The SAGE Encyclopedia of Education and Gender

Gender is a prominent and often-contested issue in educational settings across the globe. While understandings of gender and academic and professional potential, roles and expectations, and opportunities and abilities have greatly expanded over the past century in various contexts, schools remain sites of intense conflict around definitions of gender and gendered access and expression. For example, in the US there is growing public backlash against recognizing gender diversity in schools, with educators being called to make their teaching more inclusive, while schools debate what representations are permissible and parents bring legal action against school districts over recognizing students’ chosen gender expression. Furthermore, educational access and outcomes have nuanced gendered patterns to which educators and educational researchers must be attentive. For example, in India, growing literacy rates among youth now show gender parity, while across age groups men show higher literacy rates than women. In Afghanistan, girls have recently been restricted from attending school. Globally, school attendance among youth who menstruate is reduced because of lack of access to menstrual health products. In the US (and many Western countries), women are more likely to graduate high school and college than men, with the US showing the greatest degree attainment disparities between women and men of color. However, US women still advance in STEM fields at persistently lower rates than men, a pattern contrasted by the rapid rise of women earning the majority of STEM degrees in China. These examples begin to show the nuance of gendered educational patterns, with perspectives growing in complexity as our understandings of gender shift and change, moving beyond the traditional gender binary.

Yet, despite rapid changes in gendered educational patterns and in how education scholars conceptualize and study gender, the field lacks a recent, comprehensive resource text. This two-volume encyclopedia, a unique compendium on gender and education with an expansive and inclusive approach, will address this urgent need. Featuring a broad range of 250-300 well-researched, short articles written by global experts in the field, this much-needed guide will be an essential, first-stop resource for students and scholars exploring issues of gender and education, as well as educators caught in a rapidly changing and nuanced field.

A central strength of this encyclopedia will be its broad, nuanced, and inclusive exploration of gender. Entries will explore topics of gender and education comprehensively, through an intersectional lens, covering issues of gender equity, identity, and inclusivity in education that impact women, girls, men, boys, trans, genderqueer, and nonbinary people. As education is an interdisciplinary field, the Encyclopedia will draw from perspectives in sociology, anthropology, psychology, policy studies, leadership, philosophy, history, economics, law, curriculum studies, public health, race & ethnic studies, and women, gender, & queer studies.