Education: A Site of Desire and Threat for Australian Girls.

In recent years there has been an international backlash against the status of girls as learners, with many people asserting that boys are suffering from new forms of educational disadvantage as girls achieve academically. This paper develops the notion of the space-between, a heuristic device to analyze and explain girls' experiences of contemporary events in education. It explores the lack of change in post-school outcomes for girls, the insignificant degree of change in the participation of girls in male-dominated curriculum areas, the endemic nature of sexual harassment, and the inequitable use of school resources by girls. Women's experiences in the space-between revolve around the conflicting discourses of equality with men and of male supremacy in which women are constructed as transgressors on male territory. Desire for achievement and threat to masculinity are dialectical experiences of girls' schooling in the Australian context. (Contains 24 references.) (SLD)