This article adds to the literature on smart girlhood by exploring the topic through Karen Barad's theory of post-human performativity. We focus on the transcripts of two participants from a larger study on girls and academic success in Canada in order to highlight the material, discursive, embodied, and temporal entanglements that co-produce the…

The article draws upon Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and cultural capital to provide an in-depth analysis of the gender differences in students' motivation for undertaking postgraduate (PG) education in Mainland China. It reports an in-depth case study comprising 381 questionnaires and 30 semi-structured interviews. The quantitative data show…

In the Burton, T., dir. [2010. Alice in Wonderland (Film). Burbank: Walt Disney Pictures] cinematographic reimagining of "Alice in Wonderland," there is a moment when the Mad Hatter looks sincerely at Alice and tells her that inside her, something is missing--that she used to be much more muchier--that she has somehow lost her muchness.…

This paper is a critical discourse analysis of teacher resource materials about girl bullying. The "mean girl" phenomenon has been widely taken up as one of the current key narratives about schools and school girls. This paper argues for the importance of understanding the origins of this discourse within behavioural psychology, which…

This paper is based on a qualitative study about middle-class mothers' experiences of school choice in Chile. It draws on Butler, Berlant and Hardt's work on affects, and on feminist contributions to the intersection between school choice, social class and mothering. These contributions help us deepen our understanding of school choice as both a…

In the context of renewed debates and interest in this area, this paper reframes the theoretical agenda around laddish masculinities in UK higher education, and similar masculinities overseas. These can be contextualised within consumerist neoliberal rationalities, the neoconservative backlash against feminism and other social justice movements,…

This paper explores the educational and migrational pathways which a number of middle-class women from Bangladesh took as they grew up in the 1980s and 1990s. It draws on qualitative research, conducted between July and November 2011, with highly educated Bangladeshi women who migrated to Britain in the early 2000s. French Sociologist Pierre…

Gender inequality in academia might be understood as an effect of the belief of a contradiction between woman and science, which make it difficult for women to appropriate the right to author and authorise acts of knowing and thinking in science. In relation to this concern, the aim of this article is to explore how a group of successful women…

Despite increasing rates of university attendance among women, a significant gender gap remains in socialisation and educational processes in Japan. To understand why and how gender-distinctive socialisation processes persist, this study aimed to examine both middle-class and working-class mothers' beliefs about gender, education, and children's…

This viewpoint draws on discussions at two seminars to consider ambivalent attitudes amongst a group of Black women towards considering themselves and/or other Black people as "middle class". The first seminar highlighted the experiences of a group of Black "middle-class" parents and the second, which was organised as a result of the reaction the…

This paper develops a new analysis of homework by building on feminist scholarship which documents the invisible labour done by women in support of their children's education. While numerous studies have examined the relationship between homework and achievement, little attention has been paid to the largely gendered and potentially stressful…

The present paper explores middle-class fathers' educational work by studying how they and their partners are involved in their children's education at home, in school, and how they investigate school options and make decisions about educational issues. Drawing on data from an ethnographic study of 30 dual-earner couples in the Greater Los Angeles…

This paper draws on data collected from young white middle class women experiencing eating disorders to highlight what we refer to as the paradox of performativity in schools. In interviews with these young women on their schooling experiences, their narratives convey both a critique of the social conditions of their schooling and their subjugated…

This paper draws on the case studies of six girls between the ages of 10 and 13 and considers their transition to secondary school and involvement in extracurricular sports. Within it, I explore how the girls' understandings of "a good education" affects both their academic and extracurricular/sporting choices. Despite government educational…

This paper examines the impact of gender on white middle-class parents' anxiety about choosing inner-city comprehensives and their children's subsequent experiences within school, particularly in relation to social mixing. Drawing on interview data from an ESRC funded study of white middle-class parents whose children attend inner-city…