September 19, 2005
Tsolidis, Georgina. Schooling, Diaspora and Gender: Being Feminist and Being Different. Feminist Educational Thinking Ser. Philadelphia: Open UP, 2001.
Tsolidis argues that “schooling, particularly secondary schooling, is a significant site for processes of identification,” and that gender is a particularly significant part of these processes (10). Arguing as a feminist but from a diasporic position as an ethnic minority in Australia, Tsolidis endorses a feminism that does not “assume a unitary voice”: “My overall intention is to argue that it is possible and valuable to be both feminist and different” (3, 2). She writes as an antiracist feminist, and turns to education as a significant site for “potential means of changing both society and the lives of individuals” (4). Because schooling provides such an important context for adolescent identity formation, Tsolidis’ focus on secondary education has implications for identity—and society—at large.
In Chapter 2, “Ethnicity as constructed difference: being an ‘ethnic woman’ in Australia,” Tsolidis describes the “Roles and representations of ethnic minority women in Australia society more generally,” whereas in Chapter 3, “Equality OR difference: representations of ethnic minority girls in education policy,” she addresses the essentialist understanding of girls endorsed by mainstream Australian feminism and the ways that essentialism silences difference (11). Chapters 4 (“Going out or staying in: sexuality, schooling and assimilation”) and 5 (“‘Good’ students and ‘good’ schooling”) discuss two Australian multicultural studies, noting the way in which multiculturalism can remain “silent on the question of class and gender,” and yet how uncritical cultural stereotyping can lead to a “repertoire of racism and gender and class subordination” (55, 101). Tsolidis articulates her understanding of effective feminism in Chapter 6, “A feminist praxis of difference,” and uses this description to take up “Equality AND difference” in Chapter 7.
Addressing racism as well as gender, the feminist educator has “an obligation to assist in the construction of schools as spaces which allow students to contest, negotiate and recreate cultural identifications” (126). By inhabiting the expected role of “enculturat[ing] the next generation,” women have the power to “contest-negotiate, and reinterpret new cultural understandings” (126). It is up to the teacher to give these young women such a space to exercise their agency and create new racial and gendered identifications.