13: Core Group Participation by Gender

13a: "Core Group," "Regular," and "Lurker" Participation on E-Mail List by Gender

13b: "Critical Dialogue Core Group" Participation by Gender

Discussion:

See also 11: "Core Group," "Regular," and "Lurker" Participation by Student Residents and 12: "Critical Dialogue Core Group" Participation.

For the e-mail list as a whole (13a):

• A majority of messages posted by lurkers were from women (who composed a majority of the lurkers themselves).
  
• Almost as many (181 vs. 219) messages from regular contributors were posted by women as by men.
  
• A large majority of messages from the core group (425 out of 534 or about 80%) were from men. Since 10 of the 12 core group members were men, men's (80%) and women's (20%) contributions were approximately proportional to their numbers.

For critical dialogue discussion (13b):

• Women were close to men (51 vs. 64 messages) among the least-active "other contributors" to critical dialogue.
  
• A large majority of critical discussion messages were posted by men, roughly reflecting their proportion among the critical discussion participants. For example, among the core group, the one woman (Hillary) posted 24 messages or about 15% of the core group's total, while representing one-fifth of the membership (20%).

I find it troubling that both core groups, and critical dialogue in general, should be so dominated by men. I can speculate that, as some researchers have suggested, women and men prefer to use CMC for different purposes, as in face-to-face interaction women demonstrate different conversational styles than men (e.g., the work of Deborah Tannen). I have some evidence for this conclusion in 08 and 09, where women's and men's perceptions and actual behavior on the list are compared. We should be especially concerned, as feminist scholars have emphasized, about the extent to which the kinds of critical dialogue promoted in academia and the media that facilitate such dialogue tend to be male-centered. In the case of Rinconada, it seems that some women (Hillary, to be sure) were quite comfortable using the e-mail list and engaging in the stereotypically- or historically-male point-counterpoint style of argumentation, while many other women were not so comfortable doing so, including women who were otherwise (f2f) socially and politically active in the dorm. I fear that by using a traditional definition of critical dialogue, I may have to some degree guaranteed these gender disparities in my results. To measure the potential of CMC to overcome male domination of conversational spaces in academia more truly or thoughtfully, perhaps we should re-think those categories and redefine a critical dialogue based more on feminist principles.