In a creative writing workshop of seven male and nine female graduate students, two female students became increasingly aware of a sexual bias. Though the male instructor made an effort to create a non-hierarchical, student-centered environment, informal hierarchies developed among students that granted the male instructor and the male students more authority. The males seemed to be doing most of the talking, the women most of the listening. To test this observation, two female students took turns timing and recording discussions (but in a non-scientific way). Results showed that men talked nearly twice as often as women. Further, men usually talked first; they set the agenda and women merely responded to it. According to gender theorists, socialization leads both men and women to contribute to a dynamic that allows men to talk more. Further, the traditional writer's stance is that art and politics should remain separate, a philosophy that makes it particularly uncomfortable for women to address political issues. Deborah Tannen's "You Just Don't Understand" sheds some light on the situation. She suggests that men and women have different conversational goals: women talk to connect with others; men talk to gain status. Also, the workshop process may go against women's styles of learning. In "Women's Ways of Knowing," Belenky and her colleagues found that women learned better through "connected knowing"--learning based on empathy, listening, and believing rather than doubt, antagonism and competitive turn-taking. (TB)