Gender justice/gender through the eyes of children: a Photovoice project with elementary school gender expansive and LGBTQ-parented children and their allies

How do children experience gender? What are the roles of schools, adults and allies in supporting gender inclusion in a world of gendered categories? Despite a growing public discourse on gender and shifts toward fluid understandings of gender in US popular culture and educational institutions, the voices of transgender and gender expansive children remain on the margins. In Spring 2017, fourteen elementary school children in a school in Northern California, USA, who are gender expansive, transgender and in LGBTQ parented families and their allies documented their understandings and experiences of gender in their lives and in the school using Photovoice methodology. Visual and narrative findings traced three related themes of gendered meanings, gendered spaces and gendered allies. This paper asks how we can build more inclusive school environments in which children can come into their fully gendered selves. By documenting meanings and experiences of gender, children illustrate the infinite possibilities of gender and create pathways to institutional and social change for inclusive educational environments. The paper addresses the role of gender justice in light of persistent injustices rendered in and through gendered states to support movements for educational and social change.     

‘The first step is the two‐step’: hegemonic masculinity and dancing in a country‐western gay bar

Gay men are often rendered feminized males according to masculine, heterosexual ideologies. This research demonstrates that gay men are actually more creative and active agents in their gender performance, simultaneously resisting and reinforcing dominant ideologies around gender and sexuality. One context where the creative agency of gay men is readily prevalent is in their leisure. Leisure contexts, used to shift the goalposts of cultural domination, are important locations where both social control of individuals and social strategies for change are prevalent. Using ethnographic methods, the author investigated a country‐western gay bar to identify those practices that reveal how gay men shape and assign meaning to the bar as a leisure context, the structures that exist to facilitate and/or prohibit gendered practices, and how gay men negotiate hegemonic and counter‐hegemonic gendered practices. This paper focuses on two‐step dancing, the most visible and popular activity that occurs in this country‐western gay bar. Yet, despite its popularity, analysis and interpretation reveal that two‐stepping, a heterosexually based, gender‐defined activity, provides gay men with a unique recreational opportunity to both challenge and reinforce dominant gender and sexual ideologies.     

Learning about sustainability and gender through Farmer Field Schools in the Taita Hills,Kenya

This research uses transformative learning theory to explore how Farmers Field Schools (FFS) of the Taita Hills, Kenya have contributed to environmental sustainability, with a particular focus on gendered learning. Both genders experienced transformations in their meaning schemes related to farming (e.g., men and women switched their traditional roles in tillage and planting). A significant change in meaning perspective occurred among men who overcame personal biases and a cultural practice of land inheritance for males to now include their daughters. More research is needed to explore how all participants (farmers, extension agents, scientists) could enhance sustainability efforts and gender equality through agricultural participatory education projects such as FFS.     

Failing to attract males in foundation phase teaching: an issue of masculinities

Drawing on a qualitative interview-based study, this article foregrounds the perspectives of a group of male pre-service teachers at a South African university for choosing not to specialise in the teaching of young children. Male pre-service teachers in this study associate with teaching older learners in the senior phases, constructing it as more appropriate for men, with greater intellectual capacity and a higher status profession in contrast to the feminised caring roles associated with teaching young children in the Foundation Phase (FP). They disassociate with the FP of teaching, engage in oppositional and gendered discourses, claim power and construct a version of masculinity that has inequitable gendered effects. Understanding why men choose not to pursue the FP of teaching is a key issue of masculinities and power. Drawing attention to such issues becomes necessary in order to counteract positioning males and females into gender-specific roles within professions and in the context of this study, to attract more males into the largely feminised FP of teaching.     

Doing men's work?: discipline,power and the primary school in Taiwan

This article examines the masculinization of discipline and its interplay with power in the primary school through an exploration of teachers' gender and disciplinary work and roles by drawing on data from an ethnographic study conducted at a primary school in Taiwan. The research findings suggest that discipline was men's work due to women distancing themselves from discipline, the physical advantages of men and masculinity, and parental expectations. However, negative feelings and pressure towards disciplining were also revealed by men. This research evidence also indicates women were, or could be, as tough disciplinarians as men. More importantly, the masculinization of disciplining work and roles was linked to male domination in power. The teacher workplace culture may help to explain discipline as men's work and power as gendered.     

Stage fright

Gender identifies the social roles deemed appropriate for both sexes. Rhetorical genres are also social constructions, but given prohibitions against women speaking, historically, virtually all rhetorical action was gendered masculine. Accordingly, the earliest women speakers faced a double bind that not only spurred them to heights of inventional creativity but also generated contradictions that limited their ability to produce rhetorical masterpieces. At the same time, their challenges emboldened other women, and their arguments became resources for subsequent women speakers. These claims are developed and illustrated through analysis of texts of two of the earliest known speeches by U.S. women, Priscilla Mason's 1793 salutatory oration and Deborah Sampson Gannett's 1802 lecture tour.     

Becoming a ‘proper man’: young people’s attitudes about interpersonal violence and perceptions of gender

Whilst public awareness campaigns, interventions and legal reforms have done much to challenge gendered interpersonal violence, the incidence and prevalence of this violence is not decreasing. Furthermore, research with young people reveals significant acceptance and tolerance of interpersonal violence if perpetrated by men within the parameters of an intimate heterosexual relationship. Empirical data from a study with young people in Glasgow will be used in this article to explore young people’s attitudes about gendered interpersonal abuse and violence and young people’s perceptions of gender roles and specifically ‘masculinity’. It is argued that in order to understand the continued tolerance of male abuse/violence, it is necessary to appreciate how young people conceptualise the role of women and men within intimate heterosexual relationships.     

The Ideal Worker or the Ideal Father: Organizational Structures and Culture in the Gendered University

While literature has focused on the ways in which organizational structures exclude women from the workplace, this article suggests that the inverse is also true: organizational structures and culture prevent men from being involved in the home. Using theories of gendered organizations as a guide, this article draws on interviews with 70 faculty fathers at four research universities to explore the tension that many men feel navigating their responsibilities in the home while simultaneously aiming to fulfill the norms of the ideal worker, which holds that employees are always available to perform work and have few responsibilities in the home. Data suggest that institutions and those within them penalize men who appear too committed to their families. Some participants crafted identities for themselves that separated their roles as professor and father while others struggled to reconcile their two roles. In short, institutional structures and culture play a critical role in shaping faculty identity, both on and off-campus.     

Gender,masculinity and the new economy

This paper examines the ‘remaking’ of white working class masculinities in the latter quarter of the twentieth century. It draws on ethnographic data gathered at two points in time in order to interrogate the relation of macro-economic and social relations on individual and group identities; to excavate the social psychological relations ‘between’ genders and races, as narrated by white working-class men; and to explore the nuanced variations among these men. Addressing theoretical, empirical and methodological issues associated with these studies, I argue that the remaking of the white working class can only be understood in relation to gendered constructions within itself, the construction of relevant ‘others’, as well as deep shifts in large social formations.     

Gender in schools and culture: taking stock of education in Italy

When politicians discuss Italy's position in terms of achieving equality between men and women, the school environment is rarely called into question or mentioned. This is despite the fact that gender inequality remains a prominent feature of the Italian education system. The reason for this failure to perceive the problem, and the consequent lack of investment in policies for gender equality in education, derives from a massive misunderstanding: school is perceived by the public and the political class as one of the few environments within the highly sexist Italian social fabric in which equality has been achieved. On closer examination, however, it is clear that the Italian school is merely the image of a sexist society which in turn acts as the driving force for a traditional and stereotypical view of male and female roles. This article will discuss this perspective and investigate three areas of education that are problematic in gender terms: gendered educational choices; sexist stereotypes transmitted through textbooks; and the lack of adequate training for teachers.     

Commentary

This paper examines the sociological implications of sport as a male preserve. Sport is a gendered cultural form that has been dominated by men and masculinity. The effects of this domination upon broader patterns of social relations have been misrepresented in much of the literature on sport and gender, where sport is often conceptualized as a static fact, rather than as a dynamic social practice. Analysis of sport as social practice directs attention to the manner in which sport gives meaning to broader patterns of social relations. In the case of gender relations, sport as a male preserve has contributed to the oppression of women through the objectification and dornination of their physicality and sexuality. A feminist alternative to sport as a male preserve challenges gender inequality by challenging sexual stereotypes and patriarchal control of women's bodies.     

The Development of Gendered Interests and Personality Qualities From Middle Childhood Through Adolescence: A Biosocial Analysis

This study charted the development of gendered personality qualities and activity interests from age 7 to age 19 in 364 first- and secondborn siblings from 185 White, middle/working-class families, assessed links between time in gendered social contexts (with mother, father, female peers, and male peers) and gender development, and tested whether changes in testosterone moderated links between time use and gender development. Multilevel models documented that patterns of change varied across dimensions of gender and by sex and birth order and that time in gendered social contexts was generally linked to development of more stereotypical qualities. Associations between time with mother and expressivity and time with father and instrumentality were stronger for youth with slower increases in testosterone.     

Assessing the gender climate of an evangelical student subculture in the United States

This study explored the gendered experiences of students belonging to an evangelical Christian religious community on a university campus in the United States. As some religious traditions harbour distinctive views on gender differences and roles, the study focused on community characteristics that pertained to beliefs about gender and the behaviours that emanated from those beliefs. The findings revealed that the community was defined by masculine norms, the endorsement of essential gender differences and separate roles for men and women with respect to leadership, modesty and dating/marriage. Suggestions for improving the conditions for women in religious groups and the broader college campus are discussed.     

The smiling philosopher: Emotional labor,gender, and harassment in conference spaces

Abstract

Conference environments enable diverse roles for academics. However, conferences are hardly entered into by participants as equals. Academics enter into and experience professional environments differently according to culture, gender, race, ethnicity, class, and more. This paper considers from a philosophical perspective entering and initiating culturally into academic conferences as a woman. It discusses theories of gender and emotional labor and emotional management, focusing on Arlie Hochschild’s foundational work, and affect in gendered social relations, considering Sara Ahmed’s theorization of the feminist killjoy and the affect alien. It applies these lenses to explore problematic experiences of women initiates at conferences. The paper proceeds with a theoretical discussion of gender, emotional labor, and affect. Then the paper discusses women academics’ experiences generally and at conferences, including educational research conferences, with reference to relevant higher education research as well as anecdotal evidence, relating these experiences to the theories. It thus aims to tie together theoretical insights, higher education scholarship, and ordinary real-life experiences of gendered social relations in conference activities.     

Deal‐making and rule‐breaking: behind the façade of equity in academia

A glass ceiling for women still exists in academia after two decades of equal employment opportunity (EEO) legislation in Australia. There are complex factors that when combined make gender inequity in the higher education sector highly resistant to change. Using personal histories as a reflexive device, the paper makes explicit the embedded male patterns of behaviour in academia that operate beneath the façade of policies and rules put into place to counter inequity. In particular, the paper focuses on the cognitive dissonance individuals experience due to the disparity between formal organizational policies promoting equity, such as workload allocations, and perceptions of the unequal opportunities for women and men. Using social identity theory and the leader member exchange (LMX) framework, the daily experiences of three academic women are interpreted, the impediments to equality identified, and suggestions made for more fundamental change to gendered organizational structures within academia. The analysis of such behaviours shows that the traditional emphasis of EEO legislation on formal policies and procedures to bring about gender equity in academia needs to be accompanied by cultural change programs that make explicit and challenge behaviours that reproduce and reinforce male hegemony in academia.     

After the Public Realm: Spaces of Representation,Transition and Plurality

This essay questions the privileging of the design of public over domestic spaces and buildings in architecture and urban design, and their education, and the identification of public space with a public realm seen as the location of democracy. It cites the case made by Doreen Massey that the division of public and private realms is gendered, allowing men the freedom of public affairs whilst confining women to domesticity; and argues that a dualism of public and private space ignores a third area of transitional spaces which affect patterns of urban sociation. The case of redevelopment in El Raval, Barcelona, demonstrates that public space may be, today, part of an anti-democratic strategy of gentrification. But, if public space constructs a gendered public realm as imposition, there remains, as Hannah Arendt contends, a need for locations of social mixing in which difference is visible. What, if not public space, enables this?     

Do women publish fewer journal articles than men? Sex differences in publication productivity in the social sciences

This paper examines whether women and men publish journal articles at a level comparable with their representation within the social sciences. The paper also explores sex differences in patterns of single authorship and co-authorship. To do so, demographic data of the UK social sciences is compared with a sample of UK-authored journal articles. The findings of the study show that, overall, female academics contribute to a lower proportion of journal articles than the proportion of academic staff that they constitute. However, within certain disciplines (social policy and psychology) women publish articles at a level comparable with the proportion of the discipline that they constitute. These findings, it is argued, can be helpfully understood as both cause and consequence of the gendered academy.     

New roles,old stereotypes – developing a school workforce in English schools

In this paper, the author explores the development of school staff who are employed to support pupils in the classroom, specifically the teaching assistant/higher level teaching assistant role. These roles have undergone considerable change following the introduction of Workforce Reform and Remodelling in English schools and the National Agreement. In practice, the introduction of this agreement into schools appears to have a powerful gendered aspect which limits choice and agency for individuals and prevents the development of a coherent workforce. I argue that the discourse of maternality within which the school support role has evolved supposes a level of self-sacrifice and conscientiousness which is gendered and conceals the exploitative nature of the role in terms of poor pay and career prospects. Furthermore, the growth of support staff in English schools to undertake roles previously assigned to teachers has had the effect of disaggregating and de-professionalising the teacher role and weakening the traditional job boundaries which defined the work of support staff.     

Explaining Male Dominance and Sex Segregation in Coaching: Three Approaches

This article discusses various approaches that have been used to explain coaching as a male-dominated occupation. Individual approaches look at the interests, qualifications, and choices of women to explain their absence in male-dominated jobs. Structural approaches assume that gender-differentiated work behavior is more a function of location in organizational hierarchy than of gender. In the third approach, social relations, gender is seen as a verb in that women and men collectively struggle over the power to give meaning to social facts, including the meaning of coaching. This approach shows how structures, jobs, activities in those jobs, workers, and places of work are gendered through the meanings we assign to them. The ways those meanings may be altered if and when the number of women in coaching begins to increase are described.     

Gendered communities of practice and the construction of masculinities in Turkish physical education

This paper analyses the construction of masculinities in Turkish physical education through Carrie Paechter's conceptualisation of gendered communities of practice. According to Paechter, educational communities of practice operate as sites of gendered activity. Membership within these communities contributes to the construction of a gendered identity. We suggest that this model is useful for conceptualising how Turkish young men come to engage with physical education classes which can be considered as masculine communities of practice. In one Turkish secondary class, we found that football was the most valued practice, determining boundaries of participation and differentiating levels of participation in the learning community. Young men who were immersed and excelled in football took up ‘full’ learning trajectories and became accepted as ‘fully masculine’ while those who were uninterested or non‐competitive in football took up marginalised learning trajectories. We suggest that these diverse learning trajectories came to reflect differentiated versions of masculinity.