‘Oh, she’ssosmart’: girls’ complex engagements with post/feminist narratives of academic success

Interviewer: ‘Are women and girls ever responsible for the domestic violence they encounter?’ Student: ‘No, well, unless they did something really, really bad …’

“…Baker (2010), writing about Australia, and Pomerantz and Raby (2011), writing about Canada, reveal similar findings; that schoolgirls (and women) are increasingly asked to believe that they now have equality with boys (and men) and that feminism is no longer needed. They both accept and reject this narrative, revealing the difficulty of being a girl (and a woman) in contemporary society and push themselves to succeed, conceptualising any failures as individualbut, importantly, they also recognise the gender-unequal nature of society.…”

“…Nonetheless, we note that these interventions are occurring in the context of what is still a highly gender-unequal society (see Banyard, 2011) where simply campaigning for images of women on bank notes can prompt unknown men to tweet women rape threats (Creasy, 2013). In addition, violence against women and girls discourses are rarely prioritised in high-profile policy discussions of the sexualisation of society (see Coy & Garner, 2012) and anti-feminist discourses of individualism (see Baker, 2010;Pomerantz & Raby, 2011) seek to prevent girls from embracing collective, feminist positions. Never-the-less grassroots feminist campaigning organisations such as UK Feminista (2014), Object (2014), Everyday Sexism (2014, and Lose the Lads' Mags (2014) are emerging and more established organisations and campaigns -such as the Fawcett Society and, world-wide, One Billion Rising -persist.…”

12-talspigerne i medierne: Rammesætning og stereotypificering af højtpræsterende piger og kvinder i det danske uddannelsessystem [Straight-A girls in the media: The framing and stereotypification of high performance girls and women in the Danish system of education]

“…Nyere studier peger dog på, at den angiveligt feminiserede skole ikke nødvendigvis er en fordel for pigerne, men snarere har ført til, at de i dag kaemper med at skulle klare sig godt på to fronter samtidig. De skal vaere både skarpe og smukke (bright and beautiful), altså både excellere i skolen og klare sig godt som piger i mere traditionel stereotypifi ceret forstand (Renold & Allan, 2006;Pomerantz & Raby, 2011). Ifølge en undersøgelse af Skelton et al (2010) harmonerer det dog sjaeldent, når piger på den ene side ønsker at vaere socialt accepterede ud fra traditionelle feminine vaerdier og på den anden side straeber efter intellektuel succes.…”

Are Male Role Models Really the Solution?

“…It is balancing these in tension with so-called feminine characteristics that can make for complicated subjectivities that are difficult for young women adopt, but also to success in areas previously dominated by boys and men (Ringrose 2007). Perhaps the model for increased success for boys is not 'more masculinity,' or male role models, but rather greater acceptance of stereotypically 'feminine' characteristics, and negotiating the same difficult balance of gender fluidity that some young women seem to have achieved (Ringrose 2007;Pomerantz and Raby 2011;Raby and Pomerantz 2013).…”