A brief overview of Gender within the Australian school context

1. Dr Rachel Buchanan
Rachel.Buchanan@newcastle.edu.au
Do some know more
than others?
How are we
‘assessed’? Equity
and educational
attainment

2. Do some know more than
others?
How are we ‘assessed’? Equity and
educational attainment
Key Concepts
• Gender
• The social contexts of educational
achievement
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ2mAeVl4YU

3. Gender
Key terms
Sex - Essentialism
Gender – sex role socialisation
Macro – social organisation
Micro - practices which constitute gender

4. Gender is ubiquitous.
From the ‘segregation of jobs, to the gender
differentiation of voluntary organisations,
gender acts as a fundamental principle of
organising social relations in virtually all
spheres of social life’
(Ridgeway & Correll, 2004, p. 521)

5. Judith Butler: gender performativity, heteronormality,
heterosexual matrix
Raewyn Connell: hegemonic, complicit, protest
masculinities
“knowing that they will be categorised in this way,
most people carefully construct their appearance
according to cultural gender rules to ensure that
others reliably categorise them as belonging to the
sex category that they claim for themselves”
(Ridgeway & Correll, 2004, p. 515)

6. Source: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/08/10/lifetime-earnings-gaps-by-
sex-and-raceethnicity/

7. Source: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/08/10/lifetime-earnings-gaps-by-sex-and-raceethnicity/

8. Source:
http://bit.ly/r2WVzp

9. Source: http://bit.ly/r2WVzp

10. Gender norms are changing, but certain patterns are still discernible
Men – breadwinners, assertive, strong, providers – as the breadwinner
wages should be higher. Men more likely to work fulltime
Women – certain work is women’s work (caring, nurturing, “easy”)
either free, or low paid. Women more likely to take time out from
paid employment to raise children, care for elderly. Women more
likely to work on a part-time or casual basis

11. (Vickers, 2010, p. 212)
The school as a gendered organisation
Gendered dimensions of organisation
include
In schools and education systems:
The division of labour: for example, there
are gendered jobs in the organisations
structure
Men are under-represented as teachers,
especially in primary school and early
childhood centres
Power-relations: for example, men and
women, and boy and girls exercise power
differently
Boys are often the perpetrators of bullying:
they bully other boys as well as girls. Girls
sometimes bully other girls but they rarely
bully boys.
Emotional relationships: for example,
patterns of antagonism and solidarity are
gendered
Peer relationships often function to amplify
and maintain boys’ dominant behaviours
Organisational cultures: for example,
beliefs about gender difference and equal
opportunity are gendered
It is assumed that boys are better than girls
at ‘rational thought’ subjects: maths,
physics, and computer science. Girls are
thought to be more intuitive and social than
boys, and more verbally fluent.

12. Theobald notes the endearing influences of nineteenth
century ideas about the female brain (not robust, not suited
to rational learning, readier sympathies and greater
dependence on emotions) in development
of mass schooling. She states we are seeing
“the translation in the mass educational practice
of the enduring and oppressive myths that there
is a natural affinity between the humanities and the
female mind – with its equally enduring myth
that there is a natural affinity between science
and the male mind. Patriarchal social formations
have proved remarkably resilient in periods
of rapid economic social changes such as
those set in motion by the rise of industrial
Capitalism” (1996, p. 26).
02/14/15

13.  Theobald’s analysis is supported by recent research into
education.
 Teese and Polesel (2003) found that girls, especially
those from working class backgrounds, remain under-
represented in high schools subjects such as maths and
science.
 Even in the present subject selection remains influenced
by nineteenth century prejudices.
 Girls remain over-represented in humanities subjects
and boys tend to be concentrated into a smaller pool of
science, maths and vocation-based subjects (Teese &
Polesel, 2003).
02/14/15

14. Boys in schools Debate
• Ed Policy in 1970s and 1980s concerned with
increasing girls’ educational achievements
• Early 1990s saw underachievement of boys as
an emerging area of concern, has now been
central to educational debates over the past
two decades
• Claims that teaching is a feminimized arena –
harmful due to the lack of role models for boys?
02/14/15

15. Underachieving boys?
• NAPLAN results reveal bigger differences in regards to
SES than gender – numeracy no significant differences,
girls achieve slightly higher in writing (Vickers, 2010)
• School completion rates 2010 – Males 73.2%, Females
83.0% (ABS, 2011)
• University (Bachelor degree or above - % of the pop.n
aged 25-29 years) Males 30%, Females 38.3%
• Girls relatively recent success in schools has not
translated into success outside of school

16. Which boys and which girls are not being
well served by the education system and
why?
How do students do gender in school?

17. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlucQZZL9MQ&feature=fvsr
Students themselves create, maintain and
interpret gender norms.
Swain (2004) notes that the acquisition of
peer group status is ‘inextricably linked’
to boys’ construction of masculinity.
‘it is not something that is given, but is
often the outcome of intricate and
intense manoeuvring, and has to be
earned through negotiation and
sustained through performance,
sometimes on an almost daily basis’
(p. 171)
How is Jonah enacting gender?

18. In the school yard, various gender and sexual identities are
collectively imposed, yet, individually taken up.
“In Foucaultian terms, it would appear that the individual is both an
effect of power and the element of its articulation” (Nayak &
Kehily, 2006, p. 465)
Renold examines the ‘heterosexual matrix’ and notes how it
regulates boy/girl relationships in the school context – gendered
and sexualised bullying and harassment were often the primary
way by which children created and consolidated gender and
sexual norms. Particular gendered subject positions (e.g.
tomboy) offer and escape route from coercive and frequently
compulsory heterosexual positioning. One third of the children in
her study ‘routinely positioned themselves as Other to
hegemonic heterogendered scripts with all of them reporting
being systemically teased, excluded and humiliated for choosing
not to invest in and project (thus directly challenge and resist)
normative forms of age-appropriate heterofeminity and
heteromasculinity’ (2006, p. 499).

19. Teacher Expectations
Teachers’ expectations of their students form a powerful socialising
agent.
Jones and Myhill (2004) note that teachers have gendered
expectations in terms of student achievement. Teacher perceptions
saw underachieving boys and high achieving girls conforming to
gender expectations, high achieving boys were seen to challenge
gender norms and ‘troublesome’ underachieving girls largely
overlooked.
“The apparent tendency to associate all boys with
underachievement and all girls with high achievement does little
service to the complex needs of individuals, not least the
troublesome girls and compliant boys” (Jones and Myhill, 2004, p.
560).

20. Judith Butler
“Any radical pedagogy has to think its plans in light of
that overriding need to provide a sustainable life for
an emerging and dependent person…how does one
stay in the matrix of rules long enough to survive
and, how does one bend and redirect those rules in
order to breathe and live” (2006, p. 533), as “what is
at stake are the activities through which gender is
instituted and, then, stands a chance of being de-
instituted or instituted differently” (p. 529).

21. References:
Australian Bureau of Statistics (2011). Gender Indicators. Accessed from:
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/4125.0?OpenDocument
Butler, J. (2006). Response. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27, 529-534.
Jones, S., & Myhill, D. (2004). ‘Troublesome Boys’ and ‘Compliant Girls’ : Gender identity and
perceptions of achievement. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25, 547-561.
Nayak, A., & Kehily, M.J. (2006). Gender undone: Subversion, regulation and embodiment in
the work of Judith Butler. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27, 459-472.
Renold, E. (2006). “They won’t let is play…unless you’re going out with one of them”: Girls,
boys and Butler’s ‘heterosexual matrix’ in the primary years. British Journal of Sociology of
Education, 27, 498-509.
Ridgeway, C.L. & Correll, S.J. (2004). Unpacking the gender system: A theoretical perspective
in gender beliefs and social relations. Gender & Society, 18, 510-531.
Swain, J. (2004). The Resources and Strategies that 10-11-Year-Old-Boys use to Construct
Masculinities in the School Setting. British Educational Research Journal, 30(1), 167-185.
Teese, R. & Polesel, J. (2003). Undemocratic schooling: Equity and quality in mass secondary
education in Australia. Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press.
Theobald, M.R. (1996). Knowing women: origins of women’s education in nineteenth century
Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vickers, M. (2010). Gender. In R. Connell, C. Campbell, A. Welch, D. Foley, & N. Bagnel,
(Ed.s). Education, Change & Society (2nd Ed.) (pp. 205 - 234). Sydney: Oxford University
Press