Growing up as a young woman in today’s society, I have always been aware of the issues that women, teenage girls, and even young girls face. When I learned about the feminism course offered by Ileana Jiménez, who teaches in the English department at my high school, I realized that I would have the chance to discuss topics to which I could relate. But little did I know how much of an impact the class would have on me. Continue reading “Feminism: Much More Than Women’s Rights”
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”
Feminist Ryan Gosling
Ryan Gosling is the star of three current films: political drama The Ides of March, noir action flick Drive and rom-com Crazy, Stupid Love. He’s also the star of the global gender politics phenomenon Feminist Ryan Gosling. This site picks up on and subverts the internet ‘hey girl’ meme which started with a series of publicity stills of Mr Gosling captioned with amusing romantic slogans. For example, a smiling Ryan says, “Hey Girl, Happy Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for your yams and sweet potato pie.” A distraught looking Ryan says, “Hey Girl, sometimes I get so sad when we can’t watch Golden Girls together.” And, one of several topless Ryans simply says, “Hey girl, my shirt fell off.” This site’s an entertaining but odd mix of humour and romance and boasts an endorsement from Orson Welles, who, presumably from the afterlife, calls Gosling “The most awesomest, raddest, coolest dude since me.” Perhaps it is Gosling’s iconic performance in the romantic drama The Notebook that’s made him such a great blank slate for so many romantic imaginations. Although the over-the-top nature of many the slogans make this site as much a parody of romance as an indulgence in it. Continue reading “Feminist Ryan Gosling”
Has research on Gender and Education come of age as a properly scientific field or is something else happening?
I was recently invited by the University of Luxembourg as a keynote speaker at an International Conference, ‘Gender Variations in Educational Success: Searching for Causes’. It quickly became apparent that boys’ achievement with respect to girls’ is an international, hot topic. National and political concerns in Germany, Switzerland and Luxembourg have created a mass of research dominated by multivariate analysis and structural equation modelling. Scholars from these countries drew heavily on data available from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to search for the ‘causes’ of boys’ underachievement. Alongside PISA data they used national public examination and test scores, psycho metric measures of cognitive competencies in, for example, reading, mathematics and problem solving, scales of well-being and data gathered from questionnaires designed by researchers to capture, for example young people’s motivations to learn. Continue reading “Has research on Gender and Education come of age as a properly scientific field or is something else happening?”
Gender, community and education: cultures of resistance in Socialist Sunday Schools and Black Supplementary Schools
I started the historical research that is the basis for my article in the upcoming Gender and Education issue (23:6) in 2007. At this time, New Labour’s policy emphasis on ‘empowerment’ through community cohesion, regeneration and community-oriented schools, had attracted significant critique within research literature. Examining New Labour’s policy paradigm, and the schooling practices promoted by their policy ensemble, many had demonstrated the tendency to privilege middle-class modes of educational agency. Concurrently, despite being the specific target of a proliferation of policies, working-class children and parents have been routinely constructed as perpetually lacking. Spurred on by this, when starting my research, my primary interest lay in uncovering – and better understanding – the history of working-class educational agency that had appeared to be lost in dominant policy discourse. Interestingly, whilst completing my research, New Labour came to the end of its 13-year rule, and in swept the Conservative/Liberal Democratic Coalition, bringing with it a new (though perhaps not radically reformulated) reiteration of community ‘empowerment’. With David Cameron’s heralding of the ‘Big Society’ and Michael Gove’s ‘free schools’, community participation appears to continue to have significant rhetorical utility in contemporary education policy. Continue reading “Gender, community and education: cultures of resistance in Socialist Sunday Schools and Black Supplementary Schools”
Accessions: Researching, Designing Higher Education
My piece ‘Accessions: Researching, Designing Higher Education’ in Gender and Education (23:6) reports on the experiences, effects and (dis)engagements in working alongside designers – as part of a research-design team – to foster a more ‘public sociology’. These are questions, conceptual and methodological, that I have been interested in for some time: this piece, as with other work, asks who becomes the proper subject for (non)academic attention? Questions are raised about the place of a ‘public sociology’ as part of a ‘city publics’ and ‘engaged university’ where understanding local disseminations and disparities is important in considering where different users, interviewees and indeed researchers are coming from. It asks where are we coming from? Why does this matter and how can this be operationalised as a politicised practice (rather than personalized, individualized pain); Where are we going as the direction of Higher Education stalls and changes? When we ‘travel’ in academia do we only credentialise ourselves, becoming more distant from the very audiences, users, and publics which enable our mobility? ‘Accessions’ alludes to academic hierarchies, elitism and ‘becoming’ in and out of the university setting, and continues a concern reflected in a forthcoming Sociological Research Online piece: ‘Placing Research: ‘City Publics’ and the ‘Public Sociologist’ (2011, with Michelle Addison) and a current European Societies piece ‘International and Widening Participation Students’ Experience of Higher Education, UK’ (2011, with Tracy Scurry). Continue reading “Accessions: Researching, Designing Higher Education”
Join UNESCO consultation on “Teachers for gender equality”
This year, on 5 October, World Teachers’ Day will be celebrated all over the world around the theme of “Teachers for gender equality”.
Education International would like to invite you to participate in the online consultation organized by UNESCO. Continue reading “Join UNESCO consultation on “Teachers for gender equality””
Professor Becky Francis – Gender and Social Justice in Education: Current Issues and Future Agendas
Thursday 27th October 2011
Lancaster University
4.30-6pm followed by a drinks reception
Sponsored by GEA and the Centre for Social Justice and Wellbeing, Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University Continue reading “Professor Becky Francis – Gender and Social Justice in Education: Current Issues and Future Agendas”
The e-word now at the heart of English (higher) education
The Third Gender and Education Association Policy Report (July 2011) Continue reading “The e-word now at the heart of English (higher) education”
‘Study reveals extent of the Oxbridge divide’: Whatever happened to gender equality?
It is most remarkable that neither the Sutton Trust nor the media have noticed changing forms of inequality in access to elite universities over the last 30 years. Whilst it is true that access to Oxbridge remains highly privileged as the recent Guardian article suggests, there is a major change that has been overlooked. 2 of the 5 schools mentioned in your report have co-educational sixth forms, and a third is a girls’ school. Only two schools are single sex boys’ schools (Eton and St Pauls). Relatively equal numbers of boys and girls now access higher education, including Oxbridge and indeed girls slightly outperform boys in degree results overall. It is strange indeed that changing forms of gender equality in education are not celebrated in the rush to try to get poor or disadvantaged students into the elite universities. This is being encouraged in last week’s white paper: HE: putting students at the heart of the system. What a pity attention is not focused on trying to change the culture of the political elites who still maintain their male privilege, and continue to exclude not only the poor and disadvantaged but their middle class sisters in the higher echelons, despite their academic achievements.
Miriam David, GEA Executive