Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Gender & Identity (Male Peer Groups (Mac an Ghail’s study of Parnell…
Gender & Identity
Male Peer Groups
Mac an Ghail’s study of Parnell school (1994) found that Male peer groups put boys under pressure to not take school work seriously.
Working class boys – genuinely didn’t make an effort – part of being male for them meant being cool, and not caring about school work.
For them ‘real boys don’t try hard at school’ and are more interested in dossing around . These boys referred to boys that wanted to do well as ‘dickhead achievers’ ‘queer’ or ‘gay’.
Middle class boys – Behind the scenes, many middle class boys would try hard to succeed but in public they projected an image of ‘effortless achievement’
pretending they were weren’t really making any effort and being smug when they did well because of this.
In terms of identity then, not working hard is part of working class masculinity and being seen to not working hard is part of middle class masculinity
Female peer groups
Louise Archer – Interviewed 89 young people, looking at the identities of young working class girls.
She found that girls that didn’t conform to traditional gender identities (passive and submissive) were at a disadvantage because they came into conflict with the school.
For most of the girls, constructing and performing a heterosexual, sexy feminine image was the most important thing to them.
Each of the girls spent considerable money and time on their appearance, trying to look sexy and feminine which gave the girls a sense of power and status.
Archer also interview one Laddette – who felt as if the school had a grudge against her. Over one summer she transformed her identity to a classically feminine one and got on much better with staff at her new college as a result.
-
Verbal Abuse
Connell argues that verbal abuse is one way in which dominant gender and sexual identities are reinforced.
Paetcher (1996) argued that male pupils use terms such as ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ in a derogatory manner. Such labels are often given to students who are disinterested in or bad at sport or who prefer traditionally feminine subjects.
Sue Lees (1986) found that boys called girls ‘slags’ if they appeared to be sexually available and ‘drags’ if they didn’t, negatively labelling girls for being promiscuous or not. According to Lees this is one way in which male dominance starts to assert itself.