Gender Safety

Abstract

Despite longstanding efforts towards gender equity and current yet intense focus on school safety, the simple right of boys and girls to an equitable and safe school environment-not to have to negotiate inequity or violence as part of their school day-has yet to be secured. In this article we review the development of “gender equity” and “school safety” as concepts out of which various practices have arisen and argue that these conceptualizations have not proved sufficient to eradicate the problems each targets. We then propose a new approach to this goal of creating and insuring an equitable and safe school environment for girls and boys which sifts out, braids together and builds upon key aspects of gender equity and school safety but is grounded in the articulation of a “missing discourse” of gender within each. Gender safety is built on an acknowledgment of gender as a set of ideologies which are produced reproduced and sustained within (and beyond) school classrooms and hallways. We suggest that a lack of attention to these ideologies is a significant and unrecognized barrier in the are nas of both gender equity and school safety. A key feature of our formulation is the psychosocial significance of gender ideologies in adolescents' daily experiences and in school cultures and climates. Despite longstanding efforts towards gender equity and current yet intense focus on school safety, the simple right of boys and girls to an equitable and safe school environment-not to have to negotiate inequity or violence as part of their school day-has yet to be secured. In this article we review the development of “gender equity” and “school safety” as concepts out of which various practices have arisen and argue that these conceptualizations have not proved sufficient to eradicate the problems each targets. We then propose a new approach to this goal of creating and insuring an equitable and safe school environment for girls and boys which sifts out, braids together and builds upon key aspects of gender equity and school safety but is grounded in the articulation of a “missing discourse” of gender within each. Gender safety is built on an acknowledgment of gender as a set of ideologies which are produced reproduced and sustained within (and beyond) school classrooms and hallways. We suggest that a lack of attention to these ideologies is a significant and unrecognized barrier in the are nas of both gender equity and school safety. A key feature of our formulation is the psychosocial significance of gender ideologies in adolescents' daily experiences and in school cultures and climates.