Gender identity and schooling

• Gender identity


  A person's internal sense of being male, female, or another gender
• Schooling


  • Pupils' school experiences may reinforce their gender and sexual identities
• Connell (1995) argues that school reproduces 'hegemonic masculinity'-the dominance of heterosexual masculine identity and subordination of female and gay identities
• Feminists argue that experiences in school act as a form of social control to reproduce patriarchy-male domination and female subordination
• Verbal abuse


  1. Name-calling puts girls down if they behave in certain ways

  2. Acts as a form of social control to make them conform to male expectations
• Verbal abuse


  • Boys call girls 'slags' if they appear sexually available, but there is no equivalent term for males
  • Working-class boys call other working-class boys who work hard 'dickhead achievers'
• Male teachers reinforced gender identities by telling boys off for behaving like girls' and ignoring boys' verbal abuse of girls
• Male gaze


  A form of social control where male pupils and teachers look girls up and down as sexual objects
• Boys who don't participate in the male gaze may be labelled 'gay' - also a form of social control
• Double standards exist when one set of moral standards is applied to one group but a different set to another group
• Double standards


  • Boys boast about their own sexual exploits, but label girls' negatively for the same behaviour
• Female peer groups: policing identity


  1. Working-class girls gain symbolic capital by performing a hyper-heterosexual identity

  2. Female peers police this identity and girls risk being called a "tramp" if they fail to conform

  3. Working-class girls faced a tension between an idealised feminine identity (loyalty to the peer group) and a sexualised identity (competing for boys)

  4. 'Slut shaming' and 'frigid shaming' are social control labels with which they police each other's identities
• Even though girls achieve better than before, it doesn't mean all girls are successful, there's a social class difference in girls' achievement
• In 2013, only 40.6% of girls eligible for FSM achieved 5 A-C GCSEs, compared to 67.5% of girls who did and weren't on FSM
• Symbolic capital


  Status, recognition and sense of worth we get from others
• Archer (2010) found that the girls gained symbolic capital from their peers by performing their working-class feminine identities
• This caused conflict with the school, stopping them from gaining educational capital (qualifications) & economic capital (good careers)
• Archer found strategies girls followed to create a valued sense of self: adopting hyper-heterosexual female identity, being loud & having a boyfriend
• Some working-class girls still do succeed and go onto higher education, but they're still disadvantaged by their gender and class identity
• Evans (2005) found working-class girls wanted to go to university to increase earning power, but to give back to their families instead of for themselves
• Economic necessity was another reason for staying at home, as cost/year of debt were worries of working-class pupils when applying to university
• Archer shows that it wasn't just an economic choice, but one that reflects their working-class feminine identity and habitus by remaining local
• Working-class girls' dilemma


  Either gain symbolic capital from peers by conforming to a hyper-heterosexual female identity, or gain educational capital by rejecting their working-class identity and conforming to the school's middle-class ideal female pupil
• Hyper-heterosexual feminine identity


  The set of time/activities constituting an ideal, glamorous femininity (e.g. one girl spent £40 a week on her appearance)
• Archer argues that working-class female identities and educational success conflict with each other, and working-class girls' investment in their female identity is the cause of their underachievement
• Their performance of this identity got them status from their peers, and avoided being singled out for wearing the wrong brand
• However, it conflicted with the school rules, leading to being in trouble for lots of makeup, jewellery etc. and teachers saw these as a distraction from education
• This caused the school to 'other' the girls and define them as incapable of educational success and therefore undeserving of respect
• Having boyfriends gave working-class girls symbolic capital, but it got in the way of education and lowered their aspirations such as higher education and masculine subjects like science
• Instead, these girls aspired to settle down, have children and work local jobs like childcare
• Some working-class girls adapted loud identities - being outspoken, independent and outspoken
• This fails to conform to the school's ideal girl pupil who is passive and submissive, causing conflict with teachers and seeing their behaviour as aggressive instead of assertive
• This examines the different ways pupils' experiences in school help them construct and reinforce their gender/sexual identities
• Connell (1995) - these experiences contribute to hegemonic masculinity- the dominance of heterosexual masculine identity and the subordination of female & gay ones
• The male gaze


  The visual aspect in the way pupils control each other's identities
• Mac an Ghaill - this is the male gaze - how male teachers/pupils look at girls, see them as sexual objects and make judgements about their appearance
• Male gaze is a form of surveillance that dominant heterosexual masculinity is reinforced and femininity is devalued
• This is one way boys reinforce their masculinity, bragging about sexual conquests and telling stories if they don't, they risk being labelled as gay
• Lees (1993) - for gender identity, she found a double standard of sexual morality. Boys boast about sexual exploits but call girls slags for not having a steady boyfriend/dressing a certain way
• Feminists see this double standard of boys gaining status from the same acts/boasts that girls are shamed for as patriarchal ideology. It justifies male power and devalues women