ABSTRACT
In this chapter gender inequality in schooling is examined through a case study of aspects of the construction of masculine subjectivity in a boys’ school, and of the encounter of women teachers with its gender regime. The women are shown to be in an inequitable position in relation to their male colleagues in a variety of ways. In preparing the chapter I have revisited data collected during an ethnographic study that I conducted over several years as a participant observer in Christian Brothers College (CBC) in the provincial Australian city of Newburyport,1 in the early to mid 1980s.2
The study was published as Continuity and Change in Catholic Schooling: An Ethnography of a Christian Brothers College in Australian Society (Angus, 1988). Although identified early in the research as an important theme (Bates, 1986), gender was treated in that book as a general feature of organizational life at CBC but not as a central issue. While the organizing theme for the book was social and cultural production and reproduction, this amounted in effect to an analysis of the part played by the school in the production of suitable young men for a differentiated labour market. Tensions created in the school by religious changes, a changing population of teachers, curricular pressures and changes in the local political economy were illuminated. In particular, constructions of class, hegemony and high-status knowledge were examined in an attempt to explore the relationship between the school and particular status groups. Through an emphasis on agency and structure, school dynamics were located within larger social movements and within a broad social and economic context.
