Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Tables
Preface
Chapter 1: The education of "successful" girls in single-sex schools
Chapter 2: A curriculum of girlhood
Chapter 3: A place for girls
Chapter 4: High hopes and curriculum as "makeover"
Chapter 5: High hopes and a pedagogy of privilege
Chapter 6: Cruel futures, and other postfeminist failures
Chapter 7: A critical education for girls
Appendix
Index
Stephanie D. McCall is Assistant Professor in Professional and Secondary Education at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania, USA.
Stephanie McCall takes us on an eye-opening journey through two
all-girls schools to show how girls are positioned differently
while still understood as subjects of infinite capacity. McCall’s
engaging book brilliantly explores how ‘girl power’ rhetoric about
girls’ optimistic futures does not account for oppressions,
privileges, and the sexism that permeates our culture. Instead of
understanding single-sex schools as bastions of female empowerment
where girls can freely thrive in a supportive female environment,
using rich ethnographic data, McCall deftly shows how girls are
produced within curricular knowledges shaping them in profound,
demanding, and invisible ways. Far from ‘genderless’, all-girls
schools operate through carefully crafted notions of girlhood that
are mobilized differently in public and private educational
settings. This book is necessary reading for anyone interested in
gender and education, particularly as these topics intersect with a
culture that promises girls equality and achievement but delivers
little more than ‘postfeminist fantasies’.- Shauna Pomerantz is
Associate Professor of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University,
Canada. She is co-author or Smart Girls: Success, School, and the
Myth of Post-FeminismMany books have been written about single-sex
schooling. This one takes the discussion to an especially timely
level. Here Stephanie McCall offers a clear-eyed view of all-girls’
schooling across the spectrum of gender, race, ethnicity, religion,
and social class that draws on both empirical research and insights
from practical experience in coeducational and single-sex
institutions. This is a must-read for anyone interested not simply
in all-girls’ schools, but in the larger context in which they
operate, including current discourses on knowledge, the myth of
"having it all", social and economic barriers to success, and what
it means to be "female" in a world in which gender fluidity is a
reality to be recognized.- Rosemary Salomone is the Kenneth Wang
Professor of Law at St John's University School of Law, USAAs
leaders of an all-girls school, we must see every single member of
our school community as connected agents of change. Our work is to
learn together to do two things: first, recognize the systems and
symptoms of paternalism and white supremacy; second, build concrete
strategies to replace those systems in tangible ways. Doing this
work requires a learning space where we can examine the
complexities of identity, we each bring with us, understand the
stories we tell ourselves about what girlhood means, and
re-envision our roles in shaping and enacting this definition.
Stephanie's passion for this work is rooted deeply in her knowledge
of the seriousness of the stakes and of the purpose of theory: to
inform and inspire action. Because she rolls up her sleeves and
does the work alongside schools, she brings unique perspective and
a clear commitment to action throughout this book. This should be a
foundational text not just for all-girls schools, but for all
schools.- Tara Haskins is the School Leader and Tom Krebs is the
CEO of Kansas City Girls Preparatory Academy, Missouri, USA
Stephanie McCall takes us on an eye-opening journey through two
all-girls schools to show how girls are positioned differently
while still understood as subjects of infinite capacity. McCall’s
engaging book brilliantly explores how ‘girl power’ rhetoric about
girls’ optimistic futures does not account for oppressions,
privileges, and the sexism that permeates our culture. Instead of
understanding single-sex schools as bastions of female empowerment
where girls can freely thrive in a supportive female environment,
using rich ethnographic data, McCall deftly shows how girls are
produced within curricular knowledges shaping them in profound,
demanding, and invisible ways. Far from ‘genderless’, all-girls
schools operate through carefully crafted notions of girlhood that
are mobilized differently in public and private educational
settings. This book is necessary reading for anyone interested in
gender and education, particularly as these topics intersect with a
culture that promises girls equality and achievement but delivers
little more than ‘postfeminist fantasies’.-Shauna Pomerantz is
Associate Professor of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University,
Canada. She is co-author or Smart Girls: Success, School, and the
Myth of Post-Feminism.
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