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This paper explores the association between the gender rules operating within schools, harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) between pupils and the ways safety is created in these spaces. The ability and responsibility of school institutions to inform gender rules within schools is of particular focus. The paper draws on data from a mixed-methods study exploring HSB in seven secondary schools in England. Findings indicate that gendered rules not only play a role in explaining HSB in schools, they also inform discourses of safety and influence pupils' attempts to subvert gendered harm. Drawing on research on local space, it is suggested that school institutions can work to maintain or challenge the gendered rules between pupils, and subsequently, limit or provide effective options to create pupil safety. The paper argues that schools have a responsibility to construct safe spaces for pupils by challenging harmful gender norms and behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article calls for papers for the 18th Annual Conference of the Women's History Network at St. Hilda's College in Oxford, England from September 11-13, 2009. Papers are encouraged to focus on gender and institutional politics, women's movements and identity politics, and community and neighbourhood empowerment.

This paper focuses on the learning experiences of lower attaining boys attending Stone Acre, a non-selective state Secondary school in England, and how these were shaped by teachers' gendered beliefs and practices. It argues that despite changes in our theoretical understandings of gender, those found in the context of everyday practice in schools may continue to be rooted in biological understandings of masculinity that tend to reinforce rather than challenge assumptions of deficit. It argues that these interactions form part of a gender regime that also includes the lower-status learning spaces disproportionately occupied by lower attaining boys, with selective grouping practices and the curriculum both contributing to the limiting understandings of boys' educational potential that are ultimately reflected in persistently gendered patterns of attainment. The small number of boys who took part in this study clearly recognised the less favourable positioning of boys as a group. Despite this, they went on to achieve beyond expectations, suggesting that they maintained some agency as learners. Teachers at Stone Acre were also under pressure to ensure achievement against performance threshold levels, suggesting that there may have been some mitigating, trickle down effects. The paper concludes that there is a continuing need for teachers to develop more inclusive understandings of masculinities and of the effects of these on everyday practices in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One proposed strategy to overcome labour shortages in male-dominated jobs is to attract female workers. This has been the case for lorry driving in the UK. These efforts, however, often work to reproduce binary gendered stereotypes, or seek to include women without questioning how working conditions and everyday embodied work itself constructs gender roles and difference and is differentially experienced. In this paper, we highlight differentiated lorry driving bodies at work, centring lorries as an essential part of global logistical systems. Empirically drawing from interviews and mobile ethnographies with freight drivers in England, we tell a series of composite stories which uncover gendered ideals of worker-bodies, and embodied experiences of mobilities. With the gendered, embodied life's work of lorry driving remaining largely invisible and poorly understood, we illustrate the complex intersections between places, people, materialities and forms of work. Through this paper, we show how (gendered) narratives and bodily difference are both reproduced and disrupted through lorry driving work. We argue that only through recognising – and destabilising - the gendered re/production of mobile work will other logistical futures be made possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores and theorises education-based workshops delivered in secondary schools in support of a relationships and sex education curriculum that aims to bring forth more positive understandings and experiences of gender and sexuality. We cast this work as a form of sexual health activism, with our paper deepening understanding of how the motivations of those engaged in this form of activism interface with the decision to invest time in this work. Based on interviews with 40 workshop facilitators in England and Wales we argue that this form of sexual health activism is motivated by facilitators' life experiences as well as the desire to make the world a better place. As such, this form of work can function as a means of 'caring for' both past selves and future generations, thus functioning simultaneously as a form of self-care and a form of 'societal care work'. Ultimately, these activities may be understood as a form of 'extra-clinical' healthcare practice, with leading gender and sexual health workshops serving as an important means of solidifying health students' identities as both healthcare providers and activists for social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using as a case study examples from a range of Lincolnshire newspapers, the article examines the emergence of sports journalism at a local level. Towards the end of the 19th century, provincial newspapers’ content was becoming increasingly local in orientation as attempts were made to distinguish themselves from the cheap, popular national dailies. With the growth of commercialised leisure and professional sport, increasing coverage within the local press became devoted to the reporting of such activities. The article examines the development of sports journalism between 1870 and 1914, a period of significant change within the provincial press. The work of several historians such as Richard Holt and Dave Russell have suggested that the coverage of sports news within the local newspaper played a part in forging local and regional identities: this article will assess the degree to which an analysis of the Lincolnshire press supports this argument. Increasingly, the identity of local press titles was, to an extent, shaped and defined through their sports coverage. This enabled newspapers to distinguish themselves from neighbouring rivals. The article will examine the ways in which local sports reporting competed with or complemented that appearing within the popular national press and the specialist sports papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under-representation of women in policing is a global phenomenon, with considerable commonality in barriers to career success and differential career experiences compared to men. Through a comparative analysis utilising unique survey and interview data with female and male senior police leaders in England and Wales, this paper considers whether cultural and structural barriers persist and how they are experienced by gender; examines the challenges encountered en route to senior rank; and considers how similarities or differences by gender impact upon careers. The findings are considered to have world-wide relevance, demonstrating that those officers achieving seniority tend to share similar career experiences whatever their gender, particularly at the highest ranks. Leadership styles emerge as homogenous with agentic traits and traditional styles persisting. Costs to achieving higher rank appear to differ by gender however, and access to senior rank is revealed as dependent upon engaging in traditional behaviours including a long-hours culture and ensuring family does not reduce work capacity, effectively promoting a 'child-tax' upon female policing leaders. It thus appears that a widespread and global tacit acceptance of policing as a male-dominated profession endures, impacting on female advancement compared to men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how nursing education both exemplifies the contradictions of neoliberalism alongside its seemingly all-encompassing influence. We conduct a feminist critical policy analysis to trace the histories of nursing as a feminised vocation located outside the academy, and how this is reflected in recent policy. We then critically explore widening participation and social mobility in relation to nursing education, and demonstrate how a discourse of fairness is used to justify market solutions. The 'special case' of nursing is considered through an analysis of how 'the nurse' as subject is constituted in education policy discourse. Our discussion focuses on the effects of these reforms and demonstrates how historical discourses that centre on women as carers are assimilated into the 'neoliberal social imaginary'. The paper's scope is both local – the gendered history of nursing education in England – and global – the force of neoliberal globalisation in education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kilns used for drying grain and for malting are common features of archaeological excavations in medieval towns and in the countryside. They occur in a variety of situations, including within urban tenement plots, open spaces within the urban landscape, manorial enclosures and field systems. This paper examines what the situation of drying kilns can reveal about the ways in which household and community labour were organised and the role of infrastructure in cultivating and maintaining variegated forms of rural and urban sociality. In doing so, it seeks to contribute to ongoing debates about the legacy of 'binary' logics relating to urban and rural life and to the gendered use of space and forms of labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers gender and social class in relation to teacher education through an episodic study of the development of adult educational institutions in Huddersfield. It briefly discusses nineteenth-century mechanics' institutes in the town before moving to a consideration of school teacher training college students in the twentieth century, highlighting aspects of the gendered and cultural ethos of teacher training. Local efforts to establish teacher training, and the wartime presence in the town of an evacuated women's teacher training college, provide a prism for the examination of transitions in social attitudes towards teaching as a profession, as do the educational aspirations of local working-class grammar school girls and boys during the 1940s/1950s. The paper then focuses on the establishment in 1963 of a 'new kind' of non-residential teacher training college and, in particular, on its introduction in the late 1960s of part-time provision designed specifically for 'married women'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactional justice is concerned with how far victims feel (i) respected by justice officials ('interpersonal justice') and (ii) informed about the progress of their case and the justice process overall ('informational justice') [Laxminarayan, M., Henrichs, J., and Pemberton, A. (2012). Procedural and interactional justice: a comparative study of victims in the Netherlands and New South Wales. European journal of criminology, 9 (3), 260–275; Laxminarayan, M. (2013). Interactional justice, coping and the legal system: needs of vulnerable victims. International review of victimology, 19 (2), 145–158]. This paper explores the experience of interactional justice for victims of 'honour'-based violence and abuse (HBVA) who report to the police in England and Wales. HBVA refers to abuse perpetrated with reference to ideas of 'shame' and 'honour'. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 36 victims of HBVA across England. This paper documents their experience and extends the framework of interactional justice proposed by Laxminarayan et al. (2012). First, we identify intersectionality, in particular, the positions of gender, ethnicity and immigration status within the victim–officer encounter, as central to interpreting the interpersonal experiences of HBVA victims with police. Second, we find that how information is used and delivered can be as important as the content and timeliness of communication. Twenty of our sample of 36 participants were happy with the initial police response, but only 9 were happy with their reporting experience overall. We argue that focusing on HBVA victims' interaction with justice actors could enable us to understand and improve HBVA victims' experience of, and satisfaction with, the justice system overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationships between sex, gender and sexuality through a series of close readings of data generated through an ethnography undertaken in a south London secondary school. The paper takes as its focus girls aged 15 to 16 and considers how particular sexed, gendered and sexualized selves are constituted. Drawing on Foucault's understanding of subjectivation and the subsequent work of Judith Butler, in particular her theorization of the inseparability of gender and sexuality in the contemporary discursive frame, these analyses demonstrate how students' mundane and day-to-day practices—including bodily deportment, physical games, linguistic accounts, and uses of clothing, hairstyles and accessories—are implicated in the discursive constitution of student subjectivities. The paper argues for an understanding of sex–gender–sexuality joined together in discursive chains and intersecting with further identity categories. As such, the paper suggests that subjectivities might helpfully be thought in terms of constituting constellations that create both possibilities and constraints for ‘who’ students can be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A lack of esteem for teachers and the teaching profession is a central tenet underpinning policy reforms put forward by the 2010 UK Government White Paper ‘The Importance of Teaching’. This article argues that the policy problem and solutions presented in the White Paper lack awareness of the historical and social positioning of teaching. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 32 London-based secondary teacher training students from various social class and ethnic backgrounds, this paper asks how the profession is perceived and what sort of choice it is for the trainees. It employs a Bourdieusian lens and concepts of social and cultural capital to examine the interplay of gendered, classed and ‘raced’ biographies in relation to individuals’ decisions to become teachers. Understanding the social world as ‘accumulated history’, as Bourdieu does, stresses that experiences and outcomes are rooted and collected in a series of historical structures and functionings. The paper argues that the ambiguous status of the profession is both a function and an effect of its conceptualisation as feminised. It also asks whether the weak professional standing of teaching has further destabilising consequences in the present political moment where a string of neoliberal and neoconservative policy reforms reshape the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sexual consent has increasingly become a central component of Relationships and Sex Education. This paper draws upon findings from qualitative research conducted with teenagers in England, which explored their perspectives on consent within their contemporary youth sexual cultures, including in digital (sexting) contexts. The findings suggest that young people's definitions of consent often did not correspond to the socially- and contextually contingent realities of negotiating and establishing consensual sex(ting). While young people's contemporary sexual cultures may look somewhat different, longstanding gender norms and sexual scripts shaped their attitudes towards consent. The implications of the findings for RSE are discussed, including the need for more collaborative dialogue and exchange between educators and learners that engages with the situated realities of contemporary youth sexual culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In most OECD countries, more women than men enrol in undergraduate degrees. I analyse this gap in enrolment using the elicited subjective beliefs of a sample of 240 17–18-year-olds living in England. I use these beliefs to estimate a discrete choice model. The results from this model can explain the majority of the gender gap in enrolment. Gender differences in preferences over future outcomes rather than differences in subjective beliefs account for most of the gap. An important difference between men and women is women value feeling independent whereas men do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of local parenting practices and children's everyday use of public space within two villages in the rural South West of England, an issue that has been underexplored in recent research. Drawing upon the concept of hybridity, it explores the interplay between the social, natural and material in shaping local cultures of rural parenting. The paper begins by drawing upon recent research on parenting in the global North, the gendering of rural space and hybridity to show how these bodies of work can be interlinked to better understand rural parenting practices and norms. Through empirical research that focused on the relationships between gendered parenting strategies, idealised notions of rural motherhood and materiality, the paper explores the diverse ways in which a group of working and middle-class mothers construct and define ideas about their children's lives and mobilities. Whilst dominant discourses of rurality focus upon the idyll, and gendered identities of rural women still remain within the domestic sphere, so we examine how these deeply embedded notions of ‘normality’ can be powerful social tools in rural villages, mobilised through discourses of materiality and anxiety. In our conclusions, we argue that the hybrid integration of the material and social provides a useful framework for understanding the everyday geographies of rural parenting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bangladeshi diaspora in East London exists in a rapidly changing social geography. Drawing on fieldwork conducted with Bangladeshi mothers in East London over a period of 18 months (2003-2004), this paper explores the different ways in which becoming a mother is conceptualised, and examines the cultural claims that mothers make through their narratives of motherhood. The research focuses on health and motherhood because they are important points where personal experience, social institutions and notions of 'culture' all intersect. Through examination of the different sources of information these women used to build their narratives, debates around ethnicity and class are brought into sharper focus, as are the potential challenges in providing services to mothers that successfully deal with both with diversity and social inequality. In investigating the complexity and possible contradictions within personal narrative, this paper also highlights some of the practical challenges involved in providing services for diverse populations in a manner that recognises difference at both a community and an individual level. Finally, by utilising biographical research more fully, this paper argues that it is possible to investigate critically the role of ethnicity in the provision of services more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores homeless women's use of public spaces and buildings in England. In doing so it problematises the spatial boundaries typically presented in the literature and research which suggest homeless women are largely confined to institutional or private spaces of homelessness. The paper argues that homeless women also use highly visible public spaces and semi-private spaces, and that these practices can be conceptualised in terms of resistance. Homeless women challenge the rules associated with occupying public spaces that either directly or tacitly exclude them, and they engage in identity work to resist being labelled as homeless. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces key findings from a large-scale, online survey of women in the ICT industry across England undertaken between October 2004 and October 2005. Placed in a theoretical framework which draws on critical perspectives from within information systems (IS), and the sociology of gender and of technology, the authors examine some of the issues faced by female ICT professionals. The context for this paper is the ongoing under-representation of women in the ICT industry in England, and the difficulties that the industry is having retaining women, particularly at senior levels. Data are presented on the demographic composition of women in the ICT industry in England. In addition the authors focus on their management of domestic and caring responsibilities, including changes in working practices they have experienced as a result of these responsibilities. These data are particularly pertinent given current government and industry debates regarding the 'work-life balance' and 'flexible working' in the ICT industry, partially as a response to the need for a more diverse ICT workforce. Alongside information on the career histories of female ICT professionals, the authors review their perceptions of pay and reward packages, working environments, the skills they hold, and the recognition they may or may not receive in their current posts. They present reports of a 'long-hours' and 'presenteeism' culture in the ICT industry, and the existence of gendered informal networks in ICT. They also examine female ICT professionals' perceptions of the current and future-possible image of the industry. The findings highlight the continued masculinization of ICT work, and some of the difficulties faced by women working in what remain statistically and symbolically male-dominated environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Community, Work & Family is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the results of an 18-month study at Brunel University that aimed to explain the significant gendered differences in academic performance amongst geography students. Male students are doing considerably less well than their female peers, being awarded far fewer first class and upper second class degrees, a phenomenon that cannot be accounted for by A-level entry grades. This paper draws on interviews with students which suggest that differences in achievement are explained by the fact that males and females perform the role of student in very different ways. While females are generally performing the role of hard-working, dedicated and focused student, males seem to be identifying with a 'macho' culture that glorifies sporting prowess and socializing at the expense of academic study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, young women in the West have been addressed as ‘Top Girls’, symbols of social progress and emblems of a new meritocracy. The 2008 financial crash and subsequent implementation of austerity measures have further called into question the realisation of such promise and potential as evidence suggests that the young and women have suffered disproportionately within the post-crash landscape in the UK and beyond. This paper draws on longitudinal data to interrogate the promises and failures of neoliberal and post-feminist articulations of aspiration and meritocracy as these are lived and negotiated by young women making transitions in the midst of the ‘crisis’. Attending to the biographical accounts of two participants occupying different class locations, I explore their transitions and perceptions of the uncertainties and risks characterising ‘austere times’. I demonstrate how, despite similarities in their experiences of a stunted graduate labour market, social class shaped how they responded to and made sense of the pressures and predicaments they encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Foster care research and social work practice tend to focus on how women look after children living in foster care. This focus has limited our understanding of what it is that men do within foster caring families and they are automatically assigned secondary or breadwinning roles. Families who foster involve some form of renegotiation of roles to care for children they foster. While foster caring arrangements are internationally diverse, foster carers often work with social workers. It would therefore seem important for social workers to understand how foster carers negotiate their parenting roles. This paper reports findings from seven main caring foster-fathers who took part in a wider study involving twentythree foster-fathers. The evidence provided by these foster-fathers demonstrate they are highly motivated to care for children and, alongside delivering traditional parenting roles, they negotiate new, non-traditional parenting roles as foster-fathers. These new roles, taken on by foster-fathers, often challenge stereotyped masculinity while they also concurrently enact parenting norms. This study applied Judith Butler's work on performing gender to foster caring families to theorise on the process whereby foster-fathers negotiate diverse masculinities and continue to reproduce gendered relations in foster caring families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Female correctional staff face multiple challenges when working in a male prison environment. Perceptions of competence and gendered divisions of labor are prevalent in the negotiated order of a prison. Sexuality is a dynamic that is irrelevant to the demands of a correctional officer yet a significant identity to be managed and negotiated in interactions with both colleagues and prisoners. This study adopts an auto ethnographic approach to highlight discrimination in prison officer occupational culture. Drawing upon personal narratives whilst working in an adult male prison in England, lived experiences of homophobia and sexism are presented to identify the challenges faced as a gay female prison officer. Themes of sexual objectification, homophobia and workplace incivility identify failings within the English prison service in supporting workplace diversity and inclusivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the hidden gendered curriculum concealed in the texts, exhibitions and other structural devices of museums and what they teach visitors to see and think. Grounded in conceptualisations of culture, representation, and language, past feminist studies of museums and applying feminist visual discourse analysis (FVDA) we found hiding in plain sight in public museums in Canada and England a diversity of 'languages' that subversively aggrandised masculine power and privilege and (re)inscribed negative or limited understandings to women which we argue as feminist adult educators have epistemic, identity and agency consequences. We also argue that whilst museums are trying to address often centuries old exclusionary gendered practices progress is slow because these practices are so embedded and unconscious and reflect pervasive social notions of 'common sense'. Our study makes an important contribution to feminist museum studies by rendering visible a web of complex structural and textual gendered biases and to adult education. By adding museums to our curricula we can provide our students with a visual and immersive way to hone the critical visual literacy skills needed to understand more fully how both seen and unseen languages operate not just in the museum, but across society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the perspectives of male trainees on mechanisms instituted to support them during their Post-Graduate Certificate of Education in Early Years and Primary Education in England. The male trainees were interviewed towards the end of their training, using semi-structured interviews that provided scope for pursuing several lines of enquiry around their experiences as males on the course. In this paper the authors examine specifically the male trainees’ responses to innovations in Faculty support for male trainees, rather than focusing on their broader experiences as males in primary education. The authors are thus concerned to interpret and understand the trainees’ perspectives on how support mechanisms did, or did not, ensure a more positive training experience. Most prominent amongst these mechanisms, in this pilot year, was the formation of a male-only support group. The findings support the idea that, for these trainees at least, focused meetings addressing the concerns of men in primary schools can help to support their development and sense of ‘belonging’ on a course where females are overwhelmingly dominant in numerical terms. The reported success of this initiative was, in the view of the trainees, strongly reliant on the active involvement of practising male teachers and the directly relevant foci of the meetings, determined by the trainees and invited teachers. The presence of a designated male member of the Faculty staff was also viewed positively. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports on research from a small-scale project investigating the vocational training of students in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in England. We draw on data from interviews with 42 students and five tutors in order to explore the students’ understandings of professionalism in early years. In the paper, we discuss first, the then Labour Government’s drive to ‘professionalise’ the workforce and second, critically analyse the concept of professionalism, drawing on sociological literature. We then turn to the data, and argue that students’ understandings of professionalism are limited to generic understandings of ‘professional’ behaviour (reliability, politeness, punctuality and so on). The idea of their occupation being a repository of a particular knowledge and skills set is undercut by the students’ emphasis on work with young children being largely a matter of ‘common sense’. Our fourth point is to highlight the processes by which students are inducted into a respectable and responsible carer identity, as illustrated by an emphasis on clothes and appearance. We conclude that the version of professionalism offered to students training at this level is highly constrained, and discuss the implications of this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the work on youth cultures and subcultures that emerged from Birmingham's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (hereafter CCCS) during the 1970s. I engage with a number of recent critiques of the 'youth sub/cultures project', including Thornton's influential work on rave and club cultures and its troubled engagement with class. I argue that the focus of the youth sub/cultures project on mediated cultural practices through which young people constitute themselves and their (gendered, classed and racialised) positions remains of value, especially the emphasis on a 'symptomatic reading' that locates these processes in a 'conjunctural analysis'. I end by exploring the legacy of this project for understanding youth, class and culture in contemporary late modern society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the example of what is now known in a large part of the Anglo-saxon world as the boys' underachievement debate, this paper explores the construction of gender issues, which underpins educational policies in England and France. It argues that the formation of particular questions as 'policy issues' bears limited relation to what happens on the ground, yet is contingent on societal contexts. For example, while England and France share similar patterns in terms of the differential achievement of boys and girls, in the former the boys' underachievement debate is prominent, but in the latter it is non-existent. This supports the view that the emergence of the boys' underachievement debate is not related to a 'grounded reality'. Rather, the debate appears embedded in the discursive construction of gender and education and, more generally, of notions of citizenship and equality/difference. These findings provide a strong case in favour of a reflexive approach to equality matters in educational policy making. They also suggest that the analysis of what is constructed as a key issue in policy circles represents a rich terrain for feminist analysis, and they highlight that national frameworks continue to structure the thinking on equality issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how migrants negotiate and construct their identity in London. In particular it discusses how they position themselves in relation to other ethnic groups - English people and other migrant and ethnic minority groups within British society. The discussion draws upon qualitative research with recent Polish migrants in London. In addition to key informants from a range of community and voluntary groups, 3 focus groups and 30 individual interviews were carried out with migrants across various locations in the city. Participants were drawn from a range of occupations and included equal numbers of men and women. Rather than attempting to select a representative sample, the research sought to capture the range and diversity of Polish migrants. The paper examines how ethnic identity is mediated through language, gender, whiteness and European-ness. Using Goffman's concepts of 'normality' and 'stigma' the paper also discusses the ways in which participants engage with Polishness through multifaceted and complex interactions with or, indeed, avoidance of 'Poles abroad'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The feminisation of migration is absent in policy and programmatic discourses on adult education in the USA and England. This paper uses an intersectional framework and feminist transnational methodology to probe this concept and its implications for women migrants and their education and advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In post-industrial countries, folk dance may be considered as an embodied performance of a perceived tradition and is representational of values attached to an imagined past. The English Country Dance is one such form of folk dance, having been revived, or re-invented, in the early twentieth century by Cecil Sharp who claimed it to be a national dance of England. However, Sharp re-defined it not as a popular and spontaneous leisure activity but as a serious middle-class art form representing an English sensibility and the virtues of a pre-industrial pastoral collectivism. After the hiatus of the First World War, the English Country Dance continued to offer a resistance to the modern, this time in the form of a burgeoning popular dance culture which embraced urban sophistication and jazz dance. Using the concept of performativity, this paper attempts to demonstrate that the leisure context of the English Country Dance, in terms of spatiality, style, consumption and gender, enabled a continuity of resistance to the modern in a changing socio-cultural environment. The paper draws upon primary research in the archive of the Manchester Branch of the English Folk Dance Society and upon records of contemporary dance in the Mass Observation archive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the leisure narratives of three individual women who attended pole dancing classes once a week in a city in the North of England. The research was based on participant observation of pole dancing classes and individual interviews with 15 women, nine of whom were students and six were teachers. This paper uses the pole exercise classes as a departure point for an examination of how the women negotiated the time and cost, and how they motivated themselves to continue attending despite various difficulties which they faced such as childcare, pressures of work, unsupportive partners, or just general lethargy. A key part of the overall experience was the sense of achievement that they managed to attend at all. What added to the enjoyment of the experience was the sense of triumph that, yet again, they had overcome the odds and managed to attend, illustrating that for the women who somehow endeavour to find a way to attend, 'finding a way' is itself part of the pleasure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In England, the Government has implemented policies to increase and diversify participation in higher education (HE). Changes in funding arrangements that shift the burden of paying for education from the state to individuals have also been introduced. To reconcile the contradiction between widening participation and the individualization of the costs of study, HE is being framed as a risk-free and individualized financial investment. Informed by critiques from feminist economics and the philosophy of “rational economic man,” this paper argues that the government's HE policies are permeated by a narrow concept of reason and presuppose highly individualized, instrumental, and economic actors. Drawing on the findings from two studies conducted at the University of Hull, this paper demonstrates how this understanding of human behavior is incongruent with the experiences of one group of students - mature student carers - whose life choices are informed by their caring responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports a study of children's attitudes to school based on a questionnaire survey of 845 pupils in their first year of secondary school in England, together with interviews with a sample of the children. A clearly structured set of attitudes emerged from a factor analysis which showed a distinction between instrumental and affective aspects of attitudes but also dimensions within these, including a sense of teacher commitment and school as a difficult environment. Virtually all children had a strong sense of the importance of doing well at school. However, a substantial minority were not sure that they would stay on after 16. There were few differences between boys and girls or between children from different socio-economic backgrounds but children planning to leave at 16 enjoyed school less and were less sure that it had anything to offer them. There was an almost universal commitment to the value of education but, for a minority, an ambivalence about the experience and relevance of schooling for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on mobile phone use by a young minority ethnic group as a medium through which to explore diversity and technology use in everyday life. Recent research with young people has shown that mobile phones are instrumentally, socially and emotionally important but few have problematized the homogeneous concept of 'youth'. This paper argues for increased recognition of the intersections of social categories such as youth, gender and ethnicity with technologies, specifically mobile phones, in order to understand complexity of use. Drawing on new empirical, qualitative data from an urban area in the North East of England we explore the focus group narratives of young Pakistani-British Muslim women and men focusing on the notion of 'shifting' gendered and cultural identities and social practices, developed and reworked in relation to the use of mobile phones. We look at the gendered dynamics of mobile use, including gender talk and text, and ask whether the young women and men experience mobiles differently in everyday life. We also explore the ways in which mobiles are used to create 'space of one's own' and the gendered dynamics of remaining connected, especially to key peer groups. The paper concludes with the assertion that in order to fully explore the mutability of youth cultures across space and time, we need to develop a more dynamic concept of 'mobile selves' by exploring the place and meaning of technologies such as mobile phones in the rich tapestries of young people's lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on findings relating to a project on gender and essay assessment in HE. It focuses on one aspect of the study: the assessment of and feedback given to two sample essays by 50 historians based at universities in England and Wales. We found considerable variation both as to the classification awarded to the essays and to positive and negative comments made about their quality, supporting the argument that the 'quality' of a piece of writing for assessment is ultimately constructed by the reader of the essay and cannot be objectively ascertained. Gender issues emerging from the data are explored in the paper, relating to lecturers' perceptions of the essays' qualities; views concerning the way feedback should be presented; and the content and style of feedback given by lecturers on the sample essays. We found that gender constructions were manifested more in presentation than practice. These findings on the situated practice of assessment have implications for the conception of the 'reliability' of essay assessment in HE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores identity transformations of the Kosovo Albanian diaspora in the United Kingdom by focusing on the dimensions of education, gender and religion. Taking into account both the structural factors of the adopted country and the impact of a strong sense of nationhood based on traditional beliefs and mores, the analysis traces the emergence of internal lines of identity differentiation within the Albanian community in a diasporic context. The uniform interpretation of the Albanian identity is under growing pressure to incorporate alternative views of Albanianhood as they emerge from the process of interaction with the political, social, economic and cultural environment of the host country. The paper shows that the persistence of a commitment to such a rigidly defined sense of nationhood has thus far stopped these alternative views from turning into lines of division within the Kosovo Albanian diaspora. It posits that a constructive internal redefinition of the Albanian identity in the UK is necessary in order to forestall the process of fragmentation of the Kosovo Albanian diaspora community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine the ways in which female football players negotiate and contest gender conventions practised in English football. I look at female participation through the application of Bhabha’s ‘third-space’ thesis, and argue that Bhabha’s work has utility in the context of this case study for understanding complexities and nuances ordinarily ignored by gendered discourse performed in English football culture. I utilize semi-structured interviewees with women who have or are still currently playing football across an age range of 17–45. I draw on a feminist ‘standpoint’ in order to attain critical narratives. Critiques arise in two key areas. Firstly, the impact of changes in governance under the Football Association. Secondly, the agency of players themselves to actively contest gender conventions, whether through playing football despite the negative connotations attached to female physicality, or through the provision of mixed football. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There are long-standing achievement gaps in England associated with socio-economic status (SES), ethnicity and gender, but relatively little research has evaluated interactions between these variables or explored school effects on such gaps. This paper analyses the national test results at age 7 and age 11 of 2,836 pupils attending 68 mainstream primary schools in an ethnically diverse inner London borough. The groups with the lowest educational achievement and poorest progress were both Black Caribbean and White British low SES pupils. White British middle and high SES pupils made substantially more progress than White British low SES pupils, significantly increasing the SES gap over time. However low and high SES Black pupils made equally poor progress age 7–11. School effects on pupil progress were large, but there was no evidence of differential school effectiveness in relation to SES, ethnicity or gender. Low SES pupils in the more effective schools performed significantly better than high SES pupils in the less effective schools, but all pupils (both low and high SES) benefit from attending the more effective schools and so these schools do not eliminate the SES gap. The limits to change that may be achieved by schools alone are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on Julia Brannen’s contribution to the development of theory and methods for intergenerational research. The discussion is contextualised within a contemporary ‘turn to time’ within sociology, involving tensions and synergies between sociological and historical imagination. These questions are informed by a juxtaposition of Brannen’s four-generation study of family change and social historian Angela Davis’s exploration women and the family in England between 1945 and 2000. These two studies give rise to complementary findings, yet have distinctive orientations towards the status and treatment of sources, the role of geography in research design and limits of generalisation [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we reveal the neglected role of business education in legitimizing and performing gendered discourses in financial services work in London's financial district. In particular, by combining research on gendered subjectivities in elite labour markets with Foucauldian-inspired cultural economy research on the processes of financial subjectification, we argue that business education played an important role in performing discourses of idealised investment banking subjects who embodied essentialised masculine qualities during the period of rapid financialized growth in the 2000s. We then examine the temporary fragility of these ‘masters of the universe’ by exploring how the power of investment banking subjects was momentarily destabilised as the global financial crisis was scripted in public discourse as being caused in part by the dominance of hyper-masculine investment bankers. By focusing on the relationship between educational practices and the gendered nature of financial services work, our analysis responds to calls to develop a more politically engaged cultural economy of finance by raising normative questions concerning the financial subjectivities that could, or should, be called forth within the post-crisis international financial system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1910 and 1935 there was a vibrant and active campaign for the ordination of women as priests in the Church of England. Despite convening major historical and theological commissions into the ministry of women, the Church of England struggled to arrive at any coherent theological objections to the ordination of women. Nonetheless, the Church refused to countenance women priests. This paper argues that a gendered spatial analysis of the debates about women performing priestly roles in the pulpit and chancel can reveal the underlying assumptions about gender, power, theology, and sexuality that informed the debates about women's ordination in the 1920s and 1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the social networks of young unaccompanied asylum seekers and refugees in London. It discusses the findings of a 12-month qualitative study using photo elicitation interviews with eight young refugees to explore their social networks. The analysis points to the potential of social networks to provide emotional and material support for young refugees and discusses the extent to which social capital flows through these networks. It explores the importance of place and gender in shaping their entry into and formation of these networks. It concludes that the formation of weak ties particularly to institutional actors is important in providing young refugees with access to material and cultural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I explore how a woman secondary school headteacher and her colleagues talk about her gendered headship. To facilitate and contextualise the semi-structured interviews, participants were asked to categorise a range of attributes and qualities that have been seen as 'masculine' or 'feminine'. They attempted to plot their perceptions of her gendered headship on a continuum from 'extremely masculine' to 'extremely feminine' in relation to her appearance and interactions in various contexts. Their talk, as they explained and illustrated their thinking, reveals that even from a dualist starting point many have an understanding of the fluid nature of complex, subjective, gendered identities. The rejection of binary notions of gender by some participants disrupts the perpetuation of gender as a dualist concept. In particular, the headteacher forces open a space in which to consider the complexity of her own gendered headship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, based on a project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council considering how people position themselves in relation to popular representations of mathematics and mathematicians, we explore constructions of mathematicians in popular culture and the ways learners make meanings from these. Drawing on an analysis of popular cultural texts, we argue that popular discourses overwhelmingly construct mathematicians as white, heterosexual, middle-class men, yet also construct them as 'other' through systems of binary oppositions between those doing and those not doing mathematics. Turning to the analysis of a corpus of 27 focus groups with school and university students in England and Wales, we explore how such images are deployed by learners. We argue that while learners' views of mathematicians parallel in key ways popular discourses, they are not passively absorbing these as they are simultaneously aware of the cliched nature of popular cultural images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the stratification of the curriculum according to parents' education, gender, ethnicity and school sector in England, focusing on year 10 subject choices. Using the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, we analyse both year 10 subject choices and the factors that may motivate these choices, such as liked and disliked subjects, attitudes to subject choice and the extent to which choices were shaped by parents, teachers or the young people themselves. The social structure of curriculum choice is mapped using Multiple Correspondence Analysis, which reveals the hierarchy of subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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