IAS Identities & Voices Seminar: Fourth Wave Feminism in Schools

IAS Identities & Voices Seminar

Fourth Wave Feminism in Schools: Exploring the discursive and affective constitution of feminist groups in and around secondary school spaces

Join the IAS to hear Hanna Retallack from the UCL Institute of Education talk about Fourth Wave Feminism in Schools. Hanna will be presenting research conducted in the light of theories that we are witnessing a ‘fourth wave’ of feminism in which there is a resurgence in young peoples’ engagement with issues related to gender and sexuality. Dr Claudia Lapping (Senior Lecturer, IoE) will be responding to Hanna's work.

Despite previous research pointing towards a de-politicisation of feminist projects in neo-liberal landscapes and the suggestion that critiques of over-arching systems of inequity are being cast aside in favour of a focus on improving affairs of the self, there is increasing evidence that a renewed and collectivised feminism has re-entered political and civic life. This presentation is concerned with the manifestation of this new ‘wave’ in the emergence of teenage feminist groups, in which schoolgirls can be seen to be actively transgressing neo-liberal and post-feminist narratives of ‘girl power’ and ‘successful girls’ in order to form feminist collectives within their schools. Much like the consciousness raising (or RAP) groups of the second wave, this involves face-to-face meetings that discuss issues around gender and sexuality, but within specifically school-based spaces that are able to enable, preclude, make and undo the emerging feminisms on their sites. A conceptualisation of schools as shifting spaces that play out varying modes of gendered acceptance and denial will work to support an understanding of the ways in which feminist groups are beginning to take up and create affective and discursive space within schools.