The emperor has no clothes: examining the impossible relationship between gendered and academic identities in middle school students

Abstract

Despite the social equity work that still needs to be done in schools and society, many researchers, politicians, and social commentators claim that gender equity work in schools has been accomplished. These people assume that actions in school lead to gender equity outside it. But, there may be two problems with this assumption: 1) achieving equity in academic work may mask still‐inequitable gender work in schools and 2) girls’ and boys’ equal academic achievement does not promise social equality, inside or outside schools. The following study offers evidence from a recent middle school study that reveals how children’s gender identities are naturalized as neutral “student” identities, making the effects of children’s gender identity work invisible. This author argues that schooling at best maintains the inequity of the American gender status quo, and perhaps may work to actually lessen chances for women and men’s equitable life opportunities.

Notes

1. K‐12 schooling means Kindergarten through to Grade 12 in the United States’ system of schooling; it encompasses children from roughly ages 5 through to 18.

2. Sage Creek School District and all names in this study are pseudonyms in order to protect the participants’ privacy.

3. I disagree that poststructural theory must be deemed ‘feminist’ in order to be used to understand power relations between men and women in society; the definition of poststructuralism already takes power into account. While I absolutely agree that feminism is a politics that should and does have a place within poststructural analysis, I do not believe the theory itself is inherently feminist or masculinist. Each time poststructuralism is used within a study, its political representations should be redefined. By combining poststructural theory with an inquiry of gender and schooling, this study sets the stage for understanding the construction of students’ gender identities in school and consequently how they might be related to the performance of gender equity outside of school.

4. See Niemi (2001) for extensive description and analysis of the competing student identities in this study.