1. Has gender a future as an educational concept?
Gaby Weiner
Collegium for Gender in Education
Collegium for Sociology of Education
Gothenburg University
June 2018
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Gaby Weiner

2. Structure of Presentation
Autobiographical snapshot
THE START OF THE FIELD
Success: new field, journal, professional legitimacy, energy and passion
Maturity: complexity, intersectionality, theoreticisation
Decay: just another academic field, theory/practice split, collapse of foundational binaries, Anglo-centrism
THE END OF THE FIELD?
Gender as (just) one of a range of social factors affecting schooling and education generally.
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Gaby Weiner

3. Feminist periodisation/waves
‘Pre-feminism’: struggles over ‘women’ question
1800s-early 1900s: 1st wave: struggle of women for vote, education and work
1970s-1980s: 2nd wave, emergence of gender and education as part of new social movement; focus on education practice and policy
1990s: 3rd wave, growth of theorisation, intersectionality, complexity, influence of gender studies
2000s onwards, 4th wave, conflicts within feminism, collapse of binaries
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Gaby Weiner

4. Authorship on gender 1985 1994 1987 1999 1995 1987 2001 January 19
Gaby Weiner
2001

5. Start of the field
Early success: new field, journal, professional legitimacy, energy and passion
Gender and Education journal, first issue 1989
Collective involvement of professionals/academics/state
Research possibilities
Publishing opportunities (gender sells!)
Underpinned by feminism as a social movement (Women’s Liberation)
Career opportunities
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Gaby Weiner

6. Feminisms (1994)
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Gaby Weiner

7. Feminisms (1994) Three Dimensions:
Political: a movement to improve the conditions and life-chances for women
Critical: a sustained, intellectual critique of dominant (male) forms of knowing and doing
Praxis-oriented: concerned with the development of ethical forms pf professional and personal practice
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Gaby Weiner

8. Maturity of the field
Confidence, recognition, complexity, intersectionality, theorisation
Creation of international association (GEA) and website
Internationalisation of field
Establishment of doctoral studies and programmes
Theorisation
Onset of neo-liberalism in Higher Education
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Gaby Weiner

9. Problems with/in field
Decay? Just another academic field, theory/practice split, collapse of foundational binaries
Criticisms – e.g. Anglo-centrism, over-theorisation, distance from practice
Academic discipline in neo-liberal times; researchers as scholars not activists
Binary gender categories under attack
Fragmentation: theoretical (intersectionality) and policy (gender collapsed into social justice framework)
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Gaby Weiner

10. End of the field? Downward spiral?
gender now treated as a social justice factor in schooling and education, one of many – ‘race’, ethnicity, class, migrant status, LGBT, faith, urban/rural
struggle to stay a single–issue movement/discipline
new influences emerging outside current field e.g. impact of violence, warfare and migration
impact of neoliberalism = gender as performativity, commodification
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Gaby Weiner

11. Jury is out
‘It has become evident in compiling this overview of the field of gender and equity in education that, even in its short history of 40 years or so, the field has had to incorporate many changed notions of feminism, gender identity and inter- and cross-sectionality, as well as serious challenges to its foundational assumptions about what gender has meant and means now in different educational settings, within and across nations and continents.
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Gaby Weiner

12. Jury is out (2)
We have also identified generational tensions among feminist and gender researchers concerning their relationship to political action on one hand, and the theoretical and methodological innovations required by academia on the other. This is the field’s dynamic yet controversial legacy, which will no doubt be taken forward by new generations of researchers in ways difficult for us at this stage to anticipate.
(Gender, Justice, and Equity in Education, , Elisabet Öhrn and Gaby Weiner, Oxford Research Encyclopedias, 2017).
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Gaby Weiner

13. References
Öhrn and Weiner (2009)  The Sound of Silence! Reflections on inclusion and exclusion in the field of gender and education, Gender and Education, 21, 4,
Forbes, Öhrn and Weiner (2011) Slippage and/or symbolism: Gender, policy and educational governance in Scotland and Sweden  Gender and Education, 23, 6, Öhrn and Weiner, (2017) Gender, Justice, and Equity in Education, Oxford Research Encyclopedias.
Weiner and Weiner (2018) ‘You’re trouble you are, just like your mother’. An intergenerational narrative on activism in Higher Education. Pedagogy, Culture and Society.
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Gaby Weiner

14. Contact details Gaby Weiner gaby.weiner@btinternet.com
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Gaby Weiner