Sexism in Schools

One of my primary areas of research interest is the influence of sexism in media propaganda upon the self-esteem of Black American teen girls and young women.  Queries into propaganda research and the influence on gender and racist stereotypes have revealed no direct studies of the subject or any related subjects. There is an abundance of quantitative and qualitative research into the influence of stereotypes, of sexism and racism embedded in the English language (Sunderland, 2006), and even of the influence of sexist media programming and advertising upon women and (Sunderland, 2006).  However, I am unable to find any research that explicitly identifies this as unintentional propaganda (Doob, 1966) or as “penetration of an ideology by means of its sociological context” (Ellul, 1969). There is a gap between media and propaganda and between sexism and propaganda that this research hopes to connect and fill.

One of the first things many women do when they get home from work is to take off their uncomfortable bra. For these women who suffer from bras, there’s good news. Change is busting out at the workplace that will create happier, healthier working women.

Legal decisions are concluding that employers cannot force women to wear clothing that men do not have to wear for the same job, just because they are female. This means the bra usage should be optional at work, and there needs to be a change in work culture to accommodate bra-free women.

Özet Erken Cumhuriyet dönemi, kadınların cinsiyet rollerinde ve toplumsal konumlarında önemli değişimlerin yaşandığı bir dönemdir. Kadınlar özellikle İkinci Meşrutiyet döneminde güçlenen kadın hareketinin ve Batılılaşmanın son adımı olarak görülen yeni rejimin kadın konusundaki perspektifinin bir sonucu olarak kamuda görünürlük kazanmış ve geleneksel rollerinin dışındaki rol ve yükümlülükler üstlenmişlerdir. Hal böyleyken kolektif bilinçaltını yansıttığını söyleyebileceğimiz edebiyatta oldukça farklı bir manzara hâkimdir. Kadınların toplumda değişen rollerine ilişkin kuvvetli bir direnç, tehdit ve hizalama ve nihayet gülünçleştirme ve alay şeklinde görünürlük kazanır. Bu makalenin amacı, erken Cumhuriyet dönemi romanlarındaki kadın imgesini, dil ve cinsiyet ilişkisi merkezinde ortaya koymaktır. Bu kapsamda romanlarda cinsiyete bağlı konumlandırmalar tespit edilmiş, cinsiyetçi dil kullanımları ortaya konmuştur. İnceleme kültürde ve onun içinde bir yapı olarak dilde cinsiyetçiliğin cinsiyetinden ya da ideolojisinden bağımsız olarak hemen bütün yazarları az ya da çok etkilediğini ancak bu değişkenlere bağlı olarak farkı şekillerde dışavurulduğunu göstermektedir.

Introductory courses dealing with sex, gender and sexuality are usually quite biased, going as far as to deny the reality of biology. Drawing on the Catholic tradition (Aquinas), this article presents an accessible argument aimed at restoring deliberative balance in the classroom.

ABSTRACT This article investigates how the male students of the Vancouver Technical School (VTS) learned to become citizens of Canada and the British Empire, focusing particularly on the ways in which the boys re-imagined modern men's relationships with women and femininity. The 1920s climate of nation-building, women's increased presence in the paid workforce, and advances in industrial capitalism meant that the cornerstone of the VTS's male citizenship project was the construction of males as worker-citizens. In particular, the technical school became a place to reassert men's monopoly on the " breadwinner " image. This meant that boys were socialized to perceive women and femininity's encroachments on male spaces as threats to their own masculine development — and thus as dangerous to the social order as a whole. While this often manifested itself as subtle wariness of deviant masculinity, it could also mean overt chauvinism and misogyny. RÉsUMÉ Cet article explore comment les élèves masculins de la Vancouver Technical School (VTS) ont appris à devenir des citoyens du Canada et de l'Empire britannique en s'intéressant particu-lièrement aux moyens qui permettaient aux jeunes hommes de réinventer leurs relations avec les femmes et la féminité. Durant les années 1920, dans l'esprit de l'édification d'une identité nationale, la présence accrue des femmes sur le marché du travail et les avancées du capitalisme industriel, tout cela signifiait que la pierre angulaire du projet de formation à la masculinité de la VTS s'orienta vers celle de citoyens travailleurs. L'école technique, en particulier, préconisait l'image de l'homme seul pourvoyeur du foyer. Par conséquent, les garçons étaient éduqués à percevoir les femmes et leurs empiètements dans l'univers masculin comme des menaces à leur propre masculinité en développement et par conséquent comme un danger à l'ordre social en général. Cette attitude a souvent été perçue comme une manifestation subtile de masculinité déviante, mais elle pourrait aussi être interprétée comme du chauvinisme et de la misogynie mal déguisés.

The article reviews the book entitled 'A Feminist Manifesto for Education' by Miriam E. David which highlights issues of gender and sexual relations regarding feminist and educational research underliying the importance of a manifesto for education to develoop a more equal and gender-conscious education system.

Se exponen las condiciones en que se desarrollan las relaciones de poder y la legitimación del discurso dominante en el desarrollo de la actividad profesional de los académicos de la Universidad de los Pueblos del Sur (UNISUR). Para lo cual se analiza la estructura discursiva de las situaciones comunicativas clave -como las asambleas- que permiten articular y explicar, en relación con el contexto social, cómo se desarrollan los mecanismos de construcción de la legitimidad del discurso dominante, así como las formas de manifestación de las inconformidades y la formación de discursos alternativos. Se considera que la estructuración del discurso tiene su parte medular en el discurso de género que fomenta prácticas sexistas en los procesos de trabajo y en la organización del trabajo. En este trabajo se expone la forma en que, en un contexto específico, se realiza estar estructuración del discurso y se realiza el discurso de género en la actividad académico-administrativa de la UNISUR.

En los inicios del siglo XXI, las conquistas en las libertades y derechos de las mujeres están siendo contestadas con nuevos imaginarios y violencias machistas que se unen a las viejas subordinaciones. La juventud actual, nacida en sociedades en las que las discriminaciones hacia las mujeres no son tan visibles como en el pasado o en otros lugares, con frecuencia incorpora estos comportamientos acríticos y reactivos ante la igualdad de género. Los centros de educación secundaria, fruto de la falta de recursos y de este ambiente contestatario, se ven a menudo superados en su función educativa para el respeto entre iguales. Esta comunicación pretende profundizar en las resistencias y necesidades para una docencia secundaria inclusiva. El conocimiento de los estudios de las mujeres y del género en la Sociología y las investigaciones feministas en las Ciencias de la Educación contribuyen a abordar los retos que presenta este ambiente reactivo, en uno de los niveles educativos menos estudiados al respecto. Este análisis se complementa con entrevistas al profesorado de un centro de Educación Secundaria que ponen de manifiesto los obstáculos a una docencia feminista y permiten formular propuestas para superar el androcentrismo de nuestra cultura escolar. Los conocimientos aportados por el feminismo académico a la Sociología de la Educación pueden considerarse un buen antídoto ante el actual escenario de reacción patriarcal.

This talk will report on an extensive fieldwork carried out in Polish state-run schools. The data we draw on were collected in the course of a British Council-funded project entitled “Investigating Gender and Sexuality in the ESL classroom: Raising publishers', teachers' and students' awareness” and comprise audio-recorded EFL classroom interactions, focus groups with teachers and students as well as in-depth interviews with Ministry of Education reviewers.

In this talk, we demonstrate how gender matters in a fieldworker’s professional experience in the present-day Poland. Here, we pay attention to the socio-political climate and ‘moral panics’ (Cohen 1972) surrounding the “ideology of gender” (P. ideologia gender) (see Pawelczyk and Pakuła 2015) and their impact on research opportunities/possibilities. We also aim to show gender dynamics within a classroom setting and how gender (and sexuality) is made relevant during classroom practices as well as during extra-curricular ‘educational chitchat’ (Pawelczyk and Pakuła 2015). Further insight into how gender matters in the Polish EFL classroom is offered via focus groups that served to uncover students’ and teachers’ perspectives. Finally, gender-related language policies are accessed through in-depth interviews with Ministry of Education reviewers. In order to analyse the gathered data, we utilise methods and insights of (feminist) critical discourse analysis (Lazar 2014) critical pedagogies (Norton and Toohey eds. 2004; Monchinski 2008) and queer linguistics (Motschenbacher 2011; Nelson 2007, 2009). We intend to point to the importance of ‘gender’ as a crucial concept in fieldwork and how this fact is linguistically manifested in the studied contexts. The analyses also show how categorization of women and men in essentialist ways -- during classroom exchanges -- is commonly drawn on in various aspects of teaching EFL in Poland. In this way EFL teachers close down discussion of gender and sexual diversity and instead impose dominant categories of femininity and masculinity as well as promote heteronormativity and, potentially, sexism and heterosexism (Queen 2006).