Reading – accessible online

 

Fennell, S. & Arnot, M. (2008) ‘Decentering hegemonic gender theory: the implications for educational research’ Compare, 38 (5) 525-538

 

Preece, J. (2002) Feminist perspectives on the learning of citizenship and governance, Compare, 32 (1) 21-33

 

 

In this week’s session we return to some of the issues that have been raised in earlier readings, using the two articles above in order to highlight how the debate over the relation between essentialised and constructed ideas of gender underpins many features of everyday assumptions about citizenship, and wider ideas of equality and social justice.

 

Take a moment to look at the Millenium Development goals: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

 

And then click on the Education and Gender Equality buttons. Then stop and reflect on whether these ideas of universal education or Education For All presuppose any monolithic understanding of gender as ‘essential’ or ‘socially constructed’ . Go back and look at the notes you made on the Fuss, Paechter and Pickering readings at the beginning of the module before you start this week’s reading of Fennell and Preece. (If you are short of time please concentrate on the Fennell reading).

 

Diana Fuss suggests that even social constructionist theories have to begin from an essentialist perspective

 

Paecheter highlights and critiques the dominance of the Cartesian (Descartes) discussion of the Mind/Body split

 

Pickering explores the creation of stereotypes – the creation of the ‘other’ Up to now we have used his work to discuss the stereotyping of women and men but in this week’s discussion we can take this forward into the creation of the ‘other’ in terms of gender and race.

 

The focus of the module is to explore the way in which we ‘think’ gender affects our actions in our day-to-day lives, and especially within school settings. In the individual presentations I have selected research from a number of different countries. In addition to the UK we have looked at research in the US, the Netherlands, Finland and Australia. It appears that all these countries face similar problems of:  ‘boys underachieving’, girls achieving at school but being less successful in their career prospects, tensions within the construction of teacher identities and gendered differences in participation within curriculum subjects. We have, in short, over the last 8 weeks created a monolithic world view of the way that societies’ expectations of gender have impacted on girls’ and boys’ performance in school. Or have we?

 

Once you have read the Fennell and Arnot article, the dominance of Northern/Western theories of gender becomes apparent. In seeking to unpick the reasons for gender inequality in schools we have unwittingly made assumptions that all societies share similar cultural values in terms of the purpose of education, the preferred place of education and the preferred structure of education. We have, in fact, created a hegemonic discourse with which to explore the constructions of gender roles in school. An assumption that the purpose of education is focused on the individual is just that, an assumption that maybe a powerful discourse within our own society, but is it one that really can create a ‘One size fits all’ EFA MDG? After all if gender is, on the whole, socially constructed – that is, as individuals our agency in terms of our performance of gender is limited within the current discourses of masculinity and femininity, how would it be possible to have a universal system of schooling?

 

Fennell and Arnot highlight how western ideas and assumptions about gender and the subsequent  ‘oppression of women’ do not necessarily apply to African and Asian society. As the world apparently gets smaller in terms of economic globalisation, interest in ‘transnational’ theoretical frameworks has grown – but what do we understand by the term ‘transnational’ (That will be our first discussion point on Monday). Where are theories of knowledge / society created? How are they disseminated? Rather uncomfortably perhaps – who decides that universal access to schooling on a western model is the best way forward?  Fennell argues that once the gender dimension is incorporated into these difficult questions the dominance (or hegemony) of a system (which we have already seen seems to privilege boys over girls long term, if not short term) becomes apparent, ‘National gender agendas in education, therefore are in danger of being both the symbol of progress and the vehicle of contemporary neo-colonialism’.

 

They argue that if the current form of western education is taken uncritically as a universal model there is a danger that localised and culturally specific forms of education which privilege women may end up being devalued. They highlight the significance of women and the status of motherhood within African society which, as is discussed in the Preece article, have been theorised within feminist ideas of citizenship as being one of the reasons that western women have been excluded from full participation in active citizenship.

 

Fennell and Arnot highlight the dialectic between ‘education and development’ and ‘indigenous knowledge’ – what role does globalisation play in establishing whose knowledge is more valid – at this point remember our earlier discussions of  the way that ‘women’s ways of knowing’ based on experience took some time to be accepted as valid (if indeed they have been accepted).

 

Adding a wider perspective to our enquiry into the construction of gender roles highlights how embedded our assumptions of gender difference are, as women’s education becomes a matter of social policy rather than finance and wealth creation initiatives. Fennel and Arnot highlight 4 themes that are particularly relevant to education in terms of the split between the Northern/Western and Southern/Eastern societies and the uneasy alliance between essentialised and constructed ideas of gender:

 

1. The ‘third world woman’ and the ‘girl child’ – repeats the problem in terms of any universalising project in that it overlooks differences of class and religion (just 2 possible nuances)

 

2. The ‘othering’ of motherhood and the importance of relational worlds – western assumptions of the status of motherhood and the significance of power relations within communities are not universally relevant

 

3. Individualism and the sex/gendering of the body – in this section they explore the meaning of the body in different societies and again, the problematic assumptions made by western theorists about women’s oppression in terms of the way we perform gender through the representation of our bodies (clothing, piercing etc)

 

4. Agency, dislocation and positionalities in the global gender education field -  and in this section we return to our debates about how we assert or understand individual agency and subjectivity. Fennell suggests that Foucault’s model is problematic if we start from a different standpoint of understanding the extent to which agency/ identity and subjectivity are constrained by our dependence and interdependence on other people. This section also raises some of the issues that Carrie Paechter discusses in her article.

 

Critique and Criticism

 

Both the articles that we are using today act as a warning against making assumptions that we can impose monolithic theories of gender across a global perspective. Indeed if you read the Preece article following the Fennell and Arnot you should find yourself being very aware that they are talking about a very specific European perspective, despite being ‘comparative’ in their overall framework.

 

However, remember that the critique we ask you to engage in the final year of your degree does not necessarily imply criticism, or a dismissive approach to issues raised. What a critical eye does achieve is a way to understanding that there are a variety of interpretations, many of which may be valid – it depends on the purpose to which they are being put. Look again at the Millenium Goals and the aspiration behind them to alleviate world poverty by 2015. Few of us would argue that this is not a worthy aspiration. There may well be a case for a degree of homogenisation in order to make the first steps to wider social equality. The uncomfortable question that we are left with in terms of gender is whether economic prosperity may compromise other areas of social justice or, indeed simply confirm the hegemony of western frameworks.