Gendered classroom behaviour

Question 1

Gendered Classroom Behaviour/Power – Francis 2005.

Discuss

Answer 1

In a mixed classroom girls often support boys in clearing up, helping with homework and girls defer to boys in classroom interaction. Girls may also find themselves silenced or ridiculed or harassed by boys. This happens most often to the most assertive/self-confident girls who risk challenging boys and undermining their masculinity – boys feel they have to punish these girls to re-assert their masculine dominance. Girls who do not conform to mainstream expectations of femininity will also be ridiculed which only serves to reinforce patriarchal power, the ‘male gaze’ and reinforcing stereotypes of masculinity and femininity.