In many countries, teaching is constructed as a ‘women-friendly’ profession. By drawing on Les Enseignants et le Genre, a recently published cross-national comparison of men and women teachers based in French and English secondary schools, I want to question this view. Continue reading “Rethinking gender equality in the teaching profession: is secondary school teaching ‘women-friendly’?”
Gender representation and social justice: Ideology, methodology and smoke-screens
This article in Gender and Education 27.3 was born out of a commitment to contribute to the United Nations Millennium Goals related to gender equality. The commitment was not only mine as author, but also that of the organisations which sponsored and supported the research. The South African President of the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration, the Commonwealth Foundation, the Matthew Goniwe School of Leadership and Governance in Johannesburg, the international network, Women Leading Education, and the University of Southampton all offered support. The number and range of organisations that helped evidences a fund of willingness to try to improve gender equality. I led the team from South Africa and the UK which undertook research in South Africa into how women became headteachers and how they lead their schools when appointed. The aim was to pilot a method of comparative research into women headteachers’ experience that could be used in other locations across the world. Continue reading “Gender representation and social justice: Ideology, methodology and smoke-screens”
Similarities and differences in collegiality / managerialism in Irish and Australian universities
This article developed from collaboration between the authors in late 2008 when Kate was a visiting researcher at the University of Limerick, funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences. At the same time the authors were collaborating in an eight-country study of the Women in Higher Education Management (WHEM) Network that was published in the UK and US in 2011 as Gender, Power and Management: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Higher Education (eds. Barbara Bagilhole and Kate White). Building on those collaborations, we have continued to analyse the Irish and Australian data and presented papers at conferences in Gothenburg (2010) and at Amsterdam, Ottawa and Melbourne (2011). The Irish/Australian comparison is particularly apposite in view of the use of Australian higher educational policy and practice as an exemplar by the Irish government. Continue reading “Similarities and differences in collegiality / managerialism in Irish and Australian universities”
Slippage and/or symbolism: gender, policy and educational governance in Scotland and Sweden
The co-authors of this article have been working together in Sweden (Elisabet Öhrn & Gaby Weiner) and in Scotland (Gaby Weiner & Joan Forbes) for a number of years. The idea for this policy study piece grew from involvement in a project on social and other capitals in independent schooling in Scotland. Gender was found to be significant in/through which capitals resources worked. One school exhibited a ‘traditional’ gender regime, exemplified in its privileging of boys’ sport, boys’ overall confidence and apparent lack of gender awareness among staff; another had an explicit discourse of girls’ high academic achievement and aspiration; a third school encouraged newer, more urbane and ‘sensitive’ forms of middle class masculinities alongside traditional forms of masculinity. We were interested in knowing more about the Scottish gender policy context for that study and how it compared to that of Sweden – another relatively small country on the periphery of Europe. Continue reading “Slippage and/or symbolism: gender, policy and educational governance in Scotland and Sweden”