Childhood, neo‐liberalism and the feminization of education

This paper brings together analyses from childhood and gender studies with macro‐economic analysis to offer new perspectives on current educational debates, including the current role of education within broader discussions. Girls' recent (supposed) educational success is situated within economic and cultural contexts to explore how discussions of gender, childhood and development both express and, paradoxically, obscure these. Analysis of popular discourses surrounding children and childhood is used to suggest that the sentimentalized (girl) child has come to represent a new neo‐liberal subject, such that contemporary discourses of childhood and feminization typically distract attention from more meaningful structural analyses ‐ that would crucially include further analyses of gender and childhood. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Rebecca Lawthom and Lynne Segal for helping me on the way with this paper, by their comments and papers, and Daniel Troehler for inviting me to present an earlier version of this paper to colleagues at the University of Zurich in November 2002. Notes * Discourse Unit/Women's Studies Research Centre, Department of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Manchester Metropolitan University, Hathersage Road, Manchester M13 0JA, UK. Email: e.burman@mmu.ac.uk 1. AS levels are the British intermediate qualifications between GCSEs (taken at age 16, approximately) and A levels (at 18 years). 2. The reverse however did not occur, with research documenting a longstanding trend of disruptive girls attracting a doubly negative evaluation: devalued as girls and even more so as non‐typical girls (Davies, Citation1984; Clarricoates, Citation1987; Connolly, Citation1998). 3. This reflects the ambivalent status of work under capitalism—as something to engage with as a marker of 'growing up' as well as a route to escape or to confirm the possibility of escape from this through the status accorded 'childhood' as a period free from work. 4. And here we might note that the enduring media preoccupation about men's hatred of shopping suggests that even since the invention (and perhaps demise) of the 'new man', alongside the emergence of 'retail therapy', such tasks as shopping attract little male value. 5. However, as Reay (Citation2001, p. 162) notes, 'Despite the rhetorics of "new management" it seems likely that in order to obtain professional success women at, or near the top of, institutional hierarchies have had to modify some, if not all, of the qualities associated with femininity'. 6. Though it is also worth noting that such metaphors form an explicit resource within contemporary political theory—see, e.g., Jenson and Saint‐Martin (Citation2002). 7. Freud's discussion of jokework is arguably the most social of his account of unconscious functioning—indeed it could be seen as indicating the structure of a social unconscious (Dalal, Citation1998; Hopper, Citation2002). 8. Titled in French Le fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain ('The fabulous fate/destiny of Amelie Poulain') (dir: J.P. Jeanet, France, 2001), in English goes under the shortened title of Amelie (which perhaps also does some work of generalization and universalization, in contrast to the more specified—with first and last names—identification of the French title). 9. One of the promotional images shows Amelie holding a teaspoon to her face, as if it is she herself that we are consuming. 10. C.f. Terry Eagleton's (Citation1981) comment about the popular image of anti‐humanists as being people who would want to take candy away from children. 11. This is bolstered by the addendum offered by the said friends etc who say: 'don't analyse it!'—thus indicating that at some level they know their pleasure covers up some more sinister aspects. 12. A third poster shows her sitting in the stalls of a cinema, gazing up at an invisible film screen (which in the film also indicates her efforts to project into reality her own life's desires). 13. See Burman (Citation2002, 2003) for an exploration of the therapeutic consequences of this. 14. A further reading of the images is also to normalize adult prostitution, and pathologizes old age. Thus we see other consequences of political strategies that reply upon developmental rhetorics. 15. Note the discourse of sweetness discussed earlier. 16. C.f. the discussion/reception of the film as being racist for its portrayal of a homogenous city with the only non‐White character portrayed as in need of help. Additional informationNotes on contributorsErica BurmanFootnote* * Discourse Unit/Women's Studies Research Centre, Department of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Manchester Metropolitan University, Hathersage Road, Manchester M13 0JA, UK. Email: e.burman@mmu.ac.uk