Schooling for Citizenship: A Site of Desire and Threat for Girls.

This paper offers a theoretical framework for understanding girls' experiences of schooling in contemporary Australia, and explores some of the ways in which education perpetuates women's lack of citizenship status. Equality-directed curriculum reforms require of girls that they attempt to transpose themselves from private realm status to a position as the equals of males in the public realm of the school. In this process, girls' status is defined as the "other" in relation to males in various ways which frequently define girls physically or sexually in terms of their bodies. The experiential space that is thus created has been named "Transpositional mediating space." Within this mediating space, girls are reminded with varying degrees of force, of the sexual contract, of their status as sexual property. This paper explores the barriers faced by young Australian women as they attempt to educate themselves and become upwardly mobile. The relationships of women's attempts to gain equal entry to male terrain and the prohibition exercised against these attempts are described. The paper focuses on the detrimental effects that a gender biased curriculum has on the physical and emotional well-being of Australian women as they attempt to better themselves through education. These effects are manifested through the women's reluctance in reporting cases of sexual violence, sexual harassment, family violence and sexual exploitation. (SR)