This document summarizes and discusses 5 examples of gender research projects from different parts of the world. It provides an overview of each case study, highlighting some of the main findings and conclusions. The cases examine topics such as: how gender roles are socially constructed and situationally defined; the development of different masculinities in mining communities; the fluidity of gender and sexuality; the impact of the Soviet war in Afghanistan on gender equality; and the effects of microcredit programs on women's empowerment. The document aims to demonstrate the diversity of gender research and some recurrent themes, such as how gender is performative rather than fixed, and shaped by historical and social contexts.

1. Gender and Sexualities
Readings Summarized By:
Jeffrey Wilkinson, Sarah Truman, and Eden
Pollock
CTL1000H Foundations of Curriculum
Week of March 25th 2013

2. Connell (2009) Gender research: Five
examples.
In her article, Raweyn Connell discusses “…five
notable studies of gender issues published in recent
decades” as an approach to understanding gender
research. Her examples come from five continents
and varied situations. Although her specific projects
deal with “very different questions, they reveal some
of the main concerns of gender research in general”
(13).

3. CASE 1
This case questions the historical view that children were
“socialized into gender roles in top down transmission from the
adult world”. The researcher of this project, Barrie Thorne,
researches in primary schools and sees “gender difference as
situational, as created in some situations and ignored or
overridden in others” (14).
Thorne recognizes that “gender difference is not something that
simply exists. It is something that happens, and must be made
to happen; something that can be unmade, altered, made less
important” (15). Thorn discusses “boarder work” when “gender
boundaries are activated” and boys and girls become “separate
and reified groups” (15). Boys are seen to occupy more of the
playground space, disrupt girls‟ activities and make comments
about “cooties” or “girl stain” (16). Recoiling from another group
due to “contamination” is a way groups begin to claim
superiority (16). By grade 4, homosexual slurs like calling other
boys “gay” are used.

4. CASE 2
T. Dunbar Moodie‟s book Going for Gold documents the history of gold mining in
South Africa wherein the workers were predominantly male. The men in the mines,
living far from home, developed different “gender practices” (18).
Some found women in nearby villages, others developed “mine marriages” with other
men in the mine (a younger miner would hook up with an older male and do
housework and provide sexual services in exchange for gifts/protection (18). The
men being away in mines left the women in charge of the homesteads. This notion
brought a new meaning to the word (ubudoda) “manhood”:
“Ubudoda is to help people. If somebody‟s children don‟t have books or school fees
or so, then you are going to help those children while the father cannot manage….Or,
if someone is poor – has no oxen – then you can take your own oxen and plow his
fields. That is ubudoda, one who helps other people‟ (18).
Women began to embody ubudoda (it‟s worth noting that ubudoda never meant
physical strength or being a warrior).
The old ways of viewing domestic life continued to change as the society moved
away from agriculture. The young men no longer saw manhood (ubudoda) as looking
after the needs of the community, they began to equate it with biology – and a
dichotomy developed and began to follow the European standard of manhood being
equated with “toughness, physical dominance and aggressiveness and dominance”
(19).

5. CASE 3
This study looked at the HIV/AIDS epidemic through Gary Dowsett‟s
work with oral life histories of homosexual men in the “era of AIDS”
(Practising Desire 1996). Dowsett interviews twenty men over nine
years. One of the notable voices in the book is “Harriett” (Huey
Brown) who engages in a variety of sexual encounters and identifies
in a variety of different roles through the course of his life (prostitute,
wife, drag artist, activist etc.) illustrating that “homosexuality does not
necessarily exist as a well defined „opposite‟ to heterosexuality and
“gender does not „fix‟ sexual practices” (19). Harriet‟s story calls into
“question the conventional categories of gender” (22)
“One of the lessons of this research is that we cannot treat gender
relations as a mechanical system. Human action is creative, and we
are always moving into historical spaces that no one has occupied
before. At the same time, we do not create in a vacuum. We act in
particular situations created by our own, and other people‟s, past
actions. As shown by Harriet‟s sexual improvisations on materials
provided by the gender order, we work on the past as we move into
the future” (23).

6. CASE 4
This case discusses the Bolshevik stance on
equality for women in the early 1900s and then
focuses in on the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the
1980s as described in Svetlana Alexievich‟s book
Zinc Boys, where dreams of equality become
nightmares. In the story, the “code of the strong
woman. The amazon, the fighter for a larger cause is
destroyed by women‟s real memories of
harassment, humiliation and being sexually
exploited in the war zone by the men on their own
side” (27).

7. CASE 5
This case discusses “micro-credit” movements in “developing”
nations and the effects of micro lending on women‟s empowerment.
Notably the Garmeen Bank in Bangladesh (whose founder won the
Nobel Peace Prize in 2006) (28).
The article discusses that micro lending to women is not “error free”
in that many patriarchal societies will appropriate funds designated
for women (to men) as well as the “side effect” of domestic violence
if a husband feels threatened by his wife‟s economic independence
(28). Still, the micro-lending seems to be working well in many
places.
Connell focuses on the story of Subhashim Goswami, a sociologist
who travels to the Maghalaya region in North Eastern India where
the Khasi people (a matrilineal society) live (30) and where a
fieldworker, Prince Thangkhiew works tirelessly as an intermediary
between NGOs and women in the villages. Although the work
described is not “intended as a gender reform programme” it works
across the gender divide and empowers women as well as
providing education to children and a chance to overcome poverty
(30).

8. bell hooks. (1994). Eros, eroticism and the pedagogical
process. Teaching to Transgress (191-199).
In this piece, hooks questions the Cartesian „brains-in-vats‟ view of teaching and
learning wherein students are perceived to be “minds” rather than “bodies.” hooks asks
the reader to consider “…the body in relation to teaching” and acknowledges that “one
of the central tenants of feminist critical pedagogy has been the insistence on not
engaging the mind/body split” (191, 193).
hooks refers to Adrienne Rich (cited in Gallop‟s Thinking Through the Body) discussing
that historically, many women academics have had to “prove” themselves as thinkers
through “conform[ing]…to becoming a disembodied spirit, universal man” rather than
thinking through the body (193). hooks asserts that there has to be room for “passion
in the classroom” and that we should not limit the “erotic” to its sexual meaning (193-
195).
In hooks‟ view, “Given that critical pedagogy seeks to transform consciousness, to
provide students with ways of knowing that enable them to know themselves better
and live in the world more fully, to some extent it must rely on the presence of the
erotic in the classroom to aid the learning process” (194). “Feminist education for
critical consciousness is rooted in the assumption that knowledge and critical thought
done in the classroom should inform our habits of being and ways of living outside the
classroom” (194).

9. hooks draws further on Gallop’s Thinking Through the Body:
When we limit “erotic” to its sexual meaning, we betray our alienation from the rest of nature. We
“
confess that we are not motivated by anything like the mysterious force that moves birds to migrate
or dandelions to spring (195)”
hooks calls on Sam Keen‟s book The Passionate Life to remind readers that, “erotic potency was
not confined to sexual power but included the moving force that propelled every life-form from a
state of mere potentiality to actuality.”
hooks discusses eros (love) between teachers and students as transformative tool in the classroom.
She cites examples from her own teaching career, and gratitude filled notes from former students
that could be “considered romantic” expressing their love for her classes (196-197). Students
“flourish” when there‟s love in the classroom, “…well-learned distinctions between public and private
make us believe that love has o place in the classroom” (198). Hooks acknowledges that in the
“Academy,” discussing love is considered suspect because “feelings and passions may not allow for
objective consideration of each student‟s merit. But this very notion is based on the false assumption
that education is neutral” (198). Hooks discusses how “capitalism” and “competition” in our society
has taught us to believe that there isn‟t enough “love or care to go around” (199).
hooks quotes Thomas Merton suggesting that for students to actualize their potential, they need to
be able to define themselves “authentically and spontaneously in relation to” the world (199). hooks
sees the restoration of “passion” in the classroom, and acknowledgement of the body/mind an “eros”
as a method for actualizing students‟ potential.

10. Britzman: Is There a Queer Pedagogy? Or, Stop Reading
Straight – 1995
“What sort of difference would it make for everyone in a classroom if gay and lesbian writing
were set loose from confirmations of homophobia, the afterthoughts of inclusion, or special
event?” …[M]ore interestingly, what if gay and lesbian theories were understood as offering a
way to rethink the very grounds of knowledge and pedagogy in education?” (p. 151)
Britzman is challenging the ”obdurately unremarkable straight education curriculum” (p. 151)
She offers her arguments in this article within a context of the AIDS epidemic and the
assertion of the needs for civil rights and safety for Queer students and families. Free from
“violence, exclusion, medicalization, criminalization and erasure” (p. 152).
Queer Theory is seen as a way to “recuperate and to exceed stereotypes” as well as it signifies
“improper subject and improper theories even as it questions the very grounds of identity and
theory”. Queer Theory is a move away from terms like homophobia, which “individualizes
heterosexual fear…at the expense of examining how heterosexuality becomes normalized as
natural” (p. 153).
She addresses the concern of using, that some would consider, a disparaging, angry word like
“Queer”, while others see it as a “new centricity, an attempt to reverse the binary of
hetero/homo…” (p. 153). Britzman refers to Judith Butler‟s essay “Critically Queer” for how it
examines the history of the term “queer” as it reflects the discomfort in the parts of the
educational community to the term. (I think it is important to recognize that this article was
written in 1995 and that today the term Queer has been used for quite some time, by many, as
an umbrella term for all sexual minorities, including trans identities).
Britzman makes a point of differentiating how anti-homophobia defines Gay and Lesbians as
the “other”, where Queer Theory works to imagine sexual difference on its own terms, returning
“us to practices of bodies and to bodies of practices.” (pp. 153-154)

11. Queer Theory and three methods;
“The study of limits, the study of ignorance and the study of reading practices” (p. 155).
The study of limits: Britzman draws on Foulcault, Edleman and Eve Sedgwick to frame limits as a tension
between “normal” and what is “dismissed, unworthy, the irrelevant” (p. 156). Sedgewick takes up two forms of
discourse “minoritizing and universalizing”. Queer Theory is seen as universalizing, resisting the “small space
of minor subjects” (p. 156). In making this move, Queer Theory “constitutes a normalcy as a conceptual order
that refuses to imagine the very possibility of the Other…” (p. 157). Britzman highlights how discourses of
inclusion can “produce the very exclusions they are meant to cure” by focusing only on providing information
and adjusting attitudes. She posits that liberal ideas of inclusion “may actually work to produce new forms of
exclusivity if the only subject positions offered are the tolerant normal and the tolerated subaltern” (p. 160).
These “limitations” in anti-homophobia work are central to the work of Queer theorists (pp. 158-160).
The Study of Ignorance: Here Britzman focuses on AIDS education. Similarly to some forms of Anti-
homophobia education, government campaigns meant to distribute information actually “work to produce the
basis of exclusion, discrimination…and moral panic” (p. 160). This is exacerbated by the public having the
“right to know” and “at-risk” communities have the “obligation to know” not to spread the virus and admit to
their HIV status (Patton in Britzman, p. 160). She discusses the “No One is Safe” safer sex campaign as an
example of promoting ignorance by suggesting that no one knows who is queer, so you must be suspicious of
everyone, creating an unknowable Other. A situation is also described when women, discussing Gay and
Lesbian literature, became unsettled as categories of “‟women‟, „feminist‟ and „sex‟ where called into question.
Sedgwick, as related in Britzman, relates how a space can also be unsafe when the Other is known (Queer) as
this disturbs taken-for-granted identities. Britzman suggests both difficulties are caused by the same
ignorance, one created when “identity claims take on an aura of verisimilitude” promoting a binary of “self
versus other” (p. 162) where spaces are not understood and in the complexity necessary to shift the position of
the Other. Shifting these binaries can create a “queering” of spaces.
The Study of Reading Practices: These are divided into three ideas taken from the work of Shoshana Felman.
First, reading for alterity (difference or the Other), Felman states: “the reading necessarily passes through the
Other, and in the Other, read not identity, but difference and self-difference” (p. 163). Second, reading practice
as dialogue, provoking a “dialogic relationship between self and text”. Britzman points to reading that privileges
the text over the biography of the author, advocating for “thinking through the structures of textuality as
opposed to the attributes of biography” (p. 163). Last, a practice of reading that provokes a theory of reading.
By the “drag” that may be created between how one is reading and how one understands can help the “reader
to theorize the limits of her or his practices” (p. 164). Perhaps, we can become conscious of what we don‟t know
and the facing of our limits can propel us to search for new meanings. Britzman posits that there are “no
innocent, normal or unmediated readings” (p. 164). She hopes for reading practices that stretch the capacity of
the “educational apparatus and its pedagogies to exceed their own readings, to stop reading straight” (p. 164).

12. In Summary…
In summary, Britzman offers a “queer
pedagogy” that works on many levels. She is
resisting binaries, unsettling identity categories
that depend of the “production of sameness
and otherness”, questioning “normalcy” and
the role of education in “fashioning structures
of thinkability and the limits of thought” (p.
165). In three points, queer pedagogy: “refuses
normal practices of normalcy”, has an ethical
concern for “one‟s own reading practices” and
“is interested in exploring what one cannot
bear to know” (p. 165).

13. Phoenix – Neoliberalism and Masculinity: Racialization and the
Contradictions of Schooling for 11-14 Year-Olds (2003)
Phoenix bases her article on a study of 11-14 year-old boys from 12 schools
(4 private and 8 public sector schools in London, England in 1998 and 1999
(p. 234).
Neoliberalism, she defines as “an economic system and philosophy based
on laissez-faire free market values and freedom of globalized corporations”
(p. 228). This has its genesis in the regimes of Ronald Reagan and Margret
Thatcher in the late 1970‟s and early 1980‟s.
This presumes equality of opportunity and advance for all. Phoenix frames
this in the “Four C‟s: change, choice, chances and competition” pointing to
ideas that everyone is, or should be, identical (p. 229). This article focuses
on the role of education in promoting neoliberalism as a universal idea.
Susan George point out the challenges of hegemony this creates where
inequities can be swept away under a universal idea that promotes notions
that “nothing is owed to the weak, the poorly educated…it is their own fault
and never the fault of society” (George, in Phoenix, p. 230).

14. Pierre Bourdieu and Edward Said illuminate the cost to individuals in a system that honours the
nebulous “collective good”. Said points out that people seem to accept that there is no alternative (p.
230).
The article focuses on how boys‟ masculinity works within the confines of the “Four C‟s” and the
consequences of this, particularly for racialized boys.
Walkerdine (1997) questions how models of education that require the learner to “police themselves in
the ways desired by educators” when the learner may not be governing themselves under this idea and
therefore disengage from education and the educator (p. 232). (I would suggest that our current models
of Character Education fall within these Neoliberal ideals and are particularly harmful to racialized and
other historically marginalized groups.)
Researchers argue that boys have had more difficulty adapting to the expectations framed by Neoliberal
ideals than girls. The author refers also to the “ant-swot” culture (“swot” is a British term referring to a
commitment studying) that is more prevalent in boys than girls and is tied to constructions of masculinity
(p. 233).
Bruner (1990) points to a “canonical narrative-the accepted view (among boys in schools) about how
lives ought to be lived in the culture of school”. This includes ideas of toughness, style, sports
(particularly football [soccer]), and not to be as into academic as girls (p. 234). This is evident from the
interviews described in the article (pp. 234-238).
The interviews touch on bullying and how boys that do not apply (or to the same degree) to these
canonical narratives on masculinity are bullied, particularly if a boy aspires to achieve academically.
One boy, Mustafa describes himself as taking a “middle position” where he gets in trouble but “not as
much as popular boys who are „expected‟ to get into trouble. Mustafa‟s negotiating of a middle position is
pointed to by the author as a way that boys cope within the confines of masculine constructions (p. 237).

15. Four ways of negotiating are described: a middle position, “doing boy” (keeping popularity by not doing school
work), managing to be popular and be good at school, and being good at school and paying the price by being
unpopular (p. 239).
Racialization: “super masculine” (Sewell, 1997 as quoted in Phoenix, p. 239) in contradictory ways; at once “feared
and discriminate against and fac[ing] high rates of exclusion…also respected, admired and gain[ing] power through
taking on characteristics that militate against good classroom performance” (pp. 239-240).
Black, White and Asians boys were positioned differently in terms of masculinity, where characteristics like sporting
success and resisting the authority of teachers were “qualities particularly attributed to Black boys” (p. 240).
Asian boys were seen as less masculine and unpopular and White boys somewhere in the middle (Interviews, pp.
240-242). Black boys are seen as particularly needing to maintain an aura of “being bad”, even if they are
successfully academically (Interview with Greg, p. 242).
The expectation of masculinity, within neoliberal ideals of the “Four C‟s” means “that in boys‟ communities of
practice, school was not simply about learning… it was equally about managing social relations” (p. 242).
Racialization produces cultural practices, seen through ideals of masculinity where Black boys do not achieve as
well academically as White boys and much worse than Asian boys that seem more able to resist some of these
masculine codes (p. 243).
Some White boys aspire to be Black, but not in all ways or regularly (perhaps due to a consciousness of the
negative effects of racism on Black boys) (p. 243).
As Black boys are seen by teachers as being “too hard” this can lead to suspensions and expulsions that further
limit academic success (p. 244).
“Masculinity therefore mitigates against boys‟ ability to comply with the tenants of neoliberalism”. It must be
concluded then that it is wholly unsatisfactory to work from an assumption that “everybody is, or should be,
identically able to benefit form the opportunities assumed in neoliberalism” (p. 244).

16. Phoenix uses interview data to support her claim
that neoliberalism and ideals of change, choice,
chances and competition fails all boys in the
education system by not taking into account both
individual needs and the constraints of popular
masculinity. The effects of this harm are
particularly evident in Black boys due to
racialization. Though poverty is not really
discussed in the article, this is another point of
intersection where neoliberal assumptions
disproportionately disadvantage a particular
group.

17. Davis (2003) Chapter 1: Study of gendered childhoods
As a continuation of her work in Frogs and Snails and Feminist
Tails: Preschool Children and Gender, Davies book Shards of Glass
uses a poststructuralist lens to examine how gender is constructed
through discourse and a variety of texts. In this introductory
chapter, Davies explores how “our maleness and our femaleness are
established and maintained during childhood” (Davies, 2003, pg.
1.)
The main premise of her work stems from the notion that gender is
a social construct. Davies attests that gender is constituted from
storylines and discourses that are dynamic and ever- changing
Davies provides children the opportunity to explore the stories
that constitute gender and consider their historical and cultural
influence on gender and ideologies. Through this, it is her hope
that children may become active participants in the
“reconstitution of gender”.
Based on a study originally performed on preschool children,
Davies revisits these individuals (now as eight and nine year
olds) and discovers that the children admit to changes in their
interpretation of self and others‟ gender. A second study was
performed with fifth and sixth grade children from three different
schools (from different socio-economic areas).

18. Analyzing a variety of texts, the study groups discussed ways
in which texts constituted the male and female genders. Using
visual representations and photos, the children looked at how
body language and physical positioning send messages of
gender. Through an analysis of stories, the children
practiced identifying themselves with the main characters, and
the problematic undertones of doing so. In identifying with
Snow White for example, girls would perceive that in order to
be saved by a prince, one would have to be virtuous, passive
and in some ways, helpless.
Although much of society builds upon the traditional notion of
gender, Davies calls for an examination of how this dualistic
construct stems from discourse and that a deconstruction of
the gender conceptualization must take place. By understanding
how oppression is achieved, we may then take steps to
transforming it.
Post structuralism “seeks to understand the processes through
which the person is subjected to, and constituted by,
structure and discourse- and yet how it is that „practice can
be turned against what constrains it” (Davies, 2003, pg. 13).

19. In Conclusion…
Davies challenges her readers to consider
the way in which their notions of gender
have been constituted. We must scrutinize
those concepts of gender. She utilizes the
power of language to portray the subliminal
ways in which we have been influenced. She
asks us to read between the lines of the
story and uncover the hidden messages in
texts. This is a challenging endeavor as we
are often oblivious to our
subjectivity. However in her literature,
Davies describes the power of writing and
discourse on young minds. She calls for a
“reconstitution of gender”, deconstructing
the way in which we perceive it and undoing
its “exclusivity and oppressive nature”.

20. In order to help spark a discussion, we thought we would provide some
Possible Discussion Questions…
1. What are some children‟s texts (such as Snow White) that are prevalent in
our schools today that support the structuralist views of gender? What are
some texts that challenge the structuralist notions of gender?
2. If gender is not “fixed”, how do you create it through social interactions?
3. Davis, in her article Writing Beyond the Male-Female Binary states:
"Postructuralist practices invite an openness to the unexpected. They turn
a critical gaze towards oppressive patterns of power and powerlessness"
(Davis, 2003. p. 203) Do you see Britzman's Queer Theory, as Britzman
frames it, a poststructuralist practice? If so, in what way?
4. Ann Phoenix does not deal with the experiences of Queer youth in her
discussion of masculinity, racialization and neoliberalism, how might
McCready's findings in "Project 10" intersect with and/or give another
meaning to the findings in the Phoenix study?