Women and gender studies and multicultural education: Building the agenda for 2000 and beyond

Abstract

Multicultural education has always been contested terrain, yet within the last five years a significant consensus about its scope and function has evolved. The discourse about multicultural education has not adequately attended to the debates surrounding the terms “gender” and “sex” or the multiple feminist theories that focus on the more critical aspects of a social change agenda. This article focuses on some of the tensions between women and gender studies and multicultural education such as: understanding gender as a category of analysis, theoretical constructions of feminism, and building an educational agenda for social justice in an effort to further the agenda for 2000 and beyond.     

“I was my war; my war was I”: Vera Brittain,autobiography and university fiction during the Great War

Abstract

Applying the critical lenses of feminism, autographical theory and literary analysis, this essay performs a triple reading of Vera Brittain’s multi-genre writings about gender, war,and university education. Focusing specifically on The Dark Tide (1923), Testament of Youth (1933) and The Women of Oxford (1960), the essay argues that Brittain (de)constructs competing views of academic work and war work in order to reveal and critique competing definitions of women’s duty in wartime. Over the course of her life and writings, Brittain’s attitudes toward academe changed from euphoric feminist possibility to anti-spinsterish paranoia. Ultimately, Brittain was unable to reconcile these conflicting perspectives and instead chose a new, modern path in pacifism. Looking at a diverse body of her work reveals how much gender, education and the war impacted on Brittain’s perceptions of her self, her work and her writing.     

Gender & Education Association: a case study in feminist education?

This article focuses on feminist activist academics who were instrumental in creating the UK Gender & Education Association at the turn of the twenty-first century. Drawing on my own intellectual biography (David, M. E. 2003. Personal and Political: Feminisms, Sociology and Family Lives Stoke-on-Trent. Trentham Books.) linked to the collective biography and life history of feminism in academia over the last 50 years, Feminism, Gender & Universities: Politics, Passion and Pedagogies (David, M. E. 2014. Feminism, Gender & Universities: Politics, Passion & Pedagogies. Farnham: Wheatsheaf.), I consider how we, as feminist educators, developed our pedagogies and professional approaches to gender and education. In so doing, I also look at three cohorts or generations of feminist academics, from the university pioneers of second-wave feminists like myself, through to those who might be considered third wave feminists. In this it is clear that whilst feminist values of women's liberation and/or gender equality shine through, there are clear differences of emphasis. This is in relation to personal, political and professional values, and approaches to education through teaching or the social sciences. Indeed, neither feminism nor gender was in the lexicon of higher education or public policy when we were starting out, and by the third cohort gender equality had become incorporated into forms of neo-liberalism. In reviewing the developments of feminisms in higher education, I also look towards what might be considered a feminist future in global higher education, given learning from previous waves to new waves of feminists such as fourth wave and beyond. Here I briefly consider the work of our EU Daphne funded research project (2013–2015) into challenging gender-related violence (GRV) through education and training for professionals working with children and young people.     

The Promise of Freedom and the Regulation of Gender-feminist pedagogy in the 1970s

This article argues that we need to understand feminist interventions- in education and other social domains- as both emancipatory and disciplining. While it is acknowledged that feminist reforms have made many positive and desirable changes in education, this article addresses the impact of these reforms from another perspective. It analyses the normative ambitions and the utopian hopes of feminist education and suggests that the Foucauldian concepts of 'technologies of the self' and 'governmentality' offer new and fruitful ways for theorising the relation between (feminist) strategies of social, educational and personal reform. These arguments are explored in dialogue with a historical case study of 1970s feminist pedagogical reforms in Australia. The article interprets pedagogical strategies based on sex-role socialisation models as developing techniques for regulating and remaking the self and as productive of feminist truths about gender identity and difference. These pedagogies articulated feminist ambitions to reform the sex role and to produce non-sexist, self-monitoring and androgynous pupils. Such attempts to remake gender illustrate some of the ways in which feminism, while a critical social movement which has achieved genuinely emancipatory outcomes, is also necessarily a governmental and normative practice. Finally, this article underlines the imperative for properly historical and self-reflexive accounts of familiar and favoured narratives about the promise of feminism.     

The Sexual Politics of the Curriculum: contesting values

ABSTRACT

This paper arises out of our current work investigating the construction of male and female students’ sexual/gender relations within school arenas. A main concern is to explore recent empirical and theoretical work on sexuality, in an attempt to critique the New Right moralism with its own contradictory form of pluralism. At the same time a critical examination of the sexual politics of the curriculum may serve to rethink the underlying values of the old dichotomies around liberal and radical modes of progressive education with reference to curriculum change. Key areas of debate include the contextualisation of sex/sexuality within schools, sexual harassment, the normalisation of heterosexualities and sex/sexuality education. We have found it useful to hold onto the tension between materialist, deconstructionist and psychoanalytic accounts of the formation of sexual subjectivities, without attempting to resolve the contradictions between them.     

Trans*versing the DMZ: a non-binary autoethnographic exploration of gender and masculinity

Abstract

Using an abductive, critical-poststructuralist autoethnographic approach, I consider the ways in which masculine of centre, non-binary/genderqueer trans* identities transverse the poles of socializing binary gender systems, structures, and norms which inform higher education. In this paper, I assert that non-binary genderqueer identities are products of a particular sense-ing about gender that is reproduced and enforced in US higher education. Non-binary genderqueer identities defiantly take up space within a demilitarized zone that vacates the continuum of gender and instantiates binary genders. In particular, this autoethnography employs promiscuous and high-density theoretical analysis to determine the possibilities of resolving the breakdown presented by non-binary/genderqueer masculinities through a transmasculine critical epistemology.     

Sexuality education in South African schools: deconstructing the dominant response to young people’s sexualities in contemporary schooling contexts

ABSTRACT

South African schools are tasked with providing sexuality education through the Life Orientation curriculum as a means of challenging continued high rates of HIV, unwanted pregnancy and gender-based violence. While in theory schools are well positioned to provide appropriate knowledge for reproductive health and navigating sexual challenges within a gender justice framework, research on sexuality education in South African schools indicates that this is not the reality in practice. This paper draws on a growing body of qualitative studies, with both educators and learners in South African schools, to understand the issues undermining the goal of a critical and social justice pedagogy of sexuality in Life Orientation classrooms. We argue that sexuality education has been deployed to regulate and discipline young sexualities, reinforce and perpetuate gender binarisms and heteronormativity, re-establish global northern family values of the nuclear family within a pro-family discourse, and represent continued assumptions of adult authority in a civilising mission over young people. We suggest that the failure to make critical use of Life Orientation is linked to the dominance of ‘expert’-based didactic pedagogy, and argue the possibilities of sexuality education as a productive space for young people’s active participation and agency in making meaning of gender and sexualities.     

Online education as ‘vanguard’ higher education: exploring masculinities,ideologies, and gerontology

Drawing inspiration from Clegg’s [2008. “Femininities/masculinities and a Sense Self – Thinking Gendered Academic Identities and the Intellectual Self.” Gender and Education 20 (3): 209–221, 241] statement that ‘less traditional universities and areas of course provision and research might be important sites to investigate in relation to academic identity’, I undertake a single strategic case study of an expert, older, male critical educator, employed as an instructor in two ‘less traditional’, for-profit settings: one online university and one brick and mortar university. The article departs from a theoretical consideration of ‘future directions’ of three subfields: masculinities and higher education (HE) from critical and feminist perspectives, masculinities (and other identities) online (through the Internet research subfield of gender and technology), and masculinities and aging from critical and feminist gerontological perspectives. It employs the methodological strategy of ‘sketches’, arguing that these settings, which appear to position critical and feminist pedagogues in the proverbial ‘belly of the beast’, are important spaces in which to explore how a critical pedagogue navigates ‘less traditional’ HE settings.     

Calling for change: A feminist approach to women in art,politics, philosophy and education

Abstract

Michel Foucault showed by his genealogical method that history is random. It comprises sites of disarray and dispersal. In those sites, Simone de Beauvoir wrote philosophy through lived experience of woman as Other in relation to man as the Absolute. Here lies a fecund site for revisionist analysis of female cultural production and its relevance to a philosophy of education. The paper works with a feminist approach to the politics of knowledge, examining textual and political strategies in the recording of history and the ‘othering’ of women through dominant cultural discourses. Infusing this discussion is a feminist politics of interrogation on cultural change for women. The paper investigates contributions of women to fields of art, politics, education and philosophy, and to the ways their contributions have been considered, received, positioned. Different approaches to feminism become apparent in the different conditions of knowledge under discussion. This leads to a final consideration of feminist challenges in context of the politics of neoliberalism as it seeks to identify a feminist potential for ‘a cleansing fire’. The interventions in this paper trace political strategies and challenges for a philosophy of education to keep the momentum of feminist histories and issues to the forefront of scholarly enquiry and political/social action.     

Editorial

The aim of this paper is to reflect upon the ways in which 'sex', as an unchanging biological given, is often implicitly taken for granted in tertiary sex education. The paper details my own attempt to move beyond what I have come to experience as the predictable order of teaching students about sex and sexuality: the exploration of sexuality and gender anchored by the unquestioned assumption of biological sexual difference. I provide a practical example of introducing new material ism in science, and social science critiques of sex, into a tertiary level course. Consideration is given to the importance of fostering critical thinking in education: principally in being open-minded to evidence that challenges one's own belief system.     

Office Workers,Factory Workers,Cashiers or Cooks: a North American perspective on vocational education reform at the secondary school level

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the issue of secondary school vocational education reform in North America from a critical‐feminist perspective by linking directly to challenges that women face in pink and blue collar jobs. In the first part of the paper we review the research literature on pink and blue collar jobs in the clerical, sales, service, and manufacturing sectors. We explore how occupational sex segregation, job value and job security shape the working contexts of female employees in these jobs. In the second part of the paper we turn our attention to the implications of these challenges for vocational education reform. We focus on how curricular contexts such as traditional and non‐traditional vocational curricula, secondary school‐workplace linkages, and nonvocational courses could be reformed to become more responsive to the workplace challenges that current and future female workers face in pink and blue collar Jobs.     

The gendered politics of historical writing in History of Education

This article looks through the lens of the gendered politics of historical writing at the main forms and direction of scholarship on gender in History of Education since its publication. It discusses how social, women’s, feminist and gender history has been treated in the journal and how developing approaches around the body, space, materiality, and the construction of the archive, are informing the production of new knowledge around gender. The article argues that History of Education has contributed to ways in which gender has been imagined in historical reconstruction and analysis. As the gendered politics of history has been treated in the journal, gender analysis has contributed to the development of history of education as discipline. The article concludes that in re-writing and re-theorising traditional educational history, the radical openness of the future of gender analysis lies in the continuing transformation of gender analysis itself.     

The HBCU Experience: Liberating or Not?

While African American women routinely outnumber African American men on the historically Black college and university (HBCU) campus, the African American woman??s voice is usually relegated to the margins within social and academic frameworks. The author seeks to gain a deeper understanding of the actual liberation of African American women on HBCU campuses. Drawing from undergraduate and graduate experiences as an African American female on campus, the author uses Collins??s (Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge, New York, 2009) Black feminist epistemology as a lens through which to examine her own decision to attend an HBCU while giving specific attention to the implications and intersections of race and gender. Using Black feminist epistemology and autoethnography, the author provides a critical analysis of her education at an HBCU in relationship to the experiences of other African American women. The author concludes the article explaining the intersections of education, liberation, and resistance with implications for HBCU administrators and staff in preparing African American women as campus and community leaders.     

Feminist Theorisations of Identity and Difference‐‐a case‐study related to gender education policy

The intention in this paper is to explore notions of identity and difference in relation to gender and ethnic minority status within the context of Australian schooling. This is discussed through an examination of education policies related to gender. It is argued that over a 20‐year period, these policies have reflected shifts in feminist understandings of processes of identification. Initially, such policies were founded on an understanding of gender which was essentialised and in doing so consolidated discourses that denied the subjectivity of ethnic minority women and girls and reinforced dichotomies related to minority and majority ethnic status. Subsequent policies, while adopting a more deconstructive view of femininity and masculinity and indicating the possibility of biculturalism, none the less failed to address the ways in which gender and cultural identifications articulate. The paper explores the need for gender education policies to incorporate feminist theorisations of identity as unessentialised and shifting in response to contextual factors, one of which is schooling.     

Feminism and neo/liberalism: contesting education’s possibilities

ABSTRACT

Feminist theorists critiqued classical liberalism for the gender binaries embedded in social, political and economic theory and everyday social relations. Neoliberalism economises the social and political based on autonomous individualism, equating equity with choice, naturalising the market as the mechanism to allocate social goods and education while disregarding constraining discursive and material contexts. Neoliberalism also co-opts the feminist desire for agency through notions of choice. The paper tracks the historical conditions in Anglophile states that nurtured neoliberalism’s uptake with its focus on human capital theory, rethinking the dominant educational discourse of twenty-first-century skills using Yeatman’s democratic framing of social liberalism and Nussbaum’s capability approach. Feminists argue for a just and civil democratic society that dissolves binary thinking and focuses on relationality, rights and responsibility.     

Knowing feminism: the significance of higher education to women’s narratives of ‘becoming feminist’

ABSTRACT

Educational spaces have long provided opportunities for politicisation and activism. However, research into the processes through which students become politicised can often focus on participation in recognised forms of political action, thereby ignoring the multiple factors active in developing a political consciousness. This paper draws on narrative interviews with feminist women to consider the importance of education to their experience of becoming feminist. It considers how, for a particular group of women who were all students or recent graduates of non-STEM disciplines, academic feminism formed an important part of their narrative of becoming feminist. Each of the women referred to having a long-standing feminist inclination, instinct or feeling and indicated that studying academic feminism offered them the tools for reflecting on and articulating this.     

Reflections of an Online Social Work Professor: Illuminating an Alternative Pedagogy

ABSTRACT

Research in distance education has investigated student satisfaction and learning outcomes, comparing face-to-face with online delivery formats, and tested various technological tools, but has yet to consider alternative pedagogies. Liberatory pedagogy facilitates critical thinking, awareness, reflection and social action around constructs such as race, gender, and class. This paper uses Scholarly Personal Narrative to explore opportunities and challenges of implementing liberatory pedagogy within a virtual classroom. Themes include identity, body, mind, spirit, voice, authenticity, and self-actualization. Liberatory pedagogy emphasizes critical consciousness of oppression, aligns with professional values and ethics, encourages societal well-being, and would appear to enhance online social work education.     

Single‐sex Education for Girls: heterosexuality,gendered subjectivity and school choice

Single‐sex education for girls constitutes a focal point around which issues of gender, choice and educational decision‐making coalesce. My concern is not to enter the debate about the merits of single‐sex education for girls per se, but to examine the relationship between discourses of femininity and discourses around single‐sex schooling to see how they interact in the choice of single‐sex schools by girls and their parents. In this paper, I explore the ways in which aspects of feminist poststructuralist theory can be used to offer a more dynamic and complex account of the processes of school choice than that assumed by neo‐liberal theorists. The theory I develop is illuminated by interviews with three girls and their parents, from different social‐class backgrounds, at the point at which they were making decisions about which secondary school to apply for. A focus such as this enables me to do two things: firstly, to develop a more adequate understanding of the relationship between gender and educational decision‐making; and secondly, to critique the underlying theory of instrumental rationality, and its relationship to school choice, which has underwritten the marketisation of education in Aotearoa/New Zealand.     

‘More than boy,girl, male,female’: exploring young people’s views on gender diversity within and beyond school contexts

Abstract

This paper explores the views of young people aged 12–14 on gender diversity, drawing upon school-based qualitative data from a study conducted in England in 2015–2016. Although earlier feminist and queer research in schools often found evidence of variable local gender cultures and gender non-conformity, we argue that the contemporary context, with its increasing global awareness of gender diversity, offers young people significant new ways of learning about and doing gender. Findings reveal that many young people have expanded vocabularies of gender identity/expression; critical reflexivity about their own positions; and principled commitments to gender equality, gender diversity and the rights of gender and sexual minorities. We also show how young people are negotiating wider cultures of gendered and sexual violence. Schools are providing some spaces and learning opportunities to support gender and sexual diversity. However, overall, it appears that young people’s immediate social cultural worlds are constructed in such a way that gender binary choices are frequently inevitable, from school uniforms and toilets to sports cultures and friendships. Our conclusion touches on the implications of these findings for how educational practitioners, external agencies and young people can address gender rights, equality and justice in schools and beyond.     

Theoretical,Political, and Pedagogical Challenges in the Feminist Classroom: Our Struggles to Walk the Walk

Abstract

The authors explore both theoretical issues in feminist pedagogy and the politics of the contemporary university classroom. They examine various intersections of gender, power, pedagogical theory, and academic discipline in order to bring greater attention to the struggle many teachers face in “walking the walk” as feminist teachers.