Feminist Talk and Talking about Feminism: teenage girls’ discourses of gender

Abstract

Abstract In this paper I compare talk about class and gender by public‐school girls (who classified themselves as upper class and whose parents are in socio‐economic class I and/or are landowners) and comprehensive‐school girls whose parents are in socio‐economic class III. The comprehensive‐school girls had no clear concepts or categorisation of their own class position. Girls in both schools shared a diagnosis and set of grievances about the injustices and dilemmas of girlhood. However, the extent to which they used feminist categories and their contentment with these categories varied markedly — the public‐school girls being notably more uncomfortable. I analyse and theorise these differences as discursive, rather than psychological or purely sociological. This analysis highlights the importance of self‐conscious and critical discursive practice by educators and pupils in the educational setting.