I was chatting with one of my professors when she came to the realization that out of twenty students signed up for her class about oppression, only two were men. As I walked away, I began to wonder why a class that reads post-colonial literature would be 90 percent women. In most of my humanities classes, the gender balance has been about even, which leads me to think that something is askew in this specific case.
I like to think that the gender divide is quickly fading and that gender is not black and white, but a spectrum. I know many women who love to play football and many men who love ballet. However, when a class is made up almost exclusively of one gender, it makes me think that some of the out-of-date notions about gender roles still apply.
All people, men or women, can find something to like about literature. Literature is becoming increasingly more diverse as the glass ceiling, color and economic barriers are broken again and again. The days of old-white-male authors are a thing of the past. As the diversity of the authors grows, so does the diversity of the readers. It is impossible to predict what large groups of people will like to read without resorting to stereotypes. To give an example, one stereotype is that women do not like to read about violence. I have a hard time reading war novels. I find the impersonal violence gut-wrenching, but one of my close female friends loves war novels. She finds them satirical and entertaining. Oppression should be a topic that extends across the board and not exclusively to one specific group of people. I think there is something beside harmful stereotypes at play in this case.
To start out, the oppression class is an honors class, meaning the only people who take the class are in the honors program. The honors classes are almost always the first classes to fill up, and the classes fulfill the honors program minor and little more. To the best of my knowledge the program is gender-balanced. In order to balance out a class of mostly women, is there a class of mostly men? I know that universities have slightly more women than men, but the ratio is still about one to one, nowhere near nine to one.
I believe that diversity helps education. Different people help to expand our worldview and look at things through a different perspective. I look forward to the oppression class, but it is disappointing to know that few men will be joining in the discussion.
