Head Teaching Fellow Tamar Gendler, however,said the gender gap is partially due to thecourse's unstructured nature, which may intimidatefemale students.
"A course like `Thinking About Thinking,'Without realizing it, may ask students to evaluatethemselves along an axis that cuts differentiallybetween men and women," she said. "It may be thatwomen students are wary of courses in which theyhave to take a tremendous amount of responsibilityfor structuring things."
Professor of Chinese History Wei-Ming Tu, whoteaches Moral Reasoning 40, "Confucian Humanism:Self-Cultivation and Moral Community," called hisclass' gender disparity "a little unusual."
"We should encourage women to enter thiscourse," he said "The Confucian tradition is oftencriticized as male-oriented and authoritarian andI take this feminist critique absolutely seriouslyin my course."
Michelle M. Pinto '96, a student in MoralReasoning 40, said the enrollment patterns mightbe related to difficulty ratings.
Moral Reasoning 40 has a difficulty of lessthan 3.0 in the CUE guide, Pinto noted. "Forcores, the largest ones are usually the ones thelargest ones are usually the ones with the lowestdifficulty ratings in the CUE guide. Does it meanthat guys go for `guts' more than girls?" sheasked