Moving Away from “Failing Boys” and “Passive Girls”: Gender meta-narratives in gender equity policies for Australian schools and why micro-narratives provide a better policy model

Abstract

In this paper I argue that the move towards devolved modes of educational governance provides significant opportunities for feminist and pro-feminist constructionist research to impact on the types of “gender work” used by schools. Research-based understandings of gender in schools have been on the defensive in Australia and elsewhere for a decade, as demands for performative social justice policies coalesce with popular and governmental attention on the educational problems of boys. However, feminist and pro-feminist researchers can re-attain legitimacy in the policy field by marketing localized understandings of gender micro-narratives as improvements on the negative “failing boy” meta-narratives pursued by mainstream gender equity policy interventionists. While the popular, media-driven understanding frames gender as a constraint on educational access and participation, constructionist research identifies masculinity and femininity as changing constructs that produce highly specific and localized power relations. In the final part of the paper I consider the positioning of constructionist gender research in the federal government commissioned report Meeting the challenge: Final report on the boys’ lighthouse project, which demonstrated that feminist and pro-feminist readings of gender can attain legitimacy at the local level.

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