior because of the ways they speak (read more here and here). Overall, classrooms reproduce social hierarchies, so that those same voices who are privileged in mainstream media, culture, and politics are also those who get the most speaking time in classrooms.
Read the full post on HASTAC.
