‘Oh, she’s so smart’: girls’ complex engagements with post/feminist narratives of academic success

Abstract

This article explores how six teenage girls talk about being smart in the wake of celebratory discourses touting gender equality in education and beyond. Set against the neo-liberal backdrop of ‘What about the boys?’ and ‘girl power’, it is assumed that smart girls today ‘have it all’ and, therefore, no longer require feminist interventions in the school. Issuing a challenge to these post-feminist assumptions, we highlight complex narratives of girls’ academic success, including post-feminist narratives of individualisation and the ‘supergirl’, alongside feminist narratives of gender inequality in the school and the broader social world. We conclude by highlighting the impossible terms within which post-feminism frames girls, and the dangers that this pervasive discourse poses to girls’ educations.