Is anyone else as sick to death as I am about the reportage of the recent disturbances in London and other English cities? Continue reading “Blaming the women and education again”
Familiar and strange fathers in education
They say ethnographers are supposed to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange. That, however, can be a difficult task since we tend to be ignorant about our own customs and ideologies. For instance, research on parenthood has often taken traditional gender roles for granted. In most western cultures, mothers’ unpaid educational work has been seen as natural, something that educational researchers have reproduced by talking about parent involvement instead of the more accurate term mother involvement. Prominent feminist scholars, such as Miriam David and Dorothy Smith, have for long called attention to the considerable amount of educational work that women carry out on a daily basis. But what about men’s relations to their children’s schooling and education? My article published in the forthcoming Gender and Education 23(5) addresses this question. Continue reading “Familiar and strange fathers in education”
GEA Lifetime Achievement Award for Professor Tuula Gordon
At the 8th International Gender and Education Association Conference in Exeter this year GEA was delighted to present a Lifetime Achievement Award to Professor Tuula Gordon. Although Tuula was unable to be at the conference to receive the award in person, her friend and colleague Professor Elina Lahelma collected it on Tuula’s behalf. Below, Elina maps out some of Tuula’s many contributions to the field of gender and education. Continue reading “GEA Lifetime Achievement Award for Professor Tuula Gordon”
Who protects the protector? The worrying future of the Equality and Human Rights Commission
The UK Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has a statutory remit ‘to promote and monitor human rights; and to protect, enforce and promote equality across the nine “protected” grounds – age, disability, gender, race, religion and belief, pregnancy and maternity, marriage and civil partnership, sexual orientation and gender reassignment’. According to the Commission, a survey carried out by it in 2007 showed that discrimination and disadvantage are still common across Britain. So EHRC states: ‘We don’t all have equal chances in life and some forms of discrimination are complex and deep-rooted. Sometimes people choose to ignore the rights of others even when this is against the law. This is why the Equality and Human Rights Commission is here’. Continue reading “Who protects the protector? The worrying future of the Equality and Human Rights Commission”
Influences on Young Children’s Gender Identity: Observational Reflections
Bobbie: I’m Snow White.
(Bobbie has placed a cup on his head to symbolise a tiara and has draped his coat around his shoulders like a cloak)
Bobbie looks delicate, has long, blond hair and is easily mistaken for a girl. I made a mistake as I watched Bobbie and a group of boys and girls playing pirates. Thinking Bobbie was a girl, I was shocked when Terry and David, said: “He‘s always like this” “Bobbie is a girl.” “He’s a sissy.” Bobbie‘s response to me about these comments also left me stunned: “You might think this is strange, but I like girls and I like being a girl.” These brief exchanges and the realisation that Bobbie was a boy made me question my understanding of gender. Why had the boys reacted to Bobbie as they had and why, at such an early age, was their behaviour so stereotypical and Bobbie’s not? Perhaps Terry and David were being ‘normal’. Continue reading “Influences on Young Children’s Gender Identity: Observational Reflections”
Supporting Transgender Children in the Primary Classroom: A Reflection
Too often in discussions about gender identity the approach taken is extremely narrow. The discourse is largely dominated by the cisgendered, binary perspective that there is ‘male’ and that there is ‘female’ – and that both of these are biologically determined, stable categories. This is further reinforced when the discourse is situated in the context of children. The prevailing attitude is that any identity, theory or social group that destabilises such assumptions are too complicated and/or too ‘subversive’ to merit acknowledgement. It is therefore unsurprising that when school staff, policy makers and academics come to discus gender identity within the classroom, that transgendered children are usually entirely ignored. What can teachers can do to support such children? Continue reading “Supporting Transgender Children in the Primary Classroom: A Reflection”
Is feminism in the UK experiencing a double dip? Call for Action
‘Clinton is proving that feminist foreign policy is possible – and works’ so headlines an article in the Guardian in which Madeleine Bunting argues that Hilary Clinton is building her political foreign policy on a solid 1970s feminist mantra that ‘Transformation in the role of women is that last great impediment to universal progress.’ Clinton has proclaimed that ‘the rights of women and girls are now core to US foreign policy’ and Bunting draws attention to the 450 mentions of this ‘signature issue’ in the first five months of Clinton’s office. Clinton argues that ‘the empowerment, protect and protection of women and girls is vital to the long-term security of the US’. In a telling remark Bunting asks, imagine any politician saying something similar in the UK now. It is, indeed, unimaginable! Continue reading “Is feminism in the UK experiencing a double dip? Call for Action”
Browne Report + the White Paper = A Murky Outlook for Educational Equality
A report by GEA’s Policy Officer Miriam David, with Jessica Ringrose and Victoria Showunmi
October- December 2010
Continue reading “Browne Report + the White Paper = A Murky Outlook for Educational Equality”
DIANA LEONARD: FEMINIST ACTIVIST, ACADEMIC SOCIOLOGIST AND EDUCATOR
Diana Mary Leonard, who has died aged 68 of endometrial cancer after a stubborn struggle, was a feisty and fiery feminist academic and activist. She was one of the originators of feminist sociology in the academy, organising the first British Sociological Association (BSA) conference on what was then known as sexual divisions in 1974. She never looked back from this early immersionin feminist politics and developed collaborative feminist practices in theorising, researching and political campaigning. A long and hard fight to get into and establish feminist scholarship, practices and pedagogies in the academy made her a strong and uncompromising leader of radical feminist activism and academic work in higher education. Diana was of a particular generation of activists who were first involved in the women’s liberation movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. She was also a broad-ranging social scientist, having started in anthropology before moving on to sociology, as well as education from the late 1960s to the present, retiring from her post as Professor of Sociology of Education and Gender at the Institute of Education, University of London, three years ago. But she never actually retired and, with her emeritus status, and visiting professorship at the Centre for Higher Education Equity Research, University of Sussex, from 2008, she continued actively to engage with global feminist debates, theories and practices, having established a fearsome feminist agenda. This involvement ranged across continents from her early studies on French materialist feminism, to work in Canada and the USA, to Australia, Greece, Ireland, Israel and the Gender Equity Task Force in South Africa (1997), and at the Fatimah Jinnah Women University in Rawalpindi, Pakistan (2005-7). Continue reading “DIANA LEONARD: FEMINIST ACTIVIST, ACADEMIC SOCIOLOGIST AND EDUCATOR”
Taking action: keeping violence against women and girls on the education agenda
The Coalition Government has just published a ‘strategic narrative’ on violence against women and girls. This should be followed by an action plan next Spring.
Follow the link which provides template letters and campaign leaflets on keeping violence against women and girls on the education agenda