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Gender Post Truth Populism and Higher Education Pedagogies
Gender Post Truth Populism and Higher Education Pedagogies
To cite this article: Penny Jane Burke & Ronelle Carolissen (2018) Gender, post-truth
populism and higher education pedagogies, Teaching in Higher Education, 23:5, 543-547, DOI:
10.1080/13562517.2018.1467160
INTRODUCTION
Across varying global contexts, significant feminist contribution has been demonstrated
through gains in education, such as the high level of female participation in higher edu-
cation in many countries worldwide (Leathwood and Read 2009). Policies of access and
equity have contributed to growing diversity in higher education, and female students
have increasingly out numbered male students in many higher education contexts,
leading in some cases to processes of ‘gender mainstreaming’ (David 2016a). However,
the recent rise of populism in some regions of the world, together with the apparent res-
onance of ‘post-truth’ narratives, suggests an emerging formation of power concerned
with the undoing of hard-won gains in relation to gender and other intersecting forms
of inequality and difference. Increased incidences of the public articulation of misogynistic
and racist discourses (particularly via social media) and the apparent legitimation of these
practices in some high-profile instances (including the President of the United States of
America, Donald Trump), point to the ongoing and urgent need for feminist critique,
as well as wider social movements for women’s and LGBTQI rights and equalities. This
indeed has led to new social movements, such as #metoo against sexual violence and har-
assment, aiming to empower women to take a stand against institutionalized sexism. This
has been taken up by feminist scholars to explore
how the issues being raised by #metoo are manifest in the everyday practices of the contem-
porary university, what political and interpersonal tensions are brought forth by various
responses to the issues and how might we best respond to such tensions (Kenway et al. 2018).
Higher education has a key role to play in deconstructing the issues connected to contem-
porary social movements on emergent formations of power. This includes challenging the
anti-education, anti-expertise and anti-intellectual strands of post-truth populism, as well
as paying attention to the ways that gendered inequalities are potentially reproduced
through pedagogical spaces and formations of difference (Burke, Crozier, and Misiaszek
2017). This special issue pays close attention to the relationship between gender, power
and higher education pedagogies in the context of current political struggles and divisions
attached to competing claims to ‘truth’, ‘fake news’ and ‘post truth’ discourses.
It has been argued that processes of ‘gender mainstreaming’ have often been used ‘to
dismiss the necessity of feminist analysis’ (David 2016a). Gender mainstreaming tends
to ignore feminist analyses of context and difference with the ‘frequent use of gender-
neutral language in laws produc[ing] inattention to gendered power relations’ (David
you the reader’s pedagogical imagination to create spaces of critique and hope, to recog-
nize what and who is in the room, and to contribute to transformational practices through,
within and beyond higher education.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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