Policies for gender justice in education across different geographies: The role of feminist actors in countering the 'gender ideology' fallacy

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The ongoing debates surrounding gender roles and rights, fueled by local, national, and international feminist movements, have prompted a critical reassessment of gender-related aspects within global education policies (Monkman & Hoffman, 2013). Scholars and activists within and beyond academic circles have brought attention to several key issues, including the pervasive androcentric nature of educational curricula (Clark & Millard, 2005; Hernández & Cristoffanini, 2014), disparities in access, conditions, and outcomes between boys and girls (Miranda, 2010; Evans et al., 2020), and instances of gender-based violence occurring within educational institutions (Chitsamatanga & Rembe, 2020; Gallardo-López & Gallardo-Vázquez, 2019). As a result of this robust international dialogue, these concerns have gradually been introduced into the educational agendas of numerous national and subnational governments, as well as international organizations such as UNESCO and the World Bank, spanning several decades but with more notable emphasis in recent years. Proof of this is SDG5, related to gender equality, and the 'gender mainstreaming' strategy that permeates the rest of the goals, including SDG4; as well as the Gender Reports published by UNESCO.

Within this context, policymakers have been compelled to adopt a diverse range of strategies aimed at dismantling deeply ingrained conservative and/or neoliberal ideologies that perpetuate gender-based privileges and barriers within society and education (Begall & Buchler, 2018). Hence, significant milestones have been reached in the pursuit of gender justice. However, in the face of feminist progress across various domains of social policy, anti-feminist resistances and backlashes have emerged from different sectors (Bonet-Martí, 2020). They range from conservative actors explicitly denying rights and existence of gender-based violence seeking to reverse or impede any sort of feminist progress (de Aguilar & Pereira, 2019; Jara et al., 2019) to more subtle acts of ridiculing and trivializing feminist demands, including the growth of trans-exclusionary and white feminist discourses that deny the realities of trans and non-binary people (Trujillo & Pérez, 2020). This panel focuses on the strategies employed by feminist actors and policymakers to counterbalance, resist and fight back against these regressions from different geographies and contexts, including Brazil, Panama, Spain and a worldwide perspective.

There is still a need to keep digging into the complexities of gender and to keep on imagining ways to support all individuals, especially those whose rights have been transnationally neglected, despite their essential participation in the development of society and in our survival at times of emergency. The research on education policies that has as a purpose to reveal realities laying under the surface of what is obvious needs to employ creative ways that construct deep and relevant arguments based on the experiences of actors that for one reason or another are suffering from the discrimination perpetuated by the status quo or political decisions, as the ones recently taken in the state of Florida, where classes and materials related to gender identity and race were forbidden from schools.

The complexities of gender interplay at the structural and individual levels deserve theories and research methodologies that go beyond unidimensional or bidimensional methodologies if we truly aim to establish an international understanding of the different problematics faced by students and teachers at all levels of the education system. Feminist and gender theories offer creative research tools that help understand the origins and consequences of gender inequalities and seek transformative action to address gender inequalities. For instance, intersectionality helps explore the conjugation of axes of oppression —such as gender inequality, racism, social class and others— that affect women’s, LGBTQIA+ population’s, and other non-normative individuals’ opportunities on a daily basis (Carbado et al., 2013). At the same time, decolonizing theories of education bring forward strategies to rethink not only the different ways of oppression, but also the different ways of resistance, of contestation, in a world where divisions and competition can be counteracted with collective action and situated knowledges (Icaza & De Jong, 2018; Haraway, 1988).

Nevertheless, even if feminist and gender theories have opened our eyes to better understand gendered ways of oppression and resistance, they are also susceptible to being questioned, when we want to be critical enough to be able to recognize opportunities for improvements in our own academic efforts. In this line, the research in this panel also explores discrepancies in policies, discourses and actions of education actors who apparently work for the cause of a more gender-inclusive education in their respective contexts.

Sub Unit

• Gender Justice SIG

Organizer

• Alejandro Caravaca, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Chair

• Patricia Grillet, University of Hawaii / East-West Center

Individual Presentations

• Towards gender-sensitive teaching in Catalan universities? Feminist actors’ strategies for pushing policies forward - Alejandro Caravaca, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Sexuality Education: A battleground of ideologies in Panama - Ana Raquel Fuentes Córdoba

• Telling the Story of Gender Inequality during the Covid-19 Crisis in Education and Introducing Feminist Alternatives to Change the Reality - Patricia Grillet, University of Hawaii / East-West Center

• The ebb and flow of gender and sexuality education in Brazil: Exploring the interaction between LGBTQIA+ civil society and the State - Xènia Gavaldà Elias, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Discussant

• Karen Monkman, DePaul University