Transcript Slide 1

Gender Identity Construction in
Primary Schools
Oomandra Nath Varma
February 2010
Id: 9603163
Supervisor: Dr Prof Sheila Bunwaree
Introduction
Introduction
•Background to the study
•Justification
Global Gender Gap Index
Mauritius 85th among 128 countries (covering
90% of the world’s population) WTF, 2007.
•Challenging gender inequality is equivalent to challenging
“one of the most deeply entrenched of all human
attitudes”.
Gender inequality
The facts
Scores based on the analysis of 128 countries, constituting 90 percent
of the total world’s population
Source: The Global Gender Gap Report, 2007, p.118
Long term consequences of gender
inequality
 “Countries that do not capitalize on the full potential of one
half of their societies are misallocating their human resources
and undermining their competitive potential… Even in light
of heightened international awareness of gender issues, it is a
disturbing reality that no country has yet managed to
eliminate the gender gap” (Lopez-Claros & Zahidi, WEF,
2005, p1; WEF, 2007, p. 19-20).
The problem worldwide
 “…even in developed countries whose dependence on
knowledge industries and knowledge workers is large and
growing, there are still significant gaps in the job
opportunities for women and in the wages paid to women
compared to their male counterparts and these gaps are even
larger in most developing countries.” (WEF, pg. 20)
Lack of commitment to equality
Awareness of the fact that “women account for half of the
world’s population and half of its talent” and that “the costs of
not developing and using this talent are huge” does not seem
to provide enough argument to warrant a translation of the
commitment to equality into reality in key spheres such as
political empowerment and economic participation (pg. 20).
Why gender?
This research is based on the
contention that we need to probe
further for understanding ‘gender’
dimensions of inequality in society,
and thereby assess the consequences
that gender has in determining the life
chances of any individual.
The school as one of the main
agencies of reproduction is
primarily responsible for the
perpetuation of the status-quo
School as a perpetrator of inequality
Gendered
outcome of
schooling
Positive
evaluation of
masculine
practices
Children
developing a
multiple sense of
self
School as
strategic
agencies
Effects of older
cultural
practices on
current social
routines
(Bourdieu)
Successful
negotiation of
position of
dominance
Social actions
reinforce
dominant
patriarchal
structures
(Giddens)
Theoretical background
Some
theoretical basis
The situation
• Schools as arenas of oppression - Freire
School as state ideological apparatuses (Althusser)
School as instrument of structures of inequality (Bourdieu)
Secondary effects of stratification (Boudon)
• Equality of access v/s parity- but parity is not equal to equality
UNESCO target 2015 seems unattainable
• Should we therefore go beyond the mere consideration of access to schools
• We seem to be playing the game of “safe Patriarchy”- that is, failure to raise the real
question; and play it safe by raising questions that does not question the basis of inequality.
Some questions • Ability of some agents to get their way through without raising consciousness of the ‘crowd’
Focus of the study
Main focus
Analysing the
hidden processes
• Gender identity construction
• Primary schools
• Hidden mechanisms and processes within schools
• Understanding the power of the ‘informal organisation’ and how it is present among children, i.e.
how children’s construction of the informal structure of authority and power.
• Children as thinking and acting individuals
• Active agent in development of gendered power structure- the dominant v/s ‘the compliant’
• Existing conflicts between egalitarianism and inequality.
Discovering the
child as agent • Failure of schools to be sites of change and emancipation
The child as an active agent
• Social actors inhabit a universe of social ‘meanings’ and that social occurrences
must be explained primarily as the outcome of actors’ ‘meanings’, that is,
beliefs, motives, purposes, reasons, etc that lead to actions.
• Child as an agent that help to develop, maintain and perpetuate the process
• Context and perception of the teaching profession and teaching as ‘accomplice’
to maintaining inequality.
Key objectives and questions
Key objectives
Key questions
Key
assumption
• To understand the context of Mauritian primary schooling and how children interacting in such contexts
develop gendered identities that go unacknowledged or yet not understood despite a semblance of
understanding.
• How are gendered differences created and maintained within the school?
• What are the happenings and events in schools that are significant determinants of gender identity, yet not
researched in primary schools?
• How can events and happenings in schools that amplify discriminatory gender practices in primary
schooling be understood?
• It is assumed that a number of events and happenings that have significant influences in the lives of the
child are ignored by adults due to a power relationship between adults and children , and the inability of
the latter to engage in a reflective relation with the child.
Tentative explanation of the process
• The need to understand how the context, both physical and social, official and informal, in which
children are schooled, are instrumental in the perpetuation of certain dysfunctional consequences.
This is due to lack of ‘gender consciousness’ on the part of significant adults in the school.
• (dysfunctional: Any social activity seen as making a negative contribution to the maintenance or effective
working of a functioning social system. This definition is derived essentially from the functionalist
perspective. However, the concept is used in this research to refer to the negative consequences of certain
institutional arrangements that may be adverse to the functioning of the system as well as to the actors within
the system).
• This issue becomes more pressing in the light of serious concerns expressed by writers in the
African context.
• Role of the strong patriarchal ideology and feminization of poverty that prevail in the African
continent, including Mauritius,
Why this research?
• Leach (2003, p.8,9) states that “…we need to engage in gender analysis of all aspects of educational
provision, whether these are policies, institutions, curricula, teaching approaches, or forms of assessment.”
• We need to become more fully aware of the ways in which our society creates, nurtures and amplifies
gender identities and along with it inequalities that are taken for granted and viewed as normal.
• There has been a great deal of educational research in the developed world around gender issues in
schools, and the role of the school in socializing girls and boys to accept adult roles and patterns of
behaviour that comply with dominant social norms, including expectations of appropriate female and male
occupations….Research in schools in developing countries is very limited” (Leach, 2003, p. 8)
Specificity of the research
Pro-feminist
activism
Against the
comfortable
bandwagon
Uncovering the
blinded nonawareness
• This research seeks to fill an important gap by making the cause of
gender equality a concern of men as well.
• situate the need to clearly identify the problem rather than going
with the bandwagon that seems to be the case with a number of
discussions on the issue of gender and education today.
• To uncover, what I would call the “blinded non awareness” of
avenues of discriminatory gender identity construction in primary
schooling.
Approach to the research
Questioning
mainstream research
Methodological
choices: sampling
The case studyjustification
• Has research in the conventional manner, that is, research of
mainstream happenings of schooling been responsible for neglect of
important aspects of gender identity construction in primary schools.?
• Illustrates the importance of sampling the right settings, event,
processes and actors
• Though epistemological opportunity seems small on representational
ground, he argues it is “better to learn a lot from an atypical case than a
little from a seemingly typical case” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, p. 446).
Justification of the methodology
Case Study
Advantages
Further
justifications
• Powerful tool for refuting an overgeneralisation
• Even if our sample is not necessarily representative of the Mauritian school altogether, the exceptional case
can still be valuable for action as it will lead to effectively questioning of overgeneralizations.
• allows maximum possibility to ‘infiltrate’ the context and to uncover the day to day happenings as a first
hand occurring
• case study also allows a multi-perspectival analysis
• gives a voice to the powerless and voiceless (Feagin, Orum, & Sjoberg, 1991)
• “empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomena within its real life context, especially when
the boundaries between phenomena and context are not clearly evident” (Yin, 1994, p. 13).
• It allows immersion in a context and the production of thick description as well as a breadth of coverage of
a single case that also has heuristic value.
The sample
• Merriam (1998) defines the case. The case is “one simple entity around which there are boundaries….The
case could be a person such as a student, a teacher, a principal, a program, a group such as a class, a school,
a community, a specific policy and soon… (p.27).
The case
Our main
sample
Validating
sample
• The main setting: One school with an adequate mix of high, average and low achieving students.
• The school chosen has a fairly well representative profile of pupils, ranging from low to high achievers.
• Though the case is singular, there is also within-case sampling (of ‘hidden’ events, processes).
• Three other schools were chosen: one high achieving school, one at the upper end of the high achieving
group and one school of the same nature and characteristic as the main school chosen for this research.
• However, these other settings did not break the boundary of the ‘case’ school, but rather helped to
reinforce the strength of the ‘case’ to reveal the reality of the system, and not to be just a ‘case apart’.
Analysis
• The outcome of case study must also be emphasized at the start. Rather than a search for cause, more emphasis
will be placed on coincidence of events, situational and interrelated events, contingencies rather than causes, thus
a descriptive presentation of diverse aspects of the case. This way of proceeding and analysing is also advocated by
Kendall & Wickham (2000) who advocate a search for contingencies instead of causes in their explanation of
Foucault’s methods. It seeks to establish how events can be complex relations between other events
• Organised around issues it will seek to draw the complex relationship around the research questions asked. For
this approach to be successful, it will be appropriate to use what is called the “storytelling” approach. This will
bring me closer to the main aim of the study: to attempt an interpretive study which highlights meanings held by
key actors in the field of the research. The stories will seek to be emphatic and respectful of each person’s realities
Presenting
findings as ‘story’ with the researcher deciding what will be the stories that will be included in the report.
Triangulation
• To reduce likelihood of misinterpretation, various procedures will be employed. This procedure is commonly
called triangulation. Triangulation offers “a process for multiple perceptions to clarify meaning, verifying the
repeatability of an observation or interpretation…
The evidences: the power of the “hidden” elements shaping
gendered identity
Shaping the world of Gender
inequality
Teachers as active agents perpetuating inequality,
through ‘blinded awareness’. Semi-structured
interviews- non participant observation
Role of textbooks as “active instruments of
inequality”- Content Analysis
Discovering the Children world through their
drawing> : Art based methods
The time outside classroom: recess time as arena for
laying the basis for patriarchy: on participant
observation- semi-structured interviews
How does gendered identity construction become an
inevitable power struggle as “childhood politics” develops
as a foundation for an unequal world?
The context
The age of
inevitability