Student Participation and Social Difference 187generally found differential responses to law teaching by gender. In 1986, Taunya
Lovell Banks studied five schools across the country and found a significant differ-
ence between men’s and women’s self-reports regarding voluntary participation
in class. Older women students reported more active participation in class than
younger women.^56 More women than men reported that their lack of participa-
tion was due to feeling insecure or uncertain, although fewer women than men
reported that being unprepared was a reason for their failure to participate. Women
were more likely to report that the professor’s gender affected student participa-
tion, and to indicate that women professors encouraged students more than men.
Banks followed this initial study with further research in fourteen private and public
law schools across the United States from 1987 to 1989, research whose findings
largely repeated those of the first with regard to gender.^57
Subsequent surveys at individual law schools yielded similar results regard-
ing participation in class, with some interesting differences on other issues. A
study conducted in 1986 at Stanford Law School found that male students and
graduates reported asking questions and volunteering answers in class to a sig-
nificantly greater degree than did female students and graduates, despite a lack
of reported difference between men and women in actual law school perfor-
mance.^58 A similar study was administered to students at the law school at the
University of California–Berkeley (Boalt Hall), examining both gender and race;
it also found marked differences between men and women, with white men uni-
formly more active and positive about their experiences.^59 The Berkeley study
also documented a general slide in women’s grades relative to men’s between 1984
and 1988, based on objective grade data provided by the school. Research con-
ducted by Lani Guinier and her colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania Law
School found a similar disproportion in grades; they linked this with a “system-
atically alienating, three-year educational experience” for women, one key com-
ponent of which they described as “women’s silence in the classroom.”^60 More
recently, a student group at Harvard Law School collected multiple kinds of data
on gender, including information on course grades in required first-year courses
between 1996 and 2000.^61 Their results indicated that men were more likely than
women to graduate with honors or to earn high first-year grades, and that this
trend seems to have increased over the past two years. An accompanying survey
of students conducted in 2002–2003 revealed lower levels of confidence and self-
assessment for female students at Harvard.^62 A recent survey of Yale law students
and accompanying interviews of selected faculty members similarly pointed to
perceived differential hesitance among female students regarding class partici-
pation, approaching professors after class with questions, and asking for recom-
mendations.^63 On the other hand, faculty members report that in general, the
gender balance in classroom discussions at Yale seems to be improving over time.
A study headed by Joan Krauskopf, which examined nine law schools in Ohio,
also found gendered differences in classroom experience and in overall responses
to law school.^64 In this study, men once again reported asking more questions and
volunteering in class more often than did women. Women overall were less likely
to respond positively to the Socratic method and were more likely to report a loss
of confidence in class, as well as a drop in self-esteem generally. A number of the