Conflicts, competition and social support in female-dominated vocational education – breaking or reaffirming stereotypical femininity?

Abstract

One in four upper secondary school students in Norway experience nearly single-sex classrooms, an unintended consequence of choosing certain vocational study programmes, such as Health care, childhood and youth development or Building and construction. This raises a question about how female students describe their experiences of social relationships and classroom culture within the context of a gender-segregated vocational education setting. Analyses of educational biography interviews reveal that stories of conflict, competition and cultural differences dominate and are often described using derogative or gendered language, such as ‘bitching’, ‘gossip’ and ‘drama’. These stories demonstrate a break with gender stereotypes but, at the same time, accentuate femininity by aligning the behaviour to stereotypical discourses of ‘girl’ behaviour. In their stories, gender loses its importance as a basis for solidarity and commonality when students share the same gender; instead, hierarchies and other differences become highlighted.

Keywords:

• Vocational education
• gender segregation
• gender
• youth
• femininity
• single-sex education
• discourse analysis
• conflict

Notes

1. Compared to 14% of the general education students (Markussen 2016).

2. Share of female students: Design, arts and crafts (DAC) (88.4%), Health care, childhood and youth development (HCYD) (85.2%), Technical and industrial production (10.8%), Building and construction (5.5%), Electricity and electronics (5.3%) (Statistics Norway 2013). In all, the students choose between 12 upper secondary school programmes upon leaving compulsory education. Of these, eight are vocational programmes (Sales and service, Agriculture, Fishing and forestry, Restaurant and food processing, in addition to the five mentioned above). Male students comprise 57% of the VET students (Statistics Norway 2016). For the VET students, the normative route to a vocational certificate is two years in school and two years in apprenticeship. In reality, however, a greater number of male than female VET students transition into training and later vocational certification, and 71% of apprentices are male (Statistics Norway 2016). Female VET students more often transition into general studies, than male students do.

3. Nvivo is software that supports qualitative and mixed methods research, designed to organise, analyse and find insights in unstructured or qualitative data, like interviews and open-ended survey responses.

4. Students in the Norwegian VET have the opportunity to enrol an additional supplement year after 2 to −4 years in VET, to take the exams they need to qualify for higher education. Some students plan for this option from the start, others see it as an option manifesting itself during their VET years, while yet others are ‘pushed into’ it because of a lack of an apprenticeship alternative.

5. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=drama. Used similarly in Norwegian.