Policing Girlhood: Safety, Surveillance, and the Making of Identity in Schools

• In Event: Gender, Agency, and Education for Peace: Power, Resistance, and Identity in Divided Contexts

Proposal

Purpose of Study:
Research on gender and education in India has too often emphasized access—bringing girls into schools—without interrogating how those institutions themselves regulate and reshape girlhood. This study argues that schools are not simply left behind at graduation but remain deeply inscribed in memory, behavior, and identity. By focusing on current high school girls in elite Indian schools, this research examines how ideas of safety, femininity, and risk are constructed, internalized, and resisted in daily school life. This inquiry is especially timely in the wake of heightened public discourse on gender-based violence, including the 2012 Delhi and 2024 RG Kar rape-murder cases, which have spotlighted institutional responsibility while leaving schools curiously absent from the conversation.

Theoretical Framework:
The analysis draws on Lugones’ (2007) theory of the coloniality of gender to examine how elite schools—often modeled on colonial ideals of discipline and propriety—continue to shape girls into “good” and respectable subjects through practices of modesty, safety, and self-regulation. Feminist standpoint theory (Harding, 1991) further guides the inquiry by centering girls’ lived experiences as epistemically privileged sites of knowledge about domination and resistance. This framework is enriched by Bartky’s (1990) account of embodied power and Ahmed’s (2004) analysis of affect, both of which illuminate how girls experience safety as a simultaneously embodied and emotional phenomenon tied to surveillance, discipline, and belonging.

Methodology:
Nineteen high school girls enrolled in elite schools across the Indian city of Kolkata participated in semi-structured interviews, lasting 45–60 minutes, conducted in person or online. A conversational and trauma-informed approach (Alessi & Kahn, 2023; Campbell et al., 2019) encouraged participants to shape the direction of dialogue, foregrounding issues most pressing to them. Ethical protocols, including parental consent and student assent, were prioritized. Interview questions addressed how safety is experienced within school spaces, how peer relationships and institutional policies shape gender norms, and how aspirations for the future are informed by these dynamics.

Findings and Discussion:
Four interrelated themes emerged:
Safety as surveillance and regulation – Safety was understood less as protection and more as an omnipresent gaze that policed attire, movement, and relationships, producing a culture of self-surveillance.
The “good girl” archetype – Safety and morality were fused through the ideal of the obedient, modest, and respectable “good girl,” where compliance with gendered codes was equated with protection.
Friendship and relational identity – Peer networks offered spaces of solidarity and subtle resistance but also reproduced hierarchies tied to the “good girl” ideal.
Adult gatekeepers and institutional messaging – Teachers and administrators reinforced gendered codes of safety, functioning both as protectors and enforcers of restrictive norms.

Significance of the Study:
This study highlights how elite schools function as key sites where gendered safety is defined, enforced, and negotiated. Rather than viewing safety as a neutral or protective measure, the findings reveal it as a regulatory framework that disciplines girls’ bodies, behaviors, and aspirations while reinforcing caste and class privilege. By centering the voices of current students, this research contributes to feminist scholarship on schooling in the Global South, showing how safety is experienced as both a constraint and a terrain of resistance in girls’ everyday negotiations of identity.

References:
Ahmed, S. (2004). The cultural politics of emotion. Edinburgh University Press.
Alessi, E. J., & Kahn, S. (2023). Toward a trauma-informed qualitative research approach: Guidelines for ensuring the safety and promoting the resilience of research participants. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 20(1), 121–154.
Bartky, S. L. (1990). Femininity and domination: Studies in the phenomenology of oppression. Routledge.
Campbell, R., Goodman-Williams, R., & Javorka, M. (2019). A trauma-informed approach to sexual violence research ethics and open science. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 34(23–24), 4765–4793.
Harding, S. (1991). Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women’s lives. Cornell University Press.
Lugones, M. (2007). Heterosexualism and the colonial/modern gender system. Hypatia, 22(1), 186–219.

Author

• Suha Gangopadhyay, Michigan State University