In similarity to other working organisations are schools complicit in institutionalising age, gender, and sexuality in various ways. Instead of being neutral arenas of work (Acker, 1990),  Mills (2004) argues schools to mimic the traditional gender roles of the nuclear family where women engage in emotional labour while men “engage in the supposedly more difficult aspects of the job, for instance, the disciplining of students and taking care of the fiscal responsibilities of planning and managing the school” (p. 35). Through the “straight face” of schooling, discourses of family traditions emphasise heterosexuality and binary gender identities as “truth regimes” to promote schools and its teachers as safe and normalised (Davis & Hay, 2018, p. 290). While the “truth regimes” of schools and education underlines teachers’ practices has the school-based sexuality education (SE) developed into a critical practice of examining norms and values. When teachers practice SE, they also operationalise democratic values  (Venegas, 2022) by relating it with “feminist and LGBTQI+ struggles for equality, diversity, human rights, citizenship and democracy” (p. 491). The development of SE can take on different paths due to a country socio-political history (Sherlock, 2012).

When it comes to SE, Sweden tends to pride itself for being the first country in the world to make it a compulsory part of schooling. In Sweden, SE became a trademark of Swedish politics to promote sexual and reproductive rights world-wide (Irwin, 2019; Martinsson et al., 2016). In the national curriculum SE is inscribed in an overarching level from K-12 and expected to be a reoccurring, subject-integrated, and cross-disciplinary knowledge area (Skolverket, 2022a, 2022b). For the teaching practice this means that each and every one working in Swedish schools are obliged to engage with SE and address issues of sexuality, consent, and relationships with students. However, talking sex with children and adolescents is not always easy.

The paper presents data from a larger thesis project that aims to explore how SE take shape by interviewing teachers about their experiences of working with SE and observing a working group assigned to develop teachers’ practices concerning SE. In the teacher interviews I was surprised that some teachers began to talk about their own embodiments of age, gender, and sexuality to describe how they were able to teach and talk about sexuality and relationships with their students while others found it more difficult for the same reason. In this paper I ask, how do intersections of age, gender, and sexuality interfere teachers practises in teaching SE?

To understand how teachers’ embodiment create possibilities and limitations in discussing issues of sexuality and relationships with students, I departing from Joan Ackers (1990, 2006) notion on gendered organisations and Clary Krekula’s (2021) view on age as relation to analyse open interview with 18 teachers.

The methodological departure is grounded in feminist theory to consider how norms and practices are embodied experiences. Inspired by Frigga Haug’s (1999, 2008) memory work, I conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with teachers across Sweden to collect memories of their practises. According to Haug (2008) memories are not only subjective but rather collective and changeable experiences that contains discursive information about the social organisation of society. Viewing teachers experiences of teaching SE as a form of collective experiences of practice allow for identifying discursive and normative patterns of experiences. Based on Acker (1990) and Krekula’s (2021; 2005) conceptualisations of age, gender, and sexuality to be intertwined and dependent on the repeated act of doing, I analyse how age, gender and sexuality are expressed through the teachers memories and experience of practice. In Acker and Krekula’s view, thorough the repeated act of doing social structure and hieratical relationships become kept intact. In the repeated act of doing, Acker (1990) argues organisations uphold the idea that organisations are neutral arenas for work, however, viewing gender and age through doings reveal that some bodies are privileged enough to be unmarked and unnamed while others are explicitly gendered, aged, or sexualized (Krekula, 2021).

The analysis shows that the intersections of age, gender, and sexuality reproduce gendered paths that either allow or limits teachers to address issues of sexuality and relationships in school-based SE. In the material, the Swedish cultural figuration of “tant” [auntie] appears as an important figure to allow teachers to talk freely about issues in SE. Doing gender in line with a normative ideal of a particular aged femininity are female teachers able to make use of the normative expectations of older women’s lack of sexuality and male authority to neutralize possible embarrassments and tensions in SE. However, in similarity to the “tant”, are “younger” female teachers also able to make use of their age and gender to open conversations about issues of sexual behaviour with students. In teaching, both older and younger female teacher perform a safe form of sexuality by following normative expectations of women. When female teachers follow the expected life course of sexual experience so that they are able to discuss issues of SE with an open and relaxed approach. However, these possibilities cease if the female teacher cannot live up to the normative expectations. In contrast to the female teachers are male teachers limited due to their age, gender, and sexuality. In their case, age or following expected life courses do not create possibilities for teaching SE. Instead, they need to perform a safe form of masculinity by for instance, having an updated view on society to enable discussions about sexuality and relationships in a comfortable way. By exploring intersections of age, gender and sexuality in SE, this paper shows a paradox of how gendered ideals and normative notions of sexuality are reproduced and made successful in teachers practices of SE to address the very issues SE is designed to work against.

Acker, J. (1990). Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations. Gender and Society, 4(2), 139-158. Acker, J. (2006). Inequality Regimes Gender, Class, and Race in Organizations. Gender and Society, 20(4), 441-464. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243206289499 Davis, I., & Hay, S. (2018). Primary masculinities: how male teachers are regarded as employees within primary education – a global systematic literature review. Sex Education, 18(3), 280-292. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2017.1400963 Haug, F. (1999). Female sexualization : a collective work of memory. Verso. Haug, F. (2008). Memory Work. Australian Feminist Studies, 23(58), 537-541. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164640802433498 Irwin, R. (2019). Sweden’s engagement in global health : a historical review. Globalization and Health, 15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-019-0499-1 Krekula, C. (2021). Ålder och ålderism: Om görandet av privilegierelationer baserade på ålder. In (pp. 59-79). Lund: Social Work Press. Krekula, C., Närvänen, A.-L., & Näsman, E. (2005). Ålder i intersektionell analys. In (Vol. 2005(26):2/3, s. 81-94). Kvinnovetenskaplig tidskrift. Martinsson, L. e., Griffin, G. e., & Giritli Nygren, K. e. (2016). Challenging the myth of gender equality in Sweden. Policy Press. Mills, M. (2004). Male Teachers, Homophobia, Misogyny and Teacher Education. Teaching Education, 15(1), 27-39. doi:10.1080/1047621042000179970 Sherlock, L. (2012). Sociopolitical influences on sexuality education in Sweden and Ireland. Sex Education, 12(4), 383-396. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2012.686882 Skolverket. (2022a). Läroplan för grundskolan, förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet 2022. Skolverket. Skolverket. (2022b). Läroplan för gymnasieskolan. Retrieved 230112 from https://www.skolverket.se/undervisning/gymnasieskolan/laroplan-program-och-amnen-i-gymnasieskolan/laroplan-gy11-for-gymnasieskolan Venegas, M. (2022). Relationships and sex education in the age of anti-gender movements: what challenges for democracy?. Sex Education, 22(4), 481-495-495. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2021.1955669