‘These boys are wild': constructions and contests of masculinities at two Jordanian high schools

Abstract

In Jordan, gender equality is often depicted as an important social concern in policy texts, national media, and reports by international development institutions. In these reports, ‘gender' is often synonymous with ‘women’, and efforts are directed to improving parity in social and economic outcomes. This article argues that males are often overlooked or invisible in such accounts, and are more readily visible as obstacles to gender equality or embodiments of masculine crisis. Drawing upon ethnographic work in two government high schools for boys, I analyse everyday practices and social experiences of male students and teachers in schools to argue that they constitute an overlooked site to analyse the construction of gendered subjectivities. Mainstream accounts fail to account for how schooling is constitutive of gender struggle for boys, and how this struggle is connected to the changing nature of social membership in Jordan spurred in part by social and economic pressures.