This article draws on a case study of 15 boys aged between 13 and 14 years who attend an urban ethno-centric community school located in Melbourne, Australia. The study investigated how the boys' constructions of masculinity were mediated by a strong connectedness to their Greek cultural traditions and ideals. Data generated from focus group…

Despite the assertion that higher education is becoming increasingly "feminised" and that male students are the relative losers, gendered meanings continue to permeate higher education in ways that mean that the recognition of women's experiences are frequently marginalised. Our paper reports on research designed to explore student participation…

Since 1980 the Swedish compulsory school curriculum has stipulated that Physical Education (PE) should be taught co-ed and schools are legally required to promote gender equality. The latest evaluation of PE in Sweden shows that more boys than girls ranked the subject highly and that they had a higher level of activity during the PE lessons.…

This article uses three frames of analysis, each with gendered implications, to interpret the author's narrative of experience as a department chair (head of department) in a Canadian university from 1999 to 2002. The narrative is based not only on memory but on transcripts of interviews conducted with the author at various points during her term…

Official statistics from several resources in Iran indicate that female enrollment and achievement in Iranian universities has recently exceeded that of male students. Despite the fact that a religious government has been ruling the country for three decades, and despite many regulations against women, Iranian women have managed to overcome…

This article draws data from an innovative research project tracing former refugee teachers who received teacher training from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) over a 17-year-long education programme in refugee camps in Guinea (1991-2008). The research traced repatriated refugee teachers who had returned to their homes in Sierra Leone and…

The present article examines the situation of girls in Spanish academic secondary education during the first Francoism. It outlines the measures introduced by the Franco Regime that maintained the traditional access for girls to the same academic curriculum followed by boys, although in separate schools. Later, it examines the various projects put…

Sexual and gendered violence in the education sector is a worldwide concern, but in the UK it has been marginalised in research and policy. In this paper we present findings from the National Union of Students' study "Hidden Marks", the first nationwide survey of women students' experiences of violence. This research established high levels of…

This manuscript draws from a 4-year feminist ethnographic study of eight young girls and their caretakers in a high-poverty, predominantly White, urban community in the USA. Themes of mothers, mothering, and motherhood were dominant across 4 years of data generation and in this article I focus on the girls' and mothers' narratives to explore…

A central theme that dominates most studies on gender and leadership in education is the emerging tendency towards mitigating pervasive forms of discrimination against females. Yet, women still remain, for the most part, a minority within leadership positions in education. Despite policy initiatives emphasising gender equity, discrimination,…

This paper explores how sexually marginalised black high-school students from conservative schooling contexts in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, experience schooling. It draws on queer theories through life narratives in presenting findings from a small-scale interventionist project designed by the author. The project involved 14 participants…

Boys are commonly associated with disruptive behaviour and physical fighting at school. Explanations for this behaviour range from naturalistic "boys will be boys" approaches to analyses which focus on the social construction of masculinity and emphasise the gendered nature of boys' behaviour. Whichever view holds sway, it is often assumed that…

This article explores issues of gender and race in the academic careers of female sociologists in South Africa by focusing on selected women who left academic departments in higher education institutions. In-depth interviews were conducted with 11 participants who left various Sociology departments at different times. It was found that young black…

Gender-based violence is a reality in many societies and is linked to the spread of HIV and AIDS. There have been numerous studies that have attempted to acquire an understanding of the breadth and depth of the issues around gender-based violence. However, one area that has received scant attention is the voices of women teachers. Thus, in this…

This article draws on the five other papers from South Africa in this issue of "Gender and Education" to consider how Southern theory has been developed and is developing in relation to gender and education in South Africa. We argue that Southern theory is not an on-the-shelf solution to global geopolitical inequalities but a work in process that…