Helping Women to Raise Their Hands

Abstract

In 2017, Alice Paul Tapper was a 10-year-old girl who observed a phenomenon in her class that prompted her to write an op-ed in The New York Times in that year, and subsequently a picture book for children. During a class field trip, she noted that the boys stood at the front and raised their hands, and the girls stayed in the back and remained quiet. She speculated, as a 10-year-old girl, that the girls were afraid to give the wrong answer and would be embarrassed if they were wrong. Furthermore, since the boys already had the teacher's attention, the girls were worried that they would not be able to get the teacher's attention (1).