Reproducing Gender

Critical Essays on Educational Theory and Feminist Politics

Madeleine Arnot

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781135707156
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Reproducing Gender charts the development of a theory of gender relations built up over the last twenty years. This theory has been highly influential in establishing the importance of the sociology of women's education for the study of society. It demonstrates the power of feminist educational theory and research, and its role in creating new political and academic agendas.
This fascinating book explores gender relationships at all levels of schooling. It brings together political, social and cultural theories to understand continuity and change in gender and education. Madeleine Arnot, widely considered to be a pioneer in the field of gender and education, brings together for the first time in a single volume her most influential writings. This book is essential reading for students and academics in the areas of gender studies, women's studies, educational policy, sociology and history of education.

1 Gender codes and educational theory
An overview

This book charts my contribution over the last twenty-five years to the emerging field of gender scholarship in education. This is a field which comprises some of the most sophisticated research in education. It engages with diverse theoretical problematics and explanatory frameworks; it develops its own methodological approaches; and it actively engages with the concerns of practitioners and students in a range of educational contexts and settings (from early years schooling through to higher education and adult education). The richness and originality of the field of gender and education research lies in its commitment to social analysis linked to critical praxis.

Theorising gender relations in education is a complex and dynamic project. Since the 1960s, gender research within education has had an extraordinary momentum as national and local policy-makers responded to the demands for better education for women. The impact of the women’s movement in the UK and abroad has resulted in a multitude of local initiatives in school around the concept of equal opportunities. These interventions have drawn upon a range of feminist academic discourses and have been influenced by a range of political philosophies and agendas. Not suprisingly, feminist educationalists continually reflect on the relationship between social movements, political action and social inequalities.

I have contributed to this emerging field by attempting to develop a sociological theory of gender relations that is both critical and interpretative. My concern has been the ways in which gender relationships work within the social order. Arguably, the task of contributing to any field of study is made easier if the parameters and problematics of the discourse are made explicit. Over the period, I have therefore engaged with the sequence of theoretical (and often critical) encounters between sociology of education and feminist studies of education, looking to see what connections are made between gender relations and the education system. I have also put forward a range of conceptual and discursive frameworks, most notably a theory of gender codes, to help focus and advance the field of gender studies.

Like others in the field, I have been fortunate in being able to draw upon the insights gained from the rich multitude of large and small, national and international research projects on gender issues in education. The explosion of feminist studies has generated original insights into gender relations in education, more often than not critically challenging mainstream conceptual frameworks, understandings and explanations. I have also gained by addressing the plethora of audiences for such work. Like others of my generation working in higher education on gender and education, I have engaged with national and international academic debates, central government agencies, local government, schools, teachers, teacher educators and students. It has been important to relate the theory of gender relations explicitly to educational policy-making and practice. Theoretical understandings are best framed not just by social scientific academic discourses but also by pragmatic and practical considerations. One of the clear guiding principles of feminist studies and the women’s movement has been the use of theory to ground social reform.

The selection of articles in this volume offers the opportunity to consider the strengths and weaknesses of social and cultural reproduction theory for the study of social inequalities. This volume does not cover all the issues I have worked on, but the articles selected represent my commitment to understand how power and social control work within the educational system and how social relations are produced, reproduced and transmitted through schooling. The central theme (hence the title of the collection) is the contribution which social and cultural reproduction theory can offer to an understanding of the relationship between social class, race and gender relations in schooling and society. Over the last twenty-five years, I have attempted to:

• construct a sociological theory of gender that accounts for, among other things, the transmission historically of specific sets of gender relations in education;
• explore theoretically the relationship between gender, race and class as social and educational inequalities;
• theorise the interface between gender relations, feminist politics and the state by considering contemporary policy-making at central, local and institutional levels;
• assess critically the construction and the power of feminist educational approaches as democratic discourses and social reform movements; and
• assess contemporary sociological theory in the light of gender transformations in late modernity.

I shall first describe the context in which these interests developed and then the ways I have used social and cultural reproduction theory for the study of gender.

Academic positioning

The principles which govern my work reflect my positioning within the field of sociology of education. Although trained in the ‘master narratives’ (Lather, 1992) of sociology, I consistently question whether such narratives can adequately address the specific nature of women’s position in society and the specificities of female education. My first degree in sociology at Edinburgh University offered a training in positivist social science and an inculcation into modernist social theory. Theories of social class, stratification and mobility were critical to the project, as were theories of the social division of labour promoted by, for example, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx and Max Weber. I learnt that at the heart of the sociological imagination can be found a concern with the nature of the social order and the processes of social change.

Later, as a doctoral student under the supervision of Basil Bernstein at the Institute of Education, London University (1973–5), I was influenced by the ‘new sociology’ of education which highlighted a number of key questions: How does society sustain itself economically, politically and culturally? What are the key forces of change? What role does educational knowledge play in such processes? Working directly on Bernstein’s theories of educational codes in the early 1970s, I explored the historical relationship between symbolic structuring of educational knowledge and a class-based society. In my doctoral study of the Scottish university curricula, I focused on the complex connection between educational and social change, trying to use Bernstein’s concepts of classification and framing of educational knowledge. Thus, even before attempting an analysis of gender and education, I had chosen a sociological agenda which privileged the structure of educational knowledge, its institutional forms and its relationship to social context.

My first teaching post in the Open University gave me access to a further set of theoretical dimensions and perspectives, many of which centred upon the relationship between structure and agency, between macro- and microprocesses of power and control, between individual and collective political agency. Of central significance at the time was the neo-Marxist political economy of education (or social reproduction theories) which privileged the education–economy relationship. The work of Althusser (1971) and Bowles and Gintis (1976) were central to this project. Such macro-social theories were complemented by theories of cultural reproduction (especially that of Bernstein, 1977, and Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977) since they focused on the cultural formation of identities and forms of consciousness, derived from the social division of labour (MacDonald, 1981).

My work was also influenced by changing political climates. For example, Chapters 2 to 6 which were written between 1980 and 1984 reflect a period in which the illusions of liberal democracy were being challenged by sociologists concerned about the continuing strong influence of social class inequalities, despite the post-war promises of meritocracy. These chapters address the illusions of gender neutrality and the image of social progress generated by social democracy. The post-war period with its weak ideals of equality of opportunity had not delivered gender equality in education or in employment or in the family. The initial purpose of critical feminist research, therefore, was to expose the ways in which the educational system transmitted and sustained gender inequalities and the ways in which male dominance of educational privileges related to the forms of social class dominance reproduced through the school system. These early chapters illustrate some of the perspectival differences and conflicts within the field of gender and education at that time, especially between liberal theories of socialisation and Marxist political economy.

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, sociologists of education in the UK turned to address the role of the state in education. In 1979 the election of a new government under Margaret Thatcher with a clear anti-egalitarian stance was a pivotal moment for the sociology of education, since it forced the discipline onto the defensive (Arnot and Barton, 1992). In this new context, it became important to conceptualise the role of the state in relation to gender relations. Education feminists were able to contribute (although they were not often given full recognition for their contribution) a gender perspective to the emerging sociology of the state. Chapters 8, 9 and 10 highlight the changing role of the UK government in the 1980s and 1990s in relation to gender and the lessons to be learned from feminist encounters with state action. In these chapters, it is possible to see the complex processes of change involved in what appeared to be the ‘modernising’ of gender relations – processes which engaged in an elaborate interaction between, on the one hand, the state regulation of gender and, on the other, feminist educational politics engaging the state. Making sense of the work of teachers, government and, latterly, media discourses became the main focus of much feminist educational debate – a debate heavily shaped by its parochial/national concerns.

Post-structuralist and post-modernist feminists also redefined the political terrain in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This feminist work drew heavily on Foucault (1970, 1979) – for example, see Davies (1989, 1993), Walkerdine (1990) and Dillabough and Arnot (2001) for a discussion of this tradition. Reflecting the social fragmentation of society under the New Right, the uneven effects of economic restructuring on women’s and men’s position, and the individualising/personalising consequences of globalising economies, feminist theory challenged the modernist categories of social class, gender and race. ‘Changing of the subject’ involved the deconstruction of policy regimes and discourses by highlighting the complexity involved in the formation of identities, subjectivities and performance. My focus in Chapters 8 and 9 on policy discourses and the discursive framing of youth identities reflects such interests.

By the end of the 1990s, a new Labour government under Tony Blair was voted into office. While sustaining both the economic and educational policies of the New Right, including the marketisation of schools and the standardisation of pupil performance, the new government set about redefining the political agenda to include a concern for poverty, social inclusion and social inequalities. Sociologists of education started to return to structural/materialist frameworks in order to offer more complex understandings of why patterns of social inequalities remained intact despite the shifting, more fluid nature of late modernity. Chapters 10 to 12 reflect this recent search for theoretical frameworks which can offer a structural/materialist analysis of education and the cautious return to social and cultural reproduction theories of the 1970s. Below I describe in more detail my own contribution in response to these political and theoretical developments.

Social and cultural reproduction theory

By the mid-1970s, sociologists of education challenged liberalism and particularly the social democratic educational reforms of the post-war period for their failure to reduce social class inequality. Not only were social class patterns of educational achievement, especially unequal access to higher education, shown to be maintained (Halsey, Heath and Ridge, 1980; Goldthorpe et al., 1980), but patterns of class privilege were increasingly being connected to the organisation of schooling. The structure of the curriculum, the selection of educational knowledge and the ideologies of teaching, learning and assessment were identified as important contributors to such patterns of social class reproduction.

The major themes of what was called the ‘new’ sociology of education were expressed in the language of power, of social control and even of domination and oppression. Sociological analyses investigated the political framework of schooling by exploring the relationships between, for example, education, the economy and the state. Similarly, the sociology of culture (whether of the curriculum or of youth cultures) focused attention on the role of class cultures, especially the contribution which cultural conflict played in class struggle. At the heart of these studies lay the task of moving away from the ‘naive possibilitarianism’ (Whitty, 1974) of sociological analyses which failed to take account of the impact of the social structure on the form and content of school experiences. Arguments were put forward that schooling might, in effect, be unable to deliver even such limited goals as promoting equality of opportunity, especially if schools were designed precisely to maintain social inequalities in the interests of the dominant social classes or ‘capital’. Debates concerning the nature of the relationship between the power structure and education ranged from stressing, at one extreme, the determining force of the economy or, alternatively, proposing the relative or even ‘delegated’ autonomy of schooling (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977; Hall, 1981).

Such critiques were highly controversial, not least because of the references to the ‘hidden’ and even ‘unconscious’ structuring of the educational system. Critical sociologists wanted to delve beneath the taken-for-granted reality of schooling, to go behind the detail of student–teacher interaction in the classroom in order to uncover the class-based ideologies of intelligence and the legitimation of particular class cultural styles of teaching and learning. Behind such everyday practices, it was assumed that deeper ‘codes’ or principles (Bernstein, 1977; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977) which governed the organisation of schooling could be found. The goal was to discover whether a connection existed between such educational principles (and the ideologies which sustained them) and the principles and ideologies governing economic production and class relations. Whether structurally or culturally, education was analysed as a major site for the ‘reproduction’ of the class structure and its unequal relations of power. Theories of social and cultural reproduction attempted, ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Gender Codes and Educational Theory: An Overview
• 2. Socio-Cultural Reproduction and Women’s Education
• 3. Cultural Reproduction: The Pedagogy of Sexuality
• 4. Schooling and the Reproduction of Class and Gender Relations
• 5. A Cloud Over Co-Education: An Analysis of the Forms of Transmission of Class and Gender Relations
• 6. Male Hegemony, Social Class and Women’s Education
• 7. Schools and Families: Gender Contradictions, Diversity and Conflict
• 8. A Crisis In Patriarchy?: State Regulation of Gender and Feminist Educational Politics
• 9. Sociological Understandings of Contemporary Gender Transformations In Schooling In the UK
• 10. Schooling In Capitalist America Revisited: Social Class, Gender and Race Inequalities In the UK
• 11. Basil Bernstein’s Sociology of Pedagogy: Female Dialogues and Feminist Elaborations
• 12. Gender Relations and Schooling In the New Century: Conflicts and Challenges