NW 33: Tackling crises and generating hope: including and transforming intersectional gender relations through education.

Network
NW 33 Gender and Educcation

Title
Tackling crises and generating hope: including and transforming intersectional gender relations through education. 

Abstract
Crises of different magnitudes have emergent consequences and unanticipated impacts upon intersecting gender inequalities.  Post-hoc analyses often recommend education-based remedies, e.g., through curricula or female education. Conversely, economically driven changes are regularly forward planned with policies involving the transformation of gender identities sometimes in built (e.g., women, black and minority ethnic groups having new identities within STEM).  In both cases, initiatives often fail, and some identities are ignored by educational policies (e.g., disabilities, sexualities and women of colour). How can educational researchers, educators and activists follow international policy guidance, inbuild intersectional gender strategies and generate hopeful educational futures?

The Call
Network 33 welcomes papers focusing on any aspects of intersecting gender inequalities and education.  This includes papers pertaining to sexualities and diverse genders.  Also, those regarding genders intersections with people of colour, minoritized ethnicities, masculinities, indigenous populations, disabilities and age-related studies. 

This call is for a subset of the papers, with a similar focus regarding genders and their intersections, but intended to focus on issues relating to the overall conference theme.  With regard to all submissions to Network 33 we welcome individual papers, symposia, panels, posters, debates and other creative sessions that offer novel ways of engaging conference and network participants.

The world is currently beset by many crises of different magnitudes. The climate emergency threatens all life on the planet: whilst wars, migration, economic challenges, political unrest and more, exacerbate the problem and threaten our ability to remain hopeful (e.g. Bazzul and Siry, 2019; Belser, 2020; Freire and Freire, 2004; ). 

It is widely agreed by researchers, politicians and global organisations that strategies to tackle these problems must tackle the current intersecting gender inequalities (Haraway, 2018). All over the world lower socio-economic and status classes, ethnic minorities, women and girls, people with disabilities, indigenous populations, people with diverse sexualities and genders, older people and other groups are frequently minoritized and disadvantaged (Stanger, 2018).  This means these groups have less individual wealth and status. They also have impaired access to educational and employment successes and positions with opportunities to influence crisis responses.  This includes opportunities to develop and influence the knowledge that underpins strategies.

The education systems of Europe and the world are often seen as implicit to solving these problems (Olvitt, 2017).  They are implicated in including learners, researchers, developing educational programmes and providing contexts that can include, develop and equip diverse populations to tackle these problems (Arnott et al, 1999).  It is very clear in the research that we need people that can understand the needs, perspectives, embodiments and so forth, of diverse populations.

However, the conflicting problems and opportunities available to our education systems, teachers, researcher and learners in playing an affirmative role is well captured by the sociologist Basil Bernstein (2000, xix) in the following quote:

Biases in the form, content, access and opportunities of education, have consequences not only for the economy; these biases can reach down to drain the very springs of affirmation, motivation and imagination. … Education can have a crucial role in creating tomorrow’s optimism in the context of today’s pessimism. But if it is to do this then we must have an analysis of the social biases in education.  These biases lie deep within the very structure of the educational system’s processes of transmission and acquisition and their social assumptions.  

The truth of this quotation is supported my much research and in the international policy environment.  We would be delighted to receive papers that respond to the following questions regarding any level of education and in relation to any form of genders.

1. How do Europe and the world’s education systems simultaneously address intersecting gender inequalities within their own institutions and contexts to facilitate effective and inclusive strategies in response to any current crisis?
2. How is hope developed and maintained for diverse genders facing the climate crisis in different contexts? 
3. How is hopeful education achieved in particularly contexts of those experiencing war, climate impacts, political upheaval and other crisis?

Contact Person(s)
Andrea Abbas aa2452(at)bath.ac.uk

References
Arnot, Madeleine., Miriam E. David, and Gaby. Weiner. Closing the Gender Gap : Post-war Education and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity, 1999. Print.

Bazzul, Jesse., and Christina. Siry. Critical Voices in Science Education Research : Narratives of Hope and Struggle. 1st Ed. 2019. ed. Cham: Springer International : Imprint: Springer, 2019. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 17. Web.

Belser, Julia Watts. "Disability, Climate Change, and Environmental Violence: The Politics of Invisibility and the Horizon of Hope." Disability Studies Quarterly 40.4 (2020): N.PAG. Web.

Bernstein, Basil. Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity : Theory, Research, Critique. Rev. ed. Lanham, Md. ; Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. Print. Critical Perspectives Ser.

Freire, Paulo, and Freire, Ana Maria Araújo. Pedagogy of Hope : Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Continuum, 2004. Print.

Haraway, D. (2018). Staying with the trouble for multispecies environmental justice. Dialogues in Human Geography, 8(1), 102-105. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820617739208

Olvitt, Lausanne Laura. "Education in the Anthropocene: Ethico-moral Dimensions and Critical Realist Openings." Journal of Moral Education 46.4 (2017): 396-410. Web.

Stanger, Camilla. "From Critical Education to An Embodied Pedagogy of Hope: Seeking a Liberatory Praxis with Black, Working Class Girls in the Neoliberal 16-19 College." Studies in Philosophy & Education 37.1 (2018): 47-64. Web.