Abstract
ABSTRACT This article reports results of an ethnographic study of how girls are positioned, and position themselves, in relation to gender regimes in three vocational programmes in Swedish upper secondary education: Restaurant Management & Food, Health & Social Care, and Vehicle & Transport. The comparison shows that there are different possible feminine positions where the girls resist and comply to varying degrees both within and between the programmes, with expectations interrelated with discourses of consumption, caring and production. However, generally the position of emphasised femininity is most prominent and becoming a female worker in the programmes’ settings involves complying with feminine ideals of a caring discourse, regardless of whether the VET is oriented towards education for masculine production work, or feminine consumption work.
Highlights
Labour markets tend to be highly gender segregated, especially sectors that do not require higher education, in Sweden, the EU and globally (OECD 2017; Das and Kotikula 2018; SCB 2018)
Classroom observations of the Health & Social Care (HSC), Restaurant Management & Food (RMF) and Vehicle & Transport (VT) classes were collected during 33, 24 and field days, respectively. (The students were followed in their vocational education and training (VET) subjects, i.e. not their general subjects such as Swedish language, Mathematics, Social science et cetera.) In addition, we interviewed 25, and 28 students, 4, 2 and 4 teachers, and 1, 1 and 2 heads associated with the respective programmes
We find that the educational context offers less opportunities than VT female students have to enter different feminine positions, the overall conclusion we draw is that the female students in the HSC groups act in line with feminine norms and caring discourses of the HSC-VET context
Summary
Labour markets tend to be highly gender segregated, especially sectors that do not require higher education, in Sweden, the EU and globally (OECD 2017; Das and Kotikula 2018; SCB 2018). This is reflected in, and upheld by, educational systems that function as sorting devices of individuals according to socioeconomic background and gender (Reisel, Hegna, and Imdorf 2015; Smyth and Steinmetz 2015). Gender segregation in the labour market tends to increase with strong linkage between education and occupation (cf Beck, Fuller, and Unwin 2006), as in vocational education and training (VET) This apparent conflict with policy warrants further attention, and to contribute to its elucidation this article explores female students’ positioning in gendered VET contexts in Sweden
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