Title: Computer shop girls: An ethnographic study of gendered positionings in a vocational high school
Abstract: This ethnographic study investigated the gendered subject positionings of six low income girls enrolled in the computer shop of a rural vocational high school in the US. Theoretical perspectives of feminist poststructuralism informed this study and data were gathered via structured ethnographic interviews feminist poststructuralist analysis of salient texts and four school terms of participant observation. Analysis of the interrelatedness of these discrete strands of data yielded multiple often contradictory layers of gendered subject positionings. Discourses related to gendered positionings in personal relationships and schooling/career were fundamental. Feminine discourses related to nurturing were primary in analyzed texts. In the girls lives caring for others and working in minimum wage jobs competed with schooling. For some of the girls pervasive discourses of beauty meant a battle with anorexia. Discourses of heterosexual romance imbued the girls textual preferences. In ways befitting characters in the soap operas books and films they loved the girls commonly jeopardized their safety to find and keep boyfriends. At school the girls navigated an environment that privileged boys and men through gendered shop selections sexist texts and male authority. Excessive regulatory practices contributed to three of the girls not graduating on time. Understanding the multiple subjectivities of adolescent girls challenges educators and researchers to move beyond simplistic solutions in equity issues. Through multi-layered research the impacts and synergy of gendered discourses become visible and thus subject to interruption. (full text modified)
Publication Year: 1998
Publication Date: 1998-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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