ABSTRACT
Gender is of strong relevance in education, particularly given education's socialising function and its role as a potential agent of social change. In the social processes gender roles, norms and their behavioural expression are learned and perpetuated in ways specific to the host culture, through various primary and secondary socialising agents. In some countries, where gender recognition legislation exists, various restrictive forms of expert certification are required. In education, these issues are reflected at multiple levels, including in policies, in institutionalcultures, in curricular options, in the segregation of toilets and changing facilities, and in varying degrees of violence and bullying. Seeing the body as a cultural situation, Judith Butler argues that gender and sexuality are contingent, assumed, and the product of identifications with figures within dominant narratives. Objects of desire are offered and substantially delimited through these same narratives, which are typically heteronormative.
