Carrie Paechter
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 130044 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Carrie Paechter |
| PRENOMES | Carrie |
| SOBRENOME | Paechter |
| ASSINATURA | PAECHTER C |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Goldsmiths University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3050-5571 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 37 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 547 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 37 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1993 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 12 |
I don’t want to get in anyone’s way”
Skateboarding is an informal activity with a relatively low cost of entry, and a range of potential practice grounds. Without formal gatekeepers, it is potentially inclusive on social, economic, and cultural levels. Participation has increased overall in recent years, including by girls and young women, who are increasingly visible in skateboarding organisations, international competition, and media. However, skateboarding spaces remain dominated…
Free therapy
In this paper, we use a theoretical framework derived from Frank's concept of the communicative body, and Berry et al.'s typology of body self-compassion, to examine and understand the mental health benefits of skateboarding, as discussed by young woman skateboarders. In response to the open question, 'What are the benefits of skateboarding', we were given a wide variety of mental and, to a lesser extent, physical, health benefits, both short and…
It Feels Like a Big Performance
In this article, we apply philosophical and sociological theory to consider how young women skateboarders interact with and are affected by performative aspects of skateboarding cultures. Drawing on findings from a qualitative study of three skateparks plus other skate spaces in and around two English cities, we argue that these spaces are performative in nature and that this is frequently problematic for young woman skateboarders. We suggest tha…
Is gender equality in brain damage 'progress' for women and sport
This commentary sits within a context of growing cultural concern over brain damage that occurs in many of the Western world's most popular, profitable and prized sports. After laying out evidence demonstrating this point, we discuss the increasing inclusion of women within sports which involve regular and routinised brain injuries. We problematise this apparent 'progress' with the title of our commentary. In particular, rather than offering some…
What's it like to be a girl skateboarder? Identity, participation and exclusion for young women in skateboarding spaces and communities
This paper reports findings from a qualitative study of girl and young women skateboarders in and around two cities in England. We consider what it means to have a skateboarder identity, and how this is related to commitment, skill level, and participation in local skateboarder communities. We found that girls and young women frequently need more support to take up skateboarding than do boys and young men. Crucial enablers are both structural and…
The rights and interests of trans and intersex children
In this paper I consider the contradictions in majority Western treatment of trans and intersex children, in relation to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). I argue that how each group is treated is underpinned by contrasting assumptions about what constitutes the child’s best interest, which are a primary consideration under the Convention. In the case of intersex children, it is assumed that it is in the child’s be…
Communities of Practice of Transition
In this article, we consider a previously unidentified form of community of practice: the community of practice of transition. Our exemplar data come from two separate studies, one of a group for trans young people and one of an online divorce support community. Such communities differ from other communities of practice because the transition process itself is the focus and the shared practice of the community. We argue that communities of practi…
Implications for gender and education research arising out of changing ideas about gender
Ideas about gender are changing. The UK and other countries are moving towards altering laws about gender recognition. Intersex people can be recognised as such in some countries. In the global North, nonbinary identities are becoming more common, and this is reflected in changes to recording systems. Referrals to child gender identity clinics are rising, and increasingly we have children in our schools who are socially transitioning, delaying pu…
Where are the feminine boys? Interrogating the positions of feminised masculinities in research on gender and childhood
In this paper I examine the postion of feminine boys in the literature on gender and childhood. I argue that there has been little systematic research carried out on feminine boys, and that this is the case for several reasons. I start by discussing how researchers tend to focus on dominant narratives, with the result that alternative positions are either ignored or treated as straightforwardly subordinate. Following that, I consider some of the …
Rethinking the possibilities for hegemonic femininity
In this paper I consider and challenge the ways in which hegemonic femininity has mainly been conceptualised in the gender literature. This approach has several limitations, including being strongly binary, positioning girls and women as Other and frequently essentialised. After suggesting some criteria for a more useful conceptualisation, I consider some of the alternatives, which I critique for their dependence on sexuality and sexual desire. I…
Young children, gender and the heterosexual matrix
In this paper I consider the adult focus of current mainstream gender theory. I relate this to how the concept of the \nheterosexual matrix originates in a social contract which excludes children from civil society. I argue that this exclusion is problematic both for theoretical reasons and from the perspective of children themselves. I start by discussing the nature of the heterosexual matrix and its foundations. I consider the implications for …
Being 'nice' or being 'normal
In this paper we consider discourses of friendship and belonging mobilised by girls who are not part of the dominant ‘cool’ group in one English primary school. We explore how, by investing in alternative and, at times, resistant, discourses of ‘being nice’ and ‘being normal’ these ‘non-cool’ girls were able to avoid some of the struggles for dominance and related bullying and exclusion found by us and other researchers to be a feature of ‘cool g…
The problem of gender categorisation
Developments in the field of gender theory as applied to education since the 1970s are briefly reviewed in order to highlight key challenges and debates around gender categorisation and identification in gender and education. We argue that conundrums of categorisation have haunted, and continue to haunt, the field of gender theory, and empirical applications (such as the case of education) in particular. We explain how we have attempted to addres…
Concepts of Fairness in Marriage and Divorce
Discourses of fairness are bound up with Western ideals of companionate marriage. They are also central to the ways people talk about their approaches to divorce, especially in relation to the division of property and finances. How fairness is understood within marriage, however, is gendered, with husbands more likely to take equity-based approaches and wives equality-based approaches. In this article I discuss previous research on how fairness i…
Researching sensitive issues online
This article is concerned with methodological issues arising from a retrospective partially insider study of a divorce support website. I argue that, while we need to conduct detailed retrospective studies into the development of online communities, such studies bring methodological challenges, due to their retrospective nature, the potential size of the data set, and the problems of dealing with past manifestations of sites that continue to func…
Gender, visible bodies and schooling
In this paper, I consider two interrelated problems. The first concerns the issues and difficulties involved in studying how children think about their bodies, in the schooling setting. The second involves an attempt to bring together a series of phenomena around which gendered media and social panics are being constructed in the UK and elsewhere. I discuss the problems concerned with the practicalities of studying children's bodies in a setting …
Bodies, identities and performances
In this paper I seek to address a series of tensions in the ways we think, write and speak about gender in classrooms and playgrounds, and in the language we use to describe children and their behaviour. I shall examine some of the concepts we use for describing gender relations among children and consider the extent to which they are still useful. My main focus is on hegemonic masculinity; the female as Other; and ‘doing’ boy or girl, masculinit…
Tomboys and girly-girls
This paper is about how 9–11-year-old children, particularly girls, co-construct tomboy and girly-girl identities as oppositional positions. The paper sits within a theoretical framework in which I understand individual and collective masculinities and femininities as ways of ‘doing man/woman’ or ‘doing boy/girl’ that are constructed within local communities of masculinity and femininity practice. Empirical data come from a one-year study of tomb…
Response to Mary Lou Rasmussen’s ‘Beyond Gender Identity’
When I was contacted by the editors of Gender and Education to see whether I wanted to respond to this article, I was not particularly keen to do so. I generally believe that critique is a good thing, and that direct responses have a tendency to come over as precious, petulant, and petty. However, having read the article several times, and having re‐read the paper to which Mary Lou Rasmussen refers, I feel that I have to
Education, disordered eating and obesity discourse
London, Routledge, 2008, xv + 182 pp. £ 22.99 (paperback), ISBN 978‐0415418959 This is a complex book about a number of interlocking issues which configure themselves around the relationship betwee
Why can't girls play football?’ Gender dynamics and the playground
This article focuses on the involvement of boys and girls in playground football. It is based on research conducted with 10- to 11-year-old pupils at two state primary schools in London. Boys and girls were found to draw on gender constructs that impacted variously on their involvement in playground football. The performance of masculinity through football translated into heavy investments for many boys who took any opportunity to prove both thei…
Who are tomboys and how do we recognise them
Masculine femininities/feminine masculinities
This paper is basically about terminology. In it I discuss the terms ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ and how they relate to being male and being female. My theme arises from an increasing difficulty that I am finding in understanding how individual identities relate to dominant constructions of masculinity and femininity. Christine Skelton and Becky Francis argue that we should not be afraid to name certain behaviours as masculine even when they a…
Reconceptualizing the gendered body
How children learn to construct and enact masculinities and femininities is clearly an issue for education and one that has been explored in a wide variety of ways. In recent years, however, our conceptions of gender have once again become problematic, particularly given a gradual slippage regarding the sex/gender distinction and the increasing use of ‘gender’ to refer to matters of biology as well as those pertaining to the social. We now need t…
Power, knowledge and embodiment in communities of sex/gender practice
Masculine femininities/feminine masculinities
This paper is basically about terminology. In it I discuss the terms ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ and how they relate to being male and being female. My theme arises from an increasing difficulty that I am finding in understanding how individual identities relate to dominant constructions of masculinity and femininity. Christine Skelton and Becky Francis argue that we should not be afraid to name certain behaviours as masculine even when they a…
Masculinities and femininities as communities of practice
Rethinking the possibilities for hegemonic femininity
In this paper I consider and challenge the ways in which hegemonic femininity has mainly been conceptualised in the gender literature. This approach has several limitations, including being strongly binary, positioning girls and women as Other and frequently essentialised. After suggesting some criteria for a more useful conceptualisation, I consider some of the alternatives, which I critique for their dependence on sexuality and sexual desire. I…
Power, Bodies and Identity
Physical education (PE) lessons are an important arena for the construction and consolidation of dominant and subordinate masculinities and femininities within schools. The gym, sports hall, playing field and associated areas such as changing rooms and showers function as sites both for the gendered display of hegemonic forms of heterosexual masculinity and for the subordination of alternatives. Femininities of different sorts are also played out…
Why can't girls play football?’ Gender dynamics and the playground
This article focuses on the involvement of boys and girls in playground football. It is based on research conducted with 10- to 11-year-old pupils at two state primary schools in London. Boys and girls were found to draw on gender constructs that impacted variously on their involvement in playground football. The performance of masculinity through football translated into heavy investments for many boys who took any opportunity to prove both thei…
Reconceptualizing the gendered body
How children learn to construct and enact masculinities and femininities is clearly an issue for education and one that has been explored in a wide variety of ways. In recent years, however, our conceptions of gender have once again become problematic, particularly given a gradual slippage regarding the sex/gender distinction and the increasing use of ‘gender’ to refer to matters of biology as well as those pertaining to the social. We now need t…
Researching sensitive issues online
This article is concerned with methodological issues arising from a retrospective partially insider study of a divorce support website. I argue that, while we need to conduct detailed retrospective studies into the development of online communities, such studies bring methodological challenges, due to their retrospective nature, the potential size of the data set, and the problems of dealing with past manifestations of sites that continue to func…
Learning masculinities and femininities
Who are tomboys and how do we recognise them
Power, knowledge and embodiment in communities of sex/gender practice
The problem of gender categorisation
Developments in the field of gender theory as applied to education since the 1970s are briefly reviewed in order to highlight key challenges and debates around gender categorisation and identification in gender and education. We argue that conundrums of categorisation have haunted, and continue to haunt, the field of gender theory, and empirical applications (such as the case of education) in particular. We explain how we have attempted to addres…
Bodies, identities and performances
In this paper I seek to address a series of tensions in the ways we think, write and speak about gender in classrooms and playgrounds, and in the language we use to describe children and their behaviour. I shall examine some of the concepts we use for describing gender relations among children and consider the extent to which they are still useful. My main focus is on hegemonic masculinity; the female as Other; and ‘doing’ boy or girl, masculinit…
Tomboys and girly-girls
This paper is about how 9–11-year-old children, particularly girls, co-construct tomboy and girly-girl identities as oppositional positions. The paper sits within a theoretical framework in which I understand individual and collective masculinities and femininities as ways of ‘doing man/woman’ or ‘doing boy/girl’ that are constructed within local communities of masculinity and femininity practice. Empirical data come from a one-year study of tomb…
Mens Sana in Corpore Sano
Cartesian dualism has left a heavy legacy in terms of how we think about ourselves, so that we treat humans as minds within bodies rather than mind/body unities. This has far‐reaching effects on our conceptualisation of the sex/gender distinction and on the relationship between bodies and identities. Related to this is a dualism that is embedded in how we think of children in schools; we focus on the soundness of the mind, with the sound body tre…
Growing Up with a Lesbian Mother
This article is an attempt to analyse my experiences during the 1970s as the adolescent daughter of a lesbian, setting these against some of the theoretical writing in this area. It starts from the premise that personal experience, if treated theoretically, can provide illumination beyond the scope of an individual's life. In the article I draw parallels between my experience of `coming out' as the daughter of a lesbian and the more commonly unde…
Gender, Identity, Status and the Body
This paper considers the situation of secondary teachers working in two marginal school subjects, design and technology and physical education. Focusing on the interaction between gender, identity, status and the body, we explore the similarities between these subjects, and suggest that marginality is itself gendered. Through a consideration of the gendered legacies of these subjects, their contradictory status positions, the importance of the bo…
Power, Knowledge and the Confessional in Qualitative Research
(1996). Power, Knowledge and the Confessional in Qualitative Research. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education: Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 75-84
Being 'nice' or being 'normal
In this paper we consider discourses of friendship and belonging mobilised by girls who are not part of the dominant ‘cool’ group in one English primary school. We explore how, by investing in alternative and, at times, resistant, discourses of ‘being nice’ and ‘being normal’ these ‘non-cool’ girls were able to avoid some of the struggles for dominance and related bullying and exclusion found by us and other researchers to be a feature of ‘cool g…
I don’t want to get in anyone’s way”
Skateboarding is an informal activity with a relatively low cost of entry, and a range of potential practice grounds. Without formal gatekeepers, it is potentially inclusive on social, economic, and cultural levels. Participation has increased overall in recent years, including by girls and young women, who are increasingly visible in skateboarding organisations, international competition, and media. However, skateboarding spaces remain dominated…
Where are the feminine boys? Interrogating the positions of feminised masculinities in research on gender and childhood
In this paper I examine the postion of feminine boys in the literature on gender and childhood. I argue that there has been little systematic research carried out on feminine boys, and that this is the case for several reasons. I start by discussing how researchers tend to focus on dominant narratives, with the result that alternative positions are either ignored or treated as straightforwardly subordinate. Following that, I consider some of the …
What's it like to be a girl skateboarder? Identity, participation and exclusion for young women in skateboarding spaces and communities
This paper reports findings from a qualitative study of girl and young women skateboarders in and around two cities in England. We consider what it means to have a skateboarder identity, and how this is related to commitment, skill level, and participation in local skateboarder communities. We found that girls and young women frequently need more support to take up skateboarding than do boys and young men. Crucial enablers are both structural and…
Young children, gender and the heterosexual matrix
In this paper I consider the adult focus of current mainstream gender theory. I relate this to how the concept of the \nheterosexual matrix originates in a social contract which excludes children from civil society. I argue that this exclusion is problematic both for theoretical reasons and from the perspective of children themselves. I start by discussing the nature of the heterosexual matrix and its foundations. I consider the implications for …
Free therapy
In this paper, we use a theoretical framework derived from Frank's concept of the communicative body, and Berry et al.'s typology of body self-compassion, to examine and understand the mental health benefits of skateboarding, as discussed by young woman skateboarders. In response to the open question, 'What are the benefits of skateboarding', we were given a wide variety of mental and, to a lesser extent, physical, health benefits, both short and…
Implications for gender and education research arising out of changing ideas about gender
Ideas about gender are changing. The UK and other countries are moving towards altering laws about gender recognition. Intersex people can be recognised as such in some countries. In the global North, nonbinary identities are becoming more common, and this is reflected in changes to recording systems. Referrals to child gender identity clinics are rising, and increasingly we have children in our schools who are socially transitioning, delaying pu…
Subcultural Retreat
The National Curriculum for design and technology requires that the new subject be delivered in a cross‐curricular way, involving teachers from a number of previously‐existing subject areas. The negotiation by teachers of this new curriculum and its associated new subculture has taken place in a context in which struggles for power and control in the new departments form a significant factor. Associated with this struggle is the retreat by some t…
What Happens when a School Subject Undergoes a Sudden Change of Status
This paper reports some of the findings of the first year of a study of the development of the design and technology curriculum in England and Wales. The establishment of a new, high status, practical subject area offers a unique opportunity to study curriculum history as it happens. Furthermore, as the new subject is being taught by teachers from previously gendered areas, the relationship between gender, power and subject status is particularly…
Subcultural Retreat
The National Curriculum for design and technology requires that the new subject be delivered in a cross‐curricular way, involving teachers from a number of previously‐existing subject areas. The negotiation by teachers of this new curriculum and its associated new subculture has taken place in a context in which struggles for power and control in the new departments form a significant factor. Associated with this struggle is the retreat by some t…
Gender, Identity, Status and the Body
This paper considers the situation of secondary teachers working in two marginal school subjects, design and technology and physical education. Focusing on the interaction between gender, identity, status and the body, we explore the similarities between these subjects, and suggest that marginality is itself gendered. Through a consideration of the gendered legacies of these subjects, their contradictory status positions, the importance of the bo…
Power and Gender in the Staffroom
This paper explores the interface between gender and power through the examination of the process of introducing the new subject of design and technology into the English and Welsh National Curriculum. In considering teachers’ reactions to and interpretations of the new subject, three aspects of power are considered: the relationship between power and the self, the dynamic between positional and network power, and the way power was used by men an…
Power, Knowledge and the Confessional in Qualitative Research
(1996). Power, Knowledge and the Confessional in Qualitative Research. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education: Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 75-84
Schooling and the ownership of knowledge
This article considers the relationship between ‘school’ and ‘non-school knowledge’ and the classroom power imbalances they represent. The author critiques ways in which this distinction has been treated by earlier authors, arguing that ‘non-school’ or ‘owned’ knowledge has been defined simply as a negative of ‘school knowledge’, and that this does not aid our thinking in this area. She suggests that a key aspect of ‘owned knowledge’ is that stud…
Moving with the Goalposts
This article reviews the author's experiences as an educational researcher working in a period of constant structural, curriculum and policy change. The author argues that, although the changing national context significantly altered the focus and conduct of the research, it is still possible to remain true to at least some of one's original aims, providing that both the researcher and the research planned are flexible and that reflexivity is bui…
Growing Up with a Lesbian Mother
This article is an attempt to analyse my experiences during the 1970s as the adolescent daughter of a lesbian, setting these against some of the theoretical writing in this area. It starts from the premise that personal experience, if treated theoretically, can provide illumination beyond the scope of an individual's life. In the article I draw parallels between my experience of `coming out' as the daughter of a lesbian and the more commonly unde…
Masculinities and femininities as communities of practice
Learning masculinities and femininities
Power, Bodies and Identity
Physical education (PE) lessons are an important arena for the construction and consolidation of dominant and subordinate masculinities and femininities within schools. The gym, sports hall, playing field and associated areas such as changing rooms and showers function as sites both for the gendered display of hegemonic forms of heterosexual masculinity and for the subordination of alternatives. Femininities of different sorts are also played out…
Mens Sana in Corpore Sano
Cartesian dualism has left a heavy legacy in terms of how we think about ourselves, so that we treat humans as minds within bodies rather than mind/body unities. This has far‐reaching effects on our conceptualisation of the sex/gender distinction and on the relationship between bodies and identities. Related to this is a dualism that is embedded in how we think of children in schools; we focus on the soundness of the mind, with the sound body tre…
Reconceptualizing the gendered body
How children learn to construct and enact masculinities and femininities is clearly an issue for education and one that has been explored in a wide variety of ways. In recent years, however, our conceptions of gender have once again become problematic, particularly given a gradual slippage regarding the sex/gender distinction and the increasing use of ‘gender’ to refer to matters of biology as well as those pertaining to the social. We now need t…
Power, knowledge and embodiment in communities of sex/gender practice
Masculine femininities/feminine masculinities
This paper is basically about terminology. In it I discuss the terms ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ and how they relate to being male and being female. My theme arises from an increasing difficulty that I am finding in understanding how individual identities relate to dominant constructions of masculinity and femininity. Christine Skelton and Becky Francis argue that we should not be afraid to name certain behaviours as masculine even when they a…
Why can't girls play football?’ Gender dynamics and the playground
This article focuses on the involvement of boys and girls in playground football. It is based on research conducted with 10- to 11-year-old pupils at two state primary schools in London. Boys and girls were found to draw on gender constructs that impacted variously on their involvement in playground football. The performance of masculinity through football translated into heavy investments for many boys who took any opportunity to prove both thei…
Who are tomboys and how do we recognise them
Response to Mary Lou Rasmussen’s ‘Beyond Gender Identity’
When I was contacted by the editors of Gender and Education to see whether I wanted to respond to this article, I was not particularly keen to do so. I generally believe that critique is a good thing, and that direct responses have a tendency to come over as precious, petulant, and petty. However, having read the article several times, and having re‐read the paper to which Mary Lou Rasmussen refers, I feel that I have to
Education, disordered eating and obesity discourse
London, Routledge, 2008, xv + 182 pp. £ 22.99 (paperback), ISBN 978‐0415418959 This is a complex book about a number of interlocking issues which configure themselves around the relationship betwee
Tomboys and girly-girls
This paper is about how 9–11-year-old children, particularly girls, co-construct tomboy and girly-girl identities as oppositional positions. The paper sits within a theoretical framework in which I understand individual and collective masculinities and femininities as ways of ‘doing man/woman’ or ‘doing boy/girl’ that are constructed within local communities of masculinity and femininity practice. Empirical data come from a one-year study of tomb…
Gender, visible bodies and schooling
In this paper, I consider two interrelated problems. The first concerns the issues and difficulties involved in studying how children think about their bodies, in the schooling setting. The second involves an attempt to bring together a series of phenomena around which gendered media and social panics are being constructed in the UK and elsewhere. I discuss the problems concerned with the practicalities of studying children's bodies in a setting …
Bodies, identities and performances
In this paper I seek to address a series of tensions in the ways we think, write and speak about gender in classrooms and playgrounds, and in the language we use to describe children and their behaviour. I shall examine some of the concepts we use for describing gender relations among children and consider the extent to which they are still useful. My main focus is on hegemonic masculinity; the female as Other; and ‘doing’ boy or girl, masculinit…
Concepts of Fairness in Marriage and Divorce
Discourses of fairness are bound up with Western ideals of companionate marriage. They are also central to the ways people talk about their approaches to divorce, especially in relation to the division of property and finances. How fairness is understood within marriage, however, is gendered, with husbands more likely to take equity-based approaches and wives equality-based approaches. In this article I discuss previous research on how fairness i…
Researching sensitive issues online
This article is concerned with methodological issues arising from a retrospective partially insider study of a divorce support website. I argue that, while we need to conduct detailed retrospective studies into the development of online communities, such studies bring methodological challenges, due to their retrospective nature, the potential size of the data set, and the problems of dealing with past manifestations of sites that continue to func…
The problem of gender categorisation
Developments in the field of gender theory as applied to education since the 1970s are briefly reviewed in order to highlight key challenges and debates around gender categorisation and identification in gender and education. We argue that conundrums of categorisation have haunted, and continue to haunt, the field of gender theory, and empirical applications (such as the case of education) in particular. We explain how we have attempted to addres…
Sociology (36 obras) · Psychology (30 obras) · Gender Studies (24 obras) · Political science (20 obras) · Gender Roles and Identity Studies (17 obras) · Gender Studies (17 obras) · Social Psychology (12 obras) · Masculinity (10 obras) · Pedagogy (10 obras) · Developmental psychology (9 obras)