Genderscape

During the years of my education and early career, the genderscape of the natural sciences was transformed by a broader inclusion of women.

I will now return to an exploration of how such prescriptive responses to gendered behaviours creates a genderscape in the early years classroom which can limit the options for both girls and boys.

Thus, for example, in the 1990s, the mythopoetic strand of the American men's movement drew on ancient myths in order to argue for a natural, pre-ordained gender order, in spite of the fact that these myths derived from a patriarchal, feudal past whose genderscape was no more natural than the present one.