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This qualitative media study, undertaken within an interpretative research paradigm, aims to expand our knowledge of sexual violence perpetrated against learners in South African public and private schools. Due to ethical, normative and methodological barriers surrounding research on sexual violence in schools, South African English language newspapers were used as data source. The SA Media database was utilised to identify 153 relevant newspaper articles published in the period of 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2022. Themes were identified by means of qualitative content analysis. The findings shed light on the extent of sexual violence in schools, the acceptance and normalisation of teacher-on-learner sexual violence, the exploitation of learners' academic and athletic aspirations by teachers and coaches, and the imbalance of power and consequent abuse of power in a country where hegemonic masculinity prevails. Moreover, the study found teachers, coaches, caregivers, taxi drivers and fellow learners to be perpetrators of sexual violence. The study also highlights the negative effects of sexual violence on the victims' academic, mental, physical and social wellbeing. Drawing on Galtung's typology of violence, three dimensions of violence, namely personal or direct violence, indirect or structural and cultural violence were identified. This multidimensional interpretation emphasises the need to address this scourge on direct, structural and cultural levels.

In this article, we draw on data from focus group discussions to examine the ways in which some young boys in a South African township primary school construct and negotiate hegemonic masculinity through bullying, and other forms of violence, within the school. Deviating from the simplistic victim-bully binary, we draw from critical masculinity studies to show how younger boys exert power over girls through violence but are, themselves, also victims of violence which, they say, is perpetrated by girls. Boys are often identified as bullies at school, but when we gave them the opportunity to talk about what it meant to be a bully, we gained a far more complex picture of how bullying behaviour manifests between learners at school. Indeed, our participants' accounts of violence at school gave us great insights into the complexities of gender violence and highlighted the broader socio-cultural and economic conditions that produce it. We conclude that it is vital to understand the mechanisms of gender power relations among primary school learners, if primary school violence prevention interventions are to be effective.

This article focuses of 13 high school boys' experiences of getting into "trouble" in a former Coloured township high school in KwaZulu-Natal Province. This ethnographic study explored the reasons for boys being considered "troublesome" at school. Data collection included focus groups, semi-structured open-ended individual interviews and non-participant observation. Using the social constructionist perspective of masculinity as an analytical lens, the findings show that these boys' schooling experiences are fraught with anti-schooling, anti-academic and anti-authoritarian attitudes and behaviours. They construct themselves as dominant, unafraid and unwilling to conform to school rules, which brings them into conflict with authorities. While some of the group expressed determination to ameliorate their lives, others dropped out of school prematurely. Teacher attitudes are central to either perpetuating "trouble" or being sensitive to these boys' schooling woes.

Gendered norms construct teaching young children in Early Childhood Education (ECE) as a 'feminine profession' and as 'women's work'. Subsequently, men who teach young children are often scrutinised. One troubling factor confronting men entering the profession is the construction of men as potential paedophiles. Scholars in the Global North have shown how a conflation of homosexuality with paedophilia positions gay men as actual and potential paedophilic perpetrators. We present a view from the Global South which demonstrates how South African male ECE preservice teachers favour gay men as teachers of young children . Gay men were depicted as feminine and more appropriate for teaching ECE than heterosexual men. Additionally, gay men were constructed as men who did not pose a paedophilic threat in ECE. Conversely, heterosexual male power and violence were used to distance heterosexual men from ECE. These findings demonstrate the fluidity of masculinity and the paedophilic threat in ECE.

During South Africa's apartheid era, the social and political ideology of Afrikaner nationalism Othered those who disrupted an idealised vision of white heteronormative Afrikaner masculinity. While protections from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation were enshrined in the post-apartheid constitution in 1996, anti-LGBTQ violence remains a reality. It is common for young LGBTQ individuals to exercise the personal freedoms associated with leaving home to attend university to express their sexual orientations and/or gender identities more readily. This paper applies interpretive phenomenology to interview data with members of the LGBTQ student community at a rural university town in an overwhelmingly white Afrikaans region. It explores the complex and ill-defined relationships between LGBTQ student experiences, local heteronormative values, and shifting institutional identities in an era of social transformation.

The university period provides a critical developmental transition from adolescence to adulthood. During this period, young people establish patterns of behaviors and make lifestyle choices that affect their current and future health. Using the social constructionist paradigm that examines the development of masculinities as a mutual construct of individual, social, cultural, and historical context, this article explores the interactions between masculinities and sexual behaviors of young men at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The study used a qualitative approach and employed purposive sampling to recruit 36 young Black male students aged between 18 and 30 years. Four focus group discussions consisting of 8 to 10 participants were conducted according to the current year of study of male students. Data were transcribed, coded, and analyzed thematically. Our results show that the freedom and independence acquired from being away from home enabled students to enact their masculinities freely. Our findings further reveal that an individual has multiple masculinities which are often exerted to suit the present discourse they are in at any given point.

Purpose: Due to the limited research on fatherhood and dyspraxia, this study is critical as it highlights the challenges that fathers face in parenting a child that presents with dyspraxia. The purpose of this study is to inform various interventions while simultaneously highlighting a largely neglected area of research. Design/methodology/approach: The principal aim of this study was to explore the subjective challenges that fathers experience in parenting a child that presents with dyspraxia in the Cape Metropole area. This study adopted a qualitative approach utilising an exploratory design to understand and provide in-depth information about fathers' subjective experiences of parenting a child that presents with dyspraxia (Mack et al., 2005). Data were collected using semi-structured individual interviews with fathers. Findings: The authors' findings highlight that fathers' roles are inextricably more complex, shifting between more traditional conceptions such as the provider toward the all giving and nurturing care. Future research would benefit from adopting a more masculinity-focused framework to determine the effect that learning disorders have on constructing and challenging more traditional gendered constructions of what it means to be a man, masculinity and what it means to be a father, fatherhood and fathering. Research limitations/implications: The study was limited to the challenges faced by fathers whose children were engaged in some or other treatment plan. In addition, the study was limited to children who presented with dyspraxia, rather than those who had received an official diagnosis and this relates directly to the obscurity and ambiguity surrounding diagnosis of the disorder itself. Practical implications: The study has shed light in terms of the common features between dyspraxia and that of other developmental disorders. This is further extended to include the comorbidity of this disorder with other learning disabilities. Social implications: Mental health professionals may benefit from identifying the issues raised by fathers within this study and to further aid and support both children and parents in the treatment of dyspraxia. Originality/value : The study has shed much needed light on two very neglected areas -- the area of learning disabilities, in particular, the issue of dyspraxia and second, including fathers' voices in the discussion of their experiences.

This study explores Grade 4 school children's experiences of cross-sex relationships in a co-educational farm school in uMgungundlovu district in South Africa. The aim is to understand if and how constructions of gender bear on young children's social relations at the school. Informed by children's geographies and new sociology of childhood studies, this study uses data from semi-structured interviews and photo-voice imagery based on a qualitative narrative study of three girls and three boys aged between 9 and 12 years. The study found that children's experiences of cross-sex relationships were deeply entrenched in traditional discourses of masculinities and femininities. These rigidly constructed discourses of gender were found to constrain possibilities and fluidities with which children navigated places and spaces of cross-sex relationships in the school. The hegemonic regulatory power of gender norms was a yardstick, informing children's organisation and performances of cross-sex relationships even if some children had developed creative ways of subverting dominant gender norms in how they navigated in cross-sex relationships. The study argues for the liberalisation of gender norms, in order to allow children to freely -- without being constrained by their genitalia -- take subject positions of gender in cross-sex relationships. This would promote sustainable equitable gender relations, as children learn how to engage in cross-sex relationships, beyond the constraining prescripts of dominant masculinities and femininities.

This study draws on focus group discussions to explore how 12- to 14-year-old boys in a low economic township primary school in South Africa construct their hegemonic identity as "real boys" in the school playground during break. Addressing masculinity and boys' investment in power is now a major research development in the country, especially in light of boys' and men's culpability in sexual and gender violence. What is often missing, however, is attention to younger boys and the construction of gender and sexuality in the primary school. Analysis of the data reveals that heterosexual masculine power is a major element in the construction of being a "real boy." "Real boys" express their power-based heterosexual identity in ways that objectify girls, while, at the same time, promoting a culture of gender violence through heterosexual competition and the policing of girls' sexual agency. The major finding in our article is that the school playground is an important site for hegemonic and heterosexual identities, where a "real boy" is displayed and given dominance during break time. Implications for addressing heterosexual masculinity among younger boys is vital.

The teaching of young children (aged between 5 and 9) or Foundation Phase (FP) as it is known in South Africa, is highly gendered and is labeled a 'woman's' job. Globally there have been calls to lessen the gender disparity within the profession by increasing the participation of men. However, apprehensions about men teaching young children can counteract such efforts. In this paper we highlight the concerns emanating from a group of male and female South African primary school teachers about men teaching young children. We focus on a dominant discourse employed by the teachers that invokes essentialist notions of men as violent sexual predators, and simultaneously reinforces notions of children as vulnerable and in need of protection from men. These notions of men conjured up feelings of apprehension amongst the teachers about men as FP teachers. South Africa's high levels of male sexual violence had especially compelled them to exercise caution when ratifying men as FP teachers. Based on these findings we argue that in order to increase men's participation as FP teachers, there is need to address the essentialist and homogenising versions of masculinity whilst promoting alternative versions of men and masculinity by shifting away from the reproduction of men as sexual predators.

In South Africa there are few male teachers in the Foundation Phase (FP) of schooling, where children are aged between five and nine. FP teaching is traditionally considered to be a 'woman's job' and essentialist gender discourses play a central role in impeding men's participation in the profession. These discourses are based on polarised differences between men and women that reinforce notions of care work as women's work. Challenging gender binaries is vital if work options for both men and women are to be improved. Drawing on fieldwork with a group of South African primary school teachers, we demonstrate how feminised facets of FP teaching are contested by addressing flexible notions of gender which associate men with caring and gender equitable versions of masculinity. This recognition of men is especially important within a violent South African landscape in order to improve social relations amongst men, women and children.

In this paper, we contribute to the understandings of young masculinities by turning attention to the South African schooling primary school context. In the context of scarcity of interventions around violence in the primary school, we focus on how young boys construct, negotiate and experience violence. Notwithstanding dominant discourses around childhood innocence we argue that young boys are active participants in violent gendered cultures at school. We show how boys' bodies are key sites for the enactment of violence and is especially a valuable resource in the context of food insecurity. The paper also shows the fluidity of masculinity as boys who are regarded as 'victims' can also defend and resuscitate masculinity that endorses violence. Implications for addressing young masculinities in the primary school within local context are considered in the conclusion of the paper.

The paper seeks to demonstrate how societal constructions and gender policing inform male teachers' identities in the schooling context of Foundation phase teaching in South Africa. This is a phase that has been historically dominated by women and is often regarded as a 'women only' space. The study was conducted using a case study methodology and a total of nine men from rural schools in the province of Mpumalanga participated. The data was generated using two sessions of semi-structured interview-conversations with the participants. This work was informed by Connell's theory of masculinities. The findings suggest that men are offered positions on the basis of their sex. Male teacher's age, dress and sexuality are policed, questioned and regulated. Such policing results from a paedophilic suspicion and carries homophobic undertones. The findings make a scholarly contribution, while also calling for deeper reflections and conversation on South African teacher recruitment strategies.

In many emerging economies worldwide, and in South Africa in particular, sizeable investments have been made in education with the hope of increasing literacy rates and hence producing a workforce that will fit into the job market. Thus it is important to understand the context and literacy materials within South African classrooms and their impact. This article looks at the novel "Broken Promises" by Roz Haden, which is read in many South African classrooms. From a post-structural feminist theory and functional language theory, we analyse how the portrayal of characters and storyline can have an impact on young readers' identity construction in relation to the novel's predominant discourses. The findings show that men are still portrayed as dominant in their own right within society whereas women are defined in relation to men. Unchallenged, this portrayal can continue to perpetuate gendered stereotypes, which would affect young people's functionality in society. We therefore argue that while novels are good for improving literacy among young people, the messages they contain should be deconstructed and challenged so that young people can make informed decisions regarding their gender identities.

The teaching of young children or Foundation Phase (FP) teaching as it is known in South Africa continues to be regarded as 'women's work'. Lately South African research has focused on encouraging men's participation as FP teachers. In this paper, we offer a critical examination of how South African primary school teachers 'embrace' the need for men in FP by drawing on discursive strategies that view men as vital male role models for young girls. This contrasts more common role modelling discourses which call for male teachers to act as role models for boys. One argument put forth was that male FP teachers could help shape acceptable ways of 'doing girl'. Secondly, a 'daddy's girl' discourse was used to construct male teachers as favourable role models for girls. Lastly, male teachers were considered as role models in order to expose girls to alternate, non-violent and caring masculinities.

Sex education within the formal bounds of school curricula or clinic consultation is traditionally conceived as age-appropriate and accurate information, delivered by a sanctioned adult such as a nurse or teacher. This article explores another kind of curriculum -- taught and learned among young men themselves in the "kasi" (township) in which they live. Findings are based on primary data gathered during interviews and research workshops with boys and young men (aged 14-22), including focus group discussions and participatory research exercises. In exploring young men's sexual ideas, practices, hopes and fears, it focuses on three themes: (i) consent and coercion; (ii) pleasure and risk; and (iii) advice and authority. We examine diverse perspectives on these themes, and trace the tensions and ambiguities that surface within young men's accounts. We focus in particular on contradictions between what is learned about sex through formal curricula, and what is learned through peers and older men, including within "ulwaluko" (a rite of passage of traditional initiation and circumcision for Xhosa men).

Hazing, associated with initiation, aims at taking newcomers from novice status to a status of functional and acknowledged members of a new group. However, the process is often dangerous, injurious, and usually secretive. Hazing may occur as an unauthorised component of institutionally sanctioned orientation programmes commonly held for new students at educational institutions at the beginning of the academic year. This study focuses on the occurrence of hazing elements in orientation programmes (OP) for Grade 8 boys primarily run by Grade 12 learners in boys-only secondary schools in South Africa. A cross-sectional survey was conducted by administering a researcher-designed questionnaire to a non-probabilistic sample of 296 Grade 12 learners enrolled at three boys-only secondary schools in Johannesburg. The computer assisted analysis strategy included frequency distributions, exploratory factor analysis, and analysis of variance. Findings indicated that respondents generally agreed with regard to the structure, aims, and behaviours common to orientation programmes. Respondents strongly disagreed about the occurrence of physical and sexual abuse and activities aimed at discomfort in the OP; however, respondents showed ambivalence about the occurrence of certain activities, which may deteriorate into hazing. Prior experience of an orientation programme when in Grade 8; length of enrollment in the school, and boarder status affected respondents' perceptions of certain aspects of orientation programmes.

A feminist post-structuralist perspective offers an alternative paradigm for the study of gender bias in History texts. It focuses on multiple perspectives and open interpretation, opens up space for female voices of the past and present, and deconstructs realist historical narrative. Our aim in this article is to discuss feminist post-structuralism as an innovative approach to History as a school subject, and to demonstrate its implications for the analysis of school History texts. We seek to identify and expose biases that marginalise women in school History texts and contribute to correcting these. Additionally, we seek to develop new knowledge for understanding gender differences. An example of the empirical application of the feminist post-structuralist perspective is provided. The exemplar text analysed supports masculine historical narrative, using a neutral and naturalising style, and renders women and the feminine meaning invisible. It is suggested that non-traditional forms of writing will help to dislodge the inherent hegemony in History texts and challenge the masculine status quo in school History texts.

This article engages the dilemmas and challenges of writing histories of the recent past, and of the political agendas of intervening in those histories in the present. This is done through producing an archive of documentation and oral histories of the Gender Education Training Network, GETNET. GETNET was a feminist political education organisation formed in South Africa in the 1990s that is best known for creating spaces of thinking and learning to strengthen action and intervention at numerous levels from 1992 to 2014. This article portrays the history and pedagogy as well as groundbreaking work of GETNET--the first gender training organisation in South Africa that attempted to make real the gains made on paper by challenging gender dynamics and institutionalised sexism in post-apartheid South Africa. It draws on the literature of activist archiving and feminist methodologies of intergenerational dialogue, aiming to (a) share some of the most radical and relevant work done in the decade after 1994 by anti-apartheid feminist activists developing what they called indigenous and regional perspectives, materials, and methodologies to expose and shift gender dynamics, and (b) to spark ideas and conversations about ways of producing activist archives that are accountable to both movements and to the future.

This article focuses on how male and female primary school teachers' account of the suitability of male teachers in early years or Foundation Phase (FP) of schooling. We draw from an in-depth qualitative interview-based study to examine how ideals around hegemonic masculinity have effects for the characterization of FP within traditional feminine qualities such as nurturing and caring for children. These qualities contrasted with hegemonic masculinity and fuelled the disassociation between men and teaching young children. We found that whilst men had the responsibility to provide financially for children, their involvement in childcare duties was linked to low-status work gendering the construction of carework as women's work. The shame and embarrassment associated with teaching young children were an important mechanism to police and regulate hegemonic masculinity. Analysing how male and female primary school teachers construct hegemonic forms of masculinity provides insights into the reproduction of FP as a feminised profession as well as the construction and maintenance of counter feminist masculine ideals. Addressing forms of masculinity that are premised on male domination is vital in South Africa, especially as the need to alter masculinities and deepen gender equality has barely touched this phase of schooling.

In trying to understand some of the gendered discourses that shape the management of schools as organisations in South Africa, I analyse woman principals' experiences as they try to navigate a balance between their home and work responsibilities. After their appointment as principals, some South African women face difficulties in striking the balance between work and family. Available literature suggests that balancing private and public life for working women with families can be taxing, especially for married women. Reasons for this include the cultural expectation, which suggests that women, regardless of whether they are in employment or not, or whether they employ a domestic helper or not, should still perform family chores in the home. The traditional stereotypes also associate school principalship with masculinity, a view that hampers women's career progression in education management. I identify some of the gendered social practices that disadvantage women and suggest that these need to be challenged in order to achieve gender equity in education management. I further suggest an urgent need for research informed by feminist theories and examine gender inequity issues in schools in South Africa within the current political, social, and cultural frameworks.

In this article we argue that eliminating the divisions of labour between men and women could work towards counteracting gender inequality within professions. Globally women are over-represented in the teaching of young children in the early years of primary school, or Foundation Phase (FP), as it is known in South Africa. We are concerned to go beyond essentialist understandings of gender by exploring how male and female primary school teachers at five selected schools in South Africa are sometimes complicit in reproducing men as managers. Men tend to be positioned within dominant notions of masculinity which serve to reproduce masculine power in the realm of school management whilst FP teaching is characterised as "women's work". Teachers of both genders are complicit in safeguarding the FP as a nurturing female domain, whilst reproducing gendered binaries and unequal relations of power. We argue that there is a need to create alternate masculinities that leave behind rigid notions of appropriate gender performances and address current social challenges such as violence, health and gender transformation in South Africa.

This paper is based on an ethnographic study conducted between 2012 and 2014 with a group of 64 boys and girls aged 6-10, all attending the same township primary school in South Africa. The paper explores how the young children construct gender "boundaries" and "police" gender "transgressions" on the school playground during break-time. The findings illustrate the ways in which these young boys and girls learn to "do" gender through practices of inclusion, exclusion and "policing" during play. The findings challenge dominant teacher constructions of the playground as a "free space" and demonstrate how the playground operates as a site of learning gender through forms of "policing" that involve boys bullying girls and boys who do not conform to gender norms. The findings raise implications for the development of curriculum material and teaching practices that would assist primary schoolteachers to reflect more deeply on young learners' personal experiences and perspectives around gender and play.

Drawing upon a post-structural ethnography of boys' constructions of gendered and sexual identities in one South African high school, this paper empirically seeks to theorise how 20 Grade 8 boys, identified as The Jokers, The Achievers, The Outcasts and The Average Ou's, simultaneously seek out spaces in male peer culture to cultivate, police and challenge hegemonic notions of masculinity. The paper illustrates the construction and positioning of masculinities across spaces of conflict, more particularly, the personal and social resources reproduced by boys in the pursuit of "desirable" masculinities across experiences of interpersonal conflict, punishment, friendship and play. Given the nature of these identity struggles in school boy peer culture, this paper highlights the need for fostering and maintaining peer conversational spaces where boys and girls are challenged to actively deconstruct prevailing gendered identities and work towards more expansive definitions of self.

Drawing on a qualitative interview-based study, this article foregrounds the perspectives of a group of male pre-service teachers at a South African university for choosing "not" to specialise in the teaching of young children. Male pre-service teachers in this study associate with teaching older learners in the senior phases, constructing it as more appropriate for men, with greater intellectual capacity and a higher status profession in contrast to the feminised caring roles associated with teaching young children in the Foundation Phase (FP). They disassociate with the FP of teaching, engage in oppositional and gendered discourses, claim power and construct a version of masculinity that has inequitable gendered effects. Understanding why men choose not to pursue the FP of teaching is a key issue of masculinities and power. Drawing attention to such issues becomes necessary in order to counteract positioning males and females into gender-specific roles within professions and in the context of this study, to attract more males into the largely feminised FP of teaching.

Twenty years after Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa, deeply entrenched inequalities and injustices are still at the core of the country's social fabric. South Africa's public and private sectors continue to battle with the situation and higher education institutions are no exception. The South African Ministry of Education has identified systemic problems within the institutional cultures of universities as one of the key obstacles to change. This article focuses on a racist incident that occurred at the University of the Free State (UFS) in South Africa in 2007. The incident shook the university's institutional culture to the core and became a catalyst for change for universities across the country. We portray the institutional culture of the UFS on the basis of a series of interviews with management and student leaders who personally played key roles in handling the incident in 2008. The interviews reveal some of the "story stock" within the institutional culture and highlight four interrelated dimensions of contestation. The stories also show that the interviewees frequently situate and justify their beliefs and actions in an intergenerational chain. Finally we consider some of the implications of our findings for the ongoing reconstruction of post-apartheid institutional cultures in higher education.

This paper explores how teachers in a poor township primary school in South Africa construct meaning regarding gender violence among children, and how they talk about addressing that violence. The paper argues that major influences on the endemic violence include complex societal structures that are inscribed with cultures of violent masculinities, extreme socio-economic conditions and gender inequality. It shows how primary school teachers recognise violent masculinities and gender power imbalances but simultaneously uphold the notion of children's innocence as a rationale for refuting the primary school as a site of violence. The paper explores contradictions embedded in some of the solutions which the teachers suggest as a way of addressing violence. For example, while they highlight the importance of teaching peace, respect and equality, they also advocate the use of corporal punishment as an effective means of dealing with violent conduct among school children.

This paper draws on intentionality systems theory to begin a discussion about the relationship between the act of violence and thinking. The context against which the paper is developed is the widespread incidence of violence amongst young male South Africans. With the objective of beginning a discussion about an education which responds to this violence, this paper looks at the experience of a young South African man in Cape Town who is convicted for murder. It uses this young man's experience to understand how individuals manage their subjectivities and come to take conscious control of their own lives. It looks at where thinking is taking place and what it consists of in contexts where violence is immanent.

In this article I explore two questions -- how does, Thatho, a transgendered life orientation teacher enact, resist and reproduce dominant understandings of gender and sexuality in terms of his own identity and practice; and what specific possibilities, challenges and resistances exist for a transgender educator in the rural. Using life-history research, I show that Thatho challenges essentialist assumptions of gender and identity as he enacts multiple masculinities. My article troubles the common typification of men solely as hegemonic, marginalised or subordinate when indeed the actual accounts of their lives are far more fluid than these rigid distinctions. Thatho's enactment of multiple masculinities talks to the "durability or survivability of non-hegemonic patterns of masculinity" outlined by Connell and Messershmidt [2005. "Hegemonic Masculinity Rethinking the Concept." "Gender & Society" 19 (6): 829-859. doi:10.1177/0891243205278639], which in many ways characterises a well-crafted response to his own marginalisation and stigmatised sexuality. Yet, Thatho's narrative also suggests a significant flexibility in the gender order in Qwaqwa, which looks different from the sometimes inflexibility of rural society and in some research from the developed world and, perhaps, from some urban contexts in contemporary South Africa.

The use of sexual violence as a means of power and control within the South African prison system has been well documented. Sexual violence is intimately linked to the gendering of roles, such that rape and coercive sex is used as a brutal means of imposing a feminised identity; a violent enactment of who penetrates and who gets penetrated. Within this context, this article aims to examine both the performative and performed notions of gender and sexuality in relation to a prison theatre project located in a medium-security male prison in South Africa. I situate myself as a white feminist working within a black, all-male context, and examine moments from our theatre-making when men assumed feminised or female roles, and gender was actively and deliberately played with in an uncensored, open way. This article aims to analyse the relationship between the deliberate performance choices within the theatrical frame and the performative notions of gender and sexuality that are played out external to the theatrical moment. I question when and how prescribed gender scripts that dictate an aggressive and often violent masculinity might simultaneously be enacted and violated through theatrical performance. Drawing on my own reflections and interviews with participants, the article highlights how participants make sense of the gender choices made, and how these choices relate to wider questions of identity which need to be navigated. The issue of how such gender play might translate to a lived experience beyond the theatre space and outside of prison remains unknown, and further research is needed to understand the dynamics of the identities explored within the theatre event and how they are transferred to the world outside of it.

Using a social ecological approach (Bronfenbrenner) to violence and including Hobsbawm's historical analysis of the collective uses of violence, this article shows how gender-based violence is experienced and used. Drawing on three distinct studies in Ghana, Kenya and South Africa, it shows the commonalities and divergence of young people's experiences of violence. It links the microsystems of school, community, street and family with the larger macrosystems of poverty, government policies, power relations and structural violence. This approach highlights the relationship between the forms of gender-based violence, youth experience, and the marginalized and deprived habitats in which our research was conducted. Violence experienced by young women is shown to be linked to the ways in which young men use violence as vehicles of revenge and retribution, a desire for respect, expression of love of a mother, control over female sexuality and, ultimately, assertion of collective notions of masculinity on the street and in sprawling urban settlements. We conclude by attempting to identify what is needed to challenge the violence inflicted by poverty on young people, especially young women, the denial of their rights, and the violence they inflict on themselves and others. (Contains 7 notes.)

A framework for quantitative measurement development, validation, and revision that incorporates both qualitative and quantitative methods is introduced. It extends and adapts Adcock and Collier's work, and thus, facilitates understanding of quantitative measurement development, validation, and revision as an integrated and cyclical set of procedures best achieved through mixed methods research. It also offers a systematic guide concerning how these procedures may be undertaken through detailing key "stages," "levels," and practical "tasks." A case study illustrates how qualitative and quantitative methods may be mixed through the use of the proposed framework in the cross-cultural content- and construct-related validation and subsequent revision of a quantitative measure. The contribution of this article to mixed methods research literature is briefly discussed. (Contains 5 extracts, 3 tables, and 4 figures.)

Boys are commonly associated with disruptive behaviour and physical fighting at school. Explanations for this behaviour range from naturalistic "boys will be boys" approaches to analyses which focus on the social construction of masculinity and emphasise the gendered nature of boys' behaviour. Whichever view holds sway, it is often assumed that conflict and disagreement lead, in automatic, linear and unproblematic ways, to instances of physical violence. In fact, the situation is more complicated and less predictable. Provocations (taunts, insults and jostling) may escalate conflict and give rise to fights but this will depend on the form, the social and physical setting, the school's gender regime and, critically, the investment of individual boys in particular constructions of masculinity. In this article, we explore how boys in a coeducational secondary school in Durban, South Africa, verbally provoke one another and how these provocations on some, but not all, occasions result in physical violence. (Contains 6 notes.)

In the midst of a generalised HIV and AIDS epidemic in southern Africa, the argument for more coordinated and comprehensive youth sexual health interventions is intensifying. Yet the crucial question of "how best" to provide young people with these skills and knowledge remains a key challenge for policy-makers, researchers and practitioners in our region. Moreover, amongst the available literature on sex education in southern Africa, few authors have taken an applied perspective, to look at fresh approaches and tools with the potential to be implemented more broadly. This paper argues for a greater focus on concepts of masculinity and sexuality in the development of sexual health efforts in southern Africa. It aims to bridge theory and practice by advancing six promising approaches with the potential to create a suitable space and environment for participants to engage with these issues. Approaches include methods and tools currently being implemented in existing programmes, as well as ideas emerging from recent literature. Our paper is ultimately a call for further "out-of-the-box" thinking to find more effective and creative practical ways of providing the sexual health education our region's youth urgently needs. It is also a call for more applied research, to better inform future sex education programmes in southern Africa. (Contains 1 table.)

This study investigated homicide-suicide in Durban, South Africa, for the years 2000 to 2001. The incidence was 0.89 per 100,000, higher than the international average. A majority of perpetrators (91%) and victims (87%) were Black African, proportional to their representation in the population. Perpetrators were typically men (in 95% of cases), older than, and intimate partners (in 75% of cases) of the female victims (in 100% of cases). Average ages of perpetrators and victims were 32 and 27, respectively. The security sector was overrepresented as an employment category for perpetrators. A firearm was used in 87% of the homicides and 80% of the suicides. The individuals involved in homicide-suicides in Durban are similar to homicide-suicide perpetrators and victims in industrialized countries. The fact that homicide-suicides in South Africa, as in most countries, involve almost exclusively men killing female intimates confirms the importance of examining and challenging social norms enabling male violence against women. (Contains 2 tables, 1 figure and 1 note.)

This paper focuses on the ways in which a selected group of early childhood teachers in grades one and two, located in a predominantly white middle-class context in Durban, South Africa ascribe meaning to young boys they teach. The study finds that early childhood teachers are bearers of masculinity and incorporate taken-for-granted assumptions of boys' behaviour into their understandings of gender, leading to boys' visibility not only in terms of unequal power relations but also in negatively inscribing boys as disruptive. Further the paper provides evidence which shows how race and class have forged particular conceptions of male hegemony which lead to the teachers' investment in a "rugger bugger" masculinity. It is argued that early childhood teachers' investments in hegemonic masculinity are restrictive and work against equality for both boys and girls in early childhood. In this regard the paper signifies the need to address masculinities in the early years of South African primary schooling.

Drawing on a study that explores university students' experiences of doing laboratory work in physics, this article outlines a proposed conceptual framework for extending the exploration of the gendered experience of learning. In this framework situated cognition and post-structural gender theory are merged together. By drawing on data that aim at exploring the gendered experience of learning in physics in the laboratory setting, a case is made for the proposed conceptual framework to facilitate an analysis of gender as an active process that relates the dynamics of this process to the emerging physicist identities of the students. In other words, this framework allows for an analysis of the gendered learning experiences in a context such as physics education that goes well beyond the usual "women-friendly" teaching approaches. (Contains 7 notes.)

In South Africa, the centrality of gender-based violence in the spread of HIV/AIDS has led to many educational efforts to address it. The particular social values that male teachers hold around gender-based violence have been less examined. By focusing on African male teachers' understandings of gender-based violence, this paper highlights the complex and contested processes through which meaning of violence is made. We argue that without addressing the specific teacher realities the interrogation of unequal gender relations might be inhibited in South African schools. (Contains 3 notes.)

The author explains how the film "Get Real" enabled him to explore, with a group of South African student teachers, the complex ways in which queer adolescents negotiate their daily lives, the struggles they have with "coming out" to their friends and families, the problems with representation, and the connections between hegemonic masculinity, heterosexism, and homophobia.

Current debates about the role of sports in boys' education are part of a larger discussion of men, boys and masculinities. In this paper I reflect on this debate and the research it has led to. I highlight questions of embodiment, of relations between different forms of masculinity, and questions of reproduction and change, in all of which the schools' physical education curriculum is important. I suggest how we might use the new knowledge about gender construction to understand issues about practice-oriented subjects and undertake curriculum reform.

This paper explores the salience of sport in the lives of eight-year-old and nine-year-old South African primary school boys. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, I argue that young boys' developing relationship with sport is inscribed within particular gendered, raced and classed discourses in South Africa. Throughout the paper I show differences and durability of meanings across the social sites that affect and position blacks, white, boys and girls. It is argued that young boys' early association with sport is centrally about identity and doing sport, or at least establishing interest in sport is one important way in claiming to be a real boy. The findings have implications for the call by the South African Government to get the nation to play. (Contains 7 notes.)

This paper examines the extent to which masculinity played a role in the incorporation of an education college into a university in South Africa. I adopt the theoretical stance that masculinity is not a biological phenomenon that is peculiar to males but the socially constructed behaviour of masculine subjects that is contextually driven, and that the masculinity of institutions, and not only the masculinity of individuals, plays a role in shaping the outcomes of a change process. I go on to show: first that the discourse of power and control underpinned much of the behaviour of senior managers; second, the discourse of territoriality shows that the battle for asserting rights over space is linked to the masculine assertion of power. Finally I argue that masculinities survive and gain predominance, at the expense of other potentially beneficial social practices. (Contains 19 notes.)

This paper takes up the concern that sexual health programs targeting adolescents may actually increase HIV risk among youth by reinforcing dominant versions of masculinity that portray males as sexually irresponsible and unconcerned about their health. If a key aim in HIV prevention education is a renegotiation of high-risk behavioral norms, an important consideration is the ways young people resist stereotypical gender norms that can lead to risky sexual practices. From this perspective, opening up spaces for the expression of counter-hegemonic masculinities may be an important health prevention strategy. In a study conducted in three urban Toronto high schools, we explore the ways students in mixed-sex groups supported or challenged dominant discourses of masculinity expressed through three themes: notions of male sexuality as unrestrained and unrestrainable; narrow definitions of sex; and concepts of "risk" and resistance to condom use. We argue that designing HIV prevention programs that "begin" with the exploration of alternative masculinities may be one way to fashion a framework for gender relations that can offer youth more effective prevention strategies. (Contains 3 notes.)

Very few large-scale research projects involving lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth have taken place in South Africa. However, there have been several important small-scale studies. One of the major obstacles that researchers of LGB youth encounter in South Africa is the lack of access to these adolescents. There are no national networks for social justice educators committed to challenging homophobia and heterosexism in schools. Further, there are no educational policies requiring that schools become "safe places" for LGB youth or that teacher education or the school curriculum addresses issues relating to sexual diversity. The author suggests that researchers seeking access to youth in communities headed by men and women suspicious of "the gay and lesbian cause" must find ways to articulate why such research is valid and necessary. In addition to adopting a culturally sensitive approach when conducting research, future research should focus less on the homophobia and wounding experienced by LGB youth, and more on the ways in which those who self-identify as LGB actively negate the effects of homophobia and heterosexism, overcome their problems, and have fun. South African researchers also need to investigate how schools can become safer and just for youth who embrace a diversity of masculinities and feminities. Using the case study approach, teacher educators could work with particular schools and teachers. They could introduce the teachers to anti-oppressive teaching strategies which they could then use in their own classrooms over a period of time. Researchers could then evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies, resulting in recommendations which could inform discussions about school policies, practices, and curriculum which protect and affirm the rights of LGB youth of all races or cultures. Such research--which is not currently the focus of mainstream education debates--would require the support and commitment of the whole school involved in the case study, as well as the relevant education department. (Contains 1 note.)

This article presents elements of an ethnographic study of gendered identities among boys and girls in the early years of primary schooling. Foregrounding group work in mathematics as a key arena for the production of young masculine identities, this article goes some way to addressing what is absent from sociological portrayals of young children, gender and mathematics education. Drawing on data derived from a top set mathematics group comprising five boys and one girl in a Grade 2 classroom, the article examines the ways in which a group's social dynamics interacted to define and regulate hegemonic masculinity. Boys in this study associate with mathematics, engage in oppositional and gendered discourses, claim power over girls and construct a version of masculinity which correlates with prestige and these have inequitable effects. I conclude by arguing that a focus on the early years using theoretical spaces offered by masculinity studies is really useful in understanding young boys' and girls' developing relationship with mathematics.

Pregnancy capacity, and gestational desire are shared by people of different genders and sexes. Yet, gestational embodiment and subjectivity are feminized in the normative cisheteropatriarchal pregnancy imaginary where cisgender non-intersex women are constructed as essentialized pregnant subjects. An important part of this normative pregnancy imaginary is the preclusion of men's desires to be pregnant, and the medico-socio-cultural construction and enforcement of men as non-gestational and non-uterine subjects. This construction of masculinity and manhood is reflected in much pregnancy-related research conducted among cisgender men, but is subverted by research on trans men's and masculine people's pregnancy and birth experiences, and by some depictions of cis men's pregnancies in some novels, fanfiction and films. Set against this backdrop, in this article we report on the results of a qualitative study conducted in South Africa in which six cisgender men with diverse identities and geo-locations were asked about their desires to be pregnant. Using a narrative-discursive approach, we analyse micro-narratives constructed by participants in which they speak about their desires to be pregnant and/or gestational parents. We argue that their micro-narratives both challenge and reproduce normative discourses on masculinities and sex/gender more broadly, pregnancy, reproduction and parenthood, and their presumed entanglement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Richard Jefferies's After London (1885), often praised as a pioneering work of speculative fiction, has not been sufficiently understood within the context of late-Victorian imperial expansion. While After London is frequently read in tandem with Jefferies's nature essays and speculative fiction like H. G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895), I locate the novel within the generic conventions of lost world fiction, a subgenre of the imperial romance associated with masculine adventure tales. Analysing After London's parallels with, and potential influences on, H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines (1885), published later that same year, I argue that Jefferies's unflattering portrayal of English 'Bushmen', coupled with the geography of Wild England, gesture emphatically to South Africa. In turn, the motif of a 'relapse into barbarism' serves to rationalise the fantasies of terra nullius ['nobody's land'] and extractive treasure hunting that Felix Aquila, the quixotic hero, enacts. By connecting After London to Haggard's highly influential fiction and drawing on Jefferies's writings about British colonialism in South Africa and the conventions of travel literature, cartography, and ethnography, this paper provides a more complete understanding of Jefferies's contributions to the canon of lost world fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we aim to explore public reactions to non-normative expressions of masculinity within South African society. We argue that although society has become more accepting of such expressions, there still exists public criticism and heteronormative labelling of sexuality and gender. The case study of a local entertainment celebrity, Sivuyile Ngesi, is used to interrogate the illusion of the "real man" and the construction of heteronormative masculinities in the South African context. Ngesi's personal portrayal of his masculine identity is unconventional and provides an example of an atypical expression of a Black African heterosexual identity. In the paper we draw on a range of local media sources, as well as an in-depth interview with Ngesi himself, to discuss an idiosyncratic vision of an alternative Black African masculine identity and the realities and implications around it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescents and men are two populations that perform poorly within the HIV cascade of care, having worse AIDS-related health outcomes, and experiencing higher levels of HIV-related stigma. This paper explores institutional health system discrimination as experienced by adolescent boys with perinatally-acquired HIV, situating them within the social and gendered contexts of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Life history narratives (n = 36) and in-depth semi-structured interviews (n = 32) with adolescent boys living with HIV aged 13–22 were conducted in 2017-2018. In-depth semi-structured interviews with biomedical and traditional health practitioners (n = 14), analysis of health facility files (n = 41) and clinic observations were also conducted. Together, triangulated sources point to an incongruence between the complex needs of adoelscent boys and young men living with HIV and their experiences within the health system. Two institutional discrimination-related deterrents to retention in care were identified: (1) lack of confidentiality due to health facility layouts and practices that visibilised people living with HIV; and (2) mistreatment in the form of shouting. This article contributes to the limited literature on the experiences of young men within the HIV continuum of care, focusing on how stigma influences how young men experience and engage with the health sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]