Introduction
This paper reports on research in progress examining the gendered 
reflections of undergraduate students in the Faculty of Education at Deakin 
University.  The project extends an on-going interest in gender 
inclusiveness of a large and diverse group of staff members from most 
Departments in the School of Primary Teaching.  A collaborative team 
representing a range of feminist interests and expertise implemented this 
research.  In the first instance we aimed to influence the current practice 
of Teacher Education by translating the gender inclusive curriculum to a 
tertiary context.  We adopted this paradigm after Fowler (1983) 
conceptualising it as a framework which by its contents and methodologies 
valued the female as equally valid as the male.  In responding to current 
Government policies we hoped to utilise this  model and identify its 
significance in Teacher Education.  The team chose to focus upon examining 
the perceived and pre-existing gendered knowledge of our students as they 
began their teaching qualification.  We expected that this would form an 
appropriate base for our eventual goal of discovering their perceptions of 
the gendered process of Teacher Education.  We began the research task by 
attempting to uncover what our students could tell us was the gendered 
nature of their schooling both at the primary and secondary levels.  In 
doing so we devised a wide ranging series of open-ended questions to form 
an interview schedule.  These questions focussed upon issues of policy, 
language, culture, knowledge and harassment in an attempt to uncover 
statements of how gender was constructed in schools for and by our 
students.
In our post-modern times naming the problem is seen to be a significant 
dilemma.  How do we name the students we have interviewed.  Do we identify 
our respondents as girls?  Women?  Females?  In seeking the most 
appropriate naming of our subjects we looked to the Government policies in 
Gender Equality.  The key policies in our area clearly refer to the 
education of Girls:
     1975 Girls School and Society
     1984 Girls and Tomorrow
     1987/1989  The National Policy for the Education of Girls.
Nevertheless we view the focus of our research is on uncovering our 
tertiary students memories of their schooling experience, as a basis for 
analysing their responses to Teacher Education.  As such they are adults 
subjectively constructing gender through their memories and current 
positionings.  Therefore we name them as women and men.
theorizing women's knowledge and gendered relations in schooling
The theoretical agendas of this research project are twofold:
(1)  From an empirical base of interviews with 40 teacher education 
students, to build theories about women's knowledge and memories of the 
process of schooling;
(2)  To provide an account of theorizing women's knowledge that will 
provide a framework for our understanding of change in schools and tertiary 
institutions.
In terms of the empirical base of the project, there is little information 
available on current women's memories, knowledge and reflections on the 
experience of schooling.  Research that has been done on training teachers 
and their knowledge has tended to quantify and categorize attitudes and 
ideas, and rest on complacent or self-reinforcing studies of 'gender-
stereotyped' attitudinal surveys, the 'victimology' of girls' experiences 
in schools, or the conservative nature of teachers' perceptions of 'gender 
roles' and 'gender identity'.
The theoretical perspective framing this research project intends to push 
these assured parameters of understanding women students' knowledge much 
further.  Along a trajectory of experience, memory, reflection and 
knowledge, we intend to argue for a problematized and situated 
understanding of our own and our students' knowledge.  This approach does 
not imply the development of a theoretical apparatus outside of the 
research data, that is then read back on to the texts of the students' 
memories.  We do not intend as outsiders to expose, or uncover weaknesses, 
blindspots or disguises in our students' memories and knowledge but to 
project a range of understandings through and inside the texts, in context 
of our broader aim of analysing knowledge as a basis for change.  A key 

focus throughout the paper is thus movement, development, reform, and the 
agenda that will allow space for these to occur.
The point of departure in our interviews on the gendered relations of 
schooling was personal experience.  Since the early stages of the second 
wave women's movement, when the personal was defined as the political, the 
realities of women's personal lives have been a crucial factor in making 
knowledge and consciousness.  But the notion of unmediated experience, 
unproblematised in the raw, is no longer helpful in locating women's 
knowledge.  As Weedon has commented, women's 'lived reality', or 
experience, is constituted by social-material practices and the formation 
and processes of subjectivity:
re them ...   (Weedon, 1987, 8-9)
Experience-in-itself a limiting concept, it must be located as related, 
process, a site or position, or as embodiment of social practices and 
institutions in and through it.
Experience must be conceptualized as projected memory and is thus refracted 
through time.  Haug has summed this up as 'women's lived practice in the 
memory of a self-constructed identity' thus the intervention of the self 
and identity through time is our construction of experience" (Haug, 1987).  
de Lauretis (1990) has highlighted this concept as 'historical 
consciousness', whereby she argues that our understanding of self, identity 
and subject is made through the historical process of successive 
displacements and transformations.  In framing historical change as 
important for the feminist subject, de Lauretis draws  on the 
autobiographical reflections of Pratt, who speaks of her life as the 
continual 'reanchoring' of self, and the 'rewriting' of self or the 
narrative of autobiography over time (de Lauretis, 1990).  Personal 
experience, as memory and knowledge, is thus constituted, located, and must 
be analysed as such:  this theme will recur throughout the paper, 
specifically in our comments on 'gender' and 'gender identity'.
In broad terms, there are three movements within current feminist theory 
that situate experience and knowledge.  In our view, each can make a 
contribution to the aims of this paper, despite some contradictory 
positions within and between varying approaches.
The oldest tradition draws on the legacy of class-based theories of 
culture, where knowledge is defined as the product of the material and the 
social, specifically, the means of production in a capitalist society.  
Culture may be analysed as the production or the reproduction of the 
ideologies of a specific society, the work of the 'superstructure' of 
institutions or the social apparatus of the time.  For the purposes of this 
paper, the work of Frigga Haug (1987) and others on the theorization of 
'memory work' provides a useful example of feminists working within this 
tradition.  In the dynamic or the dialectic between the self and the 
social, Haug gives the impetus and control to pre-given, existing social 
relations as the determinants of women's knowledge.  She concludes that the 
role of the individual is in 'appropriating', 'negotiating' or 
'reproducing' within the given structure.  If there is space for the 
individual subject, in Haug's terms it is only space to 'construct the self 
into existing relations', or to 'grow into' the structures of society 
(Haug, 1987).  This is the language of other theorists of ideology who 
describe the individual 'interpellated' into ideology.
There is, however, more momentum in Haug's memory-work than appears from 
the rather over-determined portrait above.  A strong motif is specific 
concrete and material details, which are made significant through memory as 
'practices of subjugation':  the close examination of specific practices is 
a useful feature of our research project.  Haug also draws on theories of 
ideology as disguise, or false consciousness, but presents a specific 
tension in this experience for women, that we find is relevant.  She argues 
that the process of forming knowledge for women is bound to be fraught with 
self-imolation, or the destruction of self, or the withdrawal from reality.  
These tensions and dangers for women arise directly from the tensions, 
dangers and contradictions of their lived experience, and women's only 
resort in aligning knowledge with reality is to ignore, omit or gloss over 
contradictions:
At every point, where we have indulged in self-delusion, refused to 
confront issues face to face, avoided conflicts, refuted connections ... we 

have in so doing by-passed potential for our future.   (Haug, 1987, p.  )
There is an important element of collective authorship, ownership and 
memory in Haug's analysis that is not as clearly reflected in the research 
of our project.  Our source material has been produced by other women's 
memories, however, we as collective authors participated in interviews and 
analysis.  Haug's theorizing of women's knowledge separates consciousness 
from reality, and truth from consciousness, in a way that raises problems.  
But the sense of rationalisation, withdrawal, in other words the political 
purpose served by making women's knowledge remains an important referent 
for our research.
This point, where we focus on the political purpose, or ends served by the 
construction of women's knowledge, is taken up and reinforced in the work 
of current American feminist theorists, Nancy Hartsock and Sandra Harding. 
In their focus on the politics of women's knowledge they invert the 
relations between individual and society proposed by Haug to say that it is 
the 'standpoint' of women that must be our reference in exposing the power 
relations in a society.  As the class-based view of oppression taken by the 
proletariat is the legitimate position from which to understand class, so 
the standpoint of women allows us to understand the power of patriarchy.  
Another way of explaining this is to say that first hand experience and 
knowledge of oppression - the speaking position of women - is our only 
valid access to analysing power.
This is a view of women's knowledge which is more active and empowering, 
than that of Haug, because of its positive view of the construction, 
production and expression of women's points of view.  It has the effect of 
legitimating, if not valorizing women's points of view, allowing space for 
subjugated knowledge and experience.  As a frame for research such as our 
current project, this positive view of women's knowledge validates the 
collection of women's reflections, as the 'epistemology of power' derived 
from the standpoint of oppression.
This is the concept of women's knowledge that we find most useful, for 
beyond this Hartsock and others go on to privilege the standpoint of women, 
in an essentializing and reductive mode.  They propose for example that the 
world view of women expresses a continuum beyond dualities, a unity of 
mental and manual labour, which is based on women's reproductive work.  As 
di Stefano (1990) has pointed out, this is premised on a view of women as 
coherent social subjects, and 'women' as a potentially oppressive and 
totalizing fiction, excluding difference.  Flax's extended critique is in 
similar terms:  that Hartsock assumes the otherness that men assign women, 
by assuming that women, unlike men, can be free of their own participation 
in relations of domination (Flax, 1990).
While these critiques of the standpoint theorists of women's knowledge have 
some purchase, the work of Harding and Hartsock provides an important 
return to the imperative of women's points of view, and a sustained focus 
on the systemic relations of power that construct women's knowledge and 
memories.
The third approach to theorizing women's knowledge and memory takes as a 
framework assumptions about the momentum, movement and fracturing of the 
knowledge, experience and memory contexts.  Feminists engaged with 
varieties of postmodernist theorizing write in a mode that takes its 
political engagement beyond the problematic dualities of self and structure 
of both the Marxist and Standpoint theorists.  They offer a third frame for 
the research of this project, for they allow us access beyond a static 
reading of the texts of our students' memories and some understanding of 
women's resistance to gendered discourses and meanings.  They also 
constrain us in the project of establishing a given reality established 
through the texts of our students' memories.
Women's knowledge and memory must be read as both a site, and an embodiment 
of relations of power, dominance and subjugation.  The contestation 
involved in such a motif involves reading for contradictions beyond any 
notions of disguise, rationalisation or co-option.  Women's knowledge is 
emergent, changing, not only through time but through its refraction of 
relations of power throughout.  Dorothy Smith has developed this point 
further to argue that the 'texts' of women's knowledge have an active role 
themselves as a material presence in social relations.  Not only does 
women's language, and other cultural texts and artefacts reproduce reality 

but they are active agents themselves in structuring that social reality, 
changing meaning for all (Smith, 1990).
An approach that recognises women's knowledge as a site or text also shifts 
our understandings of identity and subjectivity.  Hutcheon's view is that 
the personal or the self is constructed by 'positionality' or a referenced 
property of experience (Hutcheon, 1989).  Others describe identity located 
as a flux, or multiplicity, heterogeneity or plurality of different axes 
beyond any single subject position created by a unitary symbol, such as 
'woman'.  In our reading of women's texts we have to go beyond simple 
conceptions of 'gender identity' and 'women's experience' which we may 
'read back' into our students' language.  As Wendy Brown has persuasively 
put it, we must move beyond the mantle of truth worn beyond identity-based 
speech, to a more political view of women's knowledge:
We have learned well to articulate and identify our 'subject positions' - 
we have become experts at politicizing the 'I' that is produced through 
multiple vectors of power and subordination.  But the very practice so 
crucial in making these elements of power visible and subjectively 
political may be partly at odds with the requisites for developing 
political conversation among a complex and diverse 'we'.   (Brown, W., 
1991, p. 81)
The theoretical perspective framing this research project thus draws on a 
strategic move made by Toril Moi (T. Lovell, 1991, p. 375) to push beyond 
the impasse of opposing positions, and to draw out not only what is most 
practically useful for our current project, but approaches to understanding 
our students' memories that together provide us with a broadbased view of 
the potential for change.
language
Feminist research has found that we can  begin to understand  better the 
position of women in society though the study of language and discourse 
(Cameron, Poynton, Gilbert, Spender, Threadgold). There are many different 
views of how language places women within society and therefore in relation 
to men.  However,  much of this research (Cameron, Fairclough, Poynton, 
Spender) centres around power relationships and how women through language 
have been alienated or oppressed in a  patriarchal society. It is men who 
have the means to oppress, silence and marginalise women through language 
by denying them  access to the most influential and prestigious registers 
of language in a particular culture (Cameron, 1985).  It is the 
institutional and bureaucratic control of language that silences and 
oppresses subcultures, such as women and ethnic minorities, within a 
society. We construct meaning differently because each individual has a 
different experience, but more generally, because in patriarchal societies 
males and females are allowed a different range of experiences. 
For feminist poststructuralism, it is language in the form of conflicting 
discourses which constitutes us as conscious thinking subjects and enables 
us to give meaning to the world and to act to transform it. (Weedon, 1987, 
p32)
Girls and boys are very specifically socialised into female and male gender 
roles (Walkerdine, Gilbert, ). This socialisation can be examined  through 
the discursive formation of the subject through the use of language. How we 
communicate about and to females and males has been shown to be different 
(Cameron, Poynton, Spender).  Research of, for example, grammatical 
constructions, lexical sets, use of intonation and discourse styles are 
often judged as being more or less acceptable, according to whether you are 
female or male. This then realises power relationships which can be 
expressed through common sense understandings and ideology. 
Fairclough(1990) discusses these connections between language use and 
unequal relations of power and the effect that class and ethnicity have in 
maintaining these unequal relationships. 

The extent to which ideological variation becomes a social struggle can be 
better understood by studying the language. Fairclough(1990) highlights how 
communication is constrained by the structures and forces of the social 
institutions in which we live and function. In these interviews these are 
the school and those who work within it, the women students' peer group and 
their families.  
Keeping in mind that  it is the memories of the first year students and 

their perceptions of their years of schooling, it is important to reflect 
on how the kind of analysis that we engage in is influenced by our role as 
listener. It is true to say that there will never be equal relationships in 
any conversation given the role of speaker and hearer. The number and place 
of agreement, interruption, request for clarification etc,.. will always 
influence how a person constructs and positions themselves.  In any 
conversational analysis  both parties' language should be taken into 
account, however, in these interviews I am concentrating not on the 
relationship between the interviewer and interviewee, but rather the social 
relationships which the interviewees conversation reveals about themselves 
and their 'real world'. 
How a person is positioned within society can be influenced by whether you 
are female or male. Bronwyn Davies makes an understanding of how the female 
students in these interviews have positioned themselves and have been 
positioned by other people.  
Discourse always requires a speaking position -a position from which 
authority is exercised - and a spoken subject, a person brought  into 
existence through the exercising of this authority.    (Gilbert, 1991, p. 
42)
These interviews show the extent to which the students subjectivity and 
their interpretations of their schooling experiences are shaped by the 
discourses of gender to which they have access, namely provided by their 
teachers, and peer group and which they have taken up as their own 
(Davies). It is revealed that these students have been interpellated 
(Althusser) into the social world via the dominant discourse of gender 
which serves to keep the male/female dualism in tact and in fact they have 
taken these discourses on as their own. They have learned to interpret 
their own lives and the lives of others within these dominant discourses.
teachers' positioning of students
When we compare the language used about girls by girls and the male other, 
the instances of sexual harrassment and the accepted behaviour of boys by 
teachers discussed in this paper,  the teachers' expectations and 
positioning is somewhat extreme. 
The language CN11 uses to describe an occurence whilst  on  school camp and 
which culminated in one girl's face being slapped by another's as she came 
out from her cabin illustrates how  girls take on the all inclusive 'we'       
'we'  were told off really badly......'we' were told off because 'we' acted 
terribly....  and that 'we' should have known,"
even though the "really bad bitch fight" only involved two girls, and their 
'helpers',  fighting over a mutual boyfriend,  "... the girls were 
suspended for a week - both of them" and through  mob-type language 
positions the 'accused' by the use of  demeaning language 
"and their two little helpers, each had two little helpers. Bodyguards we 
called them." 
CN11 reinforces the different attitudes of society to how boys and girls 
should behave:
because we've been brought up to believe that we're so different, there's 
always been 'oh boys are meant to do that, and you're a girl and you're 
meant to do that', and that's the way we've been brought up.
It was also common for girls to be positioned into the quieter, less 
dominant one through the teacher's language 
     
The teachers used to say 'look at the girls they're sitting nicely and 
quietly' (C.N.9&10). 
well you're just a vegetable.. (CN14)
     


that's not the way a girl acts.... like they'd tell her (a friend) 'yes, 
you're a tomboy, I expect this of Darren or I expect this of ......  but 
not you'.     
They expected the girls to be very nice and serene and quiet and the boys 
they were expecting to be a bit more noisy and so forth.. (CN16)
     
Some teachers say, 'I expect the boys to be noisy, I don't expect the girls 
to be. (L.B.)
Gilbert (1991) says gender identity is centred on appearance and sexuality, 
and media texts are central in the construction of this identity. This is 
illustrated by the following remark (underlined) made by the headmaster of 
a co-educational school when he told the class off 
'our class was being told off pretty badly... and he called us barbarians 
raiding villages or something, and all of you Big M girls, with your little 
mini skirts..." (CN16) 
"The content of adult talk may contain one set of messages but the 
discursive practices engaged in may encode, through metaphor or through 
habitual and unexamined language use, an entirely different set of 
messages"
students' positioning of themselves
During the interviews it was common for the women students to place 
themselves into incompetent positions (see CN14 above underlined) and in 
many cases used the pronoun 'I' rather than 'we' . 
For computers I was hopeless at computers I was just terrible, he just 
thought  I was a total complete idiot, because I couldn't understand how 
these computers worked, that was just towards me because I couldn't pick it 
up I was just so dumb but I don't think he ever thought it was us females 
being dumb just me." (CN11) 
A11 does  align herself as being one of the girls "us females" but isolates 
herself through the contradictory phrase "just me".
The poststructuralist world argues that the person is not socialised into 
the social world but interpellated into it. That is they are not passively 
shaped by active others, rather they actively take up as their own the 
discourses through which they are shaped. 
'girls can do it as as well as boys' assuming that boys do it well all of 
the time and is therefore putting  girls down. (CN8)
Examples of girls using derogatory language towards each other was quite 
common. The language used was usually borrowed from the terms boys used as 
derogatory remarks towards girls.

Slut, moll, bitch, especially in high school among the girls, 'she's a 
bitch, or she's a slut' Used:  "If she was going out with somebody else's 
boyfriend, or she done something behind another girl. It had to do with 
boys mainly."  (C.N. 11) 
Some of the language girls used to name their actions and to name 
themselves  and other girls in their classes placed them in a negative 
position
"..we had one really bad bitch fight..." 
"...their two little helpers..."
"... a total complete idiot..."
".. cat  fights. The usual 'bitch' and things like that" (A16)
'..there were a lot of what I would call very bitchy females.."
CN14 when asked about name calling agreed that whilst in Primary school it 
was 
just the usual things like (the boys said) 'you haven't got a hope in 
catching this ball' or 'you can't kick' and 'you're a sissy' and all those 
sorts of things, it was just the normal things that they say. 
(However it is noted that  in Secondary school  CN14  becomes so 
intimidated by the teasing she cannot contest her position.)
oh don't choose girls"
     
oh yuk, girls - germs " and "You can't play here -you're a girl." (D.G.)
Of three boys who had started ballet classes when offered at their recently 
formed private co-ed school only one remained at the end of second term. 
These boys were  ridiculed  in what is seen to be the worst insult you can 

pay a man by calling him feminine (Campling, 1989) "oh, you're a sissy, 
you're doing ballet".  
The discursive positions allowed by these girls (and boys) during their 
Primary and Secondary schooling were limited by the schools attitude to 
boys and their stereotypic positioning of girls by their male and female 
peer group and their teachers.
The ways in which discourse constitiutes the minds and bodies of 
individuals is always part of a wider network of power relations, often 
with institutional bases.   (Weedon, 1987, p108).
contradictions in language
Although society has always recognised contradiction as a logical concept 
naming a relation between propositions it has also been a general metaphor 
for incompatabilities of many kinds (Davies and Harre,1990). However, the 
deconstruction of modernity(Weedon, 1987, Walkerdine,1985, Haug, 1987) has 
allowed us to question the interpretation of contradiction.  
In a poststructuarlist analysis, the person who makes a contradictory 
statement is more likely to be seen as being positioned within and 
constituted through contradictory discourses.  ( Davies and Harre, 1990, 
p4). 
A person who appears to be making contradictory statements is seen to be 
inconsistent, not understanding or interpreting the social world 
'appropriately'. 
     
The guys were much louder, the girls would talk among themselves in their 
little groups, the guys would yell from one side of the room to one 
another. The teacher was quiet and didn't know what she was doing, the guys 
would yell and pick her to bits and the girls would just talk quietly and 
nastily about her or him.   (C.N.8)
However when asked about who took over in class, C.N. 8 reveals details of 
her own particular class which had "5 guys and 14 girls" and although she 
says the boys were loud and vociferous 
     
"the girls definitely took over they were in control of everything.......
(Interviewer:Was it easy to have a turn?) "When the guys got to it , no." 
(CN8) 
C.N.16 when discussing how students behaved in maths:
However C.N. 14 also states that when she was constantly teased in the 
playground 

So it was easier to fight against the teachers rather than fight against 
the boys in the classroom. It was alright to be "a disagreeable child" but 
teasing in the playground was too powerful to be fought against.
Davies and Harre (1990) state it is the discourses with their contradictory 
assumptions or imperatives, rather than the person who may need 
remediation. These female students speak from many different subject 
positions. They see themselves in different roles at different times moving 
from adolescence to adulthood, from a student at school to tertiary 
student, involved in different relationships- girlfriend - boyfriend, 
girlfriend-girlfriend, mother - daughter, father - daughter and, having to 
interpret the difference between feminism and femininity.  
Students positioning of  themselves is very contradictory. While society is 
still presenting a feminine subservient position our research has shown how 
difficult it is for students to take up any other positions. This is an 
area that the gender inclusive curiculum needs to address. 
cross cultural understandings of gender positioning
     it was O.K for boys, but not girls.


Whilst Federal and state policies are in place concerning the education of 
girls, and recent  Ministry figures indicate that there are increasing 
numbers of students of non English speaking background in schools, the 
policies are written from the dominant AngloÐCeltic perspectives. The 
students fall into a number of different categories, from the recently 
arrived immigrants and refugees, to those students born in Australia whose 
family language and community contact outside school is for the most part  
non English speaking and culturally non AngloÐCeltic. These students have 
ben identified by DSE as requiring specialised assistance, and some are 
provided with specialist teaching. If the DSE sees being of non English 
speaking background a disadvantage in our schools rather than an additional 
resource, then it is appropriate to examine gender equity policies 
appropriateness for the education of girls from non English speaking 
backgrounds from a similar perspective.
The 1975 policy document  Girls,School and Society which has had far 
reaching implications for the education of girls, was working from a 
deficit model. To be a girl of non English speaking background was to be 
seen as at a disadvantage. To what extent has that position changed today? 
When one considers the policies in relation to the gender inclusive 
curriculum and the education of girls there appears to be remarkably little 
research and even less which takes into account the different backgrounds 
of the students in schools and the implications of this for such policy 
development. (Tsolidis 1988,Kenway 1990). There is a 'significant silence' 
concerning the response of parents, students and teachers on the 
implementation of these policies (Kenway 1990).
Before making any comment on students of non English speaking background it 
should be pointed out that in attempting to form any generalisations from 
the research we must at the same time resist any resulting stereotyping in 
terms of cultural difference. Students of non English speaking background 
in schools represent a wide diversity of backgrounds in terms of class, 
educational backgrounds as well as ethnicity and gender (Tsolidis1988). 
Keeping this in mind, parents of these students will hold a wide range of 
values with regards the education of their daughters, as indeed, do all 
parents.
I suppose different values at home and that sort of thing.  When you 
comeinto contact with the school, I've been taught differently at home.  
(A9)
For some groups in our community higher education for women is still not an 
option. Thus the only women interviewed in this project came from families 
where tertiary education for women, albeit only in certain fields, is an 
option.
Although there are a considerable number of students of NESB in the first 
year enrolment only a few students were interviewed in the random sample. 
The findings were similar to much other research in the area in that almost 
all students in this group commented on their parents concern over the 
seemingly 'free' behaviour between boys and girls in secondary school, in 
public and within the Angloceltic community in general. A number of girls 
had been placed in single sex secondary schools as their parents believed 
that this would 'protect  them' from the inappropriate behaviour in co-
educational schools.
Previous research (Tsolidis1988, Kalantzis et al 1990) has shown that in 
many immigrant families gender positions for girls are strongly defined by 
their own cultural positions and at times these attitudes are contrary to 
the policies put in place in schools. 
     ...progressivism and multiculturalism are only rhetorically open 
doctrines.Rather ironically, the liberal culture which is ostensibly so 
open to difference and change, finds itself at odds with those traditional 
immigrant cultures which are not open, those which believe that school is a 
place where fixed knowledge is imparted in an authoritarian structure, 
those which include a long tradition of sexism and racism and so on.  
(Kalantzis et al 1989)
Whereas in primary schools NESB girls mix freely with all groups of 
students, in secondary schools, when parental values seem to the girls to 
come into most conflict with the everyday life of secondary students, girls 
tend to mix more with other NESB girls as there is a shared understanding 

of their dual value system..(Kalantzis 1990)
Most immigrant groups maintain very tight control over their girls social 
life and treat the boys quite differently. 
Boys  said that when they got married their wife won't work. Or they expect 
to have a virgin. (A1)
As a result some girls found their only opportunity for any social life 
whilst at school was within the close confines of family approval. Thus 
some found the freedom they encountered at University came as as welcome 
relief to their school experience, whilst others felt their parents 
attitudes still interfered with them having any independent social life.. 
Although some women students expressed frustration at their parents 
attitudes few contested them. Some  did go to great length, usually with 
the cooperation of male relatives, to have more 'freedom than their parents 
would have approved of. However for many of the girls this left them in a 
somewhat powerless position with these boys who were thus able to wield a 
certain amount of control over these girls during their school days. Some 
women commented that this 'supervision ' remained at University, to their 
frustration.
The range of careers deemed 'suitable' for young women of NESB appears more 
restricted than for other students. (Kalantzis et al) The most suitable 
courses for women appear from this sample to be law and business. Nursing 
and other health professions, so often seen as traditional 'female 
'professions, are not considered suitable for these students by their 
parents. Some families opposed their daughters entering teaching, but  most 
approved. At the time of research the entry score for teaching was quite 
low, so that in many cases, this was the only course to which the women 
gained entry.  Teaching has traditionally been a male working class and 
female middleÐclass profession amongst the AngloÐCeltic group. (Blackmore) 
This class and gender positioning amongst this sample group could be 
further examined in the future.
Many of the students appeared to have no knowledge of any gender inclusive 
policies or practices at their school although they were well aware of 
equal opportunity policy and practice. They did not relate these policies 
to themselves in terms of supporting their own or family values, but did 
notice some inconsistencies in teachers' behaviour in this area, in this 
case in teaching 'reproduction' in Science.

Several commented on the 'hassling' that girls experience but seem to 
accept this as a natural part of schooling rather than something that 
'should be dealt with'. 
I think I found your family background played a big role there, where you  
lived and your ethnicity, all that sort of portrays heavily on whether you 
do use terms like that.  (A4)
There seems to be a view that such 'hassling' should be controlled by the 
individual classroom teacher, and stopped by the teacher rather than have a 
broad school based policy. In this women from all backgrounds held similar 
views. Several expressed anger and frustration that they did not enjoy this 
behaviour and that this unruliness supported their parents' view that the 
schools were jungles and their own values did not have much credence within 
the school system (Tsolidis)
The gap between parental expectations of and attitudes towards schools by 
parents of students of NESB does not appeared to have narrowed much over 
the last twenty years. 
     
It wasn't' until my late years at high school that I went to Camp.  It 
clashed with their values. I remember I did everything against it, I asked 
teachers to come and talk to my parents, but no, that's my answer.  (A9&10)
Most schools still deny ethnicity in practice in that  they rarely give 
support for cultural, language or religious maintenance and few schools 
teach the students' own languages. In practice all students are somehow 
expected to fit some ideal 'norm' which appears to be that of the dominant 
AngloÐCeltic group. To accept such differing values in real terms in our 
schools would challenge many of the accepted positions held in the policies 
purporting to offer 'equal opportunity'.  At the same time schools must 
resist falling into the pattern of celebrating difference whilst 
reÐinforcing the dominant ideology.


One can find today many examples of 'good practice' with regard to schools' 
attempts to involve their community in participation and decision making. 
But while the every day practices of the schools seem to the parents to be 
at odds with their own values, one cannot see the distance between the two 
groups lessening. Whilst in primary school, many women spoke of how easy it 
was to have friendships with girls of all cultural backgrounds, in 
secondary school, when their parents became more aware of how their 
daughter's peer group behaviours appeared to be at odds with their 
expectations and norms, it was easier to form friendships only with girls 
of similar cultural backgrounds, who were experiencing similar concerns 
from their parents, than to try to sustain friendships with girls from 
Anglo backgrounds and have to all the time be explaining why you were not 
allowed to do something. Thus school, rather than breaking down the 
barriers between the groups, served to reinforce them.
It seems that one interpretation for this situation could be that the 
curriculum theorising on which current curriculum policy and practice is 
based has been shown to be inadequate in catering for the diverse groups of 
students within the schools and with individuals within those groups. The 
National Policy mentions that it should 'include the contribution of women 
from all ethnic backgrounds and social groups (p51).  Whilst policy which 
is claiming to maximise the involvement of the stake holders  the students,  
parents and  teachers, but many of the parents and and students from 
cultural backgrounds other than the dominant  Anglo ÐCeltic, see the 
activities and practices of the school other than those with which they can 
identify, this disjunction will continue. 
Previous research has shown resistance to the curriculum by 'disadvantaged 
groups of girls (Jones, Anyon, Lather, Ellsworth, Tsolidis,Kenway) 
questioning the way in which certain groups are objectified in education.
Rather, the inability of schools and teachers to provide an environment in 
which difference can be accepted, supported and theorised, raises more 
serious questions about curriculum theorising today. Perhaps it is  time to 
look again at  progressivism in terms of curriculum theory, in the light  
that  this approach to curriculum renders students of difference, whether 
by ethnicity, class or gender, invisible. (Walkerdine 1987, Kenway 1990).
Progressivism makes the product of oppression, powerless, invisible.It is 
rendered invisible because within the naturalised discourse it is rendered 
unnatural, abnormal.  (Walkerdine, 1987)
Resistance to such a curriculum is seen as regressive, and not given 
credence.  If individuals or groups are seen to be 'irrational' in their 
resistance to the dominant , liberatory ideology, then the possibilities of 
resistance for girls coming from such marginal groups, are severely 
limited.
One of the ironies of the culture of liberalism, working with concepts like 
'rights', participation, control and empowerment', is that ,whatever the 
practical virtues of getting parents involved, and however much they 
connote community access, they are themselves culturally alien, even 
culturally threatening, terms to many people. They work well in the culture 
of the liberal individual, confidently able to avail themselves of their 
rights of participation.  (Kalantzis et al)
To develop a curriculum which was truly inclusive of cultural difference 
would challenge the 'rationality' of many accepted educational principles. 
It is time to reÐexamine the role of the curriculum in reproducing 
inequality within our school systems and in supporting students, parents 
and teachers in their attempts to contest, construct  and find a voice for 
their own views on a gender inclusive curriculum.

sexual harassment
Sexual harassment has been conceptualized as the confluence of authority 
(power) relations and sexuality (or sexism) in a society stratified by 
gender (Fitzgerald, 1990, p. 38).  The 'power' referred to by Fitzgerald is 
of two kinds:  one deriving from a formal role, for example, teacher and 
the other, an informal kind which arises from the male sexual prerogative 
implying that men have the unfettered right to initiate sexual interactions 
or to assert the primacy of woman's gender role over that of others roles, 
for example, student (Fitzgerald, 1990, p. 38).

The consequences of sexual harassment are not insignificant to victims.  
Psychological problems, physical illness and lowered educational 
aspirations have been noted (Paludi, 1990).  In addition, acts of sexual 
harassment signify to victims that they are seen primarily as sexual 
objects, are not being taken seriously as students and are not being 
accorded the personal respect that they are entitled to expect of others 
(Davies and Campbell, 1985).
In schools, sexual harassment is expressed in a number of forms.  For 
instance, boys frequently make insulting and abusive remarks - often 
sexually focussed to girls.  This happens in the school grounds, as the 
students move around inside school buildings and in classrooms (Dwyer, 
1990, p. 24).  It may also involve physical contact as, for example when a 
girl/woman is patted, stroked, hugged or held against her will.  It can 
involve being pinched, squeezed, grabbed, groped along with more serious 
sexual assaults.  However, it does not necessarily involve contact.  
According to Halson,
Sexual harassment may be verbal or psychological:  staring, leering, 
standing too close, being followed, threatening body postures, sexual 
remarks or taunting, obscene gestures or jokes, explicit conversations 
about sex which cause offence as well as subtle or explicit pressure for 
sexual activity. (p. 131, 1990)
Similarly the Commonwealth Government's National Policy for the Education 
of Girls defines harassment as:
unwelcome language and/or conduct of a sexual nature which does or might 
disadvantage the victim in employment or education.  This kind of behaviour 
takes as many forms in schools as in the wider community, ranging from so-
called teasing and bullying of a sexist kind both verbal and physical, 
through to harassment of a more explicity sexual nature.  Although it 
extends to both sexes, girls are the main victims. (p. 54-55)
One of the particular difficulties in dealing with the more common forms of 
sexual harassment is that they are often trivialized or dismissed as 
'inoffensive' or 'friendly' or 'just teasing'.  This attitude functions 
then to absolve teachers from any responsibility to intervene.  However as 
Clark (1989, p. 4) points out sexual harassment is not the same as teasing:
It is not an individual act of meanness by one child to another, because 
there is a power dimension involved.  There is a fundamental difference 
between put-downs based on differences of power (gender, class, race, and 
ethnic based harassment by a member of a powerful group to a member of a 
less powerful group) and put-downs which are individual acts of meanness 
and disrespect.  The former might be done by one individual to another but 
they affect members of both groups and legitimate the power differences 
between them.  Sometimes boys use sexual harassment to keep girls in what 
is viewed as "their place".
Clearly the key issue in distinguishing between friendly banter or 
flirtation is that it is not mutual.  More to the point, it is unwelcome, 
offensive and/or threatening.  On this view what is defined as offensive 
falls within the ambit of the victim.  But how accurately do victims 
perceive and identify harassment?
Recent reports (Halson, 1989; Brodkey & Fine, 1990) point to evidence of 
confusion and denial when young women encounter sexual harassment.  The 
statement "I don't think he meant it" occurs repeatedly in victims' 
accounts.  At the same time Brodkey and Fine note a tendency for young 
women to reflect on their experiences in a disembodied fashion.  Victims 
separated their minds, thoughts and feelings from their bodies' actual 
physical 'presence' during the incidents - presumably in an effort to 
suspend ethical and moral judgement on their male mentors/supervisors.
As Halson (1989, p. 133) points out, there is a widely held (albeit 
mistaken) view that sexual attraction (not men exercising power over women) 
is the basis for such behaviour.
In the context of the present study it is therefore appropriate to focus on 
four main issues:
1.   Awareness of the broad range of behaviours which comprise sexual 
harassment.  That is,  how do young women and men perceive sexual 
harassment in schools?
2.   Support provided by school personnel for contestation of sexual 
harassment by victims.  That is,  how do teachers respond to such events?

3.   The types of attributions made for sexual harassment.  That is, how do 
young women and men explain sexual harassment?
4.   Possibilities for change.  That is, how do young women and men see the 
possibilities for changing the societal and educational practices which 
give rise to sexual harassment?
students' awareness of sexual harassment
Opinions expressed about about verbal and physical harassment ranged from 
moral indignation that it might happen: "Some girls were unjustly referred 
to as sluts, tarts, bitches" through victim-blaming: "They deserved to be 
called names because the way they dress or wear make-up was inappropriate" 
to denial: "It won't happen to me".


Also prevalent was an unwillingness to attribute responsibility to boys.  
Having witnessed an incident in which a girl was accosted and verbally 
abused when advances were rejected by boys in the playground, one young 
woman was able to dismiss this behaviour:  "I'm sure they didn't know what 
they were saying." (LD)
Having observed a teacher fondling a girl's bottom, another young man 
stated  that:  "It was probably an accident, he probably meant to touch the 
table." (LG)
There was a belief possibly based on prior experience of parents' and 
teachers' reactions to such stories that victims could justifiably be 
blamed for provoking harassment.  In an out-of-school incident one young 
woman explained how a friend who was working in a milk bar was threatened 
with job loss if she refused to co-operate sexually.  She didn't tell her 
parents because they would probably say: "You must have done something to 
lead him on". (C4)
Describing an incident which was said to have happened in school, one young 
woman said of the victim, "It was rumoured that she was raped ... but she 
had a lot of problems, skipped classes, was different, way-out and daring." 
(C4)
Similarly following a sexual assault in the school gymnasium, the 
compliance of the victim was alleged.   Although many parents withdrew 
daughters from the school until offenders were dealt with, no public 
discussion regarding sexual harassment took place in its wake. (LD)
Denial was also apparent in this account involving a teacher who "used to 
always walk into the P.E. changeroom while the girls were half-dressed".  
There were quite a few complaints, "They sort of didn't believe us ... they 
just thought 'stupid kids, they don't know what they're talking about'." 
(A6)  The disbelief which this student encountered eventually led her to 
question her own reactions. 
"I don't know if it was all our imagination or not later on ... but he did 
seem to come in, stick his head in 'oh are you ready yet' or something when 
he could have knocked or talked through the door. ... the teachers they 
sort of put it into your head that he wouldn't do something like that 'it's 
in your minds, you don't know what you're talking about'.  So I suppose 
when he used to do that we'd feel really uncomfortable ... because he 
didn't touch you or anything like that, just sort of open the door. ... 
He's still there. ... I think they should kick them out."  (A6)
As Herbert (1989) observes, such strategies contribute to the silencing of 
victims of sexual harassment.  This outcome is also facilitated by the 
language of verbal harassment as previously noted.  To the extent that 
girls join in the practices, they are unknowingly participating in male-
controlling strategies (Herbert, 1989).
There was a degree of ambiguity apparent in the following when referring to 
punishment for incidents of harassment: "depends on severity - whether it 
was intentional or not."  One student describes incident where two boys 
tried to kiss her in grade 6:  "So they were pushing me around a bit but 
you know, they weren't too rough or anything.  Nothing I couldn't handle."  
(A3)
teachers' reactions to sexual harassment
The response of teachers to verbal and physical harasssment in the 
classroom is interesting in so far that such behaviours are frequently left 
unchallenged.  
Teachers pretend not to see this behaviour and let it go unremarked hence 
unpunished, thus rendering invisible both the discomfort and humiliation of 
the girls and the aggression, hostility and bullying of the boys. (Dwyer, 
1991, p. 24).
Moreover, teachers "often appear to be unaware of physical harassment 
referred to as 'touching up' of girls which some boys use to make sure 
girls do not step out of line.  By ignoring these activities, teachers are 
allowing girls' bodies and sexuality to be used for social regulation of 
girls by boys." (Dwyer, 1991. p. 24)  
In general the more serious forms of harassment, for example, assault or 
misconduct by teachers were met with sanctions imposed by the school.  
However there were accounts where grossly unacceptable behaviours by boys 
to girls were ignored.  Verbal harassment, for instance, rarely invoked 

reprimands.  Indeed a number of victims were ambivalent about wanting the 
intervention of school staff.  Typical accounts of school responses were:  
"Co-ordinator did see these guys and pull them into line."   "A couple of 
them knew about it, they said to the guys "Look something went on at 
lunchtime, and we don't want to see that happen again.  That was the end of 
the discussion."  (Interestingly, the "something" remains unnamed.)  This 
respondent  claimed to be satisfied with this intervention simply because 
it did not recur.   Further action was opposed on the grounds that it had 
been "half friendly, half serious and it turned out all right ... so it 
didn't matter."  (A3)
The deterrent value of sanctions for some was voiced by one young man 
insofar that:  "I was too scared to [verbally harass] ... there was a lot 
of it ... a lot of blatant comments made by male to female.  The 
consequences were either a trip to the principal's office or a note home." 
(A  )
For some Greek-speaking girls, the effect of challenging verbal harassment 
was to send it underground, "Sometimes it was picked up by the teacher in 
English, but then when it continued on in Greek the teacher didn't have a 
clue what was going on ... but we did.  We wanted them to do something."  
(A8)
Where teachers saw little problem, and a "boys will be boys" attitude 
prevailed, or where verbal harassment was seen as "just a joking type of 
thing", then they did not customarily intervene. (A4)  According to one 
subject, "Most of my teachers were male anyway."  This response appears to 
presuppose an inherent difficulty in problematizing sexist comment or 
behaviour.  This was not exclusive to male teachers however, since one 
student recounted an incident of a friend having been pelted with oranges 
by boys during a maths class.  She described the teacher's response as:  
"No real effort made to stop the boys, because she [the teacher] was more 
afraid of them [the boys] than [concerned about] her."  (EF) Another girl 
described an incident in which boys made use of "water diviners" to locate 
girls' with large breasts.  There was apparently no challenge to this 
playground "entertainment".  (T)
attributions for sexual harassment
Sometimes harassment is accepted and interpreted as "just natural":
I was teased but it was natural, I wear glasses and I'm short.  I'm a 
target.  They teased me but I gave back as much as I got.  It wasn't a real 
cruel teasing.  It was done for fun, it was fun. (A7)
A popular view is that harassment has a developmental element:
The possibility that sexist language is perhaps a deliberate form of verbal 
harassment practised at school and which subsequently develops into more 
aggressive forms seems to have escaped the young men and women in this 
study.
In the present study many teacher education students were able to locate 
power as a central element in sexual harassment:
I think it's probably escalated since women are more independent and 
starting to exert themselves ... and the guys just do it sometimes out of 
self-defence mechanism if they suddenly feel threatened by some girl ... 
(A4)
If boys are teased by their peers about not having girlfriends then this is 
one way of regaining power, that is putting girls down. (SC)
I think a lot has to do with power, you know wanting to be the dominant 
person or feeling that you've got some sort of authority over someone else. 
(A3)
Male dominance, back to the apes, just male dominance, man degrading women, 
it's just that the male ego is so far in the clouds it's unreal.  A lot of 
males just think that they're ... if no one else is with them [the girls]  
they can do whatever they want.  Sometimes if they have got a guy with them 
they still do it. (A5)
possibility of change
Opinions varied on how sexism and sexual harassment might be eradicated.
I think it should be talked about more honestly and it's definitely not 
something to be made fun of.  But it's got to be talked about more 
seriously ... it's something which is going to increase.  Maybe I'm just 
uninformed. (C4)
I think it does need to be changed just a bit more; make them a bit more 

aware just so the guys tone down a bit.  Just controlling the class better.
One young man called for the return of the cane as an answer to harassment, 
but this time to be administered without bias to both sexes.  Another chose 
to invoke the long arm of the law:
Active sexual harassment should be dealt with very severely.  At primary 
school level compulsory classes ... if you're abusing a girl it should be 
two classes a term, like at the middle and the end and you have to go with 
your parents' consent to get lectured on equality issues.  In the secondary 
school,  ... I've heard reports like hearsay, like other schools - it 
really should lead to expulsion at least, if not lead to civil suit.   (A5)
There was also some ambivalence about whether schools were an appropriate 
forum for intervention.  The case for non-intervention is expressed in this 
way:
You can't really change it because I think it's just natural.  It's natural 
for boys to say things about girls and degrade girls and it's natural for 
girls to degrade boys, not so much degrade, but say sexist things about 
them.  It's just a natural part of life.  Kids have got to accept it; take 
it with a pinch of salt, not take it personally.  (A7)
There are also risks in putting such issues into insensitive hands. One 
young woman recalled how a male teacher publicly questioned a girl (who had 
shown disinterest in her class lesson) about whether she had her "rags" 
this week. (C1)
Others saw the curriculum as the most appropriate vehicle:
It came up in high school in human relations but concentrated on the work 
place ... the girls had their views ... I think the boys like everyone's 
view was, it shouldn't happen ... we used to hear stories and we thought 
how could anyone do that ... It's seen as immoral. (C4)
and more specifically,
Probably introduce classes, even integrate it into the syllabus.  Make it 
as much a part as language and health, appreciate men and women because the 
point has to be really reinforced in those younger days. (A5)
By contrast one can only admire the perceptiveness of the following 
observation on the possibility of change.  The significance of schools in 
potentiating change is underscored:
It'll be a very slow process, there are lots of ingrained beliefs to come 
through; you've got your grandmother whose idea of being a good mother is 
to feed up the family big, and iron everything from your undies to your 
tablecloth.  It's sort of happening already with women taking more high 
powered roles and things, but it's got to be more of an attitude fostered 
in schools, more than anything; an attitude that's just ingrained in kids 
of equality, you can't really write a textbook on equality as a subject for 
kids, it's got to be moral awareness, that type of thing.  (A4)
conclusions
The dominant views about sexual harassment expressed in this study may be 
summarised as:
1.   Sexual harassment is viewed as gross assault rather than as a 
continuum of behaviours which include sexist comment and abuse.
2.   Related to this is the notion that gender-based (usually verbal) 
harassment is somehow separate from the more serious forms of sexual 
harassment. 
3.   The view that harassment is to be expected, in other words is just a 
natural part of schooling, is widespread.  However a few young men and 
women were able to identify power as a central factor in the origin and 
expression of sexual harassment.
Additional observations include:
1.   Teachers are themselves contributing to forms of harassment by failing 
to challenge and contest traditional views of masculinity and femininity.  
Secondly they are occasionally guilty of practising it directly themselves.
2.   Young women themselves participate unwittingly in forms of masculine 
control by joining in the denigration of their peers.
3.   Schools often fail to take up opportunities to publicly affirm their 
opposition to sexual harassment in all its guises.
co-education and segregation
Co-education was a significant issue in theorising the gender position of 
our students.  Co-education was not interpreted as sexed and schools were 
seen as 'equal' simply because they enrolled students from both sexes.

We can see that co-education constituted a shifting nexus of multiple 
positions for our respondents.  This is exemplified in the comments made by 
the following women students:
"I'd have preferred ... a co-ed school ... I just think it's better ... you 
have contact with boys ... being only girls they treated us all as equals 
way." (A13)


"I knew that some of my friends who went to a boys/girls school ... they 
used to hate speaking up in class because they would have been looked at.  
We hardly ever talked about the opposite sex which is bad.   I know if I 
had of [gone to a co-ed school] I'd always be conscious of my appearance 
(A11)
More definite opinions are evident, and a typical view of our women 
students was:
"I like the co-education.  Because we're surrounded by boys.  We know how 
they act ... When you've gone to a single-sex school you won't know 
things"(A1)
"I'm glad I didn't go to a single sex school ... in the world you're with 
girls and boys.  It's good to get use to it" (A2)
It would appear that reasons for valuing co-education included a perception 
that decoding the male gender IS perceived as central knowledge.  In 
addition, single-sex schooling is rejected rather than co-education 
accepted.  Other women agreed describing girls' schools as preoccupied with 
the stereotypical 'feminine' state.  This attitude is particularly 
interesting given how extensively a male dominated curriculum has been 
shown to operate in schools (A Fair Go For All, 1990, passim).   Indeed the 
effects of this was recognised by one of our women students:
Girls have a problem with going to classrooms where they know it's male 
dominated; because there's a whole group of boys there and you know what a 
whole group of boys can do when they're put together you know, and it 
automatically makes you feel a bit insecure.  If the teachers put a stop to 
that ... there wouldn't be a problem. (A17)
Yet to some extent we could have anticipated this opinion as earlier data 
gathered in student autobiographies included the notion that girls' schools 
are worthless because they offer "no real experience with the male gender 
in a normal social setting."
The very recent proliferation of traditionally single-sex schools becoming 
co-educational institutions were problematic for several of our women 
students.  From our respondents' experience these co-educational 
experiments have not yet succeeded:
"I didn't like it at all, it was ... very set in its ways ... they had been 
there quite some time and had just taught boys ... it was a males' school 
practically ... being a female you really had to fight to get anything ... 
they deliberately used to sit you ... opposite a boy ... I'd get kicked ... 
you just had to sit there and take it.  Nothing was ever really done about 
it." (A14)
However co-education was not given unqualified support by our women; 
although not apparently sourced in a deconstruction of gender and 
education.  For instance several stated that gender issues could not exist 
in a single sex school as the interest of girls would 'naturally' be 
represented.  This idea prevailed in spite of direct evidence to the 
contrary which they later gave us about the male centred curriculum which 
operated in their schools.  Nevertheless one woman was able to recognise 
that:
"Being in a girls school ... if you wanted to do something which was 
typically male they'd encourage you." (C6) 
Others argued for single-sex classes saying that it would have been a lot 
better for equitable resource allocation (A18) and:
"It's not as intimidating, you get to answer more questions ... and it's 
just evener." (A14)
Gender segregation was observed by our students, but not as a reason for 
rejecting co-education.  Comments which were indicative  included:
"We'd never sort of mix." (A9/10)
"Boys in one corner, girls in another.  Rare occasions when we'd involve 
girls." (A5)
"Didn't have much to do with the boys." (A9/10)
"We just sort of stuck together" [in our sexes]  (A17)
So gender segregation seemed absolute at times verifying earlier research 
by Deem (1980) who noted that pupils could be classified by gender up to 
twenty times a day - day after day.  This involved gender segregation of 
areas, facilities, activities, records, tasks - indeed most aspects of 
school life.  It could be argued that co-education operates in our schools 

in a superficial sense only and that what our students experience is more 
of an adjacent educational system; according to gender.
Subject segregation did represent a potential source of criticism of co-
education by our women students.  While not adopting strident terms or 
making structural links, they did lament the unfairness of the attempted 
exclusion of them from the Maths/Sciences discipline saying:
"I would have really liked to have done men's subjects." (A11)
[re. physics] "It was sort of 'this is a boys' subject ... you weren't 
supposed to be in here." (A7)
The most obvious neglect felt by our women was in the subject of Physical 
Education.  This example of subject segregation was mentioned the most 
frequently - again while potential existed in our minds most of our 
students did not develop this into a critique of co-education.  This 
segregation revolved around the sexist allocation of Physical Education 
equipment, which was appropriated as 'male'.
I love sport, you didn't really get much chance to play because the boys 
would always hog the ball.  (A18)  
However, most of our students emphatically stated that the equipment was 
available, making this acceptable to them in terms of equal opportunity; as 
some women students reflected:
It wasn't that they did it consciously, it was because the boys sort of 
pushed in first and got all the good equipment and then we were left.  
(A18)
"I think it's a bit hard ... it's usually the boys that take the equipment 
any way.  It certainly wasn't said that only the boys can have the 
footballs ... it was there for whoever wanted to use it ... but usually the 
girls wouldn't ... But there certainly wasn't any reason why the girls 
couldn't have .  There was nothing stopping us." (A14)
However some conceded that girls literally had to fight to have a game and 
that this behaviour was not challenged by teachers:  "They never said you 
should give it (i.e. the equipment) back to the girls" (A18).  One woman 
student even reported that if girls complained teachers would reply "too 
bad they were there first" (A6).
The concept of sport being antithetical to that of the feminine seems 
important to us.  Merely noting the depth of emotion in the following 
resignation, "couldn't play football, couldn't do nothing - you are a girl" 
(A8), shows us the significance of Physical Education with the many 
perjorative insults we collected about the unfortunately labelled 'tomboys' 
in our sample.
behaviour expectations and teacher attention
Such gendered behaviour expectations became another issue.  Being "girlish" 
was more than just not being seen as too "sporty".  As mentioned previously 
in the section on Language, girls are positioned into passive positionings.  
Our women students reported that they were expected to be polite, well-
behaved young ladies.  This meant that:  "Being a girls was being a girl, 
playing with dolls and stuff like that."  (A11)
This gender stereotyping and labelling allowed girls less latitude in their 
classroom behaviours:
They tolerate more disruptions from the boys than the girls, because if a 
girl was disruptive then she was quickly dealt with, and if the boys were 
disruptive they just took it for granted that boys were disruptive. (A17)
She'd tell us to be quiet, and then we could keep talking and she'd yell at 
us ... with the boys if they were noisy ... she'd turn her back.  (A18)
Nevertheless we can highlight one remarkable incident of possible counter-
sexism:
"They used to tell us [girls] to be a little more noisy ... we didn't speak 
enough and we had to learn how to communicate." (A3)
Yet as may be expected after the work of Spender (1984), gendered behaviour 
expectations of boys was very different, as shown by:
"If something goes wrong in class the teacher would expect a boy to be the 
troublemaker." (C4)
We uncovered many gendered reflections of sex differentials in punishments 
for the same behaviours, how sex was used as an organisational criteria for  
punishments and how the sexes differed in their receptions of various 
punishments.  However for this paper we will only note that our respondents 
stated overwhelmingly that boys needed more warnings and more severe 

punishments before their behaviour complied with the teacher's 
expectations.
A complex interrelationship seemed to exist between expectations of 
behaviour and teacher attention.  We can describe an entangled web of 
teacher accommodation and yet simultaneous resistance to boys defining 
classroom relations by their negative attention-seeking behaviour in the 
responses of our women students as they talked about their classroom 
experiences:
Yes because although there were a lot more boys in the class, on average 
the boys got more but I think it was pretty even handed.  The boys were 
very intimidating. ...The boys really did dominate but the girls still got 
a lot out of the class and the boys definitely did dominate. (E3)
The girls had their say too ... teachers always chose the boys a lot of the 
time ... [out of ] brigher boys and girls, usually the boys was favourite.
[Interviewer: Who dominated?]  The brighter ones. (A9/10)
[Interviewer:  Was there equal attention given to boys and girls?]  I think 
so, I can't think of any instances ...
[Interviewer:  Did boys gain more attention because of their disruptions?]  
Yeah because the teacher would have to stop or go and help them, and just 
leave girls to their own. (A17)
However most of our women students were unequivocal in their opinions of 
girls' behaviour and boys' misbehaviour earning the boys teacher attention 
as discriminatory, although a variety of positions varying from the 
tentative to the assertive is discernible:
It was always the boys that were the loud noisy ones, so that you had to 
keep them quiet.
(Interviewer:  Did boys/girls get equal attention?)  No it was always the 
boys ... because they were so noisy.  (A18)
The teachers always seemed to be talking to the boys more.  Like singling 
them out." (A11)
"The girls wouldn't get as much attention because they wouldn't be doing 
much out of the ordinary." (C5)
"They took more time ... the teacher had to spend more time with them 
because they were seeking for attention.  ... While you had your hand up 
and you knew the answer and you'd never be picked because this boy had 
called out." (A11)
This last comment identifies an important shift for us.  It indicates how 
gender differentials in teacher attention explicitly influenced the formal 
curriculum focus of learning and teaching.  It also serves to highlight the 
negative consequences of lesser teacher attention for girls.  On 
questioning our women students they were able to cite many examples of 
teachers giving preferential attention and thus treatment to boys.  Again 
responses ranged in their degree of tentativeness.
"They seemed more partial to boys." (A6)
"They sort of paid more attention to the boys and if the girls were doing 
anything, well they were just doing it." (A7)
"Boys had more chance to answer questions; if a girl answered she would be 
expected to explain how she got her answer, boys answers were just 
acepted." (A1)
"... they didn't like girls ... you're just a girl, sort of, out of the way 


Similar to the results noted on segregation, the discipline of 
Maths/Science evoked the most frequent and critical incidents of 
inequitable teacher attention for our women.  When asked if unequal teacher 
attention was more noticeable in any particular subject one woman student 
replied:
Maths - there was a lot of attention to the boys, because they'd always 
play up.  (A18)
Many described teachers of these subject areas as "more male oriented" 
(A7), saying that if girls wanted or needed teacher attention in these 
classes they had to deliberately seek it.  Indeed in our sample male 
teachers were especially criticised:
It was horrible, because at the start we were so self-conscious ... I mean 
because the teacher was a male.  (A18)
The male teachers did prefer the guys. (C3)
He'd give time to the guys but girls were just dumb and silly to him ... He 
sometimes said it, but his actions spoke louder than that.  You'd really 
have to fight to be noticed. ... Guys they can do it, he'll have a lot of 
time, but girls fine if they can catch up, but if they can't , they're just 
a typical girl, not to worry about that. (A8)
We can locate these results.  Even if teachers are apparently unaware of 
the preferential attention they offer male pupils in the classroom 
interactions, Spender (1984) has shown that students are cognisant of this 
discriminatory division in classroom discourse:
In 1981 a research team asked the students ... who received the attention 
in class ... and the students indicated that it was overwhelmingly boys who 
received the attention and who were given the knowledge that they were 
important and liked.  In classroom discussion, said the students, boys 
predominated ... When teachers asked questions they asked two boys to every 
one girl, and when teachers provided praise and encouragement three boys 
received it to every one girl ... The students themselves provided the data 
that the boys asked twice as many questions as the girls and made twice as 
many demands of the teachers' time.   (Spender, 1984, p. 55)
More recently Kelly (1988) reviewed gender differences in teacher-pupil 
interactions.  In this meta-analytic review Kelly found that girls are 
consistently under-represented in teacher-pupil interaction concluding that 
"It is now beyond dispute that girls receive less of the teachers' 
attention in class." (p. 20).
conclusion
In spite of the emerging area of scholarship examining Gender and 
Education,  little is known about the attitudes of Teacher Education 
students towards gender.  This project begins to address this problem.
What we have begun to observe in this report on research in progress 
compares with other recent studies (Allard et al, 1992).  Our students 
seemed to deflect or deny gender and even to resist the realities of a 
gendered schooling experience.  This was frequently expressed by an 
apparent lack of gender awareness and a proliferation of unexamined 
assumptions.
This was not however the full story.  Unlike Jones (1989) who cites Smith 
and Bailey (1982) we have not found that the beliefs of our pre-service 
teachers are replete with stereotypes.  Indeed we have uncovered some 
active resistance shown by our students to sexist schooling practices.
Nevertheless we conclude as we began.  We brought to this research project 
a belief in the significance of Teacher Education for gender equity in 
schools.  We are now in a better position to agree with Christensen and 
Massey (1989) when they state the need for Teacher Education to help 
students examine "the assumptions about gender which ... [they] bring with 
them" (p. 266).  We accept Arnesen's (1992) assertion that "the real 
challenge is to alert ... students who ... do not perceive any problem." 
(p. 13).
It seems clear to us as a result of these initial interviews that in spite 
of much research and many Equal Opportunity initiatives, little real long 
term change is occurring in the schools.  This for us leads to a necessary 
focus on Teacher Education.  The unique influence Teacher Education has on 
the gendered construction of knowledge itself has been acknowledged in 
European Economic Community policy and enacted through curriculum research 

conducted by the Association of Teacher Education in Europe (Arnesen and 
Charthaigh, 1992).
Given that we acccept Jones' view that "Teacher Educators must take the 
first steps to ensure Educational Equality" (1989, p. 38), we will begin 
the second stage of our research project.  The task is to record the 
gendered reflections of our students' experience of their Teacher Education 
qualification and begin to examine how Teacher Education and Teacher 
Education students construct gender as knowledge.
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€language
h of salt, not take it personally.
There are also risks in putting such issues into insensitive hands:
While clearly shocked by sexist derogatory terms, M.D. seemed undecided as 
to whether schools ought to teach children that such language was uÿÿÿÿÿ

ÿÿÿFeminist research has found that we 
can  begin to understand  better the position of women in society though 
the study of language and discourse (Cameron, 1985, Poynton, 1985, Gilbert, 
1991,  Threadgold, 1986). There are many different views of how language 
places women within society and therefore in relation to men.  However,  
much of this research (Cameron, 1985,  Fairclough, 1990, Poynton, 1985,) 
centres around power relationships and how women through language have been 
alienated or oppressed in a  patriarchal society. It is men who have the 
means to oppress, silence and marginilise women through language by denying 
them  access to the most influential and prestigious registers of language 
in a particular culture (Cameron, 1985).  It is the institutional and 
bureaucratic control of language that silences and oppresses subcultures, 
such as women and ethnic minorities, within a society. We construct meaning 
differently because each individual has a different experience, but more 
generally, because in patriarchal societies males and females are allowed a 
different range of experiences. 
For feminist poststructuralism, it is language in the form of conflicting 
discourses which constitutes us as conscious thinking subjects and enables 
us to give meaning to the world and to act to transform it. (Weedon, 1987, 
p32)
Girls and boys are very specifically socialised into female and male gender 
roles (Walkerdine, Gilbert, ). This socialisation can be examined  through 
the discursive formation of the subject through the use of language. How we 
communicate about and to females and males can be shown to be different 
(Poynton, 1985, Spender).  Research of, for example, grammatical 
constructions, lexical sets, use of intonation and discourse styles are 
often judged as being more or less acceptable, according to whether you are 
female or male. This then realises power relationships which can be 
expressed through common sense understandings and ideology. 
Fairclough(1990) discusses these connections between language use and 
unequal relations of power and the effect that class and ethnicity have in 
maintaining these unequal relationships. 

The extent to which ideological variation becomes a social struggle can be 
better understood by studying the language. Fairclough(1990) highlights how 
communication is constrained by the structures and forces of the social 
institutions in which we live and function. In these interviews these are 
the school and those who work within it, the women students' peer group and 
their families.  
Given that  it is the memories and perceptions of first year students it is 
important to reflect on how the kind of analysis that we engage in is 
influenced by our role as listener. It is true to say that there will never 
be equal relationships in any conversation given the role of speaker and 
hearer and as Roberts (1988) states that a true feminist interview never 
takes place. For example the number and place of agreement, interruption or 
request for clarification will always influence how a person constructs and 
positions themselves. In any conversational analysis  both parties' 
language should be taken into account, however, in these interviews I am 
concentrating not on the relationship between the interviewer and 
interviewee, but rather the social relationships which the interviewees' 
conversation reveals about themselves and their 'lived reality'. 
Discourse always requires a speaking position -a position from which 
authority is exercised - and a spoken subject, a person brought  into 
existence through the exercising of this authority.   (Gilbert, 1991, p. 
42)
How a person is positioned within society can be influenced by whether you 
are female or male. These inerviews show the multiple subject positions 

that these women students take up during their schooling and the extent to 
which their subjectivity and their interpretations of their schooling 
experiences are shaped by the discourses of gender to which they have 
access, namely provided by their teachers, and peer group.They have been 
interpellated into the social world via the dominant discourse of gender 
which serves to keep the male/female dualism in tact and in fact they have 
taken these discourses on as their own. They have learned to interpret 
their own lives and the lives of others within these dominant discourses.
teacher's positioning of students
In the following examples we can see how the  teachers positioned the girls 
through their language  into the quieter, less dominant one.
     
"The teachers used to say 'look at the girls they're sitting nicely and 
quietly'" (A.9&10). 
"well you're just a vegetable.." (A.14)
     
"that's not the way a girl acts.... like they'd tell her (a friend) 'yes, 
you're a tomboy, I expect this of Darren or I expect this of ......  but 
not you'.    
They expected the girls to be very nice and serene and quiet and the boys 
they were expecting to be a bit more noisy and so forth." (A.16)
     
"Some teachers say, 'I expect the boys to be noisy, I don't expect the 
girls to be." (L.B.)
and the use of the process "expect" as a natural order for girls and boys' 
behaviour. 
Gilbert (1991) says gender identity is centred on appearance and sexuality, 
"..he (the teacher) said she was a 'tart' in the classroom.... or comments 
like 'what would you know you're only a female."  (A.14)
which A14 accepts as unimportant and almost trivial
     "Just little things like that"(A.14)
and media texts which are central in the construction of this identity. The 
following remark (highlighted) was made by the headmaster of a co-
educational school when he told the class off 
'our class was being told off pretty badly... and he called us barbarians 
raiding villages or something, and all of you Big M girls, with your little 
mini skirts..." (A.16) 
When we compare the language used about girls by girls and boys, the 
instances of sexual harrassment and the accepted behaviour of boys by 
teachers discussed in this paper,  the teachers' expectations and 
positioning is somewhat extreme. 
Students also talked of how society offers limited subject positions within 
a disourse 
because we've been brought up to believe that we're so different, there's 
always been 'oh boys are meant to do that, and you're a girl and you're 
meant to do that', and that's the way we've been brought up.(A11)
students' positioning of themselves
During the interviews it was common for the women students to place 
themselves into incompetent positions and frequently used the pronoun 'I' 
in contrast to the all inclusive 'we' which was used when discussing other 
girls wrong doings(see A11below)
For computers I was hopeless at computers I was just terrible, he just 
thought  I was a total complete idiot, because I couldn't understand how 
these computers worked, that was just towards me because I couldn't pick it 
up I was just so dumb but I don't think he ever thought it was us females 
being dumb just me." (A. 11) 
A11 does  align herself as being one of the girls "us females" but isolates 
herself again through the phrase "just me". This is in contrast to A11's 
description of an occurence whilst  on  school camp which culminated in one 
girl's face being slapped by another's as she came out from her cabin. 
During this description A11 has taken on the all inclusive 'we'      
'we'  were told off really badly......'we' were told off because 'we' acted 
terribly....  and that 'we' should have known,"
even though the "really bad bitch fight" only involved two girls, and their 
'helpers',  fighting over a mutual boyfriend,  "... the girls were 
suspended for a week - both of them" and then through  mob-type language 

positions the 'accused' through the use of  diminutive (highlighted)  and 
demeaning language
     
"and their two little helpers, each had two little helpers. Bodyguards we 
called them." 
Again the student takes on the use of "I" when talking about considered 
incompetencies and positions herself into a disagreeable, weak child

"The poststructuralist world argues that the person is not socialised into 
the social world but interpellated into it. That is they are not passively 
shaped by active others, rather they actively take up as their own the 
discourses through which they are shaped. " (Davies, 1991)
The use of sexist terms, for example, slut, moll, bitch was very frequent 
and not confined to boys. It seems that the derogation of females implicit 
in their use is no deterrent to their use by girls to their peers:

"Slut, moll, bitch, especially in high school among the girls, 'she's a 
bitch, or she's a slut'" Used "If she was going out with somebody else's 
boyfriend, or she done something behind another girl. It had to do with 
boys mainly."  (A11)
"Girls do it (use sexist language) just as much back to boys - more in 
humour, not taken seriously" (A4)
"Popular girls, seen as sluts, cows, bitches and stuff because they were 
conceited" (A3) 
"..we had one really bad bitch fight..."(A11)
"...their two little helpers..."(A11)
"... a total complete idiot..."(A11)
".. cat  fights. The usual 'bitch' and things like that" (A16)
'..there were a lot of what I would call very bitchy females.."(A2)
A14 when asked about name calling and how the boys referred to the girls 
for inclusion in activites described it as 'normal' and 'usual' in Primary 
school


just the usual things like (the boys said) 'you haven't got a hope in 
catching this ball' or 'you can't kick' and 'you're a sissy' and all those 
sorts of things, it was just the normal things that they say. 
This was reinforced and continued on into Secondary school
     "oh don't choose girls"(A2)
" 'oh don't touch' and the boy germs and girls germs. But it was usually 
the boys'we're   stronger than you', 'we're better than you' " (A14)
"of yuk, girls - germs" and "you can't play here - you're a girl" (C5)
The discursive positions allowed by these girls during their Primary and 
Secondary schooling were limited by the schools attitude to boys and their 
stereotypic positioning of girls by their male and female peer group and 
their teachers.
The ways in which discourse constitiutes the minds and bodies of 
individuals is always part of a wider network of power relations, often 
with institutional bases.   (Weedon, 1987, p108).



contradictions in language
Although society has always recognised contradiction as a logical concept 
naming a relation between propositions it has also been a general metaphor 
for incompatabilities of many kinds (Davies and Harre,1990). However, the 
deconstruction of modernity(Weedon, 1987, Walkerdine,1985, Haug, 1987) has 
allowed us to question the interpretation of contradiction.  
In a poststructuarlist analysis, the person who makes a contradictory 
statement is more likely to be seen as being positioned within and 
constituted through contradictory discourses.  ( Davies and Harre, 1990, 
p4). 
A person who appears to be making contradictory statements is seen to be 
inconsistent, not understanding or interpreting the social world 
'appropriately'. 
     
The guys were much louder, the girls would talk among themselves in their 
little groups, the guys would yell from one side of the room to one 
another. The teacher was quiet and didn't know what she was doing, the guys 
would yell and pick her to bits and the girls would just talk quietly and 
nastily about her or him.   (A8)
However when asked about who took over in class, A8 reveals details of her 
own particular class which had "5 guys and 14 girls" and although she says 
the boys were loud and vociferous 
A8 "the girls definitely took over they were in control of 
everything.......
(Interviewer:Was it easy to have a turn?) "When the guys got to it , no."   
A16 when discussing how students behaved in maths:
However A14 also states that when she was constantly teased in the 
playground 

So it was easier to fight against the teachers rather than fight against 
the boys in the classroom. It was alright to be "a disagreeable child" but 
teasing in the playground was too powerful to be fought against.
Davies and Harre(1990) state it is the discourses with their contradictory 
assumptions or imperatives, rather than the person who may need 
remediation. These female students speak from many different subject 
positions. They see themselves in different roles at different times moving 
from adolescence to adulthood, from a student at school to tertiary 
student, involved in different relationships- girlfriend - boyfriend, 
girlfriend-girlfriend, mother - daughter, father - daughter and, having to 
interpret the difference between feminism and femininity.  
conclusion:
Students positioning of  themselves is very contradictory. While society is 
still presenting a feminine subservient position through the use of 
language and limited subject positioning it is difficult for women to take 
up a more powerful, emancipated position.  This is an area that the gender 
inclusive curiculum needs to address. 

F1
Cameron.  (1985).  m and Linguistic Theory.  Macmillan..

Threadgolde, T.  (1986).  Semiotics Ideology Language.  Sydney Association 
for Studies in Soceity and Culture.
naming the problem
'girls'.  

National Policy on the Education of Girls.  (1987).  Australian Schools 
Commission, A.G.P.S., Canberra.


The team wishes to acknowledge the enthusiastic assistance of Cathy Nelson 
in the conduct of this project.