Classroom participation – is there a gender issue? I recently talked with my advisor and several other professors from the same field about student–teacher interaction in class. Several of them said they had noticed that men participated in class and interacted with them significantly more than women, and that they thought this is a problem because:


Classes work better when students participate and there’s a dialogue
If students do not ask questions, they (professors) have no way to know whether the students are actually learning.
It is easier to recognize/get to know/appreciate a student, and therefore eventually write him/her a good recommendation letter or invite him/her to work with you if you notice said student in class.


All this got me thinking: is this a real phenomenon and if yes, why is it an issue? I think perhaps, it’s also a matter of perception: at some point in the conversation my advisor said he considered I was very quiet in class too, and I’ve never perceived myself as such.
One part of the difference is not that women are different in their willingness to ask questions, but anyone visibly different is. I was an undergrad in a class of 44. There were 4 women: two of one visible ethnicity, and two of another. My hair was a different colour and length than the other woman of my ethnicity. This meant everyone knew who we were. If we were late, asked a question that showed we hadn't been listening, or did anything else, everyone knew who did that. In contrast there were 5 or 6 white guys with short dark hair and football player builds who wore leather class jackets and sat at the back. There were 5 or 6 guys of several other ethnicities, and 5 or 6 nerdy glasses-wearing white guys with bad fashion sense. I got some of them confused sometimes. They all had somewhere to hide. They could blurt something out without much consequence.

If you would like more people to participate in your class, make sure you don't punish "bad" participation at all. It may be fun to be the person who answers a question with "I see somebody skipped the pre class reading" and then just turn away, but it ensures a large chunk of the class will not ask that sort of question again, and those who do will use up class time with defensive speeches about how they were reading the blah and blah "and on page (flip flip yes here it is, 73) it says (read sentence) and so I was wondering whether "permanent" is really appropriate here" and so on. 

You can also call on students who don't ask many questions, asking them questions. My PhD supervisor did this constantly. Like 5-10 times an hour. "... and so if we reduce this completely, the result is ... Mrs Gregory?" (he was such a formal guy, called us all Mr and Mrs) and if I was following I would say the next line in the work, and if I wasn't I would say "I don't know" and he would call on someone else. This kind of approach keeps people engaged (you never know when you'll be called on) and gives everyone practice speaking up in class. (Plus it teaches you when to say "I don't know" - and he never had a problem with us not knowing.)