Making ‘Hope Practical’ Rather than ‘Despair Convincing’: feminist post‐structuralism, gender reform and educational change

Abstract This paper explores the work and effects of gender reform in schools through the use of feminist post‐structuralist theory. Focusing on the discourses designed to enhance girls’ post‐school options, it examines the ways in which teachers and students, particularly girls, write, read and rewrite these discourses and on the basis of this suggests some new directions for researching, theorising and practicing gender reform in schools. In particular, it raises questions about the ways in which feminist pedagogies in schools deal with the female body, difference, pleasure and pain.