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The idea for this Special Issue, ‘Gender, Physical Education and Active Lifestyles: Contemporary Challenges and New Directions’ developed from the interest generated by a one day conference held at Leeds Beckett University in September 2017. The conference marked 25 years since the publication of Sheila Scraton’s ground breaking, feminist analysis of Physical Education. As a pivotal text that has contributed to the growth of gender research within the UK and more broadly, it seemed fitting to mark this occasion. The reach of Sheila’s work was perhaps realised through the delegate body. Early career researchers mingled with established scholars from America, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the UK. Building on this conference and a wider call for papers, we are delighted to offer two Special Issues of Sport, Education and Society. The first issue engages explicitly with the challenge of theorising and understanding gendered subjectivities and embodiment across a range of contexts. These papers reflect the diversity of theoretical approaches being employed with some drawing on feminist perspectives, and others using Bourdieu, intersectionality, critical whiteness studies, and masculinity studies. The collection of papers in the second issue seek to examine the different ways in which gender becomes implicated in pedagogical relations and practice. These range from accounts of teachers’ struggles to use critical pedagogies to address gender inequities in PE classes, to analyses of the wider pedagogical ‘work’ of the media in constructing understandings about gender, with several papers exploring these two aspects in combination. We hope you enjoy reading the papers across these two Special Issues as much as we have enjoyed the journey as the editorial team. Collectively the papers raise alternative questions and provide new insights into gender and active lifestyles, and importantly, all seek to make a difference in moving towards more equitable physical activity experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines discourses of bullying in international climate politics. Drawing on two cases, first the (social) media coverage which surrounded climate activist Greta Thunberg's visits to the UK in 2019, and second Thunberg's interactions with former US President Donald Trump, alongside a theoretical framework inspired by feminist geopolitics, the paper argues that discourses of bullying can be conceptualised as a series of figurations (the 'bully', the 'bullied', and the 'anti-bully') which reproduce individuated relations of power. Overall, the paper argues that individuating bullying discourses perpetuate a politics of white innocence which preserves petro-masculine power in international climate politics. To contest these unequal power dynamics, the paper argues for an anti-bullying politics grounded in collective, intersectional challenges to climate injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Documentation of learning through narration and imagery is part of everyday early childhood education. Recently, technology has generated enthusiasm for digital and mobile documentation, where mobility indicates reciprocal communication between home and school using mobile devices. The present paper asks the question of what mobile documentation is doing within the boundaries of a teacher's personal and professional public–private timespace-materialities. By focusing on documentation of young children's playful learning shared through social media platforms, I put to work posthuman, feminist materialist theories. What becomes illuminated is that mobile documentation performs within the porous boundaries between a teacher's personal and professional subjectivities. These actions flow between reproduction, generation, and rupture, with hidden labours and affective costs materialised in the liveliness of timestamps, spatialities, and hashtag entanglements. Whilst mobile documentation practices raise ethical questions, they offer potentialities for accessible ways for teachers to operationalise digital doings that offer hopeful, bite-size, and accessible storytelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women working in sports media contend with unwanted attention during their careers, extending beyond evaluations of their knowledge to encompass judgements of their appearances and emotional management. Using Banet-Weiser's framework of popular feminism, within the 'economies of visibility', this research explores the experiences and strategies of women in sports media as they navigate increased -visibility. Working as a researcher-insider, the first author conducted semi--structured interviews with seven women working in sports media (early career to 35 years' experience), working in the UK and/or Ireland, across TV, radio, print and/or online formats. Collaborative reflexive thematic analysis by both authors resulted in the construction of two themes around 'heightened visibility' (including a subtheme of standing out) and 'blending in'. The findings indicate that while women are increasingly visible in the industry, the gender dynamics and conditions of the sports media workplace have not progressed to the same extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inclusion of girls and women in sport at all levels depends on single sex categories for most sports from puberty onwards, because of the biological differences between the sexes. Most sport is, by definition, competitive; involving invasion games, teams, leagues, races, competitions and sometimes rankings, from foundation to excellence. Girls and women are underrepresented, particularly in traditional sport, as recognised by the UK Sports Councils and most governing bodies of sport. This paper uses feminist philosophy: Lister on androcentric citizenship, and Fraser on justice as balance, framing, recognition, representation and redistribution. It investigates the impact on the inclusion of girls and women, of eligibility policies adopting 'self-identification of gender' guidelines for the inclusion of transgender people in sport, at participation rather than elite levels. It explores fairness and equality as incorporated in law in the 2010 Equality Act in Britain, and contributes to 'equality evidence' available to the UK Sports Councils and GBS. These bodies are charged with developing fair and inclusive evidence-based eligibility criteria, in sports participation settings, for both girls and women, and transgender people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issues of migration and the allocation of passports is a contentious issue in twenty-first-century Britain. This paper offers a timely assessment of Chila Kumari Burman's diptych, Convenience, Not Love, 1986–7, which uses the passport motif to present a scathing indictment of British immigration policy in the post-1945 era, which champions the resilience of the British South Asian diaspora in the face of persistent racial discrimination. Taking issue with the stereotype of South Asian women as 'meek and passive victims', the paper concludes with a discussion of Burman's self-portraits from the 1990s, proposing them as 'radically narcissistic'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the perceptions and experiences of women academics in the UK, participating in a small-scale qualitative study exploring career progression and encountered institutional obstacles. The accounts are considered in terms of both disadvantageous institutional strategies and interpersonal ones governing day-to-day working relationships. The findings contribute to a growing body of international research on gender constructions in the academy, where both inhibiting and exclusionary barriers are examined in focus group discussions (FGDs) in terms of gendered constructions that are perceived to impact upon the career opportunities of women academics. Analysis of data encouraged the employment of a ludic construction in this critical exploration of games playing and 'gamesmanship' (a masculinised term); these being themes raised in the FGDs as representing blocks and challenges to women's academic careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks back on the methodology and experience of feminist consciousness-raising (CR) in the 1970s, in relation to the current re-emergence of feminism. It constructs an argument that a new wave of CR is desirable so as to construct new forms of feminist pedagogy and activism. The paper will argue that contemporary feminism in the UK and USA would benefit from this kind of methodology, through which a standpoint is constructed. The core of the paper is an analysis of how CR works as an affective and social process. Drawing on academic studies and participant accounts, the paper reconstructs the mechanisms through which participants' subjectivities and narratives are expressed and transformed. It suggests that these mechanisms express different non-homogeneous temporalities. The paper invites feminist pedagogy to get back to the base level of experience and unfold new theories and strategies to address the current context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender norms, roles and relations differentially affect women, men, and non-binary individuals' vulnerability to disease. Outbreak response measures also have immediate and long-term gendered effects. However, gender-based analysis of outbreaks and responses is limited by lack of data and little integration of feminist analysis within global health scholarship. Recognising these barriers, this paper applies a gender matrix methodology, grounded in feminist political economy approaches, to evaluate the gendered effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and response in four case studies: China, Hong Kong, Canada, and the UK. Through a rapid scoping of documentation of the gendered effects of the outbreak, it applies the matrix framework to analyse findings, identifying common themes across the case studies: financial discrimination, crisis in care, and unequal risks and secondary effects. Results point to transnational structural conditions which put women on the front lines of the pandemic at work and at home while denying them health, economic and personal security – effects that are exacerbated where racism and other forms of discrimination intersect with gender inequities. Given that women and people living at the intersections of multiple inequities are made additionally vulnerable by pandemic responses, intersectional feminist responses should be prioritised at the beginning of any crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines how gendered hierarchies and relations, particularly those between hegemonic masculinities and non-hegemonic gendered identities, manifest between students at a university in North West England in and through forms of online harassment, using data collected from a large-scale study (N= 810) conducted in this institutional context. Key findings indicate that some young masculinities subordinate non-hegemonic gendered identities, namely those who identify as female and transgender, in and through gendered and sexualised forms of online harassment or are complicit in these practices. Male research participants are more likely than any other gendered group to use 'free speech' discourses to legitimate online harassment directed at transgendered and cis-female subjects. Some white, heterosexual males, who occupy a dominant position in Britain's gendered and racial social order, appropriate discursive practices associated with identity politics, which have historically been used by non-hegemonic gendered identities to challenge social inequities, to claim they are 'victims' of this society. We argue that these new emerging forms of hybridised hegemonic masculinity, which appropriate and reconfigure the discursive practices of non-hegemonic gendered identities, reproduce and conceal patriarchal systems of power in digitised spaces. We suggest more research is needed to better understand these practices, their relationship to alt-right influencers and men's rights activists, and their implications for digital hegemonic masculinities at the local level of UK university campuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are changing times impacting on the possibility of collective agency by actors and agencies responding to domestic violence against women in London? The struggle against the domestic abuse of women was grounded in the 1970s women's liberation movement under the rallying cry of 'the personal is the political'. Over time, the domestic violence (DV) response has become professionalised and mainstreamed, located in public sector agencies and charities, with small feminist groups challenging gender inequalities in different settings. These combined efforts are having no impact on the incidence of DV, and recent years have seen dramatic cuts in DV services. A snowball sample of 25 professionals, policy makers and activists across the DV response engaged in semi-structured interviews exploring their work experiences, particularly experiences of 'multi-sectoral collaboration', the professional instantiation of collective agency. Thematic analysis depicted an exhausted and divided sector. Nearly all informants saw DV as rooted in gender inequalities, and viewed collaborative working as essential for tackling its interlocking individual and social drivers. However, contemporary feminism was seen as completely irrelevant to the daily realities of professionals' work. The paper explores how the current economic, political and cultural contexts of interviewees' work experiences were hostile to the practice of multi-sectoral collaboration. Such contexts actively militated against collaborator solidarity, the inclusion of survivor voices and a social change orientation – preconditions for effective collective agency in tackling such a complex and multi-level social problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the concept of motherhood and peace in the British women’s movement during the Great War. It does so by focusing on the Women’s International League (WIL)—the British section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Drawing on the WIL papers, the article shows how a section of the movement continued to lobby for female representation during the war alongside its calls for peace. WIL referred to the social and cultural experiences of motherhood, which allowed it to challenge the discourse on gender and to build bridges between women of former enemy nations. This case study examines how maternalist rhetoric influenced feminism and sheds light on how British women attempted to enter the political sphere by linking women’s maternal experience to their demands for citizenship. [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.)

While academic scholarship generally offers various forms of commentary on decided cases, feminist judgment-writing projects have recently embarked on a new form of critical scholarship. Rather than critiquing judgments from a feminist perspective in academic essays, the participants in these projects have set out instead to write alternative judgments, as if they had been one of the judges sitting in court at the time. After introducing the UK Feminist Judgments Project and describing what is “different” about the judgments it has produced, the paper explains some of the ways in which these judgments have been used as teaching resources in UK law schools. The paper goes on to introduce the following four articles in this issue of the Law Teacher, which illustrate in greater detail particular pedagogical uses of the Feminist Judgments Project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this short paper, I start with a case study – about how elementary school children in the early twentieth century in England understood their responsibilities vis-à-vis family (and school). This example provides a window into a past which deeply contrasts with present-day children's and adults' understandings and lives. I go on to consider (very briefly, for the field is vast) how ideas about childhood changed in the interwar years and how, since then, children have become locked into educational establishments – as well as into families. It seems to me that in these circumstances we are not used to thinking of children as thoughtful and active members of society. So it is no surprise to me that adults do not look to inter-relations with children as key variables towards understanding the social order. I note that my emphasis is on the UK, since I know most about that! [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is part of a wider study into how women's studies was introduced in the academic curriculum in the United Kingdom, Canada and the USA. It looks at the sexual politics of the academy during the 1970s and 1980s, and at how they are now remembered. Women's studies was inextricably bound up in the politics of feminist activism in the period, including the ideal of working collectively in women-only groups. But the academy was male-dominated and the consent of male colleagues was indispensable. There was a further challenge to separatist practice if men wished to enroll as students. The paper starts by setting the research in the context of influential texts such as Kate Millett's Sexual politics (1972) and the framework of patriarchy. Using recorded interviews with key activists, the paper traces interaction with male colleagues. The second part reflects on how, thirty years later, the concept of patriarchy has been developed by intellectual work on gender, and by a more complex understanding of sexual identity and its interaction with sexual politics, now reflected in the curriculum, and in the re-naming of women's studies as gender studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1990s, anti-social behaviour by households living in the UK social rented sector has been highlighted as a key area of policy concern. Abandoning the usual stereotyped images, this paper reveals there to be significant differences in the nature of the problem according to the gender of perpetrators. We focus attention on the experiences of women-headed households involved in anti-social behaviour and the way in which landlords and the judicial system deal with such cases. It is suggested that the genderbased differences revealed can only be adequately explained in terms of a wider analysis of gender relations. The paper illustrates the punitive approach taken by landlords in the first instance, and subsequently by the judicial system, to women-headed households who fail to control boyfriends'and/or teenage sons' behaviour.The paper concludes by questioning the effectiveness of an approach, which fails to acknowledge the gender distinct nature of the problem, or to deal with the underlying causes of the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frances Heidensohn is a pioneer in feminist criminology. In 1968 her first published paper raised questions which were to provide the agenda for a generation of feminist scholars. Since then Heidensohn has continued to develop the discipline by her research and teaching--and by fostering the talents of others. She now enjoys an international reputation. This paper sets the life and work of this British criminologist within their social and academic contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Critical thinking is often understood as a set of tangible, transferrable and measurable skills and competencies. Yet, it is also an intensely affective experience that is complex, contingent and contextualised. Using interview, focus group and observation data conducted with 15 first-year undergraduate social science students at a UK research-intensive university, this paper explores how students negotiate the complex knowledge practices that constitute critical thinking, particularly the affects of being and becoming critical. The theoretical tools offered by Karen Barad and Sara Ahmed allow a conceptualisation of critical thinking as a complex phenomenon of socio-material and affective practices. This paper turns to Barad and Ahmed to explore the potential of their clashing theorisations for thinking through the affective territories of critical thinking. It will argue that acknowledging the way(s) critical thinking feels (as well as what it is and what it is for) opens up new imaginaries for feminist scholarship about criticality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines how and in what ways workplace 'sexual harassment' achieved social and legal recognition in the UK news press following its importation from North America in the mid-1970s. It assesses the role of feminist campaigners working within institutions (trade unions, human rights advocacy, the Equal Opportunities Commission and journalism itself) in shifting public discourse and in using the media to educate and promote social change. We demonstrate that the trajectory was far from a linear progression. Initial hostility within the popular press in the early 1980s was replaced with sympathetic coverage across the party-political spectrum by 1990. However, this consensus broke down in the 1990s as a result of politicised and polarised coverage of a series of claims brought by women in the services and armed forces against the backdrop of debates about 'compensation culture' and membership of the European Union. Whilst change was effected at the level of employment law, formal practice and in the human resources policies of larger employers, 'sexual harassment myths' were resilient as a thread within 'everyday cultural discourse' and, by implication, within informal workplace cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper sets current public debates about gender and schooling in England into an historical and United Kingdom-wide context. Once that work is done, the position is much more complicated than the mass-media coverage would suggest. Attacks on English schools for failing boys are examined as a 'discourse of derision'. An agenda for future research is included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the cut-throat world of newspaper advertising the newspapers of Britain's Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU)Votes for Womenand theSuffragettemanaged to achieve a balance that has often proved to be an impossible challenge for social movement press—namely the maintenance of a highly political stance whilst simultaneously exploiting the market system with advertising and merchandising. When the militant papers advocated window smashing of West End stores in 1912–1913, the companies who were the target still took advertisements. Why? What was the relationship between news values, militant violence and advertising income? ‘Do-it-yourself’ journalism operated within a context of ethical consumerism and promotionally orientated militancy. This resulted in newspaper connections between politics, commerce and a distinct market profile, evident in the customisation of advertising, retailer dialogue with militants and longer-term loyalty—symptomatic of a wider trend towards newspaper commercialism during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores how our understandings of gender and Physical Education (PE) have developed since the publication of Shaping Up to Womanhood in 1992. I reflect back on my research which, using qualitative methodology and a socialist feminist lens, explored dominant gender relations in the teaching of girls’ PE in English secondary schools. The analysis of my data revealed how PE teachers had clear ideas about ‘appropriate’ activities and behaviours based on notions of acceptable femininity relating to physical ability and capacity; female sexuality and expectations of motherhood and domesticity. I consider how my conclusions have been taken forward in international feminist PE research over the past 25 years as theory has shifted from structural to poststructural analyses. I conclude that we now have far more micro analyses of teachers’ and students’ subjectivities, identities and differences and more complex understandings of power. I argue we need to re-align subjectivities with the social, political and economic landscape of education. The paper considers the cultural backlash against feminism underpinned by postfeminist, neoliberal discourse that emphasises individual self-determination evidenced by the ‘can do’ girl. This is set in contrast to recent evidence that concludes that gender expectations are still very evident in PE for girls in schools. Finally, I consider the 4th wave of feminism that through digital platforms is re-asserting feminist activism and developing a ‘call out’ culture of sexism and inequalities. For a more equitable PE we need to bridge the gap between theoretical sophistication and school experience. There are both continuities and changes in relation to gender and PE but the need for critical feminist work in PE is as important today as it was as I concluded my research 25 years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the contribution of theoretical discussions of social education in UK youth work to debates about ‘social pedagogy’, arguing that the analysis of power and difference, in particular the impact of gender difference, which has occurred in youth work is essential in discussions of ‘social pedagogy’ too. Since ‘social pedagogy’ has been discussed as a source for transformed visions of schooling, the paper extends and develops discussion of pre-figurative counter-practice and how it can be sustained through an engagement with difference, drawing especially on the work of Luce Irigaray. Ideas and practice associated with social pedagogy have been drawn on to illuminate a radical vision of the common school as a counter-practice to the neo-liberal credentialisation of schooling. Such approaches resonate strongly with so-called romantic models of youth work in the UK (Wylie, 2010) and their associated traditions of social education. The emphasis on the relational and the social in education might enable a fruitful engagement with feminist approaches especially that of the philosopher Luce Irigaray (1932–present) whose work forms the basis of the engagement with difference which is advocated here. Such an engagement with difference is essential to any democratic project which resists pressures simply to normalise, standardise and contain those involved in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including feminism, open universities, and higher education in Great Britain.

This study focuses on the public assertion of gendered ethno-religious identities on the websites of Hindu student groups (HSGs) in the South Asian Diaspora in the USA and UK. HSGs are a part of a larger phenomenon of individuals and organizations engaged in creating and promoting ethnicities in virtual spaces. In this paper we focus particularly on the HSGs deployment of 'strong woman' imagery to assert their 'superior cultures'. We find that while the HSGs appear to challenge the gendered/racialized construction of minorities in Western societies as traditional, and non-modern, their construction of 'strong Hindu women' is replete with gendered inequalities. In addition, such constructions also implicate 'their women' into the process of drawing racialized boundaries against other groups. This paper explores how the processes involving the construction, representation and reproduction of Hinduism and Hindu identity on the web, from locations in the USA and the UK create contemporary gender hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The understanding of feminist pasts has been largely ignored in the history of education. This paper suggests that the historical sociology of Olive Banks provides fresh starting points for future research exploring the relationship between the history of social and political movements and a reassessment of contemporary and historical forms of 'radical education.' The article proceeds to use group biography to explore a municipal socialism that has been over-ridden in historical memory by the classic political histories that take the view from Westminster and Whitehall. In so doing it seeks to show the contribution of six educator activists who were participants in the making of a metropolitan political elite emerging from the association between feminism, socialism and the labour and trade union movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy-makers in the UK and Europe have become concerned with the successful management of transitions in learning as a means of increasing the competitiveness of their economies. Transitions relating to informal as well as formal learning have also been an important focus for the sociology of education. In this paper, I review alternative ways in which transitions are conceptualised as a process of change over time; but argue that the dimension of change has been overemphasised, while the dimension of time has been neglected. Much of the literature on transitions takes for granted a 'common sense' view of time as a 'natural flow' and assumes that learning can enable us to forge our own futures agentically from lessons of the past and goals in the present. Feminist research, however, challenges such a theory as androcentric, and reveals the many ways in which women's time is used and experienced differently. Drawing on critical sociological thinking about time, these ideas are illustrated through a re-interpretation of data from Mojab's (2006) study of Kurdish women refugees in Sweden. This explores the ways in which time is engendered and enacted in social practices marked by gender, race and class, and the impact of these times upon the women's learning. The potential of such an analysis points to the need for further study of these themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd 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 focuses on contemporary British public policy and how social policies and feminist-informed family therapy are influencing and challenging each other. The concept and practice of family support is evaluated in terms of the central political role it fulfils in replicating stereotyped gender roles and normative family constructs, It is argued that family support and family therapy are morphing as government policies encourage more voluntary sector services, presenting feminist family therapists with both challenges and opportunities to influence social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at discussing the notion of the body in organization theory. The postmodern and the linguistic turns in social theory have focused all forms of lexical, linguistic, semiotic and symbolic theories of organizations. This paper argues that these positions have contributed substantially to organization theory but that there are considerable, embodied activities of organizations that are excluded, marginalized or overlooked. Therefore, it is important to rethink and problematize the use of human bodies in organizations. Four different perspectives on embodiment are examined in the text: phenomenology, feminist theory, theories of practice and postmodern theory. The paper concludes that organization theory needs to integrate the human body to fully understand how organizations operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of feminist periodicals in mobilizing consensus for and against welfare reform measures such as the endowment of motherhood and birth control in the 1920s. It argues that the tendency to characterize the differences between ‘old’ (equalitarian) and ‘new’ (welfare) feminists as a conflict between equality and difference has been reductive and misleading. Both camps aimed to liberate women from the domestic sphere by ensuring opportunities and access in the sphere of work/professions, but for welfare feminists, equality was not enough because it accepted a world structured for men. The concept of self-determination is central to how new feminists like Eleanor Rathbone attempted to redefine the home and maternal labour as they championed controversial policies aimed at ensuring a degree of economic and reproductive autonomy for women. An analysis of the debates that played out in and between theWoman’s LeaderandTime and Tidein the 1920s underscores the role of the feminist press in the processes of political and strategic communication, at a time when self-declared feminists were trying to achieve a range of goals in a context of hostile reaction. The article encourages a reassessment of the ambitious goals of welfare feminism in the interwar period and suggests that these struggles (often obscured by ‘equality’ feminism) have never completely gone away. They resurface in various forms—from ‘wages for housework’ campaigns to assessing the conditions and economics of motherhood for working women—all of which underscore the impact of the welfare state on relations in the family and the home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines statistical data on the employment of women in the British armed forces. It reviews some of the issues shaping debates about women’s military employment, in order to establish the on-going significance of the topic. It looks at patterns of female military employment across the three services, and places discussion of this in the context of observations about gendered divisions of labour in the wider UK labour market. It examines data for the gendered divisions of labour within different corps, branches and occupational groups within each of the three armed services, and looks at gender patterns across ranks. It concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for both policy and conceptual work on women’s military participation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is based on workshops conducted with students at Bristol University with some of the materials from the Feminist Archive South. We explore how the sensory wonder of the archives enriched and reshaped the practice of feminist pedagogy especially with regard to the interface between ontology and epistemology. We argue that the feminist archive is an important resource which incites us to shift our focus on the process of knowledge production as stories encountered in the archive can challenge the authority and coherence of dominant feminist stories. This can produce feelings of disorientation which act as important moments through which different kinds of feminist knowledge can emerge. Our approach places feelings at the centre of encounters with knowledge because of the mutual entanglement of thinking and feeling rendered salient in the feminist archive. Finally, these processes facilitate different kinds of student–teacher collaboration, with students positioned as co-researchers working to document and interpret the feelings, knowledge and transformations that emerge from the encounter-with the feminist archive. The objects we encountered worked as knowledge companions to stimulate collaborative (un)learning and to produce unique forms of affective knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

English painter Barbara Bodichon received a dynamic home education, consisting of engaging lessons, reading sessions, family discussions, sketching excursions, and trips at home and abroad. As an adult, Bodichon led a nomadic life, living between Algeria and England and travelling across Europe and America. Seeking to unpack travelling and travel letters as sources of learning, this paper studies Bodichon’s correspondence as epistolary articulations of herBildung(self-cultivation). It argues that, conforming toBildung’s idea of forging one’s individuality in interaction with the world, her travelling provided her with a variety of settings through which she extended towards the unknown and incorporated it into her sense of being. In turn, letters functioned as forums where she made sense of encountering the difference through which she individualised her subjectivity. Notwithstanding, a revised reading ofBildungpermits teasing out to what extent Bodichon’s self-cultivation was developed at the expense of certain social categories. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports on findings from a 2013 study of UK social work students’ attitudes towards feminism and the perceived relevance of feminist theory to social work practice. Building on an earlier, single-university exploration of students’ views, the study made use of social media (Twitter) to access opinions of students from seven universities across the UK using an online survey tool. Whilst it is not possible to make generalising claims based on ‘opt in’ research of this nature, the findings are nevertheless suggestive of some important issues for those working with social work students today. Principally, they showed that understandings of feminism in the student cohort were diverse and may be very different to the feminism that an older generation of academic and fieldwork educators may have grown up with. The article argues that it is important, in the light of this, to interrogate what we mean by feminism in our work with students. This will then allow us to open up wider conversations about power, agency and structure, thus bringing greater criticality and reflexivity to our teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including feminism, education of women and higher education in Great Britain.

Constructions of femininity and attendant notions of feminism are being produced in different ways in different places around the world. This is a complicated global process that cannot be reduced to analyses that take place in nation states. This paper seeks to respond to and enhance Angela McRobbie's compelling argument about understandings of contemporary girlhood, primarily in the UK context, by drawing into the fold Aihwa Ong's powerful thinking around theories of transnationality. Rather than repeating arguments about constructions of femininity that are invariably articulated within national confines, the discussion demonstrates the transnational nature of these subjective constructions by referring to recent ethnographic research undertaken in two elite schools in England and India, and focusing particularly on in-depth interviews and focus groups conducted with some of the young women who attend these schools. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The period 1880–1930 saw women composers achieve unprecedented prominence as composers of large-scale works. This success coincided with the first wave of feminist movements in England, France and Germany. This article views the junctions where these two groups of women met through the vehicle of the feminist press, documenting the tensions and misunderstandings that occurred between emerging women composers attempting to be taken seriously as creative entities and feminists seeking to improve the political, social and professional lot of women. The pervasive aesthetic of male musical genius remained unquestioned by many feminists in spite of examples of female creative brilliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore the discursive roots of inclusivity in mixed-sex martial arts training in the UK. On the basis of data from two qualitative studies conducted in the East Midlands, I briefly account for the level of integration among several martial arts schools, before focusing on the unique meanings of martial arts that appeared to facilitate the normalization of this integration among participants. Drawing on insights from queer feminist theory, I argue that the discursive framing of martial arts in contemporary Western culture is significant in the generation and normalization of mixed-sex inclusivity in these settings. As such, I suggest that scholars interested in the potential of sex-integrated sports for challenging dominant sexual hierarchies should be attentive to the unique discursive meanings of specific sports cultures, which may be generative of possibilities for radical forms of embodiment and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the framing in four British and American newspapers of the second-wave feminist movement during its most politically active period (1968-1982). Using content and critical discourse analysis of 555 news articles, the article investigates how movement members were represented, what problems and solutions to women's oppression/inequality were posed and whose voices were used. This paper identifies: opposition to the movement, support for the movement, conflict and movement defined in terms of its goals. In addition to exploring nuances in coverage across time and space, we use a feminist perspective to make political statements about how gendered hierarchies function through media discourse, and argue that the circulation of patriarchal and capitalist ideologies worked to prevent women's equal partnership with men in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the views of seven Asian female Social Science students following a class seminar on religious issues and schooling at a university in the UK. It explores the importance of the post-class spontaneous student dialogue where participation in much teaching and learning is voluntary. The concern is with engaged pedagogy and interactive teaching methods that allow space for students to voice their views and experiences. This is especially important when dealing with 'controversial' topics such as Islamophobia - anti-Muslim racism - and 'war on terror'. Whilst the issues are provocative, some students remain silent and do not participate in the formal class setting; they hold back their comments for a less exposed moment. In this case, the post-class discussion threw up insights into the reasons for student 'silences' and possibilities for 'breaking' them. A key insight is the importance of 'safer spaces', usually after classes, in the corridors and refectories, and how to bring the discussions back into the classroom environment. Another is the political significance of 'counter-stories' told in safety for pedagogic and political theory and practice. This article refers to one such moment and explores the value of post-class student 'counter-narratives' that developed organically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the UK and in many parts of the world, official accounts of what it is to make sense of religion are framed within a rhetorics of neutrality in which such study is premised upon the possibility of dispassionate engagement and analysis. This paper, which is largely theoretical in scope, explores both the affordances and the costs of such an approach which has become 'black boxed' on account of the work that it achieves. A series of new orientations within the academy that are broadly associated with post-structuralist philosophies, feminist and post-colonial studies, together with insights into science and technology studies, question the plausibility of these claims for neutrality whilst in turn raising a series of new questions and priorities. It therefore becomes necessary to rethink and reframe what it is to make sense of religious and cultural difference after neutrality. The gathering and coordination of new planes of sense-making that are responsive to an emergent series of epistemological, ontological and ethical orientations are considered. Some of the distinctive pedagogical implications of such an approach that engages material practice, difference and uncertainty are then entertained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interdisciplinarity and feminist research have provided invaluable insights into the importance of the domestic work of women and the need for its remuneration as a first step towards achieving public policies that facilitated balance between genders. By the 20th century they found champions in formidable women in position of power that were well aware of the different contributions made by men and women to the economy and sought to assist home based women and open pathways to entitlement to equal pay. But by the 21st century there is a fear that the government has shifted the focus towards equal pay in the formal sector, without recognising the constrains on many women that prevents them from being recognised as equals in the formal market. This paper will consider the difficulties of introducing a gendered understanding to the Equality and Welfare Bills going through the British Parliament. A comparison will be made with the relative success of the Prison Reform proposals and the withdrawal of the mandatory rights of employers to dismiss workers at 65. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers Olive Banks' work on charting the history and development of British feminism, and particularly her use of collective biography as a research and analytic tool. It is argued that while this has been seen as the least 'fashionable' aspect of her work, it took forward C. Wright Mills' contention for one definition of sociology as the interaction between biography and history, and predated by a decade or so similar work on prosopography by Bourdieu from the 1990s onwards. More recently other sociologists and educationists have taken up this methodological approach, including Jane Martin and Bronwyn Davies and Susanne Gannon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we ask: How is motherhood being represented in the British media, especially in relation to choice, age and fertility? Do media discourses reflect a redefinition or transformation of ‘motherhood’ in the twenty-first century, and what implications do they have for feminist research into maternal identity and motherhood? As three Ph.D. students from The Open University, all working on different aspects of motherhood, we examine and discuss the significant debates around motherhood, fertility and choice taking place recently in the British media. In the context of increasing divergence from traditional family forms, advances in medical technology such as assisted reproductive techniques, and changing attitudes to sexual behaviour and marriage over the past few decades, motherhood and parenting remain contested sites in the public domain. The availability of contraception and of abortion has given rise to increased choice, and yet women’s fertility choices are increasingly subject to scrutiny and criticism. In particular, media debate in the UK has focused on challenges to traditional motherhood and the implication that the family is ‘in crisis’. This is particularly evident in the coverage of teenage mothers, older mothers and women who delay motherhood. Such media representations of older and younger mothers and those women who ‘leave it too late’ reveal significant insights into the social construction of motherhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I consider the critical role of auto/biographies in the writing of a Foucauldian genealogy of women teachers at the turn of the nineteenth century in Britain. In isolating points of convergence between feminist theories and the Foucauldian genealogical project, I explore the deployment of self-technologies of women teachers in a particular historical stage and geographical site, which I have identified as having a particular genealogical significance. What I suggest is that a genealogical approach to women teachers' auto/biographical writings at the turn of the century, creates new perspectives from where to theorise the different modes in which they chose to mould themselves and calls into question given discourses surrounding the persona of the woman teacher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the issue of social movement abeyance in relation to contemporary British feminism. It argues that currently British feminism is a social movement in abeyance that is not actively confronting the social system, and is largely preoccupied with maintaining itself through service providing voluntary organizations, educational and intellectual activities and incorporation into elite politics. The analysis of abeyance is also developed at the conceptual level by adding further detail to how we might theorize abeyance by contrasting it with the insurgent phase of social movement activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers two aspects of feminist orthodoxy regarding ethics and reflexivity during data analysis in qualitative research. These methodological issues surfaced in an exploratory study of how discourses of sistering socially construct and produce feminine subjectivity. Research was carried out with 37 women aged between 6 and 50 from different class and ethnic backgrounds living in the UK. Auto/biographical work in sociology influenced the design of the qualitative methods and the use of a grounded theory and case study approach to the analysis of the interview narratives. The discussion of methodological dilemmas-how to analyse multiple perspectives of relationships with varying degrees of disclosure among participants-is located within both feminist standpoint and poststructuralist theory. A case is made for guaranteeing anonymity rather than confidentiality, and offering selective reciprocity rather than an equal exchange between researcher and participants. The challenge of working with feminist reflexivity is considered through the notion of bounded privacy and a silenced 'I'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist scholarship and campaigning have been notably successful in recent years in putting the concept of the unpaid carer onto the public agenda. The caring that women do as a feature of paid work, however, has proved a more intractable topic. This paper argues that masculinist visions gender the concepts of bureaucracy and profession. dichotomizing competence and care, and masking both the reality and the potential of public carework. The paper proposes a distinction between caregiving, carework and professional care. It then develops an analysis of professional care by reference to a recent campaign by the leading nurses' organization in the UK, seeking to highlight the worth of nursing work. It notes that the carework discussion has barely any echo in the debate about the 'new managerialism' in the public sector and argues that a critical understanding of the centrality of binary gendered thought is crucial to a constructive critique of today's emphasis on bringing health care into the market-place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]