In schools for the Deaf and in research about Deaf children, deafness seems to bring together people who would otherwise be different across class, gender, culture, and race. Donald Evans and William Falk have described, through an ethnography of a school, how the "total institution" of a school creates a significant influence over Deaf students: "Few people outside the residential school will have linguistic or symbolic access to the child, to his (her) definitions of reality. Black and white, rich and poor, male and female, are all thrown together in one place. For these children, the school serves as a comprehensive or total institution that provides the construction of their first self" (Evans and Falk).

An important part of this "total institution" is the dormitory. "In the dormitory, away from the structured control of the classrooms, Deaf children are introduced to the social life of Deaf people. This unique pattern of transmission lies at the heart of the culture" (Padden and Humphries). This transmission of values takes place not only because students are part of a physical facility but because they are restricted in their access to other information and people. Hans Furth once described the Deaf as suffering from information deprivation because they were less exposed to incidental learning that takes place out of school, access to television, and adult voices. He argued that the "content of Deaf education is meagre ... the time teaching them to talk replaces the regular standard curricula." Evans and Falk continue this argument: "In deafness one is isolated and cut off from the wider society - and this includes parents, siblings, television, media, and on and on... Students have colonized into a language community. They accept the 'total institution' as home where a shared language community and friends are to be found" (Evans and Falk 208).

The school becomes the primary socializing agent for young Deaf boys and girls. Among the education they receive are social roles and actual models for what hearing adults and Deaf adults and men and women are supposed to be. Although in school Deaf men and women may be socialized with both gender and cultural attributes, many will select to identify primarily with characteristics which provide the most comfort; that is, Deaf people consciously choose to be full members of Deaf culture instead of marginal members of hearing culture (Glickman). For most women who are Deaf, the Deaf community is accessible and supportive where other Deaf women and men can be peers. In the larger population of women who are predominantly hearing, they are unlikely to share a language, despite sharing gender. As a result, Deaf women identify far more strongly with being deaf than with being female (Holcomb and Wood).

Perception of Gender Roles

Considering how important education is to the welfare of Deaf women, I initiated a research project to compare the means of gender socialization among Deaf women and their hearing sisters (Doe). One of the difficulties in conducting this research is that there is no standard sign for "gender" (although man-woman is used by some members of the Deaf community). When asked to define what they thought gender meant, what sex-roles were, most Deaf women gave physical definitions of role differences including strength, body hair, and shape. When asked to describe deaf-hearing differences, Deaf women and hearing women explained behaviour and attitudes as differentiating factors.

This research concluded that Deaf women identified primarily as Deaf and felt that other Deaf women would too. They considered their experiences of discrimination to be primarily because of being deaf, whereas their hearing sisters felt discrimination was primarily sex-based. Deaf women showed less awareness of sexism than their hearing sisters while their sisters showed less awareness of Deaf cultural issues. Deaf women were able to identify being Deaf as a positive and strong identity and saw being women in more negative and weaker roles.