ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the material and symbolic war on women that are playing out through contemporary educational reform. The gendered subtext of educational reform underlies the unequal gendered labor force and the historical association of rationality with men and emotionality and experience with women. The chapter includes a consideration of the academic response to gender inequality through the discourse of performativity. In the humanities, performativity theory is one widely used critical theory of gender. Scholars writing in education who have discussed performativity include Henry Giroux, Robin Truth Goodman, Stephen Ball, and Deborah Youdel. Contemporary theories of performativity offers a theory of identity formation most influenced by Judith Butler who draws on the philosophers Julia Kristeva, Jacqueline Rose, Monique Wittig, Simone de Beauvoir, Joan Riviere, Gayle Rubin, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Georg Hegel. Performativity emphasizes that social interactions are performances and that identity is a performance rather than being essential, authentic, and pre-formed prior to actions.
