To explain evidence that females receive higher grades in communication courses than males, one researcher has posed a competence/compliance paradox: either, women are more competent communicators and are only judged to be less competent in public life because of prejudice, or, women are not as competent as men in communication as demonstrated in public life and their higher grades in the classroom are an artifice created by the context and their high compliance with instruction. In an attempt to resolve this paradox, discriminant analysis and correlational procedures were used to examine the relationship between grades received by 2,083 male and female students and their communicative responsiveness, as indicated by nine responsiveness scales. The results indicated that the communication patterns of sensitive speaker, sensitive listener, and supportive norm are female-specific patterns and the pattern of problem handler is male-specific. The sensitive speaker pattern is salient to most assignment grades in the course and offers the most likely explanation of why women get higher course grades than men. Although the pattern is a compliance pattern that focuses on the other person, it also represents the fundamental competency in a speech communication course: speaking. The results seem to favor the competence explanation for higher grades for women, but they also suggest that women are communicatively compliant and more competent than males. (HTH)