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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]

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]

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]

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 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]