Author: genderanded

By Catherine Asego

“I had my first child when I was 13 and dropped out of school. Since I had to fend for my baby, I decided to wash clothes for a living and this is how I got pregnant again. The man I was washing clothes for promised to take me back to school if I had an affair with him.” Says Ruth•, a fifteen-year-old Standard eight leaver. 

Ruth’s story is one among many horrific tales of young mothers who reside in the informal settlements of Nairobi. Education is a basic right for all in Kenya, however, it is not enjoyed by most teenage mothers who drop out of school despite the existence of the National School Health Policy and the School Re-Entry Policy and Guidelines that provide for these girls to enjoy their right to education. Implementation and monitoring of the school re-entry policy, the national school health policy, among others is important in curbing the rising rate of teenage pregnancies. According to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey of 2014 (Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2015), one in every five girls between 15-19 years has begun childbearing or already has a child and approximately 13,000 teenage girls drop out of school every year due to pregnancy. A study by the Population Council highlighted that 70% of out of school girls from Homabay County report pregnancy as the main cause of their schooling status. Numerous factors such as the disharmony between the provisions of the national school health policy and the re-entry policy among others have been linked to this unfortunate state that deprives girls of their childhood and prevent them from exercising their right to education thus compromising their future wellbeing and that of the communities they live in. Furthermore, teenage pregnancy aggravates their vulnerability to poverty, exclusion, and exploitation. 

Why teenage mothers need to be in school 

‘Kuteguka sio kuvunjika guu’ goes a Swahili saying. Life even after a teenage pregnancy continues and every girl has the right to re-pursue education as far as she can go. Existing evidence points out numerous benefits that accrue to girls and women when they attain an education. According to a 2013 UNESCO study, if all women in poor countries had a secondary school education, child mortality would be reduced by half. Moreover, 60 percent fewer girls under age 17 would get pregnant in sub-Saharan Africa, South and West Asia if they had a secondary school education. 

In Kenya, despite the existence of policies that support the re-entry of young mothers back to school, their plight remains dire. The National School Health Policy and the School Re-Entry Policy and Guidelines stipulate the laid – out procedures to be followed if a girl falls pregnant and/or drops out of school. However, implementation has not fully been effected owing to several challenges and barriers, such as lack of awareness of these policies by those meant to enforce them; negative attitudes and perceptions of communities, parents and school personnel against teen mothers; and failure by some school heads to divulge policy provisions for the fear that this might promote early sexual activities in schools. 

So what are we doing about this as a society? Nelson Mandela once said that ‘There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than how it treats its children’. ‘If given a chance to go back to school, I will be happy – I want to become a nurse’, says Ruth. For her and other young mothers who are yearning for a second chance at rewriting their narratives, they need the support of all the stakeholders within the education sector. 

A holistic multi-sectoral approach is key to promoting access to education among teenage mothers. The Ministry of Education and other line ministries including the Ministry of Health among others should enforce relevant policies. More so, parents, schools, communities and Non-Governmental Organizations, at large need to come together in their collective responsibility to ensure that all children go to school. Communities and parents ought to support school heads and teachers in their implementation of government policies and encourage dialogue to address the prevention of unintended pregnancies as well as changing the negative perceptions associated with school re-entry. 

Sensitization of communities on the provisions of the policies as well as regular guidance and counseling of parents on how to nurture and care for their adolescent children will go a long way in creating a supportive environment. 

The discussions around teen pregnancy need to expand from the girl child to include boys as they too are complicit (in situations where it was consensual). It is alarming that even where fellow students are reported to be the fathers to the children born by their schoolmates, in most cases, only the pregnant girls bear the backlash from the school and community. All learners need to have equal access to education opportunities. 

Furthermore, development partners and other education stakeholders need to design Interventions and programs that are holistic and responsive to the needs of teenagers and young mothers. Mentorship, guidance and counseling and creating safe spaces in schools for boys and girls to talk about the challenges they face with their sexuality and offering the appropriate knowledge will enable them to make informed decisions. 

Ruth deserves a second chance and so do the young mothers in our society- to re-write their narratives, get a good education, break the cycle of poverty and ensure that they secure a bright future for themselves and their children.

•Ruth is a pseudonym

About the author

Catherine Asego is a researcher and project coordinator of the Regional Education Learning Initiative (RELI) that promotes learning and collaboration among 70 organizations in East Africa. She also supports the development of policy and communication tools that partner institutions under the Urban Education Project use in their engagement with the various policymakers in each of the countries. 

Catherine is an alumni of the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders (YALI) program, an initiative of the former US President Barack Obama to invest in the next generation of African leaders.

African Population and Health Research Center

GEA co-chair Professor Jessica Ringrose has received an American Educational Research Association (AERA) award for her work on gender equality.

Professor Ringrose won the Distinguished Contributions to Gender Equity in Education Research Award, AERA announced on the 22^nd July. Established in 2006, the award recognises individuals within AERA for distinguished research, professional practice, and activities that advance public understanding of gender and/or sexuality at any level in the education community.

Professor Ringrose said: “I am thrilled to be the recipient of this award.  My research uses intersectional feminism to challenge inequity and to promote positivity, diversity and inclusion in representations and understandings of women and girls. I have been inspired by researching how young people trouble gender categories, challenge power inequities and are creating more inclusive worlds through their own digital feminist and gender activisms.”

“This year’s award winners exemplify commitment to the study and practice of education,” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine. “We are proud to honour their outstanding scholarship and service to the education research field.”

Professor Ringrose has been the co-chair for GEA for the past five years, supporting the association’s work to raise awareness about gender equity in educational research, policy and practice internationally. The GEA Executive Committee are delighted to see Professor Ringrose’s work on gender equity recognised by AERA, the largest interdisciplinary research association devoted to the scientific study of education and learning in the United States of America.

A virtual awards celebration will take place on 12 September, where the recipients will be honoured for their work.

Amid the global Covid-19 pandemic and a wave of #BlackLivesMatter protests against police brutality, politicians are attempting to quietly erode trans rights. In May, the Hungarian government brought in a new law banning legal gender changes. This past month alone has seen Romanian lawmakers approve a ban on schools and universities ‘propagating theories and opinion on gender identity according to which gender is a separate concept from biological sex’;  the US remove federal protections against health care discrimination for transgender patients and the UK government leak plans to scrap proposed amendments to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act. Over the weekend, thousands of protesters in the UK responded by marching to affirm that #BlackTransLivesMatter and demonstrate against potential changes to the law.

Following the lead of our colleagues at the Feminist Studies Association, The GEA Executive sent a letter to the UK Prime Minister last week urging the government not to restrict either healthcare for young transgender people or transgender people’s access to free, public facilities. As feminist scholars and activists who work in centres for the study of women and gender, GEA is intimately familiar with the sustained assault against the rights of trans and non-binary people that was unleashed by the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) consultation. Despite 70% of responses to the GRA consultation welcoming the proposals, the government looks set to disregard this show of support in a move that is profoundly anti-democratic.

Along with the majority of respondents to the consultation, GEA actively supports trans and non-binary rights because we believe that all women and non-binary people should be supported to live their lives free of oppression, restriction and violence. We are deeply concerned by Liz Truss MP’s recent comments which appear to reflect a lack of understanding regarding the proposed reforms and the unrelated issue of medical pathways for trans young people. We urge the government to revisit the wealth of evidence that supports the proposed reforms to the GRA and reconsider their position.  

In this blog our social media intern, Kate Marston, discusses the GRA debate and de-centring the focus on a small but influential faction of British feminism. 

The toxic GRA debate 

The consultation period on the GRA was very difficult for trans communities. What should have been a discussion regarding the removal of expensive, bureaucratic and dehumanising barriers to trans people obtaining a gender recognition certificate, became an extended and drawn out assault on trans lives and dignity as though their very right to exist was up for debate. Groups opposing the GRA were given high-profile platforms to scaremonger and spread misinformation about the proposed reforms, often employing hateful and cruel rhetoric. Negative attention in the press appeared to reinforce the harassment of trans and non-binary people in the street as transphobic hate crimes surged by 81% in 2018 – 2019.

Dr. Ruth Pearce details how ‘terrifying’ it was to be a trans feminist academic in 2018 noting that she was ‘scared about what might happen next, what violence might be perpetuated or excused in the supposed name of women’s rights’. Dr. Meg-John Barker also observes the significant impact that the ‘tsunami of negative press’ had on their mental health, expressing deep concern at the toll this would take on ‘younger trans folk who already suffer alarmingly high levels of distress and suicidal thoughts’. 

As someone who has worked with LGBTQ+ youth for the past eight years, the lack of empathy and understanding along with the outright cruelty shown towards trans and non-binary young people was deeply disturbing. I saw young people I had worked with attacked in the national press simply for standing up for their right to access the changing rooms that aligned with their gender identity, in line with existing equalities policies. Efforts to paint transfeminine people as sexual predators bore striking resemblance to the moral panic of 1980’s homophobia against gay men. 

Anti-trans protesters who self-identified as ‘feminists’ were given space to frame the debate as women versus trans people. Meanwhile, feminists who support trans rights were not only ignored by the media but subject to online and offline harassment from so-called ‘gender-critical feminists’ infuriated by their supportive stance. 

In the summer of 2018, for example, my partner was targeted for delivering a programme of activities on feminist archival research for young people of all genders in partnership with the organisation TIGER (Teaching Individuals Gender Equality & Respect). A notorious anti-trans protestor – Posie Parker – signed up to a workshop (for young people) under a pseudonym and proceeded to verbally abuse the facilitators for their gender inclusive stance and tear down young people’s creative work. Luckily, no young people were present at the time. Parker went on to create a YouTube video that evening recounting her version of events with thousands of viewers seeming to delight in her trolling and hate speech. 

Many GEA members will be familiar with these tactics which have temporarily driven colleagues off social media and derailed feminist events over the past few years. Yet it is stories of anti-trans protesters being silenced that continue to circulate in the mainstream media. Sara Ahmed observes how the ‘narrative of “being silenced” has become a mechanism for enabling and distributing some forms of expression’. The treatment of trans lives in the UK press has been dominated by a particular contingent of white women centring their own experiences, while the very few trans journalists that exist have been forced to withdraw due to the toll such hostility has taken on their mental health. 

Writer and comedian Shon Faye observes that ‘the purpose of the debate isn’t to move the conversation on at all […] It’s to have the same debate again and again and again, almost as if that’s a strategy in and of itself, to keep us debating and to keep a question mark over every aspect of trans lives and rights.’ With this in mind, how do we de-centre the focus on anti-trans voices and build towards more trans positive futures? In a follow-up blog post, I begin to address this question by engaging with some of the fraught yet rich herstories of trans/feminist entanglements that tell a story of powers growing together.

Related GEA blogs 

Exploring the participatory experiences of transgender and non-binary people in sport – Abby Barras

Non-binary at Conferences – Dr. Francis Ray White

Supporting transgender children in the primary classroom – Kai Smith

‘I don’t think my sexuality would come into it at all’: Understanding Australian LGBT trainee teachers expectations – Dr. Kate Russell

Resources 

Understanding trans health – Ruth Pearce 

Life isn’t binary – Meg-John Barker and Alex Iantaffi 

Non-Binary Lives: An Anthology of Intersecting Identities edited by Jos Twist, Ben Vincent, Meg-John Barker, and Kat Gupta

Inclusivity: Supporting BAME trans people – Sabah Choudrey

Why gender justice matters for everyone – SJ Miller 

When Black Lives Matter meets Gay Pride – LA Times

On transmisogyny – Paisley Currah 

The TransFeminist Manifesto – Emi Koyami 

Feminist Perspectives on Trans Issues – Talia Bettcher

Feminism, Interrupted – Lola Olufemi in conversation with Jay Bernard 

Transgender rights in the United Kingdom and Ireland, reviewing gender recognition rules – Peter Dunne

Resources for young people 

Championing Gender Diversity – AGENDA resource 

LGBT+ Feminist Movement – FAS resource 

Rewriting Herstory – FAS resource

6 UK-based trans• writers to follow

Travis Alabanza

Shon Faye

CN Lester

Sabah Choudrey

Juliet Jacques

Paris Lees

By EJ Renold, Ester McGeeney and Max Ashton

Relationships and sexuality education (RSE) begins long before children start school.

As soon as children enter the social world they will be encountering complex and often contradictory messages about sex, gender, relationships and sexuality that shape their day-to-day lives and imagined futures. However, while schools have the potential to create safe and empowering environments that can respond to children and young people’s own learning and experience on a range of RSE issues, they have “struggled over a long period of time to bridge the gap between official sexuality education and diverse young people’s lived experiences” (Kathleen Quinlivan 2018).

RSE in Wales is changing

Contemporary RSE research/ers encourage us to think again how sexualities and relationships are ‘taught, learned, witnessed, affectively charged, embodied, enacted, muted, and resisted by students and educators’ (Sara McClelland and Michelle Fine 2017, p. 212). Yet, inventive ideas for doing RSE in schools differently are too often disconnected from the political ecology of local, regional and/or national contexts, making it difficult for a new praxis to take root and flourish.

Over the last five years, EJ has had the rare privilege to build upon some incredible international scholarship and practice in RSE and has made some headway in shaping the new statutory Relationships and Sexuality Education in Wales, as an academic, activist, and Welsh Government advisor. In March 2017, EJ was invited by the Minister for Education to chair a panel of experts examining the current and future status and development of the Sex and Relationships Education curriculum in Wales. Only a short briefing was expected (Renold and McGeeney 2017a), but we produced a much longer 160 page report (Renold and McGeeney 2017b). This process laid the foundations for a radical re-routing of RSE in Wales. From 2020 this year RSE is now underpinned by the principles of rights, equity, creativity, inclusivity, empowerment, protection and co-production, and covers the core themes of relationships; sex, gender and sexuality; bodies and body image, sexual health and well-being; violence, safety and support; and rights and equity (Welsh Government 2020). However, while the expert panel’s recommendations have been slow to materialise, the stops and starts of how RSE is unfolding has opened up opportunities for EJ and Ester to develop their own professional learning programme (PLP) for teachers.

Making professional learning matter

In 2018 EJ and Ester were invited to design and deliver a series of Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) professional learning workshops to support in-service teachers to prepare for the new RSE statutory curriculum and guidance in Wales. Building upon the critical, creative and participatory methods developed in the AGENDA toolkit (www.agendaonline.co.uk) the programme invites teachers to participate in a range of pedagogic activities that they can then build on creatively and experiment with, first in the workshops themselves, then back in their own school, and then again in further workshops. Presently, the programme has directly engaged with 27 teachers, across 23 primary, secondary and special schools.

What is a creative audit?

Informed by the AGENDA stARTer activities, which many GEA members may be familiar with from the annual GEA conferences in 2018 and 2019, the creative audit is a tool that enables teachers to begin co-producing the RSE curriculum with children and young people. We have used the term ‘audit’ intentionally. We have flipped the neoliberal measuring practices of a school’s ‘audit culture’ by connecting to its Latin roots; an audit can open up the ‘listening’ process (aural) to a process of perception (‘au’ – to perceive). In doing so, it scaffolds accountability on the journey of coming to know differently through ‘creativity’ – that is, as a way of imagining and doing RSE differently.

Watch the film, “Making Space: Transforming Relationships and Sexuality Education in Wales” to see a creative audit in action.

Launching CRUSH!

To share the praxis and potential of our new RSE professional learning programme, this spring, we created and published ‘CRUSH: Transforming Relationships and Sexuality Education’ (Renold, McGeeney and Ashton 2020). Hosted on the AGENDA online website, this free to download bi-lingual (Welsh-English) 90 page booklet shares a range of new resources that have been developed for the programme. It includes the research CRUSH-cards and a concept glossary, as well as a series of five illustrated school case studies which show how teachers are starting to reimagine what RSE can be and become with and for children and young people.

Why CRUSH?

At the heart of the resource, is the sharing the different ways in which creative pedagogy can enable a wide range of feelings, expression and discussion to surface so that ideas can take-off and new connections can be made. It often involves learning to unlearn what we think we know and making space to be curious about what matters, to whom and how. However, it isn’t a matter of anything goes. The pedagogy that informs our PLP is critical as well as creative. It keeps a check on power relations and social norms and works to understand and transform how these power relations, norms and inequalities play out in harmful and violence ways. So it’s an ethical and political praxis that harnesses the multiple meanings of CRUSH to get at this complexity: CRUSH as feeling, as force, and as mash-up, or fold.

Crush as FEELING attunes to the diversity, unpredictability and intensity of emotions the ebb and flow throughout all RSE learning and experience.

Crush as FORCE is about developing an affirmative praxis for addressing injustice, inequity and violence, and working with the forces that make change and empowerment possible

Crush as FOLD is about recognising the messiness of experience, and the potential of RSE as a trans-disciplinary field, to explore how categories and concepts (like identity, consent, body image etc) entangle and fold into one another.

Make some noise

One of the early 14^th century definitions of crush comes from the Old French, croissir, which means to crack or brake and make some noise! CRUSH is a resource that not only cracks open a new unfolding RSE, but turns up the volume on youth voice through an empirical attunement of ‘what matters’ to young people on RSE issues. It also unashamedly speaks out about the need for professional learning and critical inquiry as RSE both expands and becomes statutory. Like AGENDA, it’s a resource that will always be evolving by responding and becoming responsible with all that we are learning from pupils, parents, teachers and communities. So stay tuned for more CRUSH-stories about how RSE is transforming in Wales. It’s been a bumpy ride, but we continue to CRUSH and teachers are beginning to re-imagine what RSE can become. We leave the final word to one of the teacher’s from the PLP who reflects upon her RSE journey:

“Something that I’ve noticed … is that I’m seeing RSE everywhere! and I’ve learnt that the kids are gonna love it, and it absolutely needs to happen, week in, week out, not just in a block pull down week. It needs to be in history, it needs to be in science, it needs to be in geography. It needs to be everywhere! and I think that is what I need to figure out! … I took the creative audit findings to the staff and it was SO useful ….  to convey to teachers, they don’t need to think of it as RSE, they need to think of it as everything else. And yeah they (teachers) are overwhelmed with changes and uncertainty, but I do think they’re open to a new way forward now. RSE is just around us all the time and it really needs to be …  it needs to be …  we need to be secure in that before we do anything else”

 (Primary School Teacher)”

To view and download the CRUSH resource, visit agendaonline.co.uk/crush and follow us on twitter @CRUSH_RSE.

On 25^th May 2020, George Floyd was murdered by a white Minneapolis police officer who kneeled on his neck for a total of nearly nine minutes. The video of Floyd’s death, bravely captured by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier, went viral causing collective outrage and sparking a new wave of #BlackLivesMatter protests around the world.  

In this blog, we collate the links and resources that the Gender and Education Association have been sharing on our social media feeds in order to signpost to some of the issues the #BlackLivesMatter movement highlights and signal boost some key voices.

#BlackLivesMatter

Black Lives Matter is an international civil rights movement campaigning against violence and systemic racism towards black people. Following the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2013, #BlackLivesMatter was co-founded as an online campaign by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Opal Tometi. In 2014, the first street demonstrations took place in Ferguson after the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a police officer. Following this, BLM has organised thousands of protests and demonstrations speaking out against police brutality and police killings of Black people.

It is no coincidence that the current uprisings against systemic racism and police violence are occurring at a time when the global covid-19 pandemic is disproportionately affecting people of colour. Professor Akwugo Emejulu observes that ‘Black and Brown Americans are disproportionately sickened and have died from a novel coronavirus that exploits America’s breathtaking racial inequalities in health, housing and employment’. Similarly, in the UK coronavirus has highlighted long-standing racial health inequalities. Furthermore, data shows that Black people were more than twice as likely to be fined for lockdown breaches than white people in London.  

#sayhername #blacktranslivesmatter #blackqueerlivesmatter #blackdisabledlivesmatter

#BlackLivesMatter was co-founded by feminist and queer black women. It has always affirmed ‘the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum’. The global uprisings sparked by George Floyd’s death have, however, renewed discussions about whose deaths are rallied around and whose deaths are marginalised.

The recent kilings of Tony McDade, Riah Milton and Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells highlight how trans people of colour are at increased risk of fatal violence. Campaigners have called for more to be done to affirm that #BlackTransLivesMatter. On the 14^th June, thousands gathered for a Black Trans Lives Matter rally in Brooklyn, New York.  Over the same weekend, the US rolled back transgender health care protections and the UK government announced that it was scrapping plans to reform the Gender Recognition Act.

Many have also questioned why black women and girls remain an afterthought in mobilized outrage against police violence, noting that the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor in March 2020 did not receive widespread attention until after Floyd’s death. To date, there have been no arrests for Breonna Taylor’s death and only one of the police officers involved has been fired. The need to call attention to black women’s experiences of police violence necessitated the creation of the #SayHerName campaign in 2015. Following the death of Sandra Bland in police custody, the African American Policy Forum released the #SayHerName report to draw attention to the forms of police brutality disproportionately experienced by women of colour.

Professor Brittney Cooper also highlights how Darnella Frazier, who ‘bore witness to the extralegal killing of a Black man, and made sure the world heard the story’, was subject to online harassment for not intervening as four police officers restrained George Floyd. She compares this to the experience of Rachel Jeantel, a key witness in the Trayvon Martin case, who was subject to derision and harassment due to her speech impediment.

Campaigners have also highlighted the intersection of disability and race in police brutality cases noting the disproportionate impact of state violence on Black people with disabilities. Given the number of police killings of people in mental health crisis, campaigners have called for a re-direction of funds from police budgets towards unarmed mental health response teams. 

#DefundThePolice

The recent protests have intensified demands to defund the police and consider different modes of public safety. For decades, abolitionist feminists such as Angela Davis  and Alice Walker have been calling on us to re-imagine what justice can look like and highlighted the harm caused by the prison industrial complex. Movements to defund the police illustrate the limits of reforming institutions that are rooted in the history of slavery and colonialism.

#NoPrideinPolice

Black Queer activists have also renewed their calls for an end to police presence at Pride marches. Stonewall was a riot against policy brutality led by trans women of colour and homeless queer youth. It marked a turning point in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights and inspired the first Pride marches. In recent decades, however, Pride marches have become increasingly commercialised and welcoming to the police. At last year’s London Pride, the police and officials tried to stop Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants, the Outside Project and African Rainbow Family from marching but did not intervene when an anti-trans group hijacked the parade.

Racism is still rife within LGBTQ+ communities and queer spaces leaving many black LGBTQ+ people feeling marginalized and unsupported. This necessitated the creation of UK Black Pride in 2007 despite opposition from mainstream LGBTQ+ organisations. It is Europe’s largest celebration for LGBTQ+ people of African, Asian, Caribbean, Middle Eastern and Latin American descent and advocates all year round for the health and wellbeing of these communities.

#BlackInTheIvory

Over the last few weeks, thousands of academics have been sharing their experiences of anti-black hostility in higher education under the hashtag #BlackInTheIvory. The hashtag was started by Dr. Shardé Davis and doctoral student Joy Melody Woods who wanted to share their experiences of racism in academia. Many have noted how the hashtag is limited to those who feel safe enough to share (some) stories without fearing repercussion.

In the UK, there are currently only 40 Black female professors and just 4,140 Black academics compared to 165,765 white academics. Leading Routes, an initiative to prepare the next generation of Black academics in the UK, note that over a three-year period just 1.2% of the 19,868 studentships awarded by all UKRI research councils went to Black or Black Mixed students. They have been re-sharing findings from their report ‘The Broken Pipeline – Barriers to Black PhD Students Accessing Research Council Funding’.

Last year’s #GEAconf2019 featured keynote addresses from Professor Kalwant Bhopal and Professor Heidi Safia Mirza whose work addresses issues of racism, sexism and white privilege in higher education. You can see further information about the #GEAconf2019 keynotes and panels here.

#BlackCurriculum

In the UK, the #BlackLivesMatter protests have also revived demands for a national curriculum that includes Black lived experiences and contributions throughout history.

The toppling of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol spotlighted the racist construction of British history and the educational function of public monuments. Watch Bristol-based poet Vanessa Kisuule’s response to the statue’s removal and read Travis Alabanza’s words on what it meant to them as a young person who grew up Black and queer in Bristol.

Calls to remove Colston’s statue had been made for decades, and so too have calls to revise the national curriculum. In 1999, The MacPherson Report recommended that a more culturally diverse curriculum was key to challenging racism. More than twenty years later, The Windrush Lessons Learned Review highlighted yet again the need for migration and colonial history to be taught on the curriculum.

GEA has featured a range of work on transforming school cultures from the bottom up. GEA Executive Member Dr. Victoria Showunmi’s research, for example, addresses how teachers and schools can begin to address barriers to young Black girls’ education by looking at the role of the Black Girls’ Club in challenging the status quo for young girls of colour. GEA members have also explored how to activate intersectional feminist change, showcase sisterhood amongst adolescent girls of colour and support young people to speak out in their schools and communities. Until Black British History is part of the national curriculum, schools will have limited time, resources and training to ensure that it gets the attention it deserves.

Resources

The Broken Pipeline: Barriers to Black PhD Students Accessing Research Council Funding – Leading Routes

Racism in secondary schools – The Runnymede Trust

About Race Podcast – Renni Eddo-Lodge

Feminism, Interrupted – Lola Olufemi

When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir – Patrisse Khan-Cullors

A feminist and queer syllabus for black liberation – Autostraddle

Prison Abolition 101 – Community Action on Prison Expansion

Say Her Name – The African American Policy Forum

Organisations

Black Lives Matter UK

No More Exclusions

Kids of Colour

UK Black Pride

The Black Curriculum

Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust

UCU

NEU

Natasha Richards and Gemma Connell are current PhD students who are both interested in how performance can be utilised as an effective tool for exploring issues of consent. Natasha works more specifically with young people and theatre, providing relationships and sex education through workshops and performance, while Gemma uses dance and spoken word in working with survivors of gender violence, stroke survivors and those with disabilities and mental health conditions.

After meeting at the CHASE Feminist Network Annual Conference in 2019, they realised that they were exploring similar topics through their respective practices in theatre and dance. They decided to team up to deliver a one-day workshop exploring the so-called “blurred lines” of consent through participatory exercises including theatre, dance and spoken word. The workshop aimed to open discussion around every day issues of consent, including “banter” and potentially problematic parental guidance, and how these could lead to wider issues of sexual harassment, sexual violence and victim blaming. 

GEA invited Natasha and Gemma to share a little bit about the experience…

Let’s start this post with a disclaimer: we don’t need to advocate for talking about consent on a platform like this, as we’d be preaching to the converted. However, we would like to advocate for discussing the issues of consent using creative and participatory exercises, as we feel it opens up the opportunity for new perspectives and deeper understanding of the topic of consent.

We wanted to pilot our theories with a small group of other artists and academics, so that we could gain feedback and to see how our ideas worked in practice in a smaller (and safer) environment. It is always risky to trial new ideas, even more so with sensitive topics, and so we were very grateful for those that joined us in our first pilot workshop, held at The University of Essex in February 2020.

We began with a series of introductory tasks, asking participants to think about what consent means for them in situations presented to them by us, the facilitators. For example, a statement was read out and each individual had to consider how far they agreed with the statement, one statement being – “It is ok to read your partner’s text messages.” These tasks led onto honest discussion, where participants could hear from others,as well as present their own opinions. As facilitators, we encouraged participants to consider in detail not just what their opinion was, but why they held that opinion. 

Natasha ran a theatre workshop, whereby the participants were introduced to a character, Stacey. They were presented with a monologue from Stacey, which detailed an incident of sexual harassment at school. They were given the opportunity to ask Stacey questions and to give Stacey some advice. After the workshop, one of the participants commented that “the Hot Seat theatre activity in which we were introduced to Stacey was very effective, and introduced numerous considerations affecting consent within a school environment, including peer pressure, banter culture and teacher involvement.” 

After the monologue and hotseat, the participants were invited to create freeze frames based on three different characters: Stacey, the perpetrator and the bystander. Creating the images, and then being an audience member to the images of others, gave the participants a platform to explore the different roles and emotions within instances of sexual harassment.

After lunch, Gemma introduced her own practice, beginning with a short extract of her own dance and spoken word performance, Lies My Parents Told Me. This performance explores ill-conceived advice that parents may pass onto their children, opening up a discussion about lies and how they relate to issues of consent. What is a ‘good lie’? When do such lies cause harm? 

The main task for the participants in this section of the workshop was to remix the wording of the current laws on consent in England and Wales (click here for more info on legal definitions of consent in the UK) and to generate simple choreography to accompany spoken word versions of these remixes. The remix exercise was welcoming to people unsure of dance and/or spoken word. The participants noted that they found themselves analysing the law on consent without being told to analyse it; reinforcing the notion that playing around with something can help to unlock different interpretations without that being the main focus or intention.

The workshop was a huge success, with one participant stating:

“It was compelling to explore the topic through the embodied experience of playing characters and experimenting with movement. I gained a new perspective on how the arts can allow exploration of the ‘grey space’ of consent. I also was inspired by how vital conversations about consent can be had with young people in creative ways that facilitate their self-expression.”

Using theatre, dance and spoken word techniques, we have discovered that discussions of consent can change through the creation process. Whilst generating dialogue and movement based on the topic, participants question their motives and those of others, in ways that they haven’t experienced before. 

Going forward, the aim is to run the one-day workshop in different contexts and evaluate the participants’ responses. An idea is to encourage universities to run the workshop in freshers week. We want to challenge the way people think about consent in society; not just consent to sexual acts, but where does consent affect the everyday lives of all of us – adults and children alike?

The pilot workshop was generously funded by the CHASE Feminist Network Small Projects Fund.

It is with great sadness and regret that we have to announce the cancellation of GEA 2020 in Calgary due to COVID 19 measures in Canada.

Here is a message from organiser Professor Michael Keller:

Dear GEA-GC3 2020 Contributors,

It is with great regret that I am writing to tell you that the University of Calgary has had to cancel the GEA 2020 Conference event in Calgary in June. Due to the unfolding and expanding conditions related to COVID 19 (Corona Virus) nationally and internationally, we are unable to host GEA 2020 at The University of Calgary.

Registration for this event will be reimbursed in due course. An official announcement will appear on GEA and University of Calgary GC3 2020 websites in short order.

Thank you for understanding

Michael Kehler,

GEA Organizing Committee

We want to take this opportunity to thank the GEA Conference Organising Committee for all their hard work on the conference. They had put together a stellar programme of speakers, workshops and panels, and it is very sad that their work will not come to fruition as planned during June 2020.

We wish all of our GEA members safety and wellness during this difficult time.

This post is part of the Countdown to Conference (C2C) series. We would love to feature a brief blog post from you too! Visit our main Countdown to Conference page for details! For more information about #GEAconf202 visit the conference website. 

…….

GEA is delighted to launch the programme for the upcoming Gender and Education Association International Conference on Gender Complexity, Collaboration, Connectedness.

Hosted by the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary, Canada, this year’s conference will reflect on the pillar of gender as a central identifier in education. The primary goal of the conference is to provoke conversations attentive to the complexity of gender in the current socio-political context. It will address collaboration both in the purest sense in which gender is a collaborative process through which we are authored and co-authored as well as in the broader sense that feminists and critical educators engage in collaborative research and activism to disrupt normative ideologies. Finally, it will speak to the connectedness possible when theory meets practice.

To address this year’s theme the conference is hosting a diverse range of panels and workshops alongside a stellar line-up of spotlight speakers including:

• Dr. Tracey Bear
• Dr. Jessica Fields
• Dr. Lance McCready
• Dr. C J Pascoe
• Dr. Rebecca Raby
• Dr. Shirley Anne Tate
• Dr. Kristopher Wells

We look forward to welcoming national, international and local educators, teachers, administrators, policy makers, community leaders, agencies and activists with a particular focus on gender, social justice, equality and education.

To find out more about the conference and register, please visit the GEAconf2020 website here.

By Caitlin McGrane, Akane Kanai and Julia Coffey

Despite what we might think, feminists use social media to try to understand different points of view and bring about social change, even when conflict can make it uncomfortable or doubtful that they will achieve their goals.

A recent research project conducted by Dr Akane Kanai and Dr Julia Coffey and funded by the GEA aimed to investigate how feminists listen across difference in an attempt to understand each other and resolve conflict. The research involved two workshops held in Melbourne and Newcastle where feminists of all ages and backgrounds came together to talk about how they experienced conflict in online settings like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Online conflict has become something of a sore spot of late for many internet users, particularly feminists. Many participants mentioned that witnessing or being involved in feminist conflict was uncomfortable, made them doubt themselves and their beliefs and took a lot of “feeling work” to try and understand what they felt.

So many of us are active social media users as part of our everyday internet lives, and many of us have surely felt the kind of intense discomfort that comes from being involved in an online argument – feeling your face flush, your heart race a little or just a general feeling of being uncertain. The intensity of these feelings can make engaging in online spaces difficult or troubling for many people, which is why this research project seeks to understand what those feelings are about and how we can continue to listen to each other even when we feel afraid, ashamed, excited or even amused.

The feelings associated with conflict can affect how we listen during an argument or disagreement in online settings. The results of this study were incredibly rich, so for this blog post we’re going to focus on one discussion point in the hope that the GEA community might be able to provide their feedback or commentary: Is listening possible during online conflict?

This question was addressed by several participants at both sites. The lack of visibility of other participants in online spaces could be distancing for some participants where they felt like they weren’t being heard:

Facilitator: you can’t hear the voice, I guess, but is it also… that you can’t see people listening to you?

Heather: Yes, yes, you can’t see them. You can’t – they’re strangers.

The idea of not being heard online was raised by a participant in the Melbourne workshop, who said: “I think that’s where I get really frustrated is when people just don’t listen.”

However, a number of participants in the workshops described how they found face-to-face discussions more productive and helpful, especially in how listening in a physical, face-to-face setting meant experiencing the affective approval from other participants through nodding and affirming the speaker. When asked what she liked about the workshop, Avi said:

I think everybody coming from such varied backgrounds and having such varied experiences and being very open to what the other person said. For example, when I was speaking rather than just saying, no, no, you’re wrong, or that doesn’t happen, showing physical signs of disapproval rather than doing that, people just listening and being like, oh yes, that makes sense, it was a good – it was positive encouragement.

This view was affirmed by other participants, including Lydia, 21 from Melbourne who found herself disagreeing with someone in the Melbourne workshop but felt like she had been listened to in that setting in contrast to online where she felt her disagreement and frustration would have come across as more “antagonistic” because she would have typed a large paragraph. Lydia further articulated the difference between listening in online and offline settings:

Lydia: I think it’s easier in real life as well though. Even if you are prone to being defensive, when you see someone’s body language and you’re present with someone it’s harder to assume the worst. If you’re behind a screen someone’s reading it and the tone that they imagine you to be saying it in, whereas face to face I could be – if you heard me talking to you right now, if you’re on a screen you can see – you can imagine me like yelling and be like… grrr…

Lydia:   …but if you’re right here it’s kind of hard to project that anxiety and that defensiveness. It still happens. I’ve seen people get defensive in real life before, but it’s not as overt.

Lydia seems to suggest that an offline, face-to-face context provides participants with more capacity to affectively influence each other through non-verbal cues when they disagree. We think it’s important to note here that Lydia has emphasised that disagreement is a feature of both online and offline interactions – do we just need better tools to overcome the challenge of being physically absent in online space?

The need to ascertain whether we will be listened to in online spaces before engaging raises the possibility that effective listening might need to begin with negotiation and preliminary fact-finding. Does this mean that once an online participant in conflict has been deemed ‘willing to listen’ then discussion can start?

Plenty of “netiquette” guidelines exist, especially in education settings. ActionAid Australia has also developed a set of guidelines for intersectional feminist discussion spaces. While these toolkits are useful as a starting point, it might be worthwhile developing guidelines for social media discussion and disagreement.

We think that listening is possible during online feminist conflict, but there needs to be more guidance around what we might do to make it more likely. What this guidance looks like in practice requires more in-depth investigation into everyday user practices and interactions. Let us know below if you have any suggestions!

This post is part of the Countdown to Conference (C2C) series. We would love to feature a brief blog post from you too! Visit our main Countdown to Conference page for details! For more information about #GEAconf202 visit the conference website. 

C2C: #GEACONF2020 Keynote Speaker Shirley Anne Tate

Dr. Shirley Anne Tate is a Canadian Research Chair and Professor in feminism and intersectionality in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta. Her research and scholarship includes work in the areas of gender, race and the body, institutional racism and gender in universities, and ‘race’ performativity. Dr. Tate is also the author of Inside the ivory tower: Narratives of Women of Colour surviving and thriving in British academia (Trentham Books, 2017).

Dr. Tate’s research interests can be broadly located as Black feminist decolonial diaspora studies. She has an intersectional perspective and has published widely in the areas of institutional racism, affect, hybridity, and the “race”d and gendered body in enslavement and freedom. This has emerged over a range of publications including book chapters, international distinguished speaker lectures, keynotes, and other invitations to speak in the UK, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Finland, South Africa, Brazil, and the USA.

Dr. Shirley Anne Tate’s commitment as an educator, researcher, and advocate for gender, race, and equality will certainly provide a highlight spotlight session you will not want to miss. Dr Tate’s work within race, gender, and decolonial studies exemplifies the GC3 theme for this conference. Dr. Tate’s ability in connecting critical race studies to gender and education shows the complexities of gender research through an intersectional lens.  She has also exemplified collaboration on the international stage through transnationally funded projects and international speaking engagements.