China has seen dramatic transformations in ideals of femininity since the 1970s. This article explores what it entails for young women of the only-child generation to construct "modern" womanhood within a context of multiple and conflicting gender discourses. Based on life history interviews in Beijing, the article shows that both a…

This paper turns to debates in post-critical public pedagogy to focus on how a small body of films might potentially work as vehicles for teaching and learning about youth, gender and space. It is argued that representations of the rural shape what is possible for girlhood, being both enabling and constraining for the subject. Framed by discourses…

In this article I explore two questions -- how does, Thatho, a transgendered life orientation teacher enact, resist and reproduce dominant understandings of gender and sexuality in terms of his own identity and practice; and what specific possibilities, challenges and resistances exist for a transgender educator in the rural. Using life-history…

Research indicates that transgender individuals frequently experience marginalisation and interpersonal victimisation within college and university settings. Missing from the literature is a discussion of what can be done to address such patterns in higher education, based upon empirical data gathered from transgender and gender non-conforming…

Employing social constructivist theories and the concept of abjection from gender studies, this article examines how and why a group of low-income, USA-born Dominican and Puerto Rican middle-school boys constructed masculine identities by invoking and repudiating homosexuality. Ethnographic data from a 2.5-year study indicate that the abjection of…

This paper focuses on rural and indigenous girls and their mothers in Peru, examining how they position schooling and education in their current life and future aspirations, in order to better understand girls' increasing participation in education. It is argued here that the high educational aspirations girls and their families have are not only…

The ninth international Gender and Education Association Conference "Compelling Diversities, Educational Intersections" hosted by the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research, London South Bank University engages with key debates surrounding the interplay between dynamics of education, work, employment and society in the context of…

Whilst it is known that Caribbean girls academically outperform boys, much less is known about their experiences of school. This paper, based on qualitative research in Antiguan secondary schools, is concerned with who girls can "be" in their school contexts and the consequences of positioning oneself (or being positioned) within…

In this paper I seek to address a series of tensions in the ways we think, write and speak about gender in classrooms and playgrounds, and in the language we use to describe children and their behaviour. I shall examine some of the concepts we use for describing gender relations among children and consider the extent to which they are still…

The level of public interest in what has variously been called "raunch culture", "pornification" or more broadly "sexualisation" of culture, has created new opportunities for enterprising women. In recent years, a number of immensely popular books have emerged raising concerns about girls and sexualisation by female authors across Western nations…

Using data from a 3-year ethnographic study in US early childhood classrooms, I examine two kindergarten boys' classroom play with their favourite Disney Princess transmedia to see how they negotiated gender identity layers clustered in the franchise's commercially given storylines and consumer expectations. This analysis contributes necessarily…

In 2005, a feminist educational organisation in the USA for young women, ages 14-21, adopted a policy in order to clarify their target constituency of girls and young women. The policy defined "girls and young women" not as a designation associated with fixed biological sex, but instead as a self-determined identity label creating an explicit…

This paper derives from a larger study, looking at how students in one secondary school in Ontario problematised and understood gender expression. This study applies a Foucaultian analytic framework of disciplinary space to the problem of the bathroom in public schools. It focuses specifically on the surveillance and regulation of gendered bodies…

Nigeria's diverse cultures, religions and political parties appear to be unified by a strong taboo against homosexuality and gay rights. This has affected academic research, HIV/AIDS programmes, and sexuality education, all which commonly show evidence of heterosexism, self-censorship and even explicit condemnations of homosexuality. Yet a…

Mass-marketed teen chick lit has become a publishing phenomenon and has begun to attract critical interest among children's literature scholars. Much of this critical work, however, has shied away from robust critical assessment of the postfeminist conditions informing the production and reception of young adult series like Private, Gossip Girl…