Abstract:
Modern discourses of feminine success within education systems have largely positioned girls as empowered and free from barriers to success in a ‘feminised’ education system and workforce. The image of the ‘successful girl’ is grounded in a notion of femininity that is largely white and middle class. Yet, the take-up of feminine identity markers of success into subjectivities suggests that neoliberal ideals of success hold salience for girls regardless of class positioning. High-achieving working-class girls may work towards performances of a middle-class ‘successful girl’ femininity—sometimes referred to in the literature as the ‘supergirl’ who can do it all—which is equated with effortless educational achievement; yet, these performances involve extensive labour. This paper draws from a larger study examining the experiences of first-in-family (FIF) girls in Adelaide, Australia as they transition from secondary school into their first year of university. In exploring how FIF girls construct themselves as university students, I seek to highlight how they experience university in ways that are not accounted for in essentialising discourses around the success of girls. FIF girls construct their higher education identities through positioning themselves in relation to an idealised university student that has similar markers of success to those of the enduring image of the ‘successful girl’. These identities and subject positionings suggest a take-up of neoliberal ideals of success, including specific markers such as resilience, flexibility, hard work, and personal responsibility. All of the FIF girls within the study demonstrated aspects of these identity markers at various points in their transition to university, and yet for many, it was their ability to perform them in terms of a discursive take-up of middle-class subjectivities that was important in their ability to see themselves as successful university students. In this way, I argue that learner identities may be constructed through forms of interpersonal and institutional violence, where there is a misrecognition of the failures of wider social structures. I also detail how notions of the successful girl, and the ideal university student, may be resisted or rearticulated within higher education. Yet, the way that FIF girls construct learner identities in terms of the ‘successful girl’ discourse highlights how, similar to compulsory schooling, higher education is a site for feminine neoliberal performances of success.