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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
The idea that gender equality in education has been achieved is now a staple of public debate. As a result, educational policies and practices often do not deal explicitly with gender issues, such as sexual abuse, harassment or violence. Exaggeration of neoliberalism's successes in creating individual opportunity in education conceals ongoing problems and ignores the continuing need for a fair and equal education for all, regardless of gender or sexuality. In this manifesto for education, Miriam David rejects the notion that gender equality has been achieved in our age of neoliberalism. She puts the focus back onto issues such as changing patterns of women's and girls' participation in education across the globe, feminist strategies for policy and legal interventions around human rights, and violence against women and children. She discusses waves of feminism linked to school-teaching and pedagogies in higher education as well as an illuminating case study of an international educational programme to challenge gender-related violence. Revealing neoliberal education to be 'misogyny masquerading as metrics', Miriam David argues for changes in the patriarchal rules of the game, including questioning 'gender norms' and stereotypical binaries, and for making personal, social, health and sexuality education mainstream.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
The Transforming Global Socio-Economic and Political Contexts
Manifestos for the Twenty-first Century
Manifestos for Education
How the Book is Organized
Part 1: Socio-Cultural and Political Backgrounds and Contexts
1 Feminist Research on Gender and Education
Introduction
Feminist Values and Demands for Women’s Liberation
The Emergence and Evolution of Feminist Knowledge and Understanding
Gender and Education as a Field of Feminist Research
The Biographic, Post-Structural Turn in Education and Social Sciences
Collections on Gender and Education
Gender, Violence and Education
EU Daphne Programmes on Gender and Sexual Violence
Aims and Methods of our GAP Project
Conclusions
2 Political Changes on Gender Equality in Education
Introduction: Changing International Organizations
The UN: From Sexual to Gender Equality
UNESCO, Global Feminism and Education
Feminism or Gender Equality in Education: GAPs in Access or Achievement
Surface Reality of Change across the Globe towards Gender Equality
The Girl or Boy Problem?
Globalization Has Led to More Attention to Gender Egalitarianism
Conclusions
3 Feminist Political Campaigns on Gender and Violence
Introduction
Stages of Development of Gender-Equality Policies: 1945–2015
Evidence about First-Wave Feminist Campaigns
Campaigns for Women’s Suffrage
US Women’s Rights Campaigners
International Women’s Suffrage: 1900–1945
Stages in Political Recognition of Women’s Equality: 1945–95
1995 to 2015: A New Wave of Gender Equality in the Twenty-first Century?
Concluding Comments
Part 2: Feminist Waves about Gender Equalities and Gender Violence
4 Changing Political Landscapes of Feminism: Waves and Educational Values
Introduction
Life Histories of Feminists and Waves of Activism
Discourses about Feminism and Gender
Feminism, Scholarly Journals and Publications
Second-Wave Feminism ‘Breaks on the Shores of Academe’
Feminism, Gender and Universities
Cohorts of Academic or Education Feminists
The Social and Educational Origins of Feminist Academics
Feminist University Pioneers
Education Feminists: Complex Career Strategies Linked to Social Class?
Pedagogical Predilections and Doctoral ‘Education’
Feminist Teachers and Feminist Educators: The ‘Education Feminists’
The Education of Professional Academics as Feminists
Values and Waves of Feminism Across the Generations
Riding the Wave: Mid-Career Feminists (Cohort Two)?
A Second and a Half Waver
Conclusions: Feminism Remains a New Wave of Thinking
5 Challenging Gender Violence for Children and Young People through Education
Introduction
Reflecting on Our Learning from Local Actions
The Four Sister ‘Feminist Local Actions’
Diversity in Evaluations of the Local Actions
Reflections on the Feminist Research Focus on GRV and VAWG
Conclusions: Learning from an Education Feminist Project
6 Reflections on a Feminist Educational Manifesto
Introduction
Waves of ‘Education Feminism’ as Empowering
Revisiting the GAP Work Project: What Have We Learnt?
Gender Equalities and GRV: An Education
Global Campaigns for Girls’ Education
Education in Schools: Girls and Boys Together or Separately?
Why an Educational Manifesto?
Feminist Education and Our Daughters
Concluding Thoughts on a Feminist Education Manifesto
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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A Feminist Manifesto for Education
Miriam E. David
polity
Copyright © Miriam E. David 2016
The right of Miriam E. David to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2016 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-5095-0430-5
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: David, Miriam E.Title: A feminist manifesto for education / Miriam E. David.Description: Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2016000779| ISBN 9781509504268 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509504275 (pbk.)Subjects: LCSH: Feminism and education. | Women--Education. | Sexism in education.Classification: LCC LC197 .D37 2016 | DDC 371.822--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016000779
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Acknowledgements
This book is based upon a great deal of collaborative and collective research, over many years, and I am very grateful to all the people that I have shared with. In particular, I would like to thank the women who participated in my international study of feminist academics and educators, without whose conversations and ideas this book would not have been possible. I am also very grateful to my colleagues on the European Union’s Daphne-III Programme, ‘GAP Work: Improving gender-related violence intervention and referral through youth practitioner training’ (JUST/2012/DAP/AG/3176) (2013–2015): especially, the coordinator Dr Pam Alldred of Brunel University, London, and Dr Barbara Biglia, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain, who contributed to chapters 2, 3 and 5 and without whom I could not have completed the book. Their collegiality and friendship are legendary. Jonathan Skerrett of Polity Press has also been immensely supportive and helpful.
I should also like to thank my family, particularly my children – Dr J. Toby Reiner and his partner Dr Margaret Winchester; and Ms Charlotte Reiner Hershman and her husband David Hershman – and my partner, Professor Jeffrey G. Duckett.
The book is dedicated to my grandson – Jacob Hershman – and all children and young people of future generations, in the hope that they may have more respectful and fair lives than is possible at present.
Abbreviations
ACJ
Catalan Youth Agency, Catalonia, Spain
ACU
Association of Commonwealth Universities
AERA
American Educational Research Association
AIDS
Auto-Immune Deficiency Syndrome
AHEAD
Against Homophobia: European Local Administration Devices
AHRC
Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK
ASA
American Sociological Association
ASHE
Association for the Study of Higher Education
AYP
About Young People, a British community and youth organization.
BERA
British Educational Research Association
BJSE
British Journal of Sociology of Education
BME
Black and Minority Ethnic groups
BSA
British Sociological Association
BWSG
Bristol Women’s Studies Group
CAMFED
Campaign for Female Education
CEDAW
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
CND
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
CR
Consciousness-raising groups
CREG
Centre for Research on Education and Gender
CYP
children and young people
DE
Department of Education of the Catalonia Government, Spain
DEVAW
Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women
DV
domestic violence
EC
European Commission
ECU
Equality Challenge Unit, for UK HE
EEC
European Economic Community
EEO
equal [educational] opportunities
EFA
Education For All
EHRC
Equalities and Human Rights Commission, UK
EIGE
European Institute for Gender Equality
ERA
European Research Area
ESF
European Science Foundation
ESRC
Economic and Social Research Council, UK
EU
European Union
EVAW
End Violence Against Women coalition, UK
FDR
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, US President from 1933 to 1945
FE
further education
FGM
female genital mutilation
FWSA
Feminist and Women’s Studies Association
GAP
GAP Work: Improving gender-related violence intervention and referral through youth practitioner training’ (JUST/2012/DAP/AG/3176) (2013– 2015) (European Union’s Daphne-III Programme)
GBV
gender-based violence
GDP
gross domestic product
GEA
Gender and Education Association
GEXcel
Gender and Equality Centre of Excellence
GPI
Gender Parity Index
GRV
gender-related violence
HE
higher education
HESA
Higher Education Statistical Agency
HIV
human immunodeficiency virus
IMF
International Monetary Fund
INSTRAW
International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women
IOE
Institute of Education, University College London
IWD
International Women’s Day, celebrated on 8 March for over 100 years
IWI
International Women’s Initiative
LGBTQi
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersexual
LMU
London Metropolitan University
LSE
London School of Economics and Political Science
MDG
Millennium Development Goal
MOD
Ministry of Defence, UK
MP
Member of Parliament, UK
MRC
Medical Research Council
MS
The early US feminist magazine founded by Gloria Steinem
NAC
National Abortion Campaign
NAWO
National Association of Women’s Organizations
NCCL
National Council of Civil Liberties, UK
NGO
non-governmental organization
NOW
National Organization of Women, USA
NUSEC
National Union of Societies for Women’s Citizenship, UK
NUWSS
National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, UK
OECD
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
OISE
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada
OU
Open University, UK
PG
postgraduate students
PhD
Doctor of Philosophy
PGCE
Postgraduate Certificate of Education
PgDip HE
Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education
PM
Prime Minister
PSA
public service announcements, USA
PSED
public sector equality duties, UK
PSHE
personal, social and health education
ROW
Rights of Women, a British feminist legal organization.
SPA
Social Policy Association, UK
SRE
sex or sexualities and relationships education
SRHE
Society for Research in HE
STEM
science, technology, engineering and maths and/or medicine subjects
TU
trade union
UCAS
University and College Agency for Students, UK
UCU
Universities and Colleges Union, UK
UG
undergraduate students
UK
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
UN
United Nations
UNESCO
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNIFEM
United Nations Development Fund for Women (no longer exists)
URV
University Roviri i Virgili, Catalonia, Spain
USA
United States of America
UUK
Universities UK, the organization of UK leaders of HE
VAW[G]
violence against women [and girls]
VSO
Voluntary Service Overseas
WACC
Women’s Abortion Campaign
WE
Women’s Equality Party, UK
WEA
Workers’ Educational Association
WHEM
Women in HE Management
WHO
World Health Organization
WL
Women’s Liberation/Lib
WLM/WM
Women’s Liberation Movement or Women’s Movement
WNC
Women’s National Commission, UK
WOW
Women of the World
WS
Women’s Studies courses
WSPU
Women’s Social and Political Union, UK
WSWW
Women’s Studies Without Walls
WTC
Women’s Therapy Centre
Introduction
This book is a feminist manifesto for education. First, I present what is now known about gender and sexual relations through feminist, educational and social research, given the increasingly widespread international public debates about sexual abuse, bullying, harassment and overarching violence against women and girls (VAWG). Second, I draw from this voluminous research and policy-based evidence a series of pointers as to how we could develop a fairer, more equal and gender-conscious education for both boys and girls, including those with diverse sexualities and from ethnic, racialized, classed families. This ‘manifesto’ would ensure a society that is more socially just, safe and free from violence for both men and women.
In particular, I draw on a specific European Union (EU)-funded project about how to challenge gender-related violence (GRV) amongst children and young people by working with educators and trainers (Alldred and David 2015; Alldred and Biglia 2015). This is a feminist activist project in which I have been involved with British, Irish, Italian and Spanish colleagues and others across Europe, over the last two years. The EU’s Daphne programmes commenced at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as a result of international feminist and women’s campaigning about women and children’s rights over the previous quarter-century. The Daphne programmes consist of action and education or training projects to transform gender and sexual relations. They are also linked to developing the research base on how to improve knowledge and understanding about such relations. This research has been developed by second and subsequent waves of feminists, particularly in academia, although working with community and local activists.
Given this and other feminist, educational and social research with which I have been involved (David 2003, 2014), I identify what could be done to transform relations between boys and girls, and men and women, given the rise of sexualization within new media, through both policy and practice. I bring together several diverse fields of endeavour: feminist work on gender, sexualities, women and education, on gender or sexual violence, on children and families, and policy critiques, especially around neoliberalism and individualization.
These different fields are not usually brought together even amongst feminists, of whatever wave or tendency, and are often heavily contested. This book is not simply a dispassionate approach, but a plea for better and more critical forms of education and schooling to make gender and sexual relations central to forms of schooling for children and young people. It is based upon a passionate commitment to sexual, social and gender equality; respect and fairness; freedom from violence; hence the notion of manifesto.
Inevitably, the book goes beyond traditional political manifestos that are usually statements of values and intent about policy change within a narrow time frame and linked with political expediency. I want to tease out how the aims of social, civil and human rights movements for change, including feminism and the women’s liberation movement (WLM), might be more effectively embedded in progressive and social forms of education and schooling to enable such socio-political transformations.
I will explore the evidence on which to base such change, in particular looking at what feminist educators and social scientists have revealed over the last fifty years about gender and sexual relations, and about the critical importance of forms of feminist, progressive or radical education. This also means going beyond the traditional debates about equal opportunities, including social and gender equalities, to understand how gender and sexuality are deeply embedded in cultural, ethnic and social relations. It also entails considering the resistances, both psychological and political, to changing power relations, whether about patriarchy, male domination, sexism or misogyny. These are all contested fields of feminist, educational and social research, around changing concepts of gender and sexuality, especially lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer or intersexual (LGBTQi).
Clearly, there are complex arguments about how important education is to social change. It has been seen as vital to aid the processes of socio-cultural change and yet it is clear that education is also a tool to reproduce the status quo, or traditional social class and family relations: that it does not alter social hierarchies and political elites. Indeed, at this particular political juncture, it does appear that there is great resistance to such change. Over the last fifty years, there have been contested arguments about both the form and content of social change, not only in the UK, but across Europe and North America, the so-called global North, and linked with former colonies too.
The Transforming Global Socio-Economic and Political Contexts
There has been a major shift from the British postwar political consensus around social democracy and the welfare state, to a renewed and revised form of individualism and limited forms of state intervention in ensuring social and individual welfare for men and women in the twenty-first century. This move towards neoliberalism began in the 1980s under, ironically, the first female Prime Minister, the Conservative Margaret Thatcher. She joined forces with the then Republican President of the US, Ronald Reagan, and an inexorable process of globalization and neoliberalism was set in train.
Over the last thirty years or so, there have been international shifts towards globalization, clearly linked with forms of global capitalism and the role of education as a central and critical component. This is now known as ‘academic capitalism’ (a term coined by the American feminist Sheila Slaughter in 1997) or the ‘knowledge economy’. This is also the case in other countries of Europe, most of which are now linked together through the EU. The forms of social welfare and social protectionism for men and women have shifted unevenly as various countries have joined the EU (such as the UK, Ireland and Spain). And countries of the British Commonwealth, such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand, have also developed in this fashion.
Similarly, the language and discourses about gender and sexual equality and relations have changed, as have the campaigning and political contexts incorporated, to some extent, in changing socio-economic systems. It is only during the last fifty years that the notion of gender as a social construction has entered social, legal and political discourse, in part as a result of feminist activism and associated social movements around forms of sexuality and transsexual or transgender relations. Gender equality as a concept is now accepted as integral to the political and legal discourse of neoliberalism, although its radical and transformative potential has become muted through its incorporation into such discourses. Gender equality as a matter of numbers or proportions now stands in marked contrast to some radical forms of feminist activism under neoliberal regimes.
Yet both gender equality and liberal feminism have been incorporated into these new discourses, evacuating all progressive meaning from them. And though ‘feminism’ is a term on the public and media agenda today, which it was not even as recently as at the turn of the twenty-first century, its meanings have changed with the advent of neoliberalism, as the American feminist-socialist Nancy Fraser (2013) argues, claiming that feminism is now the handmaiden of capitalism.
In 2015, in the UK, for example, patriarchal or sexist politics hold sway, although there are some paradoxical processes at work: there are more women in Parliament, making up a third of elected members, but they remain in relatively subordinate positions. Similarly, there are also more explicitly gay and lesbian Members of Parliament (MPs) (thirty-two in fact). Moreover, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, re-elected in May 2015, has appointed more women to his Cabinet than there have been in any British Cabinet before: women number over 40 per cent.
How many of these women are committed to feminism, gender equality and social transformation? This is a paradox of socio-political change under neoliberalism. These changes in gender balance are occurring in many countries of the global North, most recently in the case of Canada, with the election of the Liberal, Justin Trudeau, who declared himself a feminist and appointed a Cabinet of fifty per cent women, in October 2015. On the other hand, the socialist female Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, was ousted in 2013 in a campaign that she described in the Australian Parliament as misogynistic.
Despite the Europe-wide context of a commitment to neoliberal gender equality, gender politics barely enters the fray in the UK, with the battle lines drawn around the same old family values, assigning power to men, and subordinate status to women. Curiously, arguments still rage about the role of political leaders’ wives, albeit that they are no longer confined to the kitchen. There are relatively rare debates about women as leaders in their own right, and sardonic comments about the fact that the leaders of the Green Party, the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru, for example, are ‘self-proclaimed feminists’.
The announcement that Hillary Clinton would run for the Democratic Party nomination for US President mentioned that she too is a ‘self-proclaimed feminist’. Clinton is seen as a ‘second-wave feminist to the bone’, meaning that she has liberal feminist sentiments (Freeman 2015). Gloria Steinem (2015), a founder of Ms. magazine, as a second-wave feminist is supportive of Clinton and also other American public figures such as Sheryl Sandberg. Sandberg is the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook. Her Lean In, published in 2013, has been seen as a new feminist manifesto or ‘Betty Friedan for the digital age’ (Dowd 2013). This kind of ‘liberal feminism’ is at odds with other radical political stances, which focus more on social inclusion, but it can incorporate gender equality and a liberal stance on dealing with VAWG. These tensions between forms of feminism in relation to gender equality and GRV are to be explored.
While abuse and VAWG appear to be on the rise, as they are frequently on the public agenda, I argue that this represents a relatively new public identification of a previously hidden social issue. Over the last half-century, radical feminism, as Mackay (2015: 13) argues, has been critically important to raising this secret into a public question, yet it remains an unresolved political dilemma. Indeed, in some places, cultures or religions, the traditional sexual and gender relations of certain nations and countries, including violence and harassment, are justified and even sanctified, and women’s cultural, economic, legal and social independence abhorred.
There has been some welcome change in the balance of political arguments, and there has been some movement towards feminism in public places and spaces with the resurgence of popular feminism in the twenty-first century. Indeed, the idea of manifestos has also been extended to a wider discussion of political values, including about women. For example, the British Labour Party published a Manifesto for Women, pulling out of their general manifesto for the General Election in May 2015 the key elements that affected women.
They emphasized: ‘6 things you need to know about Labour’s plan for women and equality’. These were about low pay, and women as ‘parents’, with their young children and in families and public life. Most importantly, the manifesto stated that:
Violence against women and girls is never acceptable, so Labour will put tackling it at the heart of government. We will appoint a new commissioner to enforce national standards on tackling domestic and sexual abuse, strengthen the law and provide more stable central funding for women’s refuges and Rape Crisis Centres. And we’ll work to prevent violence, introducing age appropriate compulsory sex and relationship education in schools. (UK Labour Party 2015: 3)
This Labour manifesto for women was different from traditional approaches, but it is clear that it was too radical for UK sensibilities during the 2015 General Election. The Fawcett Society showed how very limited other parties were in their overall approaches to women and gender equality, and how limited the approach to VAWG was. Only the Labour Party hinted at using schooling as a means of prevention, basing this on recent feminist and social research. Although the Labour Party was defeated at the General Election, and this manifesto has disappeared, it marks an important step in the development of a renewed political consciousness about women, gender and education.
On the other hand, as a result of wider international feminist campaigning, including for dealing with VAWG, such as the creation of the celebratory annual Women of the World (WOW) events linked to the international ‘A Million Women Rise’ (founded by the redoubtable American playwright Eve Ensler) and International Women’s Day (IWD), in the last decade a new British political party has been spawned. This is the Women’s Equality (WE) Party, founded by feminist broadcaster Sandi Toksvig. This political party was launched at WOW in March 2015 and has been gathering political momentum through social media. The manifesto of this party also includes statements about both education and violence against women. It states that:
it’s time for a new voice in British politics – a non-partisan force determined to put equality for women at the top of the national agenda … we have determined the core issues: equal representation in politics and the boardroom, equal pay, equal parenting rights, equality of and through education, equal treatment by and in the media and an end to violence against women.
WE’s mission statement continues:
Equality for women isn’t a women’s issue. When women fulfil their potential, everyone benefits. Equality means better politics, a more vibrant economy, a workforce that draws on the talents of the whole population and a society at ease with itself … bringing together women and men of all ages and backgrounds, united in the campaign for women to enjoy the same rights and opportunities as men so that both sexes can flourish.
These are illustrations of the ways that women’s issues, women’s equality and education, and, separately, VAWG are now on the political agenda, albeit controversially. The Labour Party buries its commitments, while the WE Party reverts to very traditional sexual politics and gender binaries. So precisely what are the ways forward for women’s or gender equality that also attend to issues about VAWG? How do we facilitate change, linking with other issues to do with children and young people? What have we learnt from international feminist educational and social research? What in particular have second-wave feminists, who entered higher education (HE) as it began to expand to fit the needs of the economy, contributed to these debates and how can we use their insights for the future?
I will build upon issues specifically concerning how to teach about girls’ and women’s positions in the wider world. These entail looking historically at the changing roles of women in politics, through transformations in women’s suffrage, perceiving the extent of the struggle for emancipation by nineteenth- and twentieth-century women, often dubbed ‘first-wave feminists’, which amounted to a very violent fight. This included police brutality, imprisonment and force-feeding in the UK, with similar events in other countries, especially the long-drawn-out struggles in the US, culminating in the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.
Developing philosophical and political arguments about equality of respect and lack of discrimination is also vital to this endeavour. For example, the consideration about LGBTQi has rarely been focused upon and, where it is, it is usually about gay men. This is yet another dilemma to consider in looking at developing a fairer, more equal and respectful education. In terms also of the literature on LGBTQi, there is less about lesbianism, which is a heavily silenced topic, than gay men. For example, in a recently published philosophic tract about such discrimination, Paul Bailey (2007) looked at the silencing and oppression of homosexuality around the world. He focused on cultural and religious repression, leading to violence against male homosexuals, for the most part sidelining lesbianism or being ‘post-heterosexual’ (Orbach and Winterson 2015).
In a series of books about Manifestos for the 21st Century, the second-wave socialist feminist Beatrix Campbell (2013) wrote End of Equality, subtitled The Only Way is Women’s Liberation. This is a sustained argument for the necessity of socially inclusive feminism, on which I wish to build, to ensure a more socially and sexually just world by transforming economic and social relations. Campbell’s is a careful dissection of the socio-economic transformations under neoliberalism, to develop new approaches. She ends with the rallying cry: ‘to paraphrase from the Manifesto of the Communist Party once more: Feminism is already acknowledged by all its powers to be itself a power; it is high time that feminism meets this myth of the “Spectre of Feminism” with its own new manifestos’ (2013: 92).
Manifestos for the Twenty-first Century
Thus, my manifesto will build upon a complex array of international strategies about gender equality in education, linked to issues specifically around dealing with VAWG, as well as detailed feminist academic and activist evidence. Campbell’s manifesto, excellent though its argument is, is not at all about young women or schooling and ways to learn to transform sexual relations. Her argument is entirely about how feminist arguments for women’s liberation and sexual equality have become subsumed within a neoliberal economic system and no longer provide for genuine gender equality.
But Campbell argues that we are now in a new conjuncture of a
neopatriarchal and neoliberal matrix that assails – and provokes – feminism’s renaissance. This is the new form of articulation of men’s dominance over women – from sexual violence to human rights protocols and equality laws, budgets, time, money and care. A new sexual settlement is being made. But it is unsustainable … Imagine men without violence. Imagine sex without violence … it is doable, reasonable and revolutionary. (2013: 91–2)
A précis of her book is also included in an edited collection (Hall, Massey and Rustin 2015). This is a critique seeking ‘to map the political, economic, social and cultural contours of neoliberalism … and call into question the neoliberal order itself, and find radical alternatives to its foundational assumptions.’ Massey and Rustin argue: ‘In 2013 we – along with our fellow founding editor of Soundings, Stuart Hall – decided to … bring together … an online Manifesto. The idea was to form an analysis of the political context that was both unifying and systemic, but was also respectful to the particularities of the issues and areas of society to be discussed’ (2015: 7–8).
Campbell (2015) focuses on how neoliberalism, forms of state and civil society and rampant capitalism are a breeding ground for violence and gender polarization. She focuses on gender rather than WLM, arguing that:
Violence is not unthinking, visceral, primitive: it is produced by, and is productive of, power over land, riches and people. Violent hypermasculinities and concomitant gender polarization are, therefore, not residual: they are remade in civil society and in state apparatuses. Indeed the violence that neoliberal capital and its accomplices generate is an integral part of its evolving gender settlement – which I call neo-patriarchy. (2015: 69–85)
Her argument is very similar to Fraser’s (2013) and mine: about the incorporation of gender into new forms of capitalism and associated neoliberal politics. She goes on to state:
in spite of this increased violence, and the inequality that is inherent in neoliberalism, in the last quarter of a century the world’s institutions reached a consensus: they joined together in hailing the goal of gender equality. Ironically, this was at the very moment when we were witnessing the limits, the exhaustion, of the equality paradigm. The notion of equal opportunity was, in any case, incapable of withstanding the structures of gender: the sexual division of labour, and violence as a resource in the making and doing of masculinity … collapse of postwar consensus on welfare states and the mixed economy … They preach equal opportunity, but in practice produce ‘regressive modernization’. (2015: 71; my emphasis)
Expanding her definition of the neoliberal and neo-patriarchal matrix, she states that ‘Global capitalism works with patriarchal principles, institutions, cultures and psyches. So our liberation from this tragedy is inconceivable – it is, literally, unthinkable – without feminism’ (ibid.: 72). Her conclusion remains that of her manifesto book: to argue for a radical and socialist feminist transformation. This is exactly what I also want to do, using education, and schooling especially, as the means.
Manifestos for Education
‘One of the most profound ways in which we show our respect for other people is by treating them as capable of engaging in reasoned argument and discrimination: in other words, as equals in intellect and humanity’ (Collini 2010). Quite clearly, this is vitally important to any form of education. Within the professional education community, two new contrasting manifestos for education have also recently been published, which emphasize respect and equality.
First of all, COMPASS (2015), an independent think-tank emerging from the British Labour Party in the early twenty-first century, has worked on developing a strong argument about the future of schooling and education. They entitled their publication Big Education: Learning for the 21st Century. The argument is about how to reframe education, schooling and teaching in relation to changing forms of the political economy in the twenty-first century. Yet the report remains gender-blind and not at all attentive to issues about gender equality or dealing with VAWG, unlike the Labour Manifesto for Women.
Second, and by contrast, the British Educational Research Association (BERA) has produced ‘an evidence-based policy manifesto that respects children and young people’, entitled Fair and Equal Education (2015). This manifesto illustrates how to integrate feminist and educational research, although the term ‘feminist’ is not used. In the foreword, it was argued that an array of educational research was provided to appeal to policymakers:
This Manifesto emerges from … review[ing] a wide range of research … with a view to drawing together the implications for policy … As we approach[ed] the UK General Election in May 2015, [we] … prepared a Manifesto setting out an agenda for a fair and equal education that has the interests of children and young people at its heart. (2015: 1)
The central argument is that
Children and young people are entitled to an education that … develops their personality, talents and abilities to the full. Fair and equal education recognises differences in children and young people’s experiences, interests and backgrounds and ensures equality in access and provision. Over the last 40 years, evidence from educational research has told us about the extent of inequality. It has also told us how to make education more equal and fair … By addressing these key areas we can achieve the kind of education needed to respect children and young people’s entitlement to quality education. We recognise that the path to achieve such gains requires a long-term vision, including further research. However, to protect and promote children and young people’s educational entitlements, the UK Government can take … immediate steps towards achieving the goal of fair and equal education. (2015: 2–3)
While the authors do not address feminist educational research explicitly, what is most attractive and interesting about their arguments is how gender, sexuality and sexual health issues are threaded throughout. They conclude the manifesto by asserting recommendations:
Looking to the future … together we need to … reframe our understandings of 21st century Britain that are more reflective of our globalised world. We need to promote inclusive notions of Britishness which enables children and young people from all ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds to affirm their identity as Britons … proactively address all forms of discrimination in educational policy and practice, and beyond, to ensure issues such as racism, sexism and homophobia are addressed systemically as well as in terms of individual acts of name calling and violence. (2015: 14–15, my emphasis)
We should acknowledge the Swedish government’s development of explicit educational policies. It introduced, in 2015, a text for all Swedish sixteen-year-olds: We Should All Be Feminists by the African-American writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2014). She argues: ‘I would also ask that we begin to dream about and plan for a different world. A fairer world. A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: we must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently …’ (back cover).
These educational policies and practices are ones that I address, while also adding more explicit consideration of critical feminist educational research from across the globe, to consider fully the ramifications of issues around GRV and education as a tool for transformation. It is based upon what we now know about the relations between men and women in the family and the wider social, political and economic world. Drawing on this knowledge and understanding about how boys’ and girls’ identities develop, and are shaped by the wider social forces as part of what might now be seen as gender norms or appropriate and acceptable normal social patterns, I set out to show how these could be different, if we were to implement a more equal, fair and respectful education for all.
This also means addressing questions of sexual violence, not just as others’ problems or dilemmas but as fundamental to the ongoing relations within British society as much as in other countries of the global North, as well as the global South. While the violent attack in 2012 on Malala for simply arguing in support of girls’ education in the Swat Valley of Pakistan has received well-deserved global media attention, this is not simply a problem for countries of the global South (Yousafzai and Lamb 2013). Similarly, the brutal gang rape and murder of a medical student in Delhi, India, in late 2013, has also rightly received enormous public attention, particularly through the showing of the excellent film India’s Daughter made by Leslee Udeen. Again, this film has been stigmatized as an attack on Indian culture rather than a critique of the ways in which gender norms are deeply embedded in cultures, the exposure of which as an educational technique may be necessary to prevent the continuation of such gendered cultures.
There are many quotidian examples, particularly in the aftermath of the focus on politicians’ and celebrities’ sexual abuse, emerging almost a decade ago: what is now called ‘everyday violence’ (for example, the Feminist and Women’s Studies Association (FWSA) conference in 2015 was entitled Encounters with Everyday Violence). Again, these lead to further stigmatization, and the vilification of young, disadvantaged, vulnerable or fragile women. Discussion has focused on Pakistani or other South Asian men’s behaviour, rather than that of men in general. Increasingly, there are also everyday examples of ‘lad culture’ or ‘rape culture’ in clubs, on campus or at university and in curricula, as well as in management and leadership in schools and universities (Westmarland 2015).
How the Book is Organized
In the first part of the book, I set the scene for the detailed discussion of work on feminism, sexualities, gender and education that follows in the second part of the book. I reveal the history of feminist scholarship on gender and education and, separately, that of work on campaigning for socio-political and legal changes in the position of women and girls. I also consider international debates from the UN and its educational arm UNESCO about how to effect neoliberal change around gender equality in education. And I look at feminist campaigns for transformations in socio-political and economic contexts, especially across Europe and within individual European countries.
