The Feminisation of a School? Women Teachers in a Boys' School

This article analyses the experiences of women teachers in boys' schools by examining a case-study school. It is argued that whilst there had been a large numerical increase in women at the school, partly as the unanticipated consequence of recent government reforms, the degree of 'feminisation' was much smaller. Teaching style and negative pupils' reactions, undermining by colleagues, exclusion from staff meetings and sexual harassment emerged as important dimensions of these women's experience. The women were not a homogeneous group, however, and two ideal type groupings emerged which offered different interpretations of their situation, contrasting conceptions of what a feminised school would look like and different strategies for feminising the school. It is argued that for many of the women the women's group played an important role in enabling them to redefine their situation collectively.     

Languages of Female Colonial Authority: The educational network of the Ladies Committee of the British and Foreign School Society, 1813-1837

This article focuses on the way women in the network surrounding the British and Foreign School Society Ladies Committee used constitutional, familial, religious and educational languages to claim an authoritative role for themselves in the development of education for non-Western women and girls. It highlights some of the ambiguities of colonial power for British women educators, which were implicit in women's self-representation of themselves as authoritative and their depictions of the non-Western female 'other'. It argues that in the two-way relation of metropole and periphery, the notion of the universal 'rational' mother employed within the network constituted an early 'professionalisation' of motherhood in relation to non-Western women, which worked to confirm the authority, responsibility and the 'Britishness' of British women themselves.     

A question of gender justice: Exploring the linkages between women's unpaid care work,education, and gender equality

ActionAid International implemented an action-research programme on women's unpaid care work in rural Nepal from March 2011 to December 2012. This social empowerment methodology, Reflect, enabled 106 women to gain recognition for their unpaid care work through their own collection of time-use data. The literacy skills women acquired facilitated greater representation in community meetings calling for a reduction in their unpaid care work rather than shifting this work to girls. The article draws on Fraser's model of gender justice to explore how women's literacy, girls’ education and a more equitable balance of care work are needed to improve women's status.     

A Risky Business? Mature Working-class Women Students and Access to Higher Education Correspondence : Diane Reay,Kings College London,UK. E-mail: Diane.reay@kcl.ac.uk

This article looks at the experiences of a small, qualitative sample of 12 working-class women attending an Access course in a large, inner-city further education college. The risks and costs involved in making the transition to higher education were evident in the women's narratives, and both material and cultural factors inhibiting their access to higher education are examined. The desire to 'give something back' which motivated all these women's attempts to move into higher education is discussed. The women were either juggling extensive labour market commitments or childcare and domestic responsibilities with studying. In such circumstances, when any sort of social life is sacrificed, what becomes visible is time poverty, and, in particular, a lack of time for 'care of the self'. Six of the women were lone mothers and it is further argued that complexities of marital status intersect with, and compound, the consequences of class. Beck's thesis of individualisation is used as a backdrop to the women's stories in order to highlight the costs of individualisation for the working classes, but also to problematise the discrepancies and disjunctures between projects of the self and the women's experiences of returning to education. The article concludes with an exploration of the consequences of a policy of widening access and participation for working-class mature women and suggests that, while currently all the change and transformation are seen to be the responsibility of the individual applicant, universities, especially those in the pre-1992 sector, need to change if they are to provide positive experiences for non-traditional students like the women in this study.     

WISE Choices? Understanding Occupational Decision-making in a Climate of Equal Opportunities for Women in Science and Technology

Since the launch of the Women into Science and Engineering (WISE) campaign in 1984, many initiatives to increase the participation of women in these areas of work have been launched under its banner and the WISE approach has come to represent the dominant discourse on equal opportunities for women in science and technology, having a major influence on both policy and practice. This article examines the WISE discourse in depth, arguing that WISE has had only very limited success because it is so narrowly focused on women's 'choices', which it understands as being constrained both by a lack of information about scientific and technological work and by a masculine image of science and technology which, it infers, is alienating to women. Drawing on empirical research which examined both women's and men's occupational decision-making processes, this article takes issue with this construction of the problem, arguing that whilst the assumptions of the WISE discourse cannot be supported empirically, the discourse itself nevertheless continues to structure and limit the space women have to speak of the conflicts and contradictions they experience, explanations for which require a better understanding of the ways in which subjective experiences of both gender and sexuality impinge upon work choices.     

Engineering Difference: Discourses on gender,sexuality and work in a college of technology

ABSTRACT This article explores the reasons behind the continuing underrepresentation of women in science and engineering. Reviewing existing debates, the article argues that there exists an impasse in debates on women in engineering which can be related to the dualistic frameworks within which existing research has tended to work. Explanations for the poor representation of women in these areas tend to emphasise either individual or structural factors, neither of which allow women's agency to be fully understood. Drawing on empirical research which examined the subject choices and occupational decision-making processes of two groups of students in a college of technology (one undertaking a course in traditional 'women's work' and the other a course in a non-traditional area), the analysis here employs a post-structuralist approach, employing aspects of discourse theory, to offer a new understanding of women in engineering and of the relationship between gender, sexuality and work, more generally.     

Information Giving and Education in Pregnancy: A Review of Qualitative Studies

Studies of childbirth education have universally failed to take into account the quality of the education provided to women and their families and whether its style of delivery meets women''s preferences and needs. The present study sought to determine which educational approaches are most welcomed by women and most helpful to them in learning about labor, birth, and early parenting. A systematic survey of peer-reviewed studies on antenatal education, published in English from 1996–2006 and which sought women''s views and experiences, was conducted. Findings confirm women''s preference for a small-group learning environment in which they can talk to each other as well as the educator and can relate information to their individual circumstances.     

Beyond the Degree: Men and women at the decision-making levels in British higher education

The study is an analysis of gender and power in British universities. It draws from a lifetime of experience of the difficulties encountered by those women who do reach senior decision-making positions in academic institutions, in the UK and overseas. It spans a period of forty years which begins with women as an unassimilated minority among student populations and moves to an analysis of their opportunities for shared control beneath the glass ceilings of the levels they attain as established academics. A survey of the incumbents of senior management roles in universities reveals few women. Fewer attain honorific positions. Suggesting that the observations made represent an improvement on the past, the paper presents two case studies of the implications of senior administrative work for academic women's professional lives. The first is of a small university weighted in favour of a narrow band of technological disciplines and the second a large mainstream university with many women staff. From here, commenting on external influences in Britain and elsewhere, the paper concludes by suggesting: ways in which women's leadership in academic institutions might be encouraged; the role of the professional bodies in monitoring and promoting this; and the learning required by women themselves to become effective as leaders for change once in position.     

Different Sources, Different Answers: Aspects on Women's Work in Sundsvall, Sweden, 1860–1893

It is often hard to unravel the actual work of women in history. Generally few sources are able to give vital information on their occupational structure. What we know, though, is that a vast majority of women were engaged in domestic work. Servants frequently appear in quantitative data, such as parish registers, poll-taxes, or censuses. Nevertheless, these sources fail to cover what women really were doing in order to pay for their daily bread. But in what ways the occupation reported in the quantitative records disagreed from women's actual work is difficult to judge. Additionally, in many cases these records leave no occupational information on women at all. With the computerized parish registers of the Demographic Data Base at Umeå University, Sweden, it is possible to link alternative information on individual women's work to the quantitative data and build on the picture of women's occupations. Consequently, whereas the parish registers enable us to deal with demographic issues concerning the marital, geographical, and social path of women in the past, the alternative sources formed by local newspapers, patient records, and business statistics offer further information on their life and working conditions. This paper reveals that alternative sources are better than the quantitative data at revealing the often multi-occupational and part-time work of urban women. Newspaper advertisements, announcements, and police reports, for instance, reveal the voices of the otherwise silent women workers and tell us about their urban context. The town and time in focus is Sundsvall in 1860–1893, a Swedish sawmill town situated about 400 kilometers north of Stockholm.     

Policy as Dialogue: Feminist administrators working for educational change

The focus of this paper is upon the way in which feminist educators as administrative 'leaders' conceptualised policy within what could be described as the 'masculinist' bureaucratic culture of an Australian state bureaucracy. The paper arises out of a larger research project focusing upon the ways in which change was viewed by women who have moved from voluntary and reform oriented work in teacher, curriculum and parent organisations into senior administrative positions in the late 1980s. This paper considers how they strategically addressed issues about the production of policy within a culture which was informed by particularly technicist views of bureaucratic rationality whilst negotiating the personal contradictions and tensions of being administrators and feminist educators working for more equitable forms of education.     

Spacing Herself: Women in education

This article is concerned with the problematic status of the female self, seen from the perspective of women in education. Studying women's autobiographical writings, the author uses a genealogical approach to interrogate the historical and cultural conditions of the construction of the female self. The article looks specifically at those practices women have used to act upon themselves and create a lifestyle of their own, technologies of the female self. Space is important in women's attempts for self-assertion, and the explorations of this article focus on the ways women in education have been striving to negotiate space of their own, within and beyond gendered social structures and dominant discourses of womanhood.     

‘Special strengths for their own special duties’: women,higher education and gender conservatism in late Victorian Britain

The article discusses contributions towards female higher education made by a group of women whose views on gender roles were conservative, rather than feminist or suffragist. Four women's conservative ideals and interconnected work for women's education are reviewed in the context of late Victorian Oxford. This study is prefaced by a discussion of historical literature on women's higher education which concludes that twentieth century feminist historians have sometimes downplayed the role of reformers who deliberately disassociated women's educational reform from the advance of gender equality. A study of conservative reformers complicates definitions both of feminism and anti‐feminism, and provides an important reminder of the broader intellectual and political contexts which produced them both.     

The Past is Difference - The Difference is Past

Education has been the main channel through which Finnish women have attempted to achieve the status of an individual. But what has the story of women's individualisation been like? The article examines women's educational life stories - 'independence narratives' - and highlights the gendered interpretations women have made of their lives. The gender difference in these stories is a temporal difference within the self: through the rhetorical construction of a dualistic division between the past and the present self, a qualitative hierarchy is introduced between a (past) woman and a seemingly gender-neutral individual. Moreover, the use of the woman as the temporal other of the individual reflects the timeless character of the individual. The individual constitutes a norm that determines the perspective from which the past and the present are viewed. While the individual is timeless, the difference is historicised and projected into the past.     

Good jobs – but places for women?

This article is concerned with men and women's experience of elite positions and with the extent to which such positions are seen as places for women, so as to provide an insight into their commitment to continuing in them. Senior management in universities are elite positions in terms of income; those who occupy them are relatively powerful internally, although relatively powerless in relation to the state and the market. Drawing on a purposive study of those at the top three levels (i.e. presidential, vice-presidential, and dean) in public universities, it finds little difference between men and women's perceptions of the advantages/disadvantages of these positions. However, in a context where roughly four-fifths of those in university senior management are men [O'Connor, P. 2014. Management and Gender in Higher Education. Manchester: Manchester University Press.], at the level of organisational narratives and at the interactional level, gender differences persist. These differences are reflected in variation in commitment to continuing in senior management positions.     

Diverse experiences of women leading in higher education: locating networks and agency for leadership within a university context in Papua New Guinea

The ways in which women deliberately press back against practices of oppression and demonstrate agency in higher education institutions are highly contextual and culturally bound. The formal and informal networks that women develop and maintain are important elements of generating agency and enhancing women's access to and opportunities for leadership. This article presents a case study from research that explored women's leadership experiences in a higher education context in the Pacific Islands – Papua New Guinea. Situated within a feminist poststructural methodology, the research examined women's experiences of leadership and considered aspects that influenced women's access to formal leadership roles. The findings illustrated that the women faced numerous barriers to formal leadership opportunities. A range of culturally and contextually located approaches supported women to demonstrate agency with regard to their own leadership development and practice. This research highlighted the importance of considering the relationship between networks and agency and the impact of associated cultural and contextual practices within organisations, providing insights into the culturally located complexities of women's leadership in higher education contexts.     

Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: the use of personal experience in theoretical and analytical approaches

Abstract

This article is drawn from my research work, where I have interviewed students on a combined women's studies course through the 3 years of their degrees. I worked with 14 students in total, mainly non‐traditional entrants. The women combined their women's studies programmes with a range of other subjects (including literature, law, sociology, health studies, psychology and more), so giving me good comparisons between a range of academic subjects. My research has indicated that although it is not always recognised as academic study, the women have found the use of personal experience both challenging and exciting in developing the tools needed for theoretical and critical analytical approaches. I will conclude by suggesting that to take account of gender issues, as well as considering other marginalised groups, subject areas need to develop approaches to learning and teaching which encourage the use of personal experience in enabling students to engage in theoretical and analytical approaches in their study.     

Working-class girls in a foreign land. Social class and settling into university in a cross-current between two cultures

In Finland, the financial status of a family does not in general place any restrictions on a person's studies. However, in spite of equality of opportunity, class as a cultural and social issue is a significant factor guiding the education of young people. In the article, I analyse women with a working-class background studying at university, starting with experiences of class as it is lived. The data for the study have been generated using the memory work method. The analysis shows how class is manifested in the women's experiences as a sense of themselves as outsiders, being alone or ‘on their own’ and as feelings of inadequacy. The women are forced to find ways of doing things that suit them and to construct a space in which they can feel safe.     

Women academic leaders in a Latin American university: Reconciling the paradoxes of professional lives

This study used interviews with 18 women in positions of academic leadership at the University of Costa Rica to explore such questions as (1) why do women seem to have success attaining positions? (2) how did these women get to their current positions? (3) what obstacles did they meet along the way and what facilitated their journey? (4) what is the relationship of machmismo and institutional culture to women's professional choices and lives? A secondary purpose of the study was to provide insight into the lives of professional Latin American women, about which little is known. Traditional Western theories used to explain women's careers lead to the conclusion that Costa Rican women are oppressed and discriminated against in their quest for academic careers. An intepretivist framework focusing on the meaning women give to their lives suggests a different conclusion. Comparing themselves to women in the larger society, academic women described themselves as leading privileged lives in which rules are gender blind and women can achieve through hard work and dedication.