Carrie Paechter

Masculinities and femininities as communities of practice

This exploratory paper argues that treating masculinities and femininities as localised communities of practice is a useful approach to the question of how and why particular forms of gender are performed at particular times and places. In the paper I consider Lave and Wengers [Lave, Jean, & Wenger, Etienne (1991). Situated Learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press; Wenger, Etienne (1998). Communities of Practice: learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press] conceptualisation of learning as taking place through legitimate participation in communities of practice and demonstrate how this characterises the learning of particular forms of masculinity and femininity practice. I further discuss the implications of this for our understanding of identity and for the salience of bodies and bodily forms as reified markers of masculinity and femininity.

Masculine femininities/feminine masculinities: power, identities and gender

This paper is basically about terminology. In it I discuss the terms ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ and how they relate to being male and being female. My theme arises from an increasing difficulty that I am finding in understanding how individual identities relate to dominant constructions of masculinity and femininity. Christine Skelton and Becky Francis argue that we should not be afraid to name certain behaviours as masculine even when they are performed by girls. After a discussion of the problems of defining both ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’, and a consideration of the power relations between these terms, I go on to consider the concept of ‘female masculinity’ (Halberstam). I argue that this formulation is problematic, due to its dependence on a main term whose definition is unclear. Finally, I argue that we need to distinguish ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ from ‘masculinities’ and ‘femininities’.

Reconceptualizing the gendered body: learning and constructing masculinities and femininities in school

How children learn to construct and enact masculinities and femininities is clearly an issue for education and one that has been explored in a wide variety of ways. In recent years, however, our conceptions of gender have once again become problematic, particularly given a gradual slippage regarding the sex/gender distinction and the increasing use of ‘gender’ to refer to matters of biology as well as those pertaining to the social. We now need to rethink how we understand what it is to be male and female, masculine and feminine, and whether the sex/gender distinction and related dualisms are useful to our conceptualization of gender. One way to do this is to focus on the construction of gender in the social systems of which children are a part, including the schooling system. In this paper I consider the legacy of Cartesian dualism both for our understanding of sex and gender and for the schooling system, exploring the interconnections between the two. I examine how the Cartesian legacy underpins the disciplinary and curriculum structures of schools and explore the implications for the ways in which we, as researchers and teachers, view and treat children in schools. Finally, I argue that researchers working in gender and education need to take much more account of the specificities of children’s bodies.

Power, Bodies and Identity: How different forms of physical education construct varying masculinities and femininities in secondary schools

Physical education (PE) lessons are an important arena for the construction and consolidation of dominant and subordinate masculinities and femininities within schools. The gym, sports hall, playing field and associated areas such as changing rooms and showers function as sites both for the gendered display of hegemonic forms of heterosexual masculinity and for the subordination of alternatives. Femininities of different sorts are also played out through the acceptance and refusal of different forms of school PE and out-of-school exercise activities. This paper considers how different forms of physical education and sports in schools contribute to the construction and perpetuation of different forms of heterosexual masculinities and femininities. In it I attempt to map Franks (1991, 1995) ideal types of bodily usage against activities in the male and female traditions of school PE. I look at the gender marking of Franks ideal types and the corresponding PE, sports and fitness activities and at how the different bodily usages encouraged by different forms of secondary school PE permit and encourage the development of particular masculinities and femininities while discouraging others.

‘Why can't girls play football?’ Gender dynamics and the playground

This article focuses on the involvement of boys and girls in playground football. It is based on research conducted with 10- to 11-year-old pupils at two state primary schools in London. Boys and girls were found to draw on gender constructs that impacted variously on their involvement in playground football. The performance of masculinity through football translated into heavy investments for many boys who took any opportunity to prove both their knowledge and expertise in the sport. This investment rested on the derision and exclusion both of non-footballing boys and of girls. Associations between humility, restraint, niceness and femininity also had a negative impact on girls’ involvement in the sport. Prohibitions around desire and determination proved especially damaging to girls’ attempts at ownership and assertiveness within the game. This was compounded by boys’ co-optation of football as ‘inherently masculine’. Girls’ resistance strategies to male domination of the football pitch tended to focus on disruption and rarely resulted in equal participation. This was due to opposition from powerful boys as well as entrenched gendered zones of play that granted boys automatic rights to football and girls only marginal tenancy.

Researching sensitive issues online: implications of a hybrid insider/outsider position in a retrospective ethnographic study:

This article is concerned with methodological issues arising from a retrospective partially insider study of a divorce support website. I argue that, while we need to conduct detailed retrospective studies into the development of online communities, such studies bring methodological challenges, due to their retrospective nature, the potential size of the data set, and the problems of dealing with past manifestations of sites that continue to function. After an introduction to online and offline ethnography and insider/outsider researcher positioning, I discuss my hybrid insider/outsider status with respect to the research site. I focus in particular on researcher positioning, field entry and delimitation, public/private boundaries, ethical issues, and questions of time with respect to carrying out retrospective online studies while maintaining an ongoing real-time engagement with a research site.

Tomboys and girly-girls: embodied femininities in primary schools

This paper is about how 9–11-year-old children, particularly girls, co-construct tomboy and girly-girl identities as oppositional positions. The paper sits within a theoretical framework in which I understand individual and collective masculinities and femininities as ways of ‘doing man/woman’ or ‘doing boy/girl’ that are constructed within local communities of masculinity and femininity practice. Empirical data come from a one-year study of tomboy identities within two London primary schools. The paper explores the contrasting identities of tomboy and girly-girl, how they are constructed by the children, and how this changes as they approach puberty. The findings suggest that the oppositional construction of these identities makes it harder for girls to take up more flexible femininities, though it is possible to switch between tomboy and girly-girl identities at different times and places.

Learning gender in primary school playgrounds: findings from the Tomboy Identities Study

This paper starts from the idea that children learn and construct gendered identities within local communities of masculinity and femininity practice, including peer communities. The data presented come from an ESRC‐funded study of tomboy identities, which investigated the enabling and constraining factors for girls in taking up and maintaining tomboy identities, and the relationship between these and the perpetuation of active girlhood during the later primary school years. The paper considers how gender is constructed within the physical spaces of school playgrounds. We contrast the spatialities of the two research sites—one, an inner‐city school with restricted playground space; the other, an outer‐London school with extensive grounds—and examine the implications of these for childrens activities and associated identities. We show how the spaces of the school and the surrounding area are factors in the childrens construction of their identities, and how playground space is used partly to construct and maintain gender difference by both girls and boys. In particular, we examine how children use play as a means to the construction of their masculinities and femininities, and how these are enabled and constrained by their peer communities.

Subcultural Retreat: negotiating the design and technology curriculum

The National Curriculum for design and technology requires that the new subject be delivered in a cross‐curricular way, involving teachers from a number of previously‐existing subject areas. The negotiation by teachers of this new curriculum and its associated new subculture has taken place in a context in which struggles for power and control in the new departments form a significant factor. Associated with this struggle is the retreat by some teachers and departments into the subcultures of their originating subjects and thus further away from the integrated intentions of design and technology as developed in the Order and Non‐Statutory Guidance. The paper explores the concept of subcultural retreat as it applies in this’ situation.

“Mens Sana in Corpore Sano”: Cartesian dualism and the marginalisation of sex education

Cartesian dualism has left a heavy legacy in terms of how we think about ourselves, so that we treat humans as minds within bodies rather than mind/body unities. This has far‐reaching effects on our conceptualisation of the sex/gender distinction and on the relationship between bodies and identities. Related to this is a dualism that is embedded in how we think of children in schools; we focus on the soundness of the mind, with the sound body treated as an afterthought. This paper considers the effects of this dualism on the position of sex education both in the formal curriculum and in the physical and metaphorical fabric of schooling, considering how the body and its sexuality are both ubiquitous and marginalised within schools. I examine how schools discipline both childrens bodies in general and their sexuality and sexual expression in particular, and contrast this with the sidelining of education through and about bodies, and the positioning of these aspects of education as potentially polluting.Cartesian dualism has left a heavy legacy in terms of how we think about ourselves, so that we treat humans as minds within bodies rather than mind/body unities. This has far‐reaching effects on our conceptualisation of the sex/gender distinction and on the relationship between bodies and identities. Related to this is a dualism that is embedded in how we think of children in schools; we focus on the soundness of the mind, with the sound body treated as an afterthought. This paper considers the effects of this dualism on the position of sex education both in the formal curriculum and in the physical and metaphorical fabric of schooling, considering how the body and its sexuality are both ubiquitous and marginalised within schools. I examine how schools discipline both childrens bodies in general and their sexuality and sexual expression in particular, and contrast this with the sidelining of education through and about bodies, and the positioning of these aspects of education as potentially polluting.