Theorizing agency in post-girlpower times

Post-structuralist youth studies theorists have argued for nuanced perspectives on agency that are not reliant on an assumption of subjects as rational and internally coherent individuals, and understand subjectivity and social structure as produced in concert. These are important theoretical developments that have shaped recent scholarship on girls' identities and cultures. In this paper, we seek to give them some further sociological grounding by thinking through their resonance for the specific debate about young women and what feminist agency consists of, or looks like today. What we wish to further flesh out is how more familiar, modernist ideas about girls' agency have started to reach their limits not merely because of the post-structuralist turn, but because of the socio-cultural conditions of neoliberalism, post-feminism and post-girlpower. We unpack some recent shifts and complexities around three concepts: choice, empowerment and voice. These are the terms by which the possibility of girls' and young women's agency has traditionally been understood in feminist scholarship and much work in girls' studies. However, when we interrogate these concepts within the specific neoliberal, post-feminist, post-girlpower context, their usefulness for either understanding or enabling feminist agency is thrown into question.

Tracking the nomadic life of the eductional researcher: what future for feminist public intellecturals and the performative university?

Is the idea of the liberal university dead, has the postmodern university any chance of being emancipatory, has the theory–practice divide merely collapsed in an era of 'new knowledge work', or has the university just become one aspect of market states and global capitalism? Knowledge-based economies locate universities as central to the commodification and management of knowledge, while at the same time the legitimacy of the university and the academic as knowledge producers is challenged by postmodernist, feminist, post-colonial and indigenous claims within a wider trend towards the 'democratisation of knowledge' and a new educational instrumentalism and opportunism. What becomes of the educational researcher, and indeed their professional organisations, in this changing socio-political and economic scenario? Is our role one of policy service, policy critique, technical expert or public intellectual? In particular what place is there for feminist public intellectuals in a so-called era of post feminism and public–private convergence? The paper draws on feminist and critical perspectives to mount a case for the importance of the public intellectual in the performative postmodern university.

Tracking the nomadic life of the educational researcher :- what future for feminist public intellectual(s) and/in the performative postmodern university

Is the idea of the liberal university dead, has the post modern university any chance of being emancipatory, has the theory practice divide merely collapsed in an era of 'new knowledge work', or has the university just become one aspect of market state and global capitalism. Knowledge based economies simultaneously locate universities as central to the commodification and management of knowledge while the legitimacy of the university and the academic as knowledge producers is challenged by post modernist, feminist, postcolonial and indigenous claims within a wider trend towards the 'democratisation of knowledge' and a new educational instrumentalism and opportunism. What becomes of the educational researcher, and indeed for their professional organizations, in this changing socio political and economic scenario? Is our role one of policy service or policy critique, technical expert or public intellectual? In particular what place is there for feminist public intellectuals in a socalled era of post feminism and public-/private convergence? The paper draws on recent debates around the nature of knowledge based societies, trends in relations between policy and educational research, and draws upon feminist and critical perspectives to mount a case for the importance of the postmodern university and the public intellectual.

Sexy women sports fans: femininity, sexuality, and the global sport spectacle

In recent years the relationship between women and sport fandom has undergone significant shifts. The rapidly changing sphere of global sport is seen to offer women newly visible roles in the global sport economy as fans, broadcasters, celebrity athletes, and media personalities. In light of calls for greater inclusivity and diversity in sport, this paper examines the emergence of new forms of “sexually empowered” female fandom, which situate women as active participants in the sporting spectacle. Whereas sexy women who followed men’s sport or male athletes were once derided as “groupies,” thus socially marginalised and excluded from identification with sport fan communities, I argue that the sexy sport fan has emerged in the context of post-feminism as a visible and necessary type of feminine fan identity to meet the needs of the global sport economy. This study extends feminist sport media analysis beyond its focus on how female athletes are represented whilst also contributing new insights to sport fan research by analysing how female supporters are constructed through mediated accounts in terms of gender, sexuality, and nation.

A bit of a dirty word: 'feminism' and female teachers identifying as feminist

Following the identification of a gap in the literature around reasons for contemporary women’s self-identification as ‘feminist’ (Swirsky & Angelone, 2015), this paper discusses an empirical study of an intergenerational group of contemporary Australian female teachers collaboratively designing English curriculum around girls’ media. The paper explores the group’s shared conversations around feminism, over a series of meetings, as we (teachers and researcher) plan curriculum and negotiate broader subject positions possible for girls and women. These contexts include the competing discourses of feminism and postfeminism and how these mediate texts chosen for study, our pedagogical approaches, and the ways we experience our own lives. In this study, we struggle to find a shared language, across generations, with which to work collaboratively in a community of practice committed to the critical study of media, but involving different individual orientations to ‘feminism’. This is a space in which impediments to the feminist study of girls’ media quickly emerge. The paper also serves as a reminder that feminist scholarship takes place in schools, as well as in the academy, and that the gender studies work teachers do in schools is potentially whole population work, worthy of keen attention in the gender studies academic mainstream.

Gender inequality and education: changing local/global relations in a ‘post-colonial’ world and the implications for feminist research

This chapter explores the relationship between education reform and gender equity, both within and between nation states. Utilising feminist critical policy analysis and post-colonial theory, it examines how education reform over the past decade has impacted on gender equity and how educational reform is itself gendered. It considers the nature of gender restructuring, maps significant shifts in gender equity policy in the wider context of educational and social inequality debates and, through an analysis of recent research on gender identity, schooling and leadership, argues that gender can no longer be privileged when identifying and responding to educational inequality. Key assumptions underpinning how social change and education reform deliver equity are questioned, concluding with feminist theorising about how social justice may inform equity policy and practice in culturally diverse educational contexts.