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Answering Back: girls, boys and feminism in schools
JANE KENWAY, SUE WILLIS, JILL BLACKMORE & LEONIE RENNIE, 1998
London, Routledge
L12.99 paperback
Numerous attempts have been made to combat gender inequalities in schools. Equal opportunities initiatives with a focus on gender have been many and various. Practices, however, have changed relatively little. Girls, and boys with subordinate masculinities, are still subject to sex-based harassment, those supporting gender-inclusive education have had their work ridiculed and undermined and students' subject choices in secondary schools remain stereotypical. Furthermore, there has recently been a backlash, with claims being made that it is boys who are under-achieving and for whom special provision should be made. This interesting and timely book sets out to investigate what has gone wrong-why, despite so much hard work and commitment among teachers and other educators, the gap `between hope and happening' remains so wide.
Taking a post-structuralist approach to gender which takes account of differences within as well as between genders, the authors argue that many earlier gender reform initiatives accepted a dominant version of success that is stereotypically masculine in its orientation. This view...