What Does it Mean to be a Feminist Teacher?

What Does it Mean to be a Feminist Teacher?

Excerpt from Redress Vol 28 No. 1, June 2019: Educators Riding the Wave of #MeToo By Body Safety Australia CEO Deanne Carson. Click here to download the pdf publication.

“What do you notice when you walk into a primary school for the first time? Is it the buildings, the facilities or whether the children are happy? This is what I see.

• How much ground space is dedicated to sports ovals and basketball courts compared to monkey bars, cubby houses and other play that encourages children of all genders to play together.

• Whether the ovals are the central focus of the playground, and children using the other spaces forced to be spectators to boys’ play.

• Whether all students are dressed in a way that allows active play eg. to run without getting tangled in their clothing, or do cartwheels and hang upside down.

• Whether children are playing together or are segregated by gender, and, if the latter, at what age gender segregation becomes obvious.

When I enter a classroom as a guest speaker, I observe whether the students sit by gender. I do a casual audit of the books, looking for female authors and protagonists. I also look for diversity in terms of culture and disability, and for evidence of embedding Indigenous perspectives into curriculum in a way that is more than tokenistic. Frankly, it can be exhausting. I’m looking at teacher differential attention, noting the confidence level by gender of students in answering questions and watching to see the level of support they receive from their peers as they respond with an opinion. And mostly I’m not even there to directly teach about gender, I’m there to teach relationships and sexuality education.

Over the last three years our organisation’s role has expanded to include capacity building for schools rolling out the Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships curriculum [1]. In the first year, one primary school told me about an issue they were having with the senior boys sexually harassing the girls on social media. The teachers understood it was a gendered issue but had no framework beyond cyber bullying policies for addressing it. Fortunately, the school has many great feminists in the classroom and in leadership positions who are committed to examining how the school was reinforcing limiting gender stereotypes and failing to address gender inequity.

From that first conversation the school has embedded a number of initiatives intended to create a gender equitable learning environment. We have been fortunate to partner with them on their most recent project. The staff had noticed that the large oval space was dominated by boys and felt that there was little room for the girls to utilise the space; either to play the team sports that the boys were engaged in, or use the flat, grassed area for other activities like gymnastics. One suggestion was for there to be a dedicated day of the week for girls to use the oval; however, this resulted in boys watching from the sidelines and instructing girls on how to play and why they weren’t playing ‘correctly’.

With the aid of a grant from YLab [2], we were able to commence a consultation and co-design process with the school’s Junior Representative Council. Consultation involved speaking with children of all genders from all year levels and finding out what they really valued in a play space. What we discovered was:

• Gender differences are apparent from as early as Year 1 with boys more interested in sport and girls more interested in sitting or lying in the grass.
• Boys feel a sense of ownership over the oval.
• Girls feel disconnected from the oval space.
• All children indicated a primary interest in trees and nature elements as well as play equipment.
• All children indicated an interest in cubbies.
• Girls wanted an increase in quiet places and water elements.
• Sport was one of the least favoured elements for both boys and girls.

As part of the process, we invited AFL Women’s Melbourne captain, Elise O’Dea, to speak with the students. This was very well received by all children and their parents. The support to encourage girls into football and to have access to women leaders and sports mentors was strong.

However, there was some pushback when it came to explaining that in order for girls to take up more space and opportunities, the boys would need to cede some space and time and be intentionally inclusive in their play. This became more apparent when we ran a consultative session with parents. To begin the process, we arranged chairs in two circles, an inner circle where women were invited to sit, and an outer circle where the men sat. This exercise was intended to demonstrate how it may feel to be a girl standing on the side of the oval wanting to be part of the play but feeling excluded. This exercise was made even more powerful by the fact that, although over 15 mums attended the session, only one dad was present.

Feedback from the session was that girls are already empowered; they live in households where mums are just as likely as dads to be professionals and the children don’t feel any gender constraints when thinking about a future career. When pushed to think about role modelling of household chores, however, the parents conceded that mums still did the bulk of domestic, parenting and emotional labour in their families. Again, this showed a theme of supporting gender equity, but only to the point where boys and men do not have to experience any loss of privilege. While this was not the feedback from all parents, it’s a common enough theme we encounter in schools across Melbourne.

As part of our work in the prevention of childhood sexual abuse, we engage parents, teachers and educators in understanding the risks of abuse and in understanding grooming. This includes giving statistics on the profile of offenders. On numerous occasions, when discussing the gendered nature of offenders (93% of Child Sexual Abuse is perpetrated by men), male participants have expressed discomfort and feelings of victimisation. Not only has this been raised in parent workshops, but has also occurred when delivering professional development for teachers and leadership teams.

It would be easy, as an educator, to say, well, at least they turned up, at least they are engaged, maybe we shouldn’t talk about the gendered nature of the crime so as to make them feel more welcome in the room. But as a feminist educator this is impossible. For gender equity to occur, we must facilitate hard conversations about the role of men in gatekeeping safety and inclusivity. While it is brilliant that girls are feeling more empowered and don’t feel constrained in their aspirations, it cannot be the sole responsibility of girls and women to push against the systems and individuals that currently ensure that women have to ‘do it all’ in order to ‘have it all’.

As part of our respectful relationships program, we ask children to learn to sit with uncomfortable feelings. This may include acceptance of being rejected romantically or sexually and not persisting in order to get a date with someone unwilling. Or it may be becoming more aware of how much ‘airtime’ they take up in the classroom and choosing to be silent to allow other, more reticent peers an opportunity to share their views.

There’s a meme doing the rounds at the moment that reads, ‘Equal rights for others does not mean less rights for you. It’s not pie.’ [sic] This is true when it comes to rights like marriage equality, but not when equality means forfeiting space, whether on an oval or a in boardroom, to make room for those who have grown up in environments where they have traditionally been relegated to the sidelines.”

References

[1] Health & Physical Education curriculum, State of Victoria, Department of Education and Training. Retrieved from http://fuse.education.vic.gov.au/Resourcepackage/ ByPin?pin=2JZX4R).

[2] Retrieved from https://ylab.global/ideally

Body Safety Australia acknowledges and pays respect to the past and present Traditional Custodians and Elders of this nation and the continuation of cultural, spiritual, and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. We acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

Body Safety Australia is a child-safe organisation. We are committed to keeping children and young people safe by empowering the whole community in prevention education. We value and empower children and young people's voices in our programs and create a safe space that supports all persons to disclose. To read our full commitment to children, click here. If you have a Child Safety concern, click here.

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