The administration of feminism in education: revisiting and remembering narratives of gender equity and identity

ABSTRACT

This article examines challenges in writing histories of feminist reforms in schooling and educational administration. The focus is gender equity reforms in Australian schools since the 1970s, looking at how those earlier interventions are now remembered, represented and forgotten, in policy memory and collective narratives. Such feminist endeavours were part of the policy landscape and the administration of schools during the 1970s and 80s. I argue that feminist agendas can also be examined as themselves sites for managing the conduct of teachers and students and for regulating new forms of identity and social relations. These paradoxical aspects of feminist reform are analysed through a Foucauldian lens. The discussion identifies contextual themes in JEAH before considering debates within gender and feminist history. A revisiting mood has initiated a stocktake of the stories told not only about feminism but also the accounts feminism gives of itself. Extending this, I propose that critical attention to memory and the movement of received and revised historical narratives is vital for analysing the legacies of feminist reforms and how they might be (re)animated in the present. More broadly, it is suggested that attention to policy memory offers fruitful directions for historical studies of educational administration.

KEYWORDS:

• Memory
• second wave feminism
• gender history
• gender and education
• feminist reform and education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Julie McLeod is Professor of Curriculum, Equity and Social Change in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. She researches in the history and sociology of education, with a focus on youth, gender and social change. She was an editor of the journal Gender and Education (2011–2016), and held an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (2012–2016). Her books include Rethinking Youth Wellbeing: Critical Perspectives, (2015); The Promise of the New and Genealogies of Educational Reform (2015); Researching Social Change: Qualitative Approaches (2009); and Making Modern Lives: Subjectivity, Schooling and Social Change (2006). www.juliemcleod.net

ORCID

Julie McLeod http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4083-8700

Notes

1. My investments in these matters are many. ‘Gender and education’ is a field characterised by diverse interests and expertise, where action, advocacy, practice, theory, policy, scholarship and career-building collide. I have recently concluded a term as a co-editor of the journal Gender and Education (2010–2016), during which we confronted the task of defining and working out what constitutes the field of gender and education, including what has come before and possible future directions. Added to this, is my involvement as a former gender equity practitioner and schoolteacher, and then an academic in Women's and Gender Studies before working in university departments of Education. My research and intellectual formation was grounded in the invention of gender and education as a site of scholarly, ethical and political endeavour and the enthusiasm and ambivalences of that work.

2. Lindsay Thompson, Legislative Assembly, Victoria, Debates, 20 October 1977, vol.334, p. 10598.

3. The terms of reference for the Victorian Committee included investigations of ‘the extent and effect of’: (a) language and imagery in books conveying arbitrary stereotypes of men and women; (b) differing sets of rules, rewards and punishments applied to boys and girls(c) the segregation of desks, classes and activities; (d) different standards of conduct and dress; (e) absence of female role models in positions of seniority and high status; (f) time tabling arrangements and psychological pressures which effectively deny or inhibit participation in areas in which members of a particular sex have not traditionally participated. In particular, the Committee was asked to make recommendations on: (i) What positive measures could be implemented to encourage girls to study a wider range of subjects and aspire to a wider range of occupations, to higher education, and to positions of authority; (ii) Whether vocational guidance is biased, and how such guidance can be given so that the whole range of opportunities is presented to members of both sexes without assumptions as to what is suitable for either sex; (iii) What alterations could be made to the structure of education to keep career options open for as long as possible’. Victorian Equal Opportunity Resource Centre, Administrative Records, Victorian Department of Education, Melbourne.

4. For interviews with the Project Officers involved with early school and community based projects see, Ms. Muffet, no. 3, August, 1979, pp. 10–13. Ms Muffet (1979–1992) was the magazine of the three Victorian Teacher Unions’ (VSTA, TTAV (later the TTUV), VTU) Joint Women's and Anti-Sexism committee.

5. For examples of reports and projects from other states see, Judy Hebblethwaite and Sue Edmonds, ‘Improving Education for Girls’, Second Report to the Schools Commission, Curriculum Centre, Education Department of Tasmania, October, 1978; Sylvia J. Innes, ‘Sexism and Schooling’, A Report from the Queensland Teachers Union Women's Action Programme in the Schools, compiled by the Co-ordinator, December 1976; Patricia Arbib, ‘Contemporary Issues, Number 15: Sexism and Schools’, New South Wales Department of Education, April 1978; Rosemary Richards, ‘Sexism in Education’, A Report to the ACT Schools Authority, prepared by the Co-ordinator for the Elimination of Sexism in Education, October 1979; ‘Sexism in Education’, Report of a Conference at Wattle Park Teachers Centre, Education Department of South Australia, September 15–19, 1975; ‘Elimination of Sexism in Education’, 1980 Seminar Papers, Australian Teachers’ Federation, ACT, April 1980. Victorian Teachers Union (now the Federated Teachers Union of Victoria), Series 17/11/4, Box 1, File 1975–1977; Series 17/11/4, Box 1, File 1978–1980; Series 2/300/3, Box 1, File 1979–1980. See also the administrative files of the Victorian Equal Opportunity Resource Centre, 1980–1994, Victorian Department of Education, Melbourne – records since dispersed.

6. Victorian Committee on Equal Opportunity in Schools, 1977, Victorian committee on equal opportunity in schools: report to the Premier. Melbourne, respectively Appendix I and II.

7. Ibid., pp.1–6, pp.7–25.

8. Education Department of Victoria, 1980, Equal opportunity and the elimination of sexism, a policy statement of the Education Department of Victoria. Melbourne.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article was supported by funding from the Australian Research Council, Future Fellowship, ‘Youth Identity and Educational Change in Australia since 1950: Digital Archiving, Re-using Qualitative Data and Histories of the Present’ [grant number FT110100646, Julie McLeod].