  Group work during lab instruction can be a source of inequity between male
and female students. In this preliminary study, we explored the activities male
and female students take on during a lab session at a university in Denmark.
Different from many studies, the class was majority-female, so three of the
seven groups were all female and the rest were mixed-gender. We found that
students in mixed-gender groups divide tasks in similar ways to mixed-gender
groups at North American institutions, with men handling the equipment and
women handling the computer more often. We also found that women in
single-gender groups took on each of the available roles with approximately
equal frequency, but women in single-gender groups spent more time on the
equipment than students in mixed-gender groups. We interpret the results
through poststructual gender theory and the notion of `doing physics' and
`doing gender' in physics labs.
