Creating Feminist Classrooms 1: Feminist Education for All

What makes a feminist classroom? What forms can a feminist education take? Gender inequalities have been an enduring and central focus of equalities legislation, in part as a result of sustained feminist efforts. This session is for anyone interested in advancing their understanding of gender inequalities and feminist politics in relation to education, across compulsory and post-compulsory education contexts.

Securing women’s and girls’ access to education has a long history as an emancipatory feminist project, and while there is a contemporary success story we can tell about women’s and girls’ educational achievements, entrenched inequalities remain. This is particularly so when it comes to educational leadership, pay differentials among educators, the ways that credibility and authority are conceived and ascribed, and the gendering of particular subject disciplines as masculine or feminine.

Drawing on research and teaching expertise, this session introduces a range of feminist perspectives, and will provide the opportunity for participants to work creatively and collaboratively to develop ideas about what feminist classrooms might look like, enquiring into the possibilities and limits of feminist education. Thinking with feminism about education also involves asking critical questions about the intersecting forms of inequality that education can reproduce, challenge and change.