‘Treat me as a human being—don’t look at me as a woman’: femininities and professional identities in further education

This article draws on case study research in two further education (FE) colleges to explore the ways in which women administrators, lecturers and managers negotiate and construct their (gendered, racialized and classed) identities in the workplace. The context is that of the restructuring of education, the ‘feminization’ of educational management, and debates about the de‐ or re‐professionalization of lecturers. The article illustrates how discourses of femininity are drawn upon in the construction of professional identities, and are used to both perform and resist new worker identities and gendered power relations. Despite optimistic discourses about a ‘female future’, the restructuring of further education does not, as yet, appear to have resulted in any notable challenge to the gendered, racialized and classed FE labour market.