In recent years there have been many discussions about boys’ education, school class performances, and the situation in kindergardens and schools. The relatively few male employees in kindergardens and schools have been presented as a problem of gender inequality, and these institutions have been represented as both feminized and as normalised in a masculine way, and they have been pointed out as heteronormatively normalizing certain bodies and interests. A multitude of different practices and discourses can be found: While on the same time men are on ”paternity leave” and participate in the daily care for children, going beyond bounds of gender are encouraged, and a pedagogical focus on gender are now popular in kindergardens and schools, the labour market, young people’s choice of education, spare time interests, clothing, and toys are still strongly gender segregated. Furthermore, earlier theories of socialization have been critizised in recent years, and today children are understood as active and negotiating subjects which in interplay with other children and grown-ups create and recreate excisting gender orders.

The aim of the workshop is to discuss gender, education, and upbringing in a broad perspective. Therefore, we encourage presentations of new research on how masculinity and femininity are created, performed, embodied, transposed, and integrated with class, etnicity, age, and other orders such as more theoretical and methodological discussions. Contributions could be both sociological analyses and presentations which are rooted in art history, fashion studies, pedagogy, sport studies, history, political science, business economy, and other disciplines.

Questions which can be discussed could e.g. be:

How are different masculinities and femininities created, negotiated, and learned in gropus of friends, in kindergardens, schools, and other institutions, in spare time activities, and in different family constellations?

Which understandings of masculinity and femininity, bodies, interests, identifications, and counter identifications, power orders, and hierarcies are created and sustained in teaching, in breaks, in gender pedagogy, in curriculums and teachers’ rituals, textbook texts and pictures, the arrangement of rooms, the division of different school subjects, in play, computer games, films, different music cultures, on chat sites, and other activities which today are popular with children and young people, and how are they handled?

How are deviations created together with normalization practices in different groups of children and young people at different ages, in different school environments, and in different spare time activities?

Which understandings of gender are created and normalized in teachers’ conversations and actions and at parents’ educations?

Seen in a historical perspective, how have the upbringing and education of boys and girls changed, and how have boys, girls, and ideals of upbringing been created and portrayed in the arts?

Have ideals of upbringing and practices changed through the shared parental leave and men’s increased participation in children’s everyday life?

What does men and women do together with children?

Which understandings and descriptions of boys and girls, upbringing and education are created and supported in research on masculinity and other research?

How can gender research premises and models of interpretation be said to have formed today’s understandings of masculinity and femininity and of boys and girls behaviour and needs?