Ways of “being”:: alternative critical dialogic perspectives on gendered identity in education, training and work

Ways of “being”: alternative critical dialogic perspectives on gendered identity in education, training and work

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Education + Training, Volume 58, Issue 3.

Introduction

The past decade has witnessed rapid policy change and reformulation which has impacted upon learners’ and workers’ choice/s or lack of choice/s in the public and private domains of their lives which includes practices and trajectories within education, training and employment. As a truth regime these practices have the capacity to constitute and position learners, educators and employees as the subjects of policy within this logic of competition. For some critical commentators “values” have been replaced by an emphasis on productivity and “value” in the economic sense. These changes have produced new scholarship and theory which this “special edition” aims to provide a lens to probe and expose. In doing so it makes a timely contribution to the relationship between gendered identities, learner trajectory and new policy discourse both within the UK and more widely.

An overview: formations of gender

Early research and theory of gender tended to be based upon an essentialist paradigm and, as a result, be conceptualised in binary form. However, such theorists as Lorber (1993, p. 568) challenged the biological determinism viewpoint of “Whatever a ‘woman’ is has to be ‘female’; whatever a ‘man’ is has to be ‘male’”. Kimmel et al. (2005) provide a helpful distinction, defining the terms “sex”, “male” and “female” as biologically framed, with “gender”, “masculinity”, “femininity” and the social meanings of maleness and femaleness being more culturally defined. Sex and gender are sometimes used interchangeably. When we use these terms, sex refers to the classification of people as men or women on the basis of biological criteria; gender refers to socially constructed and learned aspects of human identity. Butler’s theory of gender performativity provides a particularly powerful lens to probe how men and women “do” their gender and how their gender is imposed upon them and is not embodied by being biologically determined. Indeed, Cornwall and Lindisfarne (1994, p. 3) remark that: “Essentialist interpretations of the male/female dichotomy are a major problem in comparative studies of gender [and that] notions of masculinity, like the notion of gender, are fluid and situational”. In a similar vein, Mac an Ghaill (1994, p. 61) warns: “we need to consider not only gender differences but also relations between young men and women and within young men’s peer groups. It is important to see masculinity not simply as complementary to femininity […] Masculinities are also developed in specific institutional contexts in relation and against each other”. For example, an indication of the multiplicity of masculinities to be found within school settings can be seen from the range of literature concerning the reproduction of pupil masculinities within the classroom. “Cool guys, swots and wimps: the interplay of masculinity and education” (Connell, 1989) explores manifestations of hegemonic behaviour in relation to academic achievement, as does “Cool boys”, “party animals”, “squids” and “poofters”: interrogating the dynamics and politics of adolescent masculinities in school (Martino, 1999), which brings in the added dimension of imputed sexualities linked to attitudes towards schooling. The identification in Mac an Ghaill’s (1994) study of masculinities of the “macho lads”, the “academic achievers”, the “new enterprisers” and the “real Englishmen” suggests that it is through teenage boys’ response to relatively recent neo-liberal curriculum reforms that their underlying assumptions in regard to educational values can best be gauged. In addition, there are the accounts of primary schooling, where Connolly (1998) compares the positioning of the “bad boys” to that of South Asian boys, and Warren’s (1997) naming of the “princes of the park” and “working-class kings”. Importantly, these studies do not discuss masculinity as something relating only to interpersonal relationships, but also highlight the interactions between masculinities and institutional life: “It is not too strong to say that masculinity is an aspect of institutions, and is produced in institutional life: as much as it is an aspect of personality or produced in interpersonal transactions” (Connell, 1993, p. 608).

Linking gender to sociology

By the early 1980s British sociologists of education were modifying class analysis to incorporate gender inequality. A number of influential anthologies were published in this decade that included both empirical studies and theoretical analyses of gender (e.g. see Arnot and Weiner, 1987). Willis’ (1977) text was heavily criticised for equating working class “kids” with working class boys, Skegg’s qualitative studies parallels with Willis’ gendered approach in its focus on working class girls. Skeggs examines how subjectivity is produced through class, gender and sexuality and seeks to explain how working class women inhabit and occupy social and cultural positions. For Skeggs this was not about them lacking awareness, but a strategy for survival in the face of a culture which equates working class (and under-class) women with derogatory labels such as “slags”. They sought to avoid being pathologised by derogatory and gendered labels and instead looked at ways they could find value in who they were and how they were positioned in the class system. Many of the women in her study did not see themselves as working class, they disassociated from it. Within the limited forms of capital available and carried by them, learners struggle in limited movement through social space (Skeggs, 1997). Duckworth’s (2013, p. 14) ethnographic, longitudinal study included 16 male and female basic skills learners who were enroled on literacy classes courses at a Further Education College based in the North of England. The research explored how they had been shaped by the flow or lack of flow of capital in the public domain of schooling, college and work and the private domain of family, friends and home. The research offered critical insights of the interplay between class, gender, education and violence and the contradiction, complexities and ambivalences learners experience in their daily lives. It developed concepts sensitive to exploring these factors, whilst examining how learners try to make sense of and deal with the challenges which they face from their structural positioning as basic skills learners. The analysis included critical illumination of the processes of capital transfer, gendered trajectories and learners’ experiences of what it means to be poor and working class. The learners were not passive in their struggle against a deprivation of dominant, literacy, economic and symbolic capital, for example, they resisted disempowerment by subverting the “violence” and “trauma” they experienced in the public domain of schooling and private domain of home into gendered “resistance capital”. For the males, an outcome was that they drew upon their “muscle capital” in the field of work, friends and community as a means to gain employment, for example, security work, which values “muscle” power and gain credibility and respect in the field of the estate they lived, where muscle capital equated to street capital. The streets, like any other field, have their own rules, which feed into the habitus that “respect” is given to those who can look after themselves. For the females, “glamour capital” and “domestic capital” were drawn upon and used as resistance and empowerment. Glamour capital, which included make-up and dressing up, offered the learners the possibility of meeting a partner and building a home away from the confines of their childhood home and family, and the domestic capital acquired in child and adulthood home practices transferred to finding employment which places values on domestic skills such as cleaning and caring work.

Key moments and gender

In our analysis of the key “moments” in the critical study of gender we cannot underestimate the influence of the turn to narrative on what has come to be known as third wave feminism and pro feminist critical masculinities scholarship. Sharing many of the same critical preoccupations of Marxist and Neo-Marxist structuralism the post-modern hermeneutic of suspicion introduced through the writings and activism of post-structuralist scholars gave theory a new set of conceptual tools and instruments to unmask the ruses of power operating through gendered social relations.

One of the most highly influential post-structuralist analyses of gendered subjectivity is Butler’s (1990) Gender Trouble, the seminal expression of third wave feminism and Queer theory. The influence of Butler’s work is evident in this collection of papers. Post-structuralist analysis such as Butler’s represents a significant epistemic shift from structuralist theory through its critique of the presuppositions of logocentric and humanist thought, the “metaphysics of substance”. Post-structuralism problematizes the rational unitary subject of humanist ontology and situates the gendered subject within the disciplinary discursive, linguistic and cultural web of the social, characterised by Butler as the heterosexual matrix. Subjectivity is therefore fluid and there is no essential pre-discursive “I” that exists prior to discourse. However, what is also methodologically key is that it is this very recognition of the fluidity of subjectivity that allows agency in gendered subjects to resist and disrupt social codes through alternative discourses and practices, as Butler writes: “for an identity to be an effect means that it is neither fatally determined nor fully artificial and arbitrary […]. Construction is not opposed to agency; it is the necessary scene of agency, the very terms in which agency is articulated and becomes culturally intelligible (Butler, 2007, p. 201).

The papers

In this collection of papers, it has been important to avoid the potential problem of categorisation brought about by such binary opposition; indeed, it is by going beyond biological, essentialist distinctions of maleness and femaleness that a more subtle and nuanced understanding can be gained (see Skelton, 2001). We have sought to critically report on the role of gender within the new social of global neo-liberal education policy as the discursive site in which gendered subjectivities are fashioned and constituted, both by policy and through the self-signifying practices of the self. To that end, we are interested in new forms of gendered subjectivity such as inclusive masculinity (Anderson, 2012) which appear to disrupt and confound gender binaries. However, our approach remains critical as we retain the hermeneutic of suspicion shared by both structuralist and post-structuralist theory through consideration of the capacity for neo-liberalism to effect an erasure of sexual and gender politics. Nor do we seek to privilege one method over another. What we take from post-structuralism are: “critiques and methods of examining the functions and effects of any structure or grid of regularity that we put into place, including those post-structuralism itself might create” (St Pierre and Pillow, 2000, p. 6).

The six different papers in this issue, which are collected from UK and International research and perspectives, draw on and respond to different elements of what can be seen as a broad debate around gender. The paper by Atkins and Vicars explores the concepts of “female masculinity” to interrogate how hegemonic gendering discourses, forms and performances are inscribed in neo-liberal narratives of competency in higher education in the Western Hemisphere. It contributes to debates on masculinity, but more importantly, opens discussions about the implications of gendering discourses for the role of the few women in senior positions in higher education institutions globally. The paper by Smith et al., draws on a two study constructive replication approach; the first study uses a cross-sectional design, while the second uses a design where data collection of variables was temporally separated. This International study demonstrates the complex effect of gender on entrepreneurial intentions. Farrell’s research, this time in the UK is of keen relevance to the collection in this special edition as it interrogates and problematizes new theories of masculinity such as inclusive masculinity in the light of empirical data collected in state primary and secondary schools. Farrell’s analysis argues for the development of nuanced perspectives capable of theorising the experiences of young masculinities in education without recourse to adult conceptions of masculinity and simplistic binary notions of the “macho lad” and “sissy boy”. Guglielmi et al., compare how the dimension of attitudes towards a future that consists in perception of dynamic future may be affected by desirable goals (desired job flexibility) and probable events (probable job flexibility) in a group of permanent vs temporary employees. Their paper offers insights into the relationship between specific guidance actions and goal-oriented career planning. We are taken into two geographic areas in the paper by Stahl and Baars who consider how working-class boys constitute themselves as subjects of “value” through a close examination of their occupational aspirations. It problematizes the literature generated by government bodies and educational institutions regarding working-class youth as having a “poverty of aspirations”. They argue that aspirations are formed in a contested space between traditional, localised, classed identities and a broader neo-liberal conception of the “aspirational” rootless self. Sanderson and Whitehead examine an area of gendered leadership that has received little critical academic scrutiny, international schools. The women in the study provide rich qualitative data and identify a number of barriers relating to culture, including gender stereotyping and self-confidence issues, and organisational behaviour, including the lack of a work-life balance and the patriarchal and hierarchical structures in place.

This edition recognises that policy and practice/s are being shaped by neo-liberal discourses that promote performativity, deregulation, marketization and competition. This landscape, we argue, is masculinised and this masculinisation stems partly from the fact that career structures within education are as skewed by gender, as they are in relation to sexuality, race and disability (Duckworth et al., 2016). Furthermore, we feel that the notion of neo-liberalism and its implication that an individual is free to determine their own pathway, is limited by the impact of structural and historical inequalities: gender, race and class and other markers of identity that shape the learners’ educational journeys (Leathwood, 2006; Duckworth, 2013; Ade-Ojo and Duckworth, 2015). As highlighted by Duckworth et al. (2016) there are possibilities to find alternative words and languages that disrupt existing managerialistic discourses and practices, or ways of “being”, that have become institutionally reified. As such, in their practice, they explicitly teach and practice co-caring community as a grounding for education. They do not view this as a contending force that is “against” the dominant culture, but one that is “outside” and bears no relation to it. The feminised critical spaces that may emerge from such communities they argue are a multifaceted refuge or asylum, and a forum for “being” and for “being yourself”. And it is with this in mind, that it is hoped that these papers, which offer a number of compelling conclusions in their own right, will trouble the hegemony by inspiring further discussions concerning ways of “being” and offer alternative critical dialogic perspectives that influence educational policy on gendered identity and its subsequent impact on learners and workers trajectories.

Vicky Duckworth, Francis Farrell and Phil Rigby - Faculty of Education, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK

References

Ade-Ojo, G. and Duckworth, V. (2015), Adult Literacy Policy and Practice: From Intrinsic Values to Instrumentalism, Palgrave Macmillan Pivotal, London

Anderson, E. (2012), Inclusive Masculinity: The Changing Nature of Masculinities, Routledge, Oxon

Arnot, M. and Weiner, G. (Eds) (1987), Gender and the Politics of Schooling, Hutchinson, London

Butler, J. (1990), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, Oxon

Butler, J. (2007), Gender Trouble, Routledge Classic, Oxon

Connell, R.W. (1989), “Cool guys, swots and wimps: the interplay of masculinity and education”, Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 15 No. 3

Connell, R.W. (1993), “The big picture: masculinities in recent world history”, Theory and Society, Vol. 22 No. 5, pp. 597-623

Connolly, P. (1998), Racism, Gender Identities and Young Children, Routledge, London

Cornwall, A. and Lindisfarne, N. (1994), Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies, Taylor and Francis, London

Duckworth, V. (2013), Learning Trajectories, Violence and Empowerment Amongst Adult Basic Skills Learners, Routledge, London

Duckworth, V., Lord, J., Dunne, L., Atkins, L. and Watmore, S. (2016), “Creating feminized critical spaces and co-caring communities of practice outside patriarchal managerial landscapes”, Journal of Gender and Education, available at: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09540253.2015.1123228

Kimmel, M.S., Hearn, J. and Connell, R.W. (2005), Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities, Sage, London

Leathwood, C. (2006), “Gendered constructions of lifelong learning and the learner in the UK policy context”, in Leathwood, C. and Francis, B. (Eds), Gender and Lifelong Learning: Critical Feminist Engagements, Routledge, London, pp. 40-53

Lorber, J. (1993), “Believing is seeing: biology as ideology”, Gender and Society, Vol. 7 No. 4, pp. 568-581

Mac an Ghaill, M. (1994), The Making of Men: Masculinities, Sexualities and Schooling, Open University Press, Maidenhead

Martino, W. (1999), “Disruptive moments in the education of boys: debating populist discourses on boys, schooling and masculinities”, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 289-294

Skeggs, B. (1997), Formations of Class and Gender, Sage, London

Skelton, C. (2001), Schooling the Boys: Masculinities and Primary Education, Open University Press, Maidenhead

St Pierre, E.A. and Pillow, W.S. (2000), Working the Ruins: Feminist Poststructural Theory and Methods in Education, Routledge, London

Warren, S. (1997), “Who do these boys think they are?: An investigation into the construction of masculinities in a primary classroom”, International Journal of Inclusive Education, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 207-222

Willis, P. (1977), Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids get Working Class Jobs, Saxon House, Farnborough