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Gender-Bending Anthropological Studies
of Education
AMY STAMBACH
Universityof Wisconsinat Madison
Anthropologicalstudies of gender have shifted focus in the past four
decades. The study of gender, anthropologistshave come to realize,
goes beyond analysis of women, sex roles, and sexuality. We used to
look at exotic kinship and marriagemodels, in which women served as
objectsof exchange (L vi-Strauss1969),and we used to talk about universal sexual asymmetry as though it were a basis of social structure
(Leach1977).Butthe focus today has shifted to examinethe ethnohistorical roots of gender ideologies and the historicaland materialcircumstancesthatshape genderrelationsin marketsand families(di Leonardo
1991;Ortner 1996).Indeed, many researchersnow focus on gender as
metaphor,arguing that gender reflectsother aspects of culture:general
values, relationshipsof power and authority,the creationand maintenance of group boundaries and identities (Lutkehaus1995;Strathem
1987).
We who study education have been somewhat slow in making this
analytic shift. Yes, our anthropologypredecessorstook gender into account, but even MargaretMead and EleanorBurkeLeacockargue that
gender is about more than male and female social roles. Like others in
FranzBoas'scircle,Mead (1928)urges anthropologiststo counterwidely
held assumptionsaboutmale dominanceand female subservience.And
Leacock(1978)argues that gender is not simply what men and women
do or what boys and girls differentlyachieve in school;rather,it is a vehicle throughwhich people talkaboutwider formsof inequality.Several
contemporarystudies frame"gender"in broad terms of social inequalities (see, for example, Holland and Eisenhart1990;Levinson 1998;Luttrell 1997).But much of the currentresearchin educationaljournalsand
conferencestends to focus on girls'voices, women's teaching,and patriarchalauthority,themes thattypicallyreproduceNorth Americanreaders' cultural views about gender and education and present gender in
socially staticand sex-specificways.1
The problem with defining gender in terms of sex roles and sexuality
is that doing so perpetuatesWesternculturalassumptionsabout teaching, parenting,and the private-publicdichotomy. Studies thatexamine
gendered divisions of labor often cast the home as a private space, the
school as public,and women and men as normativelyinvolved in either
one or the other.Sex roles and sexualitymight very well be importantin
&Education
30(4):441-445.
Anthropology
Quarterly
Copyright? 1999,AmericanAnthropological
Association.
441
442
& EducationQuarterly
Anthropology
Volume 30, 1999
some of our ethnographicstudies,but focusing on them runs the risk of
freezing women in particularlife stages and of overlookinghow boys
and men are defined as age-gradedand gendered persons.Countering
this literaturewith specifically"masculine-oriented"research,as is the
currentturn in some areasof gender studies, reinforcesthe notions that
sex is naturally dimorphicand that gender correspondswith biology,
two presumptionsthat are crediblychallengedby recentanthropological researchon intersexuality(see Herdt 1994).
What has happened?Are we sufferingfrom academicamnesia?Are
we forgettingthat anthropologistswho wrote about gender and education in the 1970s-and earlier-were themselves wary of conceptualizing gender narrowlyas "whatmen and women do"?Are we forgetting
that feminist anthropologistssince the 1970shave worked hard to illustrate how gender stands for inequalities throughout society as a
whole-even for economic delocalization, as when we speak of the
feminizationof poverty?Perhapswe are.But our own parochialismhas
also driven us into an old-fashionedparadigm.Ournarrowfocus on the
school has returnedus to think basically of gender as what girls and
boys, men and women, do. "Sexrole selection"is oftenthe way U.S.educatorsand studentsthinkaboutgender,but it may not be the best way to
approachour subjectanthropologically.As a framework,sex role selection may be appropriatefor sociological gender studies. I am thinking
here of work thathas been done on the differentialacademicopportunities and outcomesfor girlsandboys (see Grantet al. 1994).Butfor an anthropology that seeks to understandhow gender is intertwinedwith all
aspects of social life, it is possibly too narrow. As BarrieThorne(1993)
notes, the fact that schooling structuressocial life along sex dimorphic
lines is a phenomenonfor us to explain,not a startingpoint for anthropological research.
In a 1984 special issue of Anthropologyand EducationQuarterly,the in-
spirationfor this currentissue, GeorgeD. Spindlernotes thatthe focus of
"currenteducationalanthropologyhas been so exclusively on the classroom,or at least on the school,thatthe culturalcontextualization,as well
as the immediate community contextualization,is not developed in
most publishedworks"(1984:7).His point might be extendedto anthropological writing on gender/education in the interveningyears,though
it need not speak for all of it, nor for all of what is to come. It is not too
late to carrySpindler'spoint even furtherinto gender/education studies. Doing so would connectour works to anthropologists'workin other
cornersof our field.
In light of changesgoing on aroundus, it seems timely and excitingto
contemplatehow we might link gender and education to more general
values embedded in social organization.We might, for instance, consider how the teacher-studentrelationshipreflectsgenderedrelationsof
authority, discipline, and knowledge that operate in other social domains-the neighborhood,government,and home, for example. What
Stambach
Studies
Gender-Bending
443
are the workingsof power at local, state,and nationallevels, and how do
they link to gender inequalitiesin schools?Whatare the competinggender arrangementsin North Americanfamilies, and how do they intertwine with conceptualizationsof students'roles?Answers requirelooking at social life beyond the classroom. They may even involve
consideringthat culturaltendenciesto emphasizegender differencesin
schools conceal other inequalities;materialinequalitiesbetween social
groups may be hidden by a culturalemphasison inequalitybetween the
sexes.
We might also ask how the past 30 years of strugglefor gender equity
in U.S. educationrevealschangingculturalideas aboutpersonhoodand
identity-a theme that moves us out of classroom ethnography yet
keeps us firmlyrooted in issues of education.Why, for instance,has the
subjectof sexual orientationrecentlyeclipsed questions of educational
equity?Why are campuses and the media churningwith LGBTQissues
but comparatively quiet on education and affirmative action for
women?2Answers, I suspect, have to do with demographicshifts and
with the representationof women in higher education,yet they also reflect culturaltendenciesto identify genderedpersonsin termsof sexuality and to think about sexuality in terms of power. This could be explored in connectionwith universitycampusculture.
Finally, we might extend gender and education to the international
scene and ask, How does gender provide a categoryby which we define-and defend-international human rights?How does the law protect women's rights,and how areuniversalgenderrightsunderstoodlocally? How do schools contribute to these understandings?Looking
abroadwould furtherthe comparativeapproachthatMead and Leacock
so effectivelydeveloped. Genderdoes not go away with these questions,
but neitherdoes it stop with what men and women do.
All of this is anotherway of saying that anthropologistsof education
arewell poised at the excitingcrossroadsof genderand educationtoday.
We are in positions to look at the ways gender links to conceptualizations of the educated citizen, the formationof human rights, and local
discourses of power and authority.If we are to continue the anthropological projectthat Spindler envisioned-of connecting classrooms to
communitiesand social worlds-we might push ourselves to reflecton
how people use gender to speak about many aspects of social life. Even
though people around the world are talking increasinglyabout gender
as though it was a thing,genderremains,like cultureitself,largelyinvisible to "fish"who areswimming in it.3And even though some anthropological studies of girls' voices and teachers'maternalismeffectively reveal culture's hidden dimensions, the fact that we focus sometimes
exclusively on them preventsus from seeing genderas a culturalheuristic forunderstandingsocialorganization.Thetime seems ripe,and exciting, to broadenour approach.
444
Anthropology& EducationQuarterly
Volume 30, 1999
Amy Stambachis an assistantprofessorin the Departmentof EducationalPolicy Studiesat the Universityof Wisconsinat Madison,where she holds appointments in Women'sStudiesand AfricanStudies.
Notes
1. Thereareexceptions,includingFine 1991,Fordham1996,and Lee 1997.
2. "LGBTQ"
stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual,transgendered,and questioning.
3. HereI am paraphrasingClyde Kluckhohn,who writes, "Itwould hardlybe
fish who discoveredthe existenceof water"(1949:11).This quote was provided
and sharedby MaryBushnellon the Councilon Anthropologyand Education
memberlistserv,February19,1998.
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