A national approach to gender equity policy in Australia: another ending, another opening?

This paper focuses upon Gender Equity: A Framework for Australian Schools, the current policy addressing gender in schools at the national level in Australia. I take this textual moment and consider the ways in which girls are constructed within the policy with the explicit aim of drawing out and centring issues surrounding girls in schools. Gender Equity: A Framework for Australian Schools was released in 1997 and it is argued that the lack of review process indicates a closure for gender policy from the federal Australian government. Rather, I argue that there is now an emerging policy scene that centres boys' needs, sidelining the many issues still to be adequately addressed for girls. To illustrate this I pursue the mainstreaming and downstreaming of gender, and the linkage of boys and literacy at various levels of policy debate. The analysis closes with a consideration of the need to pursue the complexgender scene in school settings noting that while the discourse of girls in schools seems to have been closed down to some extent, it is necessary for feminists (and pro-feminists) to also create new openings for ongoing debates surrounding gender and schooling.