In this short blog post based upon my recently published article in British Journal Sociology of Education (Rowell 2026) I cast light on the enduring role of economic capital and access to knowledge in shaping educational pathways and decision making. I reflect on the economic insecurity that class inequality casts over educational opportunities, even in the lives of those considered to have succeed in education. In doing so I argue for greater systematic support pertaining to inclusion of working-class students at the doctoral level if we are to diversify higher education knowledge production and to take seriously historical epistemological injustices with regards to the classed politics of knowledge production and inequalities of representation.
Reproduction in education thrives off of one’s (in)ability to access knowledge. Knowing what counts as valid and worthy, having a feel for the unwritten rules that open doors for some and lock out others. At the highest level of educational attainment then, one would be shocked and surprised perhaps then to learn that access to doctoral funding (and subsequent doctoral study per se, for working-class students) is seldom based on one’s academic accolades but rather who they happened to be taught by. Afterall, education is a meritocracy, right? It’s not who you know but what you know? Wrong, as my research illustrates. In the case of being working-class and accessing doctoral funding then, having access to a ‘significant academic other’ (Rowell 2026) opens the possibility and probability of doctoral study as I discuss below.
Within the UK, and elsewhere higher education has moved from an elite to mass system of enrolment, it nonetheless remains a deeply classed sphere. As Walkerdine reminds us, higher education continues to operate as a classed pathway and bastion of classed knowledge (Walkerdine 2021) especially so given academia’s classed ceiling (Friedman and Laurison 2019). Whilst there exists a plethora of research illuminating the experiences of working-class students at the undergraduate level and to a lesser extent the postgraduate researcher level, working-class access to, experiences of and outcomes pertaining to doctoral education remain largely absent. This was thus the imperative and motivating factor shaping my research exploring working-class women’s experience of navigating access to and through (and out of) doctoral study. Funded by the Society for Research in Higher Education (Rowell 2026) the research sought to explore the way(s) in which a working-class background shaped experiences of doctoral study, in doing so the research revealed the enduring nature of economic inequality upon access to higher education at the doctoral level.
Whilst unpacking the experiences of thirteen working-class cis women’s journeys to doctoral education within the discipline of Sociology it became apparent that access (or not) to economic and social capital deeply structured their progression to and entry into doctoral study. All of the working-class women I interviewed had received funding – and – without exception would not have been able to afford to pursue doctoral study otherwise. The working-class women’s arrival at securing funding was by no means seamless nor linear, but often the outcomes of starts, stops and circling back round as they attempted to navigate the unfamiliar journey of navigating doctoral fundings.
For many of the participants, the inability to pay straight up for doctoral study was exactly what precluded them from embarking on a seamless academic trajectory and not having access to economic capital resulted in fractured academic journeys. More profoundly however, access to economic capital through securing research funding (what I refer to as ‘accrued economic capital’) was foundational in equipping participants with the necessary economic capital allowing them to embark on doctoral study possible.
A common theme and thread throughout participants narratives was the role that academics, who were also from working-class background played in supporting students accessing doctoral funding. Such academics, I refer to as ‘significant academic others’, a conceptual tool to theorise a specific form of academic social capital that, within the field of UKHE, provides access to hot knowledge (Ball and Vincent 1998), in this case: doctoral funding opportunities. ‘Significant academic others’ were drawn upon as a source of capital facilitating working-class students’ entry to doctoral study; it is through their ‘significant academic others’ that the working-class women were equipped with the right knowledge (cultural capital) of how to navigate the postgraduate doctoral fundings landscape. Most of the working-class women (all but one) were made aware of doctoral funding opportunities through their ‘significant academic other’ as opposed to more systematic practices, such as university or funder information dissemination outlets. It demonstrates how, for the working-class participants of this research acquiring the economic capital required for doctoral study was not a straightforward process or the results of structural widening participation initiatives but the result of lucky encounters with their ‘significant academic others’ (often too from working-class backgrounds).
I call on universities and funders to deliver targeted and systematic support aimed at making known, to working-class student communities the opportunities for doctoral funding and to make clear the unwritten rules of game that enable some to secure such funding over others. If we are serious about the inclusion of working-class students at the doctoral level, then we must take seriously inequalities in access.
References:
Ball, S.J. and Vincent, C., 1998. ’I Heard It on the Grapevine’: ‘hot’ knowledge and school choice. British journal of Sociology of Education, 19(3), pp.377-400.
Friedman, S. and Laurison, D., 2019. The class ceiling: Why it pays to be privileged. Policy Press.
Rowell, C.R., 2025. Fighting for funding, working-class women’s transitions to sociology doctoral education: ‘Significant academic others’, economic and social capital. British Journal of Sociology of Education, pp.1-22.
Walkerdine, V., 2021. What’s class got to do with it? Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education, 42(1), pp.60-74.
It is astonishing that a conference on Black British Girlhood Studies was convened for the first time in Britain in 2025, and we support and applaud this shift and look forward to many more – nonetheless, this truth is telling of the intellectual and political space that we are in. It also reflects a wider issue of epistemic whiteness and neocolonial violence which permeates and bolsters academic and wider institutional practices and agendas. For Black girls, their communities/families, and Black girlhood orientated scholars, researchers, practitioners, and professionals, the field is unsupported and requires research, funding, and more coordination and movement to build momentum, and consequently, drive progress.
Co-hosted by the Centre for Social Change and Justice (CSCJ), and funded by the School of Childhood and Social Care, CSCJ, and Student Life at the University of East London, the main objective of the symposium is to delve into some of the complexities involved in Black British Girlhood as a site for understanding a range of ideas around race, ethnicity, culture, gender, health, community, dis/ability and neurodivergence. It will grapple with Black girl experiences with consideration community, embodiment, and institutions such as school, social care, and technology – to name a few.
This is an interdisciplinary discussion where Black girls (18 and over) and women, academic, practitioner, students, policy and other professionals and stakeholders are welcome to contribute and collaborate in moving the agenda forward.
The symposium takes place on the 11th March 2026 at the University of East London, UK.
If you have any enquiries regarding Black Girl Streams or more specifically BEGSA including the Special Interest Stream, email: info@blackgirlstreams.com
I am Dr Silhouette Bushay, Senior Lecturer and Course Leader at the University of East London, and Founder, Executive Director and Lead Scholar at Black Girl Streams C.I.C.
Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) have become central terms in UK higher education. Universities release strategies, policies, and glossy brochures that proudly proclaim their commitment to fairness and belonging. On the surface, it looks progressive. Yet research and lived experience suggest something more complex: EDI discourse itself can sometimes reinforce exclusion rather than dismantle it. This blog is co-authored by Chong and Qiaohui. Both of us engage with UK higher education as international researchers. Chong currently serves as the EDI Lead of the Gender and Education Association, while Qiaohui is a Student Representative. Although our roles and perspectives differ, our stories intersect in showing the paradox of EDI, especially as it is experienced from international positions.
Chong’s Story:
One issue lies in the dominance of white-centric perspectives. Curricula shaped by Eurocentric traditions often leave out diverse knowledge systems, marginalising Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students and staff. The acronym “BAME” itself, once introduced to signal inclusivity, has been criticised for producing alienation rather than belonging. Many people describe feeling reduced to a label that institutions choose, rather than a language of identity they claim for themselves.
For me, the tension runs even deeper. The term BAME does not exist in my mother tongue. I encountered it only after coming to the UK, learning it as part of the institutional language of equity and inclusion. In that sense, I was learning a foreign word that seemed to describe me, yet I was not fully entitled to use it. The distance was not only linguistic but also emotional – I was learning how to name myself in someone else’s language, within someone else’s framework.
I remember this tension vividly from a personal experience. While preparing an application for the Higher Education Academy, I described myself as a “BAME student” – a “fancy” word for me at the time, learnt from a university’s Inclusive Teaching course and thought I was using the right language. When a white academic staff member read my draft, she looked at me in surprise and asked, “Are you BAME?” At that moment, I said yes, but later I realised why it felt unsettling. The term seemed available for her to apply to me, but not for me to claim for myself. What stayed with me was a strong sense of being othered. A word that was supposed to include me instead created distance.
Representation often works in similarly ambivalent ways. At one disciplinary conference, my photo appeared in a publication page alongside a middle-aged Black woman and an older white woman. The arrangement looked perfectly composed to illustrate “diversity”. Yet I could not shake the feeling that I was being positioned less for my scholarship than for my identity. We were placed together to signify inclusion, but the effect was structural, almost performative. I was visible, yet not fully recognised.
For women of colour in particular, such dynamics are deeply familiar. In white-dominated spaces, identities are often simplified or essentialised. Even in institutions with formal EDI policies, structural practices remain that separate “marked” from “unmarked” identities. Members of dominant groups may unconsciously reinforce their own belonging, keeping boundaries intact despite intentions to erode them.
At the same time, I hope my current role will allow me to approach EDI from a more transformative angle. As the EDI Lead at the Gender and Education Association, I want to move beyond symbolic gestures and foster genuine participation. My aspiration is to create spaces where international students and scholars can define inclusion on their own terms — where they can exercise agency, build solidarity, and reimagine what belonging means. While I am still learning how to do this in practice, I see this as a process of collective exploration, one that challenges the limits of existing EDI discourse and opens up possibilities for change.
Moving beyond critique means asking what genuine inclusion could look like. Real inclusion is not about filling quotas, showcasing diverse faces on a webpage, or categorising people into acronyms. It is about listening to lived experiences and recognising individuals in their full complexity. It is about rethinking curricula so that knowledge is not narrowly defined by Eurocentric traditions but enriched by multiple voices. It is about shifting power, ensuring that those who have historically been silenced are not only present but also shaping the agenda.
Qiaohui’s Story:
The other issue is that international students often seem absent from EDI discourse. At first, I was not even sure whether EDI was meant to include students like me. In my first year in the UK, I noticed posters about EDI in university buildings. Curious, I searched for definitions and began to read related academic work. One article, ‘Feeling excluded: International students’ experience of equity, diversity and inclusion’ (Tavares, 2021), resonated strongly with me, which highlights this paradox: although universities often emphasise their commitment to EDI, international students are rarely treated as an equity-seeking group. As a PhD researcher focusing on gender and international student mobility, I was particularly sensitive to such ideas, and I started to wonder whether they could inform my own research.
But when I raised these questions in conversations with other staff members, the responses I received were often ambiguous. Some people told me directly that EDI was not designed with international students in mind. Yet at the same time, many international students come from minority ethnic backgrounds, making it impossible to separate their experiences from the very concerns that EDI claims to address. This ambiguity pushed me to think more critically about whether international students are actually included.
My interviews with other international students confirmed this uncertainty. Several had never heard of EDI. Others said they knew the term but felt it had little to do with them. The most visible sign of EDI, for many, was the rainbow flags displayed across campus. For some Chinese students, these flags felt novel, since in the Chinese cultural context, gender and sexuality are not always framed as diverse. The flags created a sense of curiosity, but also confusion. Students wondered what connection these symbols had with their own everyday lives.
On the one hand, some international students see the posters of EDI in their University. On the other hand, many still encounter exclusion in daily practice, whether through racial microaggressions or moments when their voices are ignored. The gap between EDI discourse and lived experience can leave students feeling positioned outside the very spaces that claim to include them.
These reflections also shape my current role as a Student Representative of the Gender and Education Association (GEA). For me, the goal is not simply to promote EDI as an abstract principle, but to make it real in practice. I want international students to feel not only that they are present in these conversations, but that they belong. This means creating space for their perspectives, supporting them to participate on their own terms, and ensuring they are recognised not just as symbols of diversity but as contributors to academic and social life. Only in this way can EDI move beyond words on posters and become something lived and transformative.
Conclusion:
Our different perspectives point to the same paradox: EDI can both include and exclude. Chong’s experiences show how label representation can create distance instead of belonging, while Qiaohui’s reflections reveal how international students often see EDI only as symbols, not as something that speaks to their daily struggles. Together, we argue that if EDI is to be transformative, it needs to move beyond posters and acronyms. Real inclusion means recognising international students as part of the conversation, shifting power, and creating spaces where people are valued for who they are and what they contribute. As universities renew their EDI strategies each year, perhaps the most radical act is not to add more words, but to listen more deeply.
Reference:
Tavares, V. (2021). Feeling excluded: international students experience equity, diversity and inclusion. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 28(8), 1551–1568. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2021.2008536
Understanding the process of socialization and the learning of politics and citizenship during the formative period of adolescence is crucial for comprehending the origin of the gender gap in political and civic participation later in adulthood, including experiences within the school environment. Schools, whether through explicit or implicit content, can contribute to the conceptualization of politics and citizenship as a male domain if their practices and interactions among students perpetuate gender biases and stereotypes (the tendency to attribute specific characteristics and traits to men and women (Jost & Kay, 2005)).
Schools possess formative potential that extends beyond the classroom, involving the institution as a whole. As Kerr (2015) emphasizes, citizenship education encompasses the classroom through the curriculum and teaching practices; the institution as a whole through spaces for deliberation and school participation; and the school’s relationship with the community through service activities and educational outings, among other aspects. While there is extensive literature and empirical evidence focused on the classroom and the influence of teachers on the development of students’ citizenship competences (Gainous & Martens, 2012; Schulz et al., 2018; Torney-Purta, 2002), less attention has been given to the role of school leaders in citizenship education, considering the formative potential of the entire school.
This project focus on school leadership (principals, management teams and teachers in leadership positions within the school) to observe their role in the process and experience of political socialization and citizenship education of Chilean students. In doing so, we aimed to identify their approach to gender issues and the existence of gender biases that could contribute to the construction and (re)production of a citizenship associated with the masculine or feminine roles in political life.
What have we done?
During the months of project execution, we gathered essential data to address the research objectives. Case studies were conducted to observe and analyse gender biases in learning and teaching processes within the school environment, with a specific focus on the role of educational leadership.
We collaborated with a sample of four secondary public schools in Santiago, Chile, including two exclusively female schools. To ensure gender balance in school leadership, we selected two schools led by female principals and two by male principals. In line with our initial proposal, we conducted in-depth interviews with educational leaders and citizenship education teachers. The objective was to gain insights into their perspectives on citizenship learning and teaching from a gender-oriented standpoint.
We interviewed a total of seven citizenship education teachers and six members of management teams. The analysis of these four school cases focused on the discourses and practices of leaders (political and citizenship beliefs and attitudes) and the opportunities for teaching and learning (spaces for deliberation and participation, as well as the school’s relationship with the community) offered by the school as a whole. The interviews, conducted between May and October 2023, lasted approximately one hour each.
What are our main findings so far?
The four schools analyzed exhibit differences in their school culture, yet they also share some characteristics in many of the examined issues.
From the cases examined, citizenship training plans have been developed, as mandated by the Ministry of Education (outlining citizenship education actions and learning opportunities for primary and secondary education students). In a couple of schools, units have been established to address gender issues. However, in the case of citizenship education plans, in general, these are not known by the school community and have a limited impact, as there has been no collective reflection on the type of citizenship the school community seeks to emphasize or the actions this will entail. It is suggested that the formulation of these plans has been primarily for regulatory compliance rather than constructing an educational plan for the community.
A noteworthy aspect in three of the schools is the recent establishment, within the last two years, of an internal department addressing gender issues. However, these departments or units are still in their early stages, and like the citizenship plans, their scope is not yet known or shared by the educational communities. While these units represent progress in addressing the visibility of gender issues, their focus has been oriented toward addressing gender diversity, coexistence problems, and non-discrimination rather than promoting formative or educational strategies from a non-sexist approach.
In all four cases, diverse citizenship conceptualizations are observed, which even differ within each school. Views range from critical positions regarding what has traditionally been understood as citizenship, related to civic duties and rights, to others where a broader and more active conception of citizenship linked to common good and democratic coexistence is observed. Regarding feminism, a common discourse is observed in all four schools around its relevance. While its importance is declared, the concept is not used institutionally, and instead, similar concepts such as gender equality or equity are mentioned.
Concerning forms of organisation and student participation, three parallel phenomena are observed in all cases:
1. A growing weakening of traditional forms of student participation such as Student Unions, which generally have low attendance and often do not garner validation among students.
2. Minority groups of students with higher levels of politicisation, participation, and mobilisation capacity, who often drive actions such as school occupations.
3. School administrators and teachers report a growing lack of interest and disenchantment among students with topics related to traditional and electoral politics, even due to causes such as feminism during the post-pandemic period (2021-2023). However, there is a reported increase in interest in other types of issues such as animal rights.
These realities have a correlation in the discourses of school leadership, where there is a lack of problematization in relation to the type of citizenship that the school privileges, as well as to possible gender gaps or an education that produces or reproduces gender biases. These discourses, rather, focus on reducing gender issues only to the promotion of non-discrimination and the promotion of sexual diversity, from a focus on reparation rather than prevention, instead of thinking about the development of strategies in the formative or educational field for a non-sexist approach (from pedagogical practices, contents, work materials).
What can we conclude at this point?
All in all, it can be said that there is progress in schools in relation to citizenship education and gender issues, which contributes to the recognition and visibility of both topics. However, these advances are limited and the school leadership rather lacks of a critical or reflective vision on citizenship and the challenges, gaps and biases that citizenship education faces in terms of gender.
Finally, we did not encounter any ethical issues in the fieldwork. Before the fieldwork this study was revised and approved by Diego Portales University ethical committee. Participants were required to read and sign a written informed consent prior to their interview. We also tried to be mostly transparent with our research purposes and the future use that any information will have.
By Alice Little, Josh, Oscar, Elliot, Charlotte Haines-Lyon, & Nathalie Noret
Pupil toilets are a problematic space in school. Pupils often report feeling unsafe and being concerned about the cleanliness and hygiene of school toilets. As such are often reluctant to use the toilets in school time. We aimed to work with young people to explore and challenge common toilet narratives to develop healthier, more equitable toilet practice.
Working with young people, we developed a participatory research project to examine: how can young people work with schools to develop toilet policy and practice that is safe, healthy, and socially just? We successfully recruited a secondary school in South Yorkshire to participate in the project. The school had recently conducted a student voice survey and identified a problem with the school toilets. Our student as researchers group decided to investigate this further.
Consistent with our participatory approach to the project, our blog post is co-authored with members of our young people research team, Josh, Oscar, and Elliot. This approach was approved by our institutional ethics board. We highlight why the young people decided to get in the project, what they have done so far in the project, and why they feel Toilet Talk is important.
Why get involved?
Josh – My motivations for joining Toilet Talk was to gain an insight into the processes and factors considered during a research project at University standard. I joined Toilet Talk with these intentions in mind and soon became invested into the opinions and attitudes towards toilets and their usage from the answers given by students at my school and sixth form.
Oscar – I joined Toilet Talk because I have always felt that the quality of school toilets is below adequacy – I believed that through Toilet Talk, we would be able to make meaningful change to our Sixth Form, lower school, and schools across the country. I also felt that the research aspect would be quite interesting, i.e., looking at statistics from peers etc. I was interested in seeing if my opinions on the toilets in and around Sixth Form were shared among peers.
What we have done so far
Alice, Josh & Oscar – Initially we set out to work in a participatory way where the young people could lead the direction of the project. The young researchers chose a method for collecting data about school toilets. We began collaborating on choosing questions that could be asked to other pupils within the sixth form. We discussed ethical considerations such as confidentiality and safeguarding. An aim was to provide reassurance to pupils that we would respect their anonymity when answering the questionnaire. The team of pupil researchers wanted to make sure that respondents felt comfortable and could answer truthfully without any worry of any repercussions. The sessions were held in 25-minute form time slots, which fitted into the school day and were flexible to accommodate those who wanted to take part.
Some of our findings so far
Josh & Oscar –Initially we believed that social space and toilets were connected; our finding concurred that our predictions and estimations were closely matching to the outcome of the Student Voice Survey. 62% of respondents stating that the toilets in Sixth Form were being used as a social space, with 23% specifying that the toilets do not address all needs of pupils. It would be interesting to see if these findings and statistics are generally found across the country in all genders and age brackets – it would be helpful to research further into school toilets to confirm this belief. It was insightful to discover that many of our views on the toilets were shared with our peers as well.
Why these findings are important and our next steps
Josh & Oscar –Collectively, we agreed that sharing our findings with the head of our Sixth Form would be helpful in working towards a solution with the Student Voice Surveys in mind. An intention was to specifically address the findings on social space and accessibility, as we believe these are the key elements that are contributary towards achieving a more comfortable environment for students using the toilets. We believed that through our research being conducted alongside York St John University researchers, our student voice was elevated, and responses would be better received by our Sixth Form and its management. Therefore, hopefully the findings will result in a higher chance of action being taken towards the facilities, better improving the overall conditions for ourselves and our peers. We believe a higher quality environment is deserved for pupils within our sixth form, especially with equitable toilets being a basic human right.
The young researchers facilitated a meeting with senior leadership, and it became clear that no toilet policy existed within the sixth form. An action plan was created that included the co-creation of a toilet policy, and clear expectations to be set out in whole year group assemblies. The young researchers have opened dialogue with the leadership team about expectations and conditions of the sixth form toilets and they wanted to continue this discussion moving forward.
The Toilet Talk project has highlighted the benefits of employing a participatory approach when undertaking research in schools on sensitive and challenging topics. The young researchers in this project have highlighted how important it was to feel listened to and contribute to a meaningful discussion with their school leadership on their research findings. This has led to a change in school policy and practice related to school toilets.
This research secured ethical approval from the York St John University, School of Education, Language and Linguistics, Ethics Committee in January 2022. Written consent was received from the young people to take part in the Toilet Talk project and those involved in writing the blog attended a workshop session on authorship and anonymity within academia, and verbally consented to being named co-authors.
This blog post explores the Gender and Education Association 2021 funded research project titled Toilet Talk: Empowering young people in schools to research and talk about toilet issues, led by Dr Charlotte Haines Lyon.
Many South African women live in fear due to the high levels of gender-based violence (GBV). Moreover, one in five (21%) women in South Africa who have intimate partners, have experienced physical violence by their partners. More significantly, black women are identified in South Africa’s parliament report as the most vulnerable group to intimate partner violence due to their unemployment status, which is at an alarming rate of 30%. In 2021 and the first quarter of 2022 there were 902 cases of femicide, and 11,315 were sexual assault cases committed against women.However, People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA) is not convinced of the statistics as they believe that these do not provide a true reflection of women’s plight. They do acknowledge, however, that these statistics offer a glimpse of the seriousness of gendered violence in women’s everyday lives.
Therefore, it is critical to create spaces for dialogues to engage with the numerous ways in which gender-based violence affects women in the community. Visual methods and creative arts have been central to African social life and cultural construction even before colonialism took hold of African lives. We, therefore, draw from these methods to engage and reflect on the everydayness of GBV.
A work of art
Addressing social challenges through creative arts
Visual methods offer the vocabulary to often unspoken atrocities and traumas that people have experienced in their lives. Gender-based violence is a global challenge dubbed the parallel pandemic affecting communities alongside Covid-19. In a context such as South Africa where the unemployment rate is very high, many women stay in abusive relationships as alternatives do not appear to be in place. Therefore, it is critical to create dialogues, awareness, and empowerment opportunities where women can engage on alternatives and possibilities for better and safer lives. Visual participatory projects offer an opportunity for collective reflection, creating spaces for solidarity, and thinking differently about challenges confronting women. One such visual method is embroidery. Artworks such as embroideries force people to pause and reflect on the perpetual injustices and challenges confronting us daily. Furthermore, artistic visual images such as embroidery are useful tools that can be utilised to represent people’s reflections of their everyday experiences. Embroidery has the potential to contribute to how we make meaning of everyday realities, and how we can imagine the possible transformation of society. Gender-based violence has become an integral part of our lives — it has become part of ‘the everyday’, and it is therefore important to pay attention to this everydayness – the taken for granted; and how these have detrimental effects on the functioning of individuals, families, and ultimately, the whole society.
A call for action
Visual methodologies such as embroideries precipitate social change. They facilitate the co-production of knowledge in contexts where social injustice occurs. When shared publicly or disseminated on wider public platforms, such creative images have a wider reach, aiding critical awareness of the varied forms of oppression and sometimes raising awareness on the ways in which women internalise oppression knowingly and sometimes unknowingly. With embroidery, there is space to look beyond the perceived hopelessness where women are perceived as victims who do not have the power to change their circumstances. Instead, embroidery also highlights how women resist with the courage and determination to change their circumstances. Furthermore, embroidery offers the opportunity to highlight structural violence and inequalities (for example, patriarchy, unemployment, poverty, lack of access to proper education and health systems) that directly impact people’s everyday encounters. Women coming together to make embroideries that show how gender-based violence makes a home in all aspects of women’s lives, at the personal, the collective and the structural level, is a plea for action. The coming together further allows women to analyse policies and laws on GBV and how that affects their everyday lives.
Women’s embroideries in communities may also serve as props for public community dialogues. With the various themes that the embroideries highlight (e.g. being hassled in the streets, domestic violence, being accused of witchery, human trafficking, substance abuse, to name a few) we come together as academics, school learners, and community women at various places and platforms within the community to engage on what these themes mean to all of us. We come together to share stories of survival — share networking and referral processes — to speak about possible steps that could be taken by the communities themselves and how the government can take women’s concerns and recommendations forward to effect relevant policies on GBV.
Conclusion
It is clear that gender-based violence affects all of us either directly or indirectly. Therefore, the call for action is a challenge to all of us to play our role in the spaces we occupy. We should refuse to keep silent in the face of injustice and instead hold each other accountable and collectively work towards sustainable outcomes. From the micro to the macro level, attention has to be given to how gender-based violence affects us. After all, Women’s rights are human rights!
This blog post explores the Gender and Education Association 2021 funded research project titled Embroidery as a visual methodology that carves a bridge for dialogue, led by Professor Puleng Segalo.
In the UK, the prominence of a number of anti-trans feminist voices in social and mainstream media has led American journalist Katelyn Burns to term anti-trans ideology as ‘the de facto face of feminism in the UK’ – but this belies a history of feminist and trans entanglements and alliances as well as the continued and resilient support of women for trans people to self-identify their gender. In June, the GEA Executive were amongst tens of thousands of individuals and organisations who wrote to the UK Prime Minister urging the government not to rollback trans rights or disregard the results of the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) consultation. For now, this show of support appears to have prompted the government to affirm that they will not restrict healthcare for young transgender people. Much more needs to be done however to safeguard and build upon existing protections for trans and non-binary people to ensure they can live their lives free of oppression, restriction and violence.
While the drive to uncover histories of anti-trans feminism offer
valuable insights, scholars and activists have also sought to acknowledge the
fruitful connections that exist between different struggles for gender justice
(Halberstam 2017). Trans and women’s liberation have always been intimately
linked by their struggle to escape patriarchal norms. The term gender (as now
commonly understood) was developed by feminists from work by psychologists on
trans and intersex subjects. Ultimately, women’s and trans liberation are both
concerned with equity of rights and life opportunities, freedom from hegemonic
gender and sexuality discourses and questions of power. Yet, the women-led
social movements that arose during the 1970s have been persistently painted as
inherently hostile to trans experiences, despite many trans and feminist
scholars having challenged this characterisation.
Withers’ work highlights that the grand narratives ‘invoked
within the paywalls of academic feminist theory or the rabid annals of twitter’
rarely do justice to the rich ‘conceptual and lived resources’ produced within
the WLM which contributed to contemporary transfeminist discourse. Drawing on
archival materials, they illustrate how the emergence of ‘women’s culture’ and
women-only spaces was part of the ‘trans-formation of sex’ allowing for
intensified experimentation where the ‘female sex was bent into new, irreversible
shapes’. Women-only networks facilitated practices such as learning ‘how to fix
PA systems, repair faulty car engines, explore the contours of a drum kit, or
mend the plumbing’ which expanded the material politics of the female body and
what it could do, be and become. Significantly, these spaces and networks were
not marked by the same categorical differentiations between cis and trans women
that shape contemporary feminist debates. Withers draws attention to
testimonial and archival evidence that illustrates the presence of trans
activists within the WLM noting, for example, that the keyboardist for the Northern Women’s Liberation Rock Band was a trans woman.
In a special issue on Trans/Feminisms, Stryker and Bettcher (2016) along with Cristan Williams (2016) and Emma Heaney (2016) map the involvement of trans activists in US-based lesbian feminist autonomous organisations in the early ‘70s. They explore, for example, the contributions of the lesbian trans folksinger Beth Elliot, Angela Douglas (the founder of the Transexual Action Organisation) and the trans inclusive politics of the radical feminist lesbian separatist music collective, Olivia Records. In an interview for Vice magazine, former Olivia Records engineer and pioneering trans studies academic Sandy Stone tells her story of living among lesbian separatists in the ‘70s. She details how revelatory it felt to discover ‘that you could be a woman without stereotyping anything, without encountering traditional cis female culture at all’ and travel through a ‘rhizome’ of ‘lesbian safe houses’ from ‘coast to coast and never encounter someone presenting as male, like a wonderful parallel subculture—or superculture.’
When trans exclusionary feminists such as Janice Raymond began threatening and harassing Olivia Records, Stone details that she initially ‘felt really protected by the women of the Collective’. However, the unrelenting nature of the attacks and the risk of boycott action led Stone to leave. Following on from Olivia Records, Stone went on to earn her doctorate with supervision from Donna Haraway and in a faculty comprised of legendary feminist academics such as Angela Davis, Gloria Anzaldua and Teresa De Lauretis. Stone proceeded to publish one of the founding essays in transgender studies, The Empire Strikes Back: A (post)transsexual manifesto.
A place for trans lives in all feminisms
These
collective and inclusive herstories question the current common understanding
that particular strands of feminism are necessarily trans exclusionary. Furthering
the view that there is no inherent need for tension between lesbian feminism
and trans-inclusion, and calling for a revival of (a trans-inclusive) lesbian
feminism, Sara Ahmed (2017, p. 227) notes: ‘I would suggest that transfeminism
today most recalls the militant spirit of lesbian feminism in part because of
the insistence that crafting a life is political work’. Ahmed’s assertion that
transfeminist texts ‘assemble a politics from what they name’ (ibid), showcases
one of the many commonalities between lesbian and trans feminisms. Both lesbians
and trans people have been rendered menacing and monstrous killjoy
figures within and outside of feminist spaces (see Mitchell and McKinney 2019;
Stryker 1994).
Similarly, and contrary to the popular belief that radical feminism and anti-trans feminism are somehow synonymous (not least due to the infamy of the moniker ‘TERF’), radical feminism does not necessitate hostility towards trans people. Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, two of the most prominent and celebrated radfems, were both supportive of trans inclusion. In 2015 McKinnon stated “I always thought I don’t care how someone becomes a woman or a man; it does not matter to me. It’s just part of their specificity, their uniqueness like, everyone else’s. Anyone who identifies as a woman, wants to be a woman, is going around being a woman, as far as I’m concerned, is a woman.”
Intersectionality and the category of
‘woman’
In the aforementioned TSQ special issue, Stryker and Bettcher (2016) also credit the intersectional feminist analyses promulgated by US feminists of color in the 1970s and 1980s with laying the foundation for transfeminist theories and practices. They observe that by raising the question of ‘whether “woman” itself was a sufficient analytical category capable of accounting for the various forms of oppression that women can experience in a sexist society’, Black feminists ‘called for an account of multiple “differences” of embodied personhood along many different but interrelated axes’ (Stryker and Bettcher 2016, p. 8).[1] Transfeminist scholars and activists have not only drawn from the work of Black feminists but also contributed their own intersectional analyses to the fight against racism, state violence and other oppressions (Bettcher 2007). Angela Davis recently credited trans and non-binary communities with contributing to abolitionist feminism by demonstrating that it is possible to imagine more socially just worlds that challenge ‘that which is totally accepted as normal’.
Article on Angela Davis in Women’s LibeRATion magazine (1970)
Black feminist and trans scholars have also explored the historical imbrication and interplay between Blackness and transness (Riley Snorton 2017; Bey 2017; Sharpe 2016). Marquis Bey (2018, p. 165) illustrates that the ‘subjective nexus of Black and woman, for example, irrespective of an identified trans gender, also experiences the surveillance and invasion of their bodies going through airport security (e.g hair searches), expulsion from bathrooms, housing discrimination and historical invalidation of their womanhood’. Scholars including Lola Olufemi (2020) and Alison Phipps (2020) have noted the ‘whiteness’ of the UK anti-trans feminist movement. Phipps further suggesting the paucity of British intersectional analysis, relative to the US work noted above, as a contributing factor to the prominence of ‘gender critical’ views in the UK. Dr. Gail Lewis observes how Black women’s work in Britain was denied credibility and respect by white feminists as they entered the Academy and formed women’s studies networks and reading lists.
Continuing to learn from one another
OWAAD poster (1980)
Given the marginalisation of Black British feminist thought within the Academy, it is important to re-visit and learn from the Black and working class women-centred social movements, such as Wages for Housework and the Black Women’s Movement, that thrived alongside the predominantly White and middle class WLM in 1970s Britain. Significantly, these movements did not share the same unease with trans subjectivity as expressed by minority factions of the WLM. Lewis, who was a co-founder of the Organisation for Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) and member of the Brixton Black Women’s Group, highlights that the Black Women’s Movement always questioned limited articulations of gender and notes her surprise at those who have been so troubled by trans* politics. The Black Women’s Movement and Wages for Housework were characterised by coalitional working between contingently autonomous groups, activating ‘an organizational tactic to mobilize across and beyond existing racial, gender, sexual, and class configurations while recognizing the irreducible differences’ (Capper and Austin 2018, p. 449). Wages for Housework, for example, was an international movement comprised of autonomous groups such as Black Women for Wages for Housework, Wages Due Lesbians (now Queer Strike) and the English Collective of Prostitutes.
Transfeminist scholars and activists have turned to the organisational tactics and theoretical interventions of these Black and working class women-centred social movements for inspiration. Dr. Nat Raha, for example, observes how the Wages Due Lesbians campaign provided important insights into queer social reproduction by challenging the heteronormativity within Marxist feminist conceptualisations of unwaged domestic labour. Unlike the lesbian separatist movements referenced earlier, the largely Canadian / UK-based Wages Due campaign did not advance lesbianism as necessarily liberatory in itself. Instead, they noted how economic power continued to shape and limit women’s sexual choices (Caper and Austin 2018, p. 449). Raha draws on the work of Wages Due in order to advance a radical transfeminism and highlight the limits of trans liberalism. Rather than focusing on securing a particular ‘packet of entitlements’ and rights for trans people, a radical transfeminist agenda explores possibilities for common struggle across the intersecting issues of precarious working conditions, transmisogyny and sexism, white supremacy, ableism and sex work. Raha looks to contemporay and historical queer and trans-focused mutual aid support as a strategy for survival and world-building.
Conclusion
We are undoubtably living through a moment where trans lives are subject to unwarranted scrutiny and conjecture; where the historical imagining of trans as threat has reemerged and rejuvenated. That this image is often promoted by a small section of women from within the feminist movement remains disappointing. However, in the prevailing social and traditional media narrative it is easy to overlook the uplifting herstory of trans-feminist alliances which have been integral to the women’s liberation movement and which continue to inform and enrich our understandings; it is easy to overlook the collective struggles endured and the support and solidarity enjoyed. Scholars and activists demonstrate that it is in feminisms’ recognition of difference and shared experience that it is at its most sophisticated and demanding. At its best feminism is a movement that understands its role as a collective liberator of the margnalised and resists being reduced to a parochial border guard preoccupied with reserving womanhood for a privileged few.
Bio
Claire Thurlow is a PhD candidate in the School
of Law and Politics at Cardiff University. Her current research looks at
contemporary feminist reactions to trans identities in the UK. Her wider research
interests concern the intersections and divergences of feminism, queerness and
LGBTQ. She is a white cis-gender queer whose pronouns are she/her.
Kate Marston
is a PhD candidate in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. Her
research draws on feminist posthuman and new materialist theories to explore
young people’s digital sexual cultures through creative, visual and arts-based
methods. She is a white middle-class genderqueer lesbian
whose pronouns are she/they.
References
Ahmed, S. 2017. Living a Feminist Life.
Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Bettcher, T. 2007. Evil deceivers and
make-believers: Transphobic violence and the politics of illusion Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist
Philosophy, 22 (3), pp. 43–65.
Bey, M. 2018. “Other Ways to Be: Trans.” Women and
Language 41(1), pp. 165 – 167.
Bey, M. 2017. “The
Trans*-Ness of Blackness, the Blackness of Trans*-Ness.” TSQ:
Transgender Studies Quarterly 4(2), pp. 275 – 295.
Capper, B. and Austin, A. 2018. “Wages for
housework means wages against heterosexuality”: On the Archives of Black Women
for Wages for Housework and Wages Due Lesbians. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 24(4), pp. 445 – 466.
Halberstam,
J. 2017. Trans: A Quick and Quirky
Account of Gender Variability. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Heaney, E.
2016. Women-Identified Women: Trans Women in 1970s Lesbian Feminist Organising TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 3(1-2),
pp. 137 – 145.
Lugones, M.
2016. The Coloniality of Gender in Harcourt, W. (Eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Development: Critical Engagements
in Feminist Theory and Practice London: Palgrave Macmillan
Mitchell, A. and McKinney, C. 2019. Inside Killjoy’s Kastle: Dykey Ghosts,
Feminist Monsters, and Other Lesbian Hauntings. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Olufemi, L. 2020. Feminism Interrupted:
Disrupting power. London: Pluto Press
Phipps, A. 2020a. Me, Not You: The trouble
with mainstream feminism. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Raymond, J.
1979. The transsexual empire: The making of the she-male. Boston: Beacon
Press.
Riley Snorton,
C. 2017. Black on Both Sides: A Racial
History of Trans Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Sharpe, C.
2016. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being.
Durham: Duke University Press.
Stryker, S. 2004. Transgender Studies: Queer
Theory’s Evil Twin. GLQ: A Journal of
Lesbian and Gay Studies 10(2), pp. 212-215.
Stryker,
S. and Bettcher, T. 2016. Introduction: Trans/Feminisms TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 3(1-2), pp. 5 – 14.
Williams,
C. 2016. Radical Inclusion: Recounting the Trans Inclusive History of Radical
Feminism TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly
3(1-2), pp. 254 – 258.
