Recent evidence suggests that there have been significant increases in the number of problems reported by students who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual. This paper seeks to describe, by means of autobiographical account, the educational implications of being identified as 'queer' within schools. It draws on experiential stories to illustrate the injurious effects of homophobic speech acts and attempts to show how reconstructed narratives of the self can be used in educational research. The stories told in this article speak about the impact of heteronormative practices in education and how a sense of self can become constituted through the authorising, performative utterances of wounding words.
This paper draws on concepts of 'female masculinity' to interrogate how hegemonic gendering discourses, forms, and performances are inscribed in neoliberal narratives of competency in higher education in the Western Hemisphere. Design Drawing on individual examples, we consider how these narratives are omnipresent in the sector, and systematically act to exclude those who do not conform. In doing so, we draw extensively on bodies of literature exploring gender/ identity, and neo-liberalism. In particular, the paper draws on the work of Halberstam (1998, 2011), and of Drake (2014). Findings There are comparatively few women in senior positions in Higher Education and we argue that as gendering institutions they reproduce hegemonic gendering discourses. We find that hegemonic gendering discourses are instrumental in maintaining and privileging specific forms and perceptions of masculinity and femininity as inscribed within and reproduced by perceptions of professional competency. Value This paper examines neo-liberal practices from a more nuanced perspective than some traditional polarised critiques which regard gender as a binary. In doing so, it contributes to debates on masculinity, but more importantly, opens discussions about the implications of gendering discourses for the role of the few women in senior positions in higher education institutions globally.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.