Shaping Girls Research Articles

Finally … the team! Navigating obstacles in girls’ access to football

ABSTRACT The article provides educational and pedagogical insights to strengthen the inclusiveness of girls who decide to participate in a female football team. The article presents a bottom-up content analysis to explore the experiences of Italian girls gaining access to women’s football, identifying four key phases: (1) informal football experiences; (2) the search for a female team; (3) parental resistance; and (4) joining a female team. In informal football matches, girls face discriminatory attitudes from boys, but affirm their equality by showcasing their playing skills. At the exo-system level, girls face challenges finding local girls’ teams due to geographical distance. Such obstacle forces some of them to join male teams. The girls also encounter parental resistance rooted in stereotypical views of women's bodies and cultural ideals about suitable sports for women. Some girls overcome these challenges, expressing their passion and feelings to their parents, while others are met with less favorable outcomes. Joining a female team is finally described as being symbolic of support and solidarity among the girls, marking a significant and positive change in their overall football experience. The study highlights the interconnected influence of macro, meso, and microystems shaping girls’ access to football.

"He'll come with some sugar." A qualitative study exploring the drivers and consequences of schoolgirls transactional sex behaviours.

Transactional sex (TS) is common in areas of sub-Saharan Africa, motivated by reasons beyond financial support. Through this qualitative study we sought to understand the motivation driving TS among adolescent schoolgirls in rural western Kenya where rates are reportedly high. Identifying and understanding drivers within the local context is necessary for implementation of successful public health policy and programming to reduce the associated harms impacting health and wellbeing. To understand the drivers of sexual behaviors, individual views, and socio-cultural norms, we spoke with schoolgirls, male peers, parents and teachers. The three latter groups may influence, encourage, and shape girls' views and behaviors and thus contribute to the perpetuation of cultural and societal norms. One hundred and ninety-nine participants took part across 20 FGDs; 8 comprised of schoolgirl groups, and 4 each of schoolboy, parent or teacher groups. Through thematic analysis, poverty emerged as the key driver of TS and a normative behaviour amongst secondary school girls. Subthemes including parental influence, need for menstrual pads, pressure from boda boda drivers, peer pressure, and blame were part of a complex relationship linking poverty with TS. We conclude that whilst TS is perceived as inevitable, normal and acceptable it is not really a choice for many girls. Exploring ways to encourage communication between families, including around menstruation, may help enable girls to ask for help in acquiring essential items. In addition, education at a community level may shift social norms over time and decrease the prevalence of age-disparate TS among schoolgirls and older, wealthier men in the community.

Lenjeh, Gittal, Kanyi dll: Kata-Kata Lokal untuk Mengontrol dan Menekan Ekspresi Tubuh Perempuan

This article discusses the existence of the term "flirtatious" in various regions of Indonesia on women's behavior, particularly in public spaces, reflecting symbolic power dynamics. Employing a qualitative phenomenological approach with FGDs and in-depth interviews involving individuals from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and occupations, it explores how these local expressions regulate women's conduct. Using Bourdieu's theory about symbolic violence, the findings reveal that such terms primarily target women to modify their behavior and are enforced by authoritative figures, shaping girls' interactions with men beyond the family sphere. These local expressions evolve into entrenched beliefs and practices, representing not only familial norms but also perpetuating symbolic violence within Indonesia's patriarchal cultural framework

Stakeholder perceptions of mentoring in developing girls’ STEM identities: “you do not have to be the textbook scientist with a white coat”

PurposeGirls are underrepresented in many school science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects, leading to ongoing gender disparity in STEM careers. This issue is not new and has seen a range of initiatives implemented in an attempt to increase girls’ STEM participation. In Australia, a number of these initiatives have emphasised role models and mentors. This paper seeks to understand the influence of role models and mentors on girls’ STEM identities.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents qualitative research undertaken with STEM experts into the influences on girls’ STEM identities. Data were collected through three phases involving semi-structured interviews, a forum and focus groups. Thematic analysis identified the importance of mentoring and role modelling in shaping girls’ STEM participation and identities.FindingsThis paper provides a basis for rethinking how and when role models and mentors can assist girls in making decisions about STEM. In particular, it reveals the need for role models and mentors to consider the role of relatability in developing girls’ STEM identities and the need to do this at multiple points throughout girls’ lives.Originality/valueThis article captures the perspectives of multiple experts involved in a variety of STEM professions on the topic of how mentors and role models can influence girls to consider STEM professions. Utilising the concept of identity, this paper sheds new light on girls’ interactions with role models and mentors and the value of storying in role modelling and mentoring relationships as an important component of girls’ identity work in relation to STEM.

A Vexing Relationship Between Chiefship and Girls’ Sexuality: Insights From Rural Malawi

PurposeThis paper examines how the exercise of powers vested in chieftaincies is fundamental in shaping girls’ sexuality. The relationship between traditional authority and sexuality is vexing, as, on one hand, the power embedded within the chieftaincies has been perceived as fundamental in promoting positive sexual behaviors. On the other hand, as this paper demonstrates, the same power, albeit less recognized, simultaneously regulates girls’ sexualities. MethodologyThis paper critically examines present-day chiefly powers in light of three sexuality-related presentations demanded and payable to chiefs at the onset of menstruation, marriage, and premarital pregnancy. Data were collected through an ethnographic study involving interviews, archives, focus group discussions and observations conducted in Dedza district, Malawi. Verbatim data were transcribed and entered into the NVIVO data management software, where coding followed grounded theory precepts. ResultsThe study reveals three ways in which the present legitimization of chiefly powers emerges: invoking spiritual powers, sharing the proceeds to create acceptable norms, and invoking colonially codified roles to exert influence over subordinates. As chiefly powers are exercised, they define, shape, and sometimes control girls’ sexualities while sustaining positions of power and the hierarchy of the traditional authority. DiscussionThe paper reveals a combination of three different ways in which present chiefly roles are legitimized. It suggests that though chiefly roles may be rooted in the British colonial period, their persistence is based on the institution’s ability to creatively adapt to contemporary demands by positioning girls’ sexuality at the center of chiefly legitimation.

Mapping the literature on child marriage: A critical engagement

AbstractU.S. “child marriage”—marriage including at least one person under the age of 18—is legal and practiced in 44 states. In this article, I map the existing literature on child marriage and offer insights on how child marriage can expand our sociological understandings of marriage, gender inequality, and youth sexualities. Social scientists have almost exclusively focused on child marriage in the Global South at the expense of understanding child marriage in the Global North, which I argue reinforces racist and xenophobic narratives that cast child marriage as a non‐Western social problem. The research on U.S. child marriage that does exist focuses on the consequences, rather than the causes, of child marriage, which may shift focus away from a structural understanding of how intersecting inequalities shape girls' likelihood of getting married as minors. I position a sociology of U.S. child marriage at the intersection of sociological understandings of marriage and gender inequality and critical research on youth sexualities. I conclude by calling for intersectional research on U.S. child marriage that builds on these literatures, examining how girls' sexualities are racialized, gendered, and classed within the institution of marriage.

“Small town girls” and “country girls”: Examining the plurality of feminine rural subjectivity

Despite growing scholarly interest in the identities and experiences of girls, little attention has been paid to the identities and experiences of rural girls, and in particular how girls’ subjectivities are discursively constituted in rural spaces. Using interviews and focus group discussions with girls and young women who attended a girls’ empowerment program, this paper draws on feminist poststructuralism and positioning theory to examine how rural gendered subjectivities are constructed and negotiated by girls and young women within the social, spatial, and discursive boundaries of a rural Canadian community. I examine how the girls and young women positioned themselves and were positioned by others as “small town girl” and “country girl” subjects, and how rural positionality was accomplished through invoking real and imagined notions of more urban “others.” It is through these contrasts to urban subjecthood that the variability of rural positionality is made visible. The findings of this study complicate and extend the dominant narrative of the urban-rural binary, and gendered identities and performances within rural spaces, by demonstrating the plurality of feminine rural subjectivity. This study offers new applications for the role of girls’ empowerment programs in shaping girls’ identities, experiences, and perspectives.

The role of gender attitudes in shaping girls’ participation in formal education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: A matched of analysis of girls’ and caregivers’ perspectives

Gender attitudes play a powerful role in influencing girls’ involvement in formal education, which is associated with positive outcomes pertaining to girls’ protection and well-being. A quantitative survey was conducted with 866 girls (ages 10–14) and 774 matched primary caregivers from 14 sites in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Data were analyzed using multivariable mixed effects ordinal logistic regression models. Findings suggest that more equitable gender attitudes on the part of girls and caregivers were associated with girls’ higher levels of school participation. When considered jointly, the gender attitudes of caregivers had greater influence over girls’ outcomes than those held by girls. Caregivers reporting more equitable beliefs on the Men’s Rights and Privileges sub-scale were associated with a nearly-two-fold (1.95) increase in the predicted probability of girls being in school at the highest level of participation. Findings suggest the need for interventions seeking to promote gender equality in the lives of girls to take an Ecological approach that works with girls, caregivers, and along with broader family structures.

Making the Best of It: Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland during the Second World War ed. by Sarah Glassford and Amy Shaw

Reviewed by: Making the Best of It: Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland during the Second World War ed. by Sarah Glassford and Amy Shaw Charlotte Bennett Making the Best of It: Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland during the Second World War. Edited by Sarah Glassford and Amy Shaw. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2020. xii + 293 pp. Cloth $89.95, paper $35.95. Making the Best of It: Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland during the Second World War is a fitting sequel to Sarah Glassford and Amy Shaw's equally impressive edited collection on the First World War (A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service, UBC Press, 2012). Here, Glassford and Shaw aim "to do justice to the diversity in the female populations of Canada and Newfoundland," bringing [End Page 474] together essays by twelve historians who have used a "granular approach" to explore specific wartime communities and/or facets of collective experience (5). These contributions are grouped into four sections prefaced by brief introductions that signal common themes. Essays in "Part 1: Women, Children, and the War" emphasize the importance of age in shaping girls' identities and experiences (Barbara Lorenzkowski; Claire L. Halstead; Lisa Moore) as well as how conceptions of childhood determined the support available for working mothers (Lisa Pasolli). In "Part 2: Women and the War at Home," essays highlight how religion, class, and race contributed to gendered tensions inherent within Jewish women's work activities (Jennifer Shaw) and wider consumer culture (Graham Broad; Joseph Tohill). In "Part 3: Women and Overseas Humanitarian Work," Marlene Epp and Sarah Glassford reveal the practical and emotional difficulties faced by Mennonite relief workers and Red Cross workers who traveled to Europe. Finally, "Part 4: Women in Wartime Nursing, Paid War Work, and the Armed Forces" illuminates nursing experiences in northern Newfoundland and Labrador (Heidi Coombs), portrayals of female military dead (Sarah Hogenbirk), and perceptions of beauty and the female body in industrial workplaces (Sarah Van Vugt). Glassford and Shaw more than deliver on their aspirations for Making the Best of It, "mov[ing] the historiographical conversation into new territory, while also drawing attention to the many topics that await scholarly study" (17). This collection brings new research questions and analytical frameworks to the fore, transcending simple assessments as to whether the war was "good" or "bad" for women and/or liberated them in some way. Historians of children and youth will be particularly enthused to see girlhood treated as a "distinct subset of female experience," especially scholars of regions that have not yet witnessed the same "steady growth in the children's history subfield" apparent in North America (16). Lorenzkowski's chapter on emotional geographies and practices of feeling in Atlantic Canada "render[s] legible a history written in invisible ink," using recent insights from the history of emotions to scrutinize the oral histories of women who grew up in wartime Halifax and Saint John (36). Halstead meticulously situates the experiences of British evacuees within their transnational imperial context, uncovering personal ties of friendship that emerged between these "didactic symbols of the war" and their Canadian hosts (59). Moore applies a comparative framework to records from three private girls' schools in Montreal, illuminating divergences in francophone and anglophone expressions of agency and civic identity. These child-centered explorations of female experience greatly enrich the collection as a whole, substantiating the inclusion of "girls" as a key subject in its subtitle. [End Page 475] Due to its remarkable breadth and depth, Making the Best of It will likely become a core reference book for undergraduates and researchers studying Second-World-War Canada and Newfoundland. That said, it is unlikely to have the final word on the subject, a state of affairs refreshingly recognized by the editors themselves (17). Making the Best of It was limited by the responses received to a call for papers; few submissions explored francophone experiences in Quebec, only one related to Newfoundland, and none explicitly addressed Indigenous women. Glassford and Shaw also confirm up front that members of only a limited number of ethnic and religious minorities appear in the volume, presumably for similar reasons. It is hoped that Making the Best of It...

“This is probably the reason why she resorted to that kind of action”: A qualitative analysis of juvenile justice workers attributions for girls’ offending

A large body of evidence suggests that within the juvenile justice system, girls fare worse than boys on several measures, including number of arrests, length of stay, and mental health outcomes while in the system. Scholarship suggests a myriad of gendered social factors that precipitate girls’ involvement in the juvenile justice system; however, less is known about how stakeholders within the juvenile justice system perceive the girls they work with or interpret their experiences. The current paper examines the attributions that juvenile justice system workers make about the reasons girls offend. In line with previous research, we identify both internal (personality, character traits) and external (situational) explanations for girls’ involvement in the juvenile justice system that correspond to gender stereotypes and expectations of girls. Furthermore, we identify structural attributions as a special subset of external attributions that take into account how larger social, economic, and historical factors shape girls’ situations and experiences and contribute to their criminal behavior. These structural attributions have implications for practitioners’ views of justice and the role of the juvenile justice system in the lives of girls. We conclude with a set of implications for practice and policy.

Girls of the Golden West by John Adams

Reviewed by: Girls of the Golden West by John Adams James Peck GIRLS OF THE GOLDEN WEST. Score by John Adams, libretto by Peter Sellars. Directed by Peter Sellars. San Francisco Opera, San Francisco. December 10, 2017. Click for larger view View full resolution Ryan McKinny (Clarence), J’Nai Bridges (Josefa Segovia), Julia Bullock (Dame Shirley), and the San Francisco Opera chorus in John Adams and Peter Sellars’s Girls of the Golden West. (Photo: Stefan Cohen / San Francisco Opera.) The director Peter Sellars crafts indelible images charged with a sense of historical portent. Often, his productions reflect upon the stakes of public memory. He invites audience members to grapple with the claims of an imagined past upon their lived present. These values shape Girls of the Golden West, the latest collaboration between Sellars and composer John Adams. Adams and Sellars’ newest opera premiered at the San Francisco Opera in November 2017. It depicts the California Gold Rush through the interwoven stories of three women. The title alludes ironically to David Belasco’s play and Giacomo Puccini’s opera, The Girl of the Golden West (1910). Whereas they romanticized the American [End Page 94] West, Adams and Sellars emphasize the violence and injustice of westward expansion. Their counter-history offers a multiethnic, multinational, and racially fractious frontier. The characters struggle for a chance at the wealth of the conquered land and the privileges of US citizenship in the freshly minted state of California. Click for larger view View full resolution A scene from the first act of Girls of the Golden West. (Photo: Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera.) In addition to directing, Sellars spliced together the libretto from a range of archival materials, including memoirs, poetry, and miners’ ballads. The first act introduces the characters within the exploitative context of settler capitalism. It begins with the white prospector Clarence (played by Ryan McKinny) trumpeting the arriving miners with text from Mark Twain’s hardscrabble yarn, Roughing It: “It was a driving, vigorous, restless population . . . the most gallant host that ever trooped down the startled solitudes of an unpeopled land.” However, the libretto soon upends this mythologizing lore by centering on stories of women and people of color. Act 1 constellates around three couples in the mining town of Rich Bar. At the core are Dame Shirley (Julia Bullock), a doctor’s wife, and Ned Peters (Davóne Tines), a black cowboy who escaped from plantation slavery. They forge a close friendship with growing hints of attraction. Dame Shirley was the pen name of Louise Clappe; her Shirley Letters to her sister constitute a major archive of life in gold country and provide much of the libretto. Dignified, perceptive, and humane, Shirley and Ned lament the contrast between the splendor of the California countryside and the mercenary society despoiling it. Two additional couples fill out the first act, their stories entangled in discriminatory practices of gender, nationality, and race. The Chinese immigrant Ah Sing (Hye Jung Lee), enslaved by sex trafficking, works as a prostitute at the raucous gambling house, the Empire Hotel. She deems the white miner Joe Cannon (Paul Appleby) a potential path to freedom, so strives for romance. The Mexican couple Josefa (J’Nai Bridges) and Ramón (Elliot Madore) work at the Empire as, respectively, a waitress and a card dealer; they keep their relationship secret, because “without a girl there can be no hotel, without a beautiful one there can be no business.” After Joe panics at Ah Sing’s displays of affection, Josefa must repel his ugly, drunken advances. The tensions that percolate through the first act coalesce into terrifying acts of nationalist violence in act 2. The major contours are rooted in a historical event that occurred on July 4th and 5th, 1851, in Downieville, California. Fueled by alcohol and jingoism, US miners, predominately white, attacked the town’s Mexican, Chilean, and Chinese [End Page 95] residents in an effort to drive them away and steal their claims. In the opera, Ned names this threat and condemns America’s whitewashed promise of freedom with text from Frederick Douglass’s searing speech, “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?” Cannon forces his way...

Policing a menstrual monster: how working class girls discuss their menstrual reactions and experiences

ABSTRACTMuch of the research on menarche and menstruation has been conducted with white, middle-class, heterosexual participants. The purpose of this study was to investigate among a group of urban, working-class participants how social identities shape girls’ construction of their preparation for menarche, emotional responses to the event, and subsequent menstrual maintenance practices. Fifteen adolescent girls (ages 11–16) participated in flexible in-depth interviews meant to explore their family and life history, their menarcheal experiences and menstrual practices, and transition to womanhood more broadly. Thematic analysis of the data revealed three significant themes highlighting how participants made sense of menstruation. Participants discussed a culture of silence around menstruation which contributed to their feeling poorly prepared for menarche; noted negative and uncontrollable emotional reactions to menstruation; and expressed embodied suffering and efforts to engage in self-policing in order to take back a perceived loss of control of their bodies. It is argued that more research taking into consideration how social identities can impact the experience of menarche is needed to create sensitive and informed education that targets the unique needs of working-class adolescents.

Human milk cortisol concentration predicts experimentally induced infant fear reactivity: moderation by infant sex.

Little consideration has been given to the possibility of human infant development being shaped via lactocrine programming, and by breast milk cortisol levels specifically. Despite animal models indicating that glucocorticoid (GC) exposure via lactation might modify brain development and behavior, only one study has reported that milk cortisol levels were positively associated with infant negative affectivity, especially fearfulness and sadness-early emerging risk factors for internalizing difficulties such as anxiety. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether human milk cortisol is associated with mother-reported fearfulness and experimentally induced infant fear reactivity. Mother-infant dyads (n = 65) enrolled in the FinnBrain Cohort Study participated. Breast milk samples were obtained 2.5 months postpartum, and milk cortisol concentrations were ascertained using validated luminescence immunoassay methodology. Infant fear reactivity was assessed using maternal reports 6 months postpartum and in a laboratory 8 months postpartum. There was a significant interaction between infant sex and milk cortisol such that higher milk cortisol was related to higher infant fear reactivity in a laboratory setting in girls (β = 0.36, p = .04) but not in boys (β = -0.15, p = .40). Milk cortisol was not associated with mother-reported infant fearfulness. Results suggest that higher human milk cortisol concentrations are associated with elevated experimentally induced fear in infancy. Findings support lactocrine programming, and suggest that mothers may "communicate" vital information about stressful environments via cortisol contained in breast milk, shaping girls' early emotional reactivity.

Between Girls: Lateral Discipline in Henry Handel Richardson’s The Getting of Wisdom

Henry Handel Richardson’s representation of lateral discipline in her 1910 novel, The Getting of Wisdom, is significant for the way in which it makes visible the reorienting of disciplinary structures that took place as the private, domestic tuition of middle-class girls gave way to institutional, collective schooling in the last third of the nineteenth century. Focusing on this novel, which fictionalizes the author's own experience of Melbourne’s Presbyterian Ladies’ College from 1883 to 1887, this article considers her representation of girls as not just objects but agents of disciplinary action. I argue that in boarding school, novels such as Richardson’s discipline functions laterally, between peers, in ways that often reiterate the ‘vertical’ authority of parents and teachers but also contest it, moving into the space created by its failures or absences. Reading these novels thus requires a reorientation of our own theoretical models for thinking about discipline, in particular, the Foucauldian panopticon and his conception of the segmented space of the school, which do not allow for the kinds of sideways glances that proliferate across Richardson’s novel. The Getting of Wisdom thus provides the opportunity to theorize anew the role played by the peer group in shaping girls into social subjects, a role that was a cause for both celebration and concern by commentators of the time.

How Narratives of Fear Shape Girls' Participation in Community Life in Two Conflict-Affected Populations.

Numerous social factors shape girls' lives in conflict-affected settings, affecting their vulnerability to gender-based violence (GBV). Qualitative research methods were used to examine spaces of perceived safety and risk for girls living in two conflict-affected populations: camps in Ethiopia hosting primarily South Sudanese and Sudanese refugees and communities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Three major themes emerged: (a) challenges around caregiver-child communication regarding development, sex, and sexual violence; (b) a typology of safe/risky spaces; and (c) the influence of male-dominated spaces on experiences and fear of GBV. The findings have implications for programs focused on reducing adolescent girls' vulnerability to violence within conflict-affected contexts.

Social institutions as mediating sites for changing gender norms: Nurturing girl’s resilience to child marriage in Uganda

abstractPoised at the intersection between childhood and the world of adults, adolescent girls face unique challenges to the full development and exercise of their capabilities. Child marriage, one of the forms of sexual violence is noted to constrain and/or shape girls’ current and life-course opportunities and capabilities. The practice remains widespread in Uganda, associated with gender discriminatory social norms, attitudes and practices that make up the social ecology in which adolescent girls live in Uganda. Drawing on a three-year qualitative study on transforming the lives of adolescent girls and young women in Uganda undertaken between 2012 and 2014, the article illuminates the role of social institutions as mediating sites in nurturing girls’ resilience to child marriage in Uganda. With reference to the socio-ecological model of resilience, the family was posited as a foundational site for nurturing girls’ resilience to discriminatory social norms and practices that sustain child marriage. The school was also noted to be a mediating site that offers support structures and acts as a springboard for positive change. The findings suggest that coordinated actions by multiple actors at the family and school level to effectively address the underlying discriminatory social norms and their manifestations in limiting girls’ capabilities have potential to enhance girls’ resilience to child marriage and promote girls’ empowerment.

Gendered Expectations: Examining How Peers Shape Female Students' Intent to Pursue STEM Fields.

Building on prior psychological and sociological research on the power of local environments to shape gendered outcomes in STEM fields, this study focuses on the critical stage of adolescence to explore the potential negative impact of exposure to exclusionary messages from peers within girls' science classrooms, as well as the positive potential impact of inclusionary messages. Specifically, utilizing longitudinal data from a diverse sample of adolescent youth, analyses examine how the presence of biased male peers, as well as confident female peers, shape girls' subsequent intentions to pursue different STEM fields, focusing specifically on intentions to pursue the male-dominated fields of computer science and engineering, as well as more gender equitable fields. Results reveal that exposure to a higher percentage of 8th grade male peers in the classroom who endorsed explicit gender/STEM stereotypes significantly and negatively predicted girls' later intentions to pursue a computer science/engineering (CS/E) major. Yet results also reveal that exposure to a higher percentage of confident female peers in the science classroom positively predicted such intentions. These results were specific to CS/E majors, suggesting that peers are an important source of messages regarding whether or not girls should pursue non-traditional STEM fields. This study calls attention to the importance of examining both positive and negative sources of influence within the local contexts where young people live and learn. Limitations and directions for future research are also discussed.

University choice: how attitudes frustrate girls' potential in STEMs

There is wide consensus about the role played by girls’ reluctance to engage with mathematics in secondary school their likelihood to obtain the higher than average salaries typically associated with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) occupations in adulthood (Xie and Shauman, 2006). Girls, who outperform their male peers in reading abilities, lag behind in mathematics whose knowledge is fundamental to access specific higher education (HE) fields of study and well remunerated jobs. Most literature examining gender differences in post compulsory education field of study has focused on maths achievement and ignored scientific literacy where negligible gender differences have been found. How can we reconcile the lack of a scientific ability gender gap with the absence of women among the population of STEM graduates? Lot of this has to do with the way girls relate to science and the way they perceive their self-efficacy. Our paper examines how students’ and parents’ attitudes to science shape girls’ and boys’ HE field of study choices taking into account maths and science ability, socio economic background and school level characteristics before students complete compulsory education. We want to understand why a 19-year-old boy and a 19-year-old girl who share similar family backgrounds and school environments, and have similar scientific and mathematics literacy levels at age 15 still make different choices in terms of their HE field of study. We aim to do so looking at their attitudes towards science measured at age 15 as well as at the role parental attitudes towards science can play. Since we do not observe parental attitudes directly we examine parental occupation. More specifically, we discern parental occupations into science and non-science related occupations and evaluate whether paternal and maternal occupation types affect girls and boys differently in their HE field of study. In addition to this, we investigate whether these factors can explain the likelihood of obtaining a STEM occupation at age 23. The importance of STEM occupations to future prosperity is well recognised (Bell et al., 2014). Increasing girls’ participation in science addresses HE equity, and is an obvious way to increase labour supply for STEM occupations. By highlighting the role of attitudes our analysis identifies a clear mechanism that can be targeted to enhance girls’ participation in non-traditional fields of education and eventually non-traditional occupations. We use data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Youth (LSAY) for the 2006 cohort (Y06). This is a 10-year cohort study administered by the Australian Department of Education, which collects detailed information primarily on respondents’ education and labour market outcomes. The first wave of the survey is drawn from the pool of 15-year-old participants in the Programme for international Student As- sessment (PISA) test.

Life Plans of Estonian Young Adults and Their Realization: The Impact of Parental Divorce in the Context of Late Socialism and the Post-Socialist Transition

Previous studies have shown a connection between parental family characteristics, young adults’ life plans and their actual family life events. However, less is known about parental family influence in the context of the latesocialist period and rapid social, economic and political change. We use data from the longitudinal survey Paths of a generation in Estonia to look at the life plans and actual life events of the students graduating from secondary schools during the Soviet period in 1983. We compare the life plans of leaving home and starting a family made during the Soviet regime to the same life events actually occurring in 1986-2005. The analyses show that only the girls from families with divorced parents plan to start their independent lives earlier than girls from families with both biological parents. On the other hand, in the plans for family formation (marriage and birth of the first child) there are no major differences between these groups. In the actual life events of girls, however, we see the influence of parental dissolution. Girls from divorced families do not plan to create a family earlier than others, but in reality they do so. The result suggests that the parental family has an important role in shaping girls’ lives in the context of the late socialist period and societal change. Boys’ life plans seem to be more influenced by their educational choices than by the parental family.

‘Power, regulation and physically active identities’: the experiences of rural and regional living adolescent girls

Drawing on interpretations of Foucault's techniques of power, we explored the discourses and power relations operative between groups of girls that appeared to influence their participation in Physical Education (PE) and outside of school in sport and physical activity (PA) in rural and regional communities. Interviews and focus groups were conducted in eight secondary schools with female students from Year 9 (n = 22) and 10 (n = 116). Dominant gendered and performance discourses were active in shaping girls’ construction of what it means to be active or ‘sporty’, and these identity positions were normalised and valued. The perceived and real threat of their peer's gaze as a form of surveillance acted to further perpetuate the power of performance discourses; whereby girls measured and (self) regulated their participation. Community settings were normalised as being exclusively for skilled performers and girls self-regulated their non-participation according to judgements made about their own physical abilities. These findings raise questions about the ways in which power relations, as forged in broader sociocultural and institutional discourse–power relations, can infiltrate the level of the PE classroom to regulate and normalise practices in relation to their, and others, PA participation.