The erasure of sexual harassment in elite private boys’ schools

Abstract

This paper details the gendered oppressions of young female teachers in three elite boys’ private schools in Australia. Drawing on Foucauldian analytics and the theory of practice architectures, we explore the discourses and practices that work together to silence and disempower female teachers in these schools. There is an unevenness in these accounts, as there are also female teachers in the study who appear to successfully circumnavigate these issues. However, this apparent wherewithal of some female teachers speaks to the internalisations of gender oppression as much as it does to the teachers’ agency. This paper illuminates these gender oppressions, which are made possible because they remain hidden and unchallenged. The findings of this study raise thorny issues for school-based leadership, but also for educational policy-makers, because gender oppression is seemingly inextricable from the social practices that elite private boys’ schools both advocate and rely on for positional advantage in schooling markets.