Gendering corporal punishment: beyond the discourse of human rights

Abstract

In the last few years the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children has been gathering momentum, with a submission to The United Nations Secretary General’s study on violence against children the most recent addition to the cause. Nevertheless, corporal punishment in schools is still condoned in many countries and its practice persists even where it is now illegal. However, it is usually discussed within a gender‐‘neutral’ human rights framework rather than being more usefully considered as a gendered practice, pivotal in sustaining the gender regimes of schools. Drawing primarily on an ethnographic study in four junior secondary schools in Botswana, in conjunction with other related studies in Sub‐Saharan Africa, it is argued that corporal punishment is gendered at the level of both policy and practice. Female and male students and teachers understand and experience the ‘giving’ and ‘receiving’ of corporal punishment differently as gender interacts with, and often takes precedence over, age and authority relations. Understanding corporal punishment as a gendered practice has important implications for how its persistence in schools might be more successfully addressed as part of the current drive to achieve the Millennium Development and Education for All Goals in relation to universal primary education and gender equality.

Acknowledgements

I should like to thank the staff and students of the four case study schools in Botswana for sharing their experiences with me, and to various former colleagues at the University of Botswana for their support and insights during the research. Thanks are also due to Máiréad Dunne, Fiona Leach and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

1. Some interviews were conducted in English, the medium of instruction, and some were conducted in Setswana with the assistance of an interpreter.

2. In two schools, students asked me to intervene on their behalf: in one of the rural schools one group of male students asked me to provide them with a copy of the regulations on corporal punishment since they were concerned that the regulations were being flouted; in the peri‐urban school, a group of female pupils wanted me to find out to know what action had been taken following their complaint that a male teacher had been pinching their breasts prior to caning.

3. Transcription conventions: I = interviewer; F(s) = female student(s); M(s) = male students; HT = head teacher.

4. The first two quotations include the original Setswana words and the later translations into English.

5. Some high‐achieving males had other ways of performing masculinity, which also involved resisting female authority, such as cracking jokes, but were less bound up in corporal punishment whereas some of the younger Form 1 male students assumed the more ‘passive’, subservient subject positions in which they were initially positioned by the teacher.