The past few years have witnessed a heightened awareness of gender issues in NDT debate. There are a wide variety of issues which have come to the surface recently and it is important that we extend the discussion and debate on the multiplicity of concerns in order to comprehend the subject more fully. The particular issue this paper will address is the possibility that females and males have their debate performances evaluated differently. In NDT debate it may be difficult to identify an overall pattern of results that can be called sex bias. It is difficult to distinguish between a lack of success due to discrimination and a lack of success to a lack of talent, experience, or evidence. However, we can gain sight of consistent bias by examining the success of a large number of participants and trying to identify differences that can be attributed to gender and not any of the many other factors that come into play in determining who wins or loses a debate round. We fee6l that much can be learned by identifying the ways that debaters may have to compete on an uneven playing field and attempt to understand how these conditions are created. Gender differences have been pervasively examined in persuaded research. For example, it is not a typical for researchers to focus on differences in how men and women are persuaded Cooper, 1979; Cantor, 1976; Eagly, 1978; Leventhal & Cupchik, 1976; Losco & Epstein, 1975; Zillman & Stocking, 1976), differences in styles of communication according to gender (Andrews, 1987; infante, 1989, Mulac, Torborg & Bradac, I986), and how audiences react differently to male or female speakers (Burgoon, Dillard & Duran, 1983; Richmond & McCroskey, 1975; Ward, Seccombe, Bendel & Carter, 1985). In relation to competitive speaking events, there have been examinations of differences in speaking styles (Larson & Vreeland, 1985), different rates of participation for competitors (Dean & Dean, 1985; Friedley & Manchester, 1985; Nadler 85) judges (Kay & Aden, 1984), and differences in judging styles according to gender of the judge and speaker (Friedley & Manchester, 1987). Although there is a growing awareness among some in NDT about gender issues, the activity has not been very self reflexive in the recent past. Although Friedley and Manchester (1985) explored the female participation rate in elimination rounds during the 1984 National Debate Tournament, we wanted to examine the overall success rate of participants in relation to their gender. We were able to find three studies which examined this question, the most recent of which was about fifteen years old and studied high school debaters (Rosen, Dean, & Willis, 1978). Collegiate success rates have not been examined since 1972 (Hayes & McAdoo, 1972; Hensley & Strother, 1968). The most recent has concluded that the state of research on the topic reveals that mixed-sex teams appear to be superior, as indicated by the won-lost records in the present ... An examination of neither ... rankings nor quality points reveals a sex difference in the present study (Rosen, Dean, & Willis, 1978, p. 20). The need for a more recent examination is manifestly clear if for no other reason than much has changed in the intervening two decades. The average speaker points found by Rosen, Dean, and Willis, for example, ranged between 16 and 18. Additionally, speakers in the first position could, on average, out-point speakers in the second position, something implausible in the modern NDT context. in short, one is pressed to find contemporary relevance of the Rosen et al. data to collegiate NDT debate because, in addition to the differences noted above, they drew from a high school sample using a 25 point ballot. Further, in the Hayes and McAdoo study, ranks rather than speaker points were considered, a decision which would seem odd in the modern debate context. Ranks, when considered at all, are usually only the fourth or fifth tie-breaker for speaker awards. …
Read full abstract
Nov 18, 2024
David A Fullard + 2
Open Access