The policyscape of transgender equality and gender diversity in the Western Australian education system: a case study

ABSTRACT

In this paper, our purpose is to investigate policy informing texts and discourses referencing transgender equality and gender diversity in the Western Australian education system. Drawing on scholarship from transgender, queer and policy studies, we highlight the interplay of progressive and conservative forces affecting the Western Australian education system’s commitment to supporting transgender and gender non-binary students. Based on a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) project, the paper constructs a Western Australian case study, which threads together the critical examination of policy informing texts, qualitative interview data and media discourses surrounding public narratives, such as the Safe School Coalition Australia’s attempt to implement a school program, which builds awareness about gender and sexual diversity. Emerging through the material, discursive and spatial elements of locales and networks, our case study has the potential to deepen knowledge regarding the heuristic capacity of employing policyscape as an analytic category. In this vein, we draw attention to the possibilities and challenges for re-conceptualizing gender and providing trans-affirmative school spaces that promote equality.

KEYWORDS:

• Transgender
• cisgenderism
• gender diversity
• trans-inclusion
• critical policy analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Wendy Cumming-Potvin (PhD) is an Associate Professor at Murdoch University in Western Australia, as well as an Affiliate Member at the International Gender Studies Centre, Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. Her research interests are in gender democratization, human rights and literacy learning. Wendy's forthcoming book, with Professor Wayne Martino, is LGBTQI Allies and Participatory Collaborative Research: Education, Advocacy, and Activism (Routledge).

Wayne Martino (PhD) is a professor of Equity and Social Justice Education in the Faculty of Education and an affiliate member of the Department of Women's Studies and Feminist Research at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. His research interests include addressing queer and transgender informed perspectives on gender justice and democratization in the education system.

Notes

1 LGBTQI is an umbrella term referring to Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Queer and Intersex people. We acknowledge that there is diversity and even controversy in relation to such terminology, which is continually evolving. We also recognize that inequity can exist outside and within LGBTQI communities, with transgender people often experiencing the highest levels of discrimination and exclusion.

2 Cisgender refers to an individual whose gender identity aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth. Cisgenderism refers to prejudice against those groups or individuals who are not cisgender.

Additional information

Funding

This manuscript is based on analysis and research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) [Supporting transgender and gender minority youth in the school system: Investigating policy and practice, 435-2015-0077], Principal Investigator, Wayne Martino and Collaborator, Wendy Cumming-Potvin. A version of the manuscript was also presented at the AERA conference in San Antonio, Texas, 27 April–1 May 2017.