School-based Gender Research Articles

#MeToo movement as a syllabus for gender justice futures in U.S. Public schooling: a critical ethnography

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to examine how the #MeToo movement can serve as a curricular object of inquiry of gender justice futures in U.S. public schooling. Tarana Burke [2020. “A Conversation with Tarana Burke.” Uploaded 26 February. http://youtube.com/watch?v = z7FapboZddg] asserts that institutional courage and innovation is needed that goes beyond the limitations of Title IX and think about how schools understand their culpability in perpetuating the privileging of hegemonic gender in curricula. Intersectionality grounds the exploration of how historical and structural processes reproduce material, discursive, and political conditions of gender injustice in education systems and society. The methodology for this study is a part of a larger multiyear critical ethnography. The implication of this work considers how #MeToo has made school-based gender and sexual violence more visible and accountable to critique in public schooling in the U.S.

Gender Interaction and Its Implications on Sexuality Education in an Ethiopian Primary School: Girls in Focus

This ethnographic study aims to understand school-based gender interaction and its implication on the practices of Sexuality Education (SE) in a public primary school in Ethiopia. The study engaged Connell’s gender theory to explain the gender interaction from gender division of labor, power relation and cathexis dimensions. The study employed school observations, Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with students (age 13–16), and in-depth interviews with sexuality education teachers. The findings showed that the selected school is a gendered site in the aspects of division of labor, power relation and cathexis, where boys and girls learn and perform gender through various processes inside the classroom, outside the classroom, and in the immediate school surroundings. The findings also indicated that sexuality education responded to this by taking dual and complex role by both emancipatory (by challenging overall social gender power patterns) and reproducing gender relations (by neglecting the school-based gender bias). The study suggested the need to continuously reflect and reimagine the gender values embedded in sexuality education to improve gender relations in school context.

Cameroon's Schools

Abstract In this article, the data for which I acquired through a systematic review of articles published over three years, focusing on analyzing the evolution of the situation over these past years, I discuss school-based gender violence in Cameroon. Considering the complexity of Cameroonian society and its responses to violence against girls and women, we need to establish that violence can be addressed, and we have to suggest how this can be done. From one region to another, a girl being denied access to education, being trafficked, or being forced into early marriage constitutes an experience of violence. Even though the government has been fighting these ills for the past twenty years the results show that girls are still highly vulnerable in the education system.

Implementation of the School-Based Gender and Development Program in Selected Secondary Schools in the Division of Rizal: Proposed Revitalized GAD Mainstreaming Program

Implementation of the School-Based Gender and Development Program in Selected Secondary Schools in the Division of Rizal: Proposed Revitalized GAD Mainstreaming Program

“For all the role asks of us, it gives us so much more”: a descriptive study of gender and sexuality alliance advisors’ usual practices, training experiences, and motivations

School-based Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) clubs have well-documented benefits for sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth and their allies. However, little is known about what constitutes usual practice in these clubs, nor is much known about the adult advisors who serve as important safe adult relationships for SGM youth in schools. As such, the present study conducted a survey with 167 GSA advisors to gain a better understanding of usual practices within GSAs and advisor characteristics, training experiences, needs, and motivations in their role. Findings indicate that a majority of participating advisors are teachers in non-rural, public high schools. Only one third of participants indicated that they had received any training related to their role and all participants expressed needs for training across a variety of domains. In terms of their GSA meetings, participants indicated the frequency and duration of their meetings and the estimated amount of time spent focused on student emotional support, advocacy efforts, and social connection. We additionally conducted a thematic analysis surrounding advisor motivations to serve in their role. Themes included awareness of need, provision of a safe space, advocacy, and personal connections. Implications for provision of training and future supports for GSA advisors are discussed.

Learning butch: tracing lesbian and trans becoming in the classroom

In this autobiographical essay, I study the ways in which becoming a classroom teacher illuminated the school-based gender socialization that had shaped my contested understanding of myself as a girl and woman. Leaning on the work of queer theorists both within and outside of fields explicitly marked as “pedagogical,” I examine the notion of the “hidden curriculum” of gender as made manifest in my first years teaching middle school English, and the transformative capacity within my students—and the learning spaces I shared with them—to deconstruct, play with, and disrupt, if not unlearn, the gender “scripts” that had bound us to the failing coda of identification linked to larger systems of oppression which the institution of school reifies. Tracing my developing self-identification as a lesbian alongside my years of feeling “just outside” of the archetype of the professional woman teacher, I explore the possibilities for the secondary classroom to playfully and rigorously trouble normative modes of categorization and identification, broadening our understanding of who school “works” for.

Gender Discrimination, Perceived School Unfairness, Depressive Symptoms, and Sleep Duration Among Middle School Girls.

The current study examines how gender discrimination by adults in school is linked with depressive symptoms and sleep duration over time in middle school. The main goal is to test one psychological mechanism that can account for such associations: perceived school unfairness. Relying on a racially-ethnically diverse sample of girls (N=2,718, Mage =13.01, SDage =0.39) from 26 middle schools, multilevel mediation analyses revealed that girls who experienced school-based gender discrimination by an adult in seventh grade reported higher levels of perceived school unfairness in eighth grade. Moreover, perceived unfairness, in turn, was associated with more depressive symptoms and shorter sleep durations by eighth grade. Implications of changes in adolescent girls' sleep and mood related to their experiences of gender discrimination are discussed.

Uncertainty stress, social capital, and suicidal ideation among Chinese medical students: Findings from a 22-university survey.

Respective associations between uncertainty stress and three dimensions of social capital with suicidal ideation were assessed among 4446 undergraduates from 22 Chinese universities in a cross-sectional study. Multiple logistic regression model and structural equation modeling were used to examine these relationships. Uncertainty stress was more strongly and uniquely associated with suicidal ideation than with life stress. Social capital, especially social networks, shared a dual role as a correlate of suicidal ideation and means to reduce the impact of uncertainty stress. School-based gender- and age-specific suicidal ideation interventions should emphasize social capital enhancement and uncertainty stress coping.

Teaching in transition: Examining school-based gender inequities in central/southeastern Europe and the former Soviet Union

Abstract In the last decade, gender equity has become one of the most prominent issues in education reform efforts worldwide. Yet, questions of gender equity have received very little attention in the education reform efforts in the post-socialist countries during the transition period. Focusing on the political, economic, and social changes of the 1990s, this article examines school-based gender equity as it is treated in textbooks, curriculum, teacher attitudes, school environment, leadership and tracking. The article presents gender-sensitive strategies for reform and explores how existing ‘gender-neutral’ education practices detrimentally affect gender equity in schools, providing country-specific examples. The article concludes with recommendations for teaching in transition, given the education sphere's strong potential to redress gender inequities.

Gender Equity Unmasked: Democracy, Gender, and Education in Central/Southeastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union

In the early 1990s, the countries of Central and Southeastern Europe (CEE and SEE) and the former Soviet Union (FSU) moved from authoritarianism to democracy, capitalism, and market economies, thus joining “democracy’s third-wave.” As in most cases of democratization, the transformation processes in the former socialist bloc have created opportunities to “rethink the bases of social consensus and revise the rules of the game,” signaling the possibility for new political culture and institutions. As such, periods of democratic transformation constitute “political openings” in the widest sense, generating extensive opportunities for sociopolitical activism and expanding the bases for political participation of previously marginalized actors. In particular, democratic transformation processes provide unique opportunities for women to address their secondary status, to insist on their inclusion in the democratization process, to engage in formal or informal politics, and to demand that their particular issues be incorporated in the political system. While acknowledging the ostensibly equal public status of women under socialist political and economic policies, this article makes a two-tiered argument regarding gender equity in the region. First, gender equity under the socialist regime was largely a myth, despite government’s public presentation of it. Second, gender equity may not necessarily be achieved through

School, community context, and delinquency: Rethinking the gender gap

This study examines the role of gender and of community context in the relationship between school factors and delinquent behavior, otherwise termed here “the school-delinquency gender gap.” Control theory (Hirschi 1969) and power-control theory (Hagan, Simpson, and Gillis 1985) were employed as conceptual frameworks. Data used were drawn in part from the Seattle Youth Study, which included self-reported measures of school experiences and delinquent behavior for 1,508 high school students. Findings revealed significant reductions in delinquent behavior tied to positive outlooks on and performances in school-related activities. In addition, several school measures were discovered to affect differentially the delinquent behavior of males and of females. The importance of community context as an interacting variable in the school-delinquency relationship also was discovered. Conclusions support a power-control interpretation of school-based gender differences in delinquent behavior.