In this paper, I revisit a spontaneous "laughter" event in a college classroom in China to decolonize in three steps my/our otherwise naturalized modernity/coloniality assumptions about teaching/teachers, learning/learners, gender, objects, and classroom space toward a Daoist affective ecological imaginary. First, I invoke postcritical…

This article explores how Danish school girls affectively engage with and relate to STEM subjects, and what draws the girls to STEM subjects and pushes them away, respectively. We draw on Ahmed's work to shed light on the 'sticky' affects that become attached to STEM subjects as well as student subjects in constituting these as affectively…

Current international discourse foregrounds gender parity in education as a means of empowering women in societies with strong adherence to traditional gender norms, such as Pakistan. This discourse contends that women's access to higher education and subsequent employment enables them to identify and reject traditional cultural values and norms.…

In 2018, Nuh, barely 75 km from India's parliament, was ranked by the Government as the country's most 'backward' district. It is a region fraught with many challenges including endemic poverty and simmering communal tensions, which among other factors have contributed to historically limiting women from pursuing higher education or building…

School operates as a space/place where girls must navigate and negotiate different aspects of their identities further adding to the complexities of Black girlhood. The scantiness of sociological scholarship surrounding Black girls from the Dutch West Indies elucidates this article's importance. I conducted audio- and video-recorded interviews…

Despite national and international attempts to eliminate gender inequality in education, it remains a pressing issue in Turkey. Because gender equality is often shaped by and through discursive practices, the present study explores how educational policy and media discourses create gender inequalities in education. The critical discourse analysis…

This paper is a making, a cartography that maps gender equity policy in Australian education. I suggest that entrenched reductive sexist, racist, homo/transphobic and misogynistic practices have not significantly shifted materially since the implementation of inaugural gender equity programs in the 1970s, despite the investment of much money,…

Adopting an auto/biographical approach, I discuss the impact my grandmother, Nana Elizabeth (Lizbet) Beyie had on the academic and career outcomes of myself and other female descendants. The paper begins with an exploration of Lizbet's biography and how she overcame struggles in terms of ensuring my mother's education in an era and context where…

This paper considers the construction of an 'ideal' level of female education in China by reflecting on the social phenomenon of 'leftover women', and the perpetuation of this stigma by both Chinese state media. It contributes an in-depth engagement with the educational dimensions of 'leftover women' through innovative discourse analysis that…

The aim of this study is to investigate the forms, significance and effects of feminist identity development among elite young women in a Chinese university environment. Based on fieldwork conducted over 11 months in a Chinese public university with a predominately male student body, this study explores the gendered experiences of eight female…

The Saudi 2030 vision states it is committed to empowering women through education and employment, but the literature scarcely addresses their everyday realities. This paper utilises a critical realist perspective to examine the mechanisms emerging from the interplay of structural and cultural factors that impact women's empowerment concerning…

Historically, patriarchy has been as dominant in education in Ireland as elsewhere. In the Irish context, it was promoted through the male-dominated Catholic Church, which controlled either directly or indirectly the vast majority of education institutions in the country. This dominant hegemony was most powerful during the period…

In contemporary times, the status of Muslim women has become a lens to approach and engage with Muslim societies. Embedded in these narratives is an image of Muslim women as oppressed victims of their patriarchal families and societies. In this article, we focus on the lived experiences of educated Muslim women from Pakistan and India to examine…

In the last 20 years, a reversal of the gender gap in higher education (HE) has been observed both in developed and developing countries. Nowadays, more women than men are studying HE. Nevertheless, averages tend to high disparities and gender gaps are still observed when indicators take poverty and ethnicity into account. This paper uses…

Gendered cultural ideologies limit access to education for girls in Ethiopia. Practices like child marriage, a disproportionate work burden for girls, early pregnancy, and social isolation, inhibit the participation of female students in education. This qualitative study analyzes the influence of Girl Effect (a branding agency supported by…