Writing Femininities and Masculinities – Representation of Gender in Students’ Narratives

The study that has been undertaken sets out to explore students’ representation of gender in their narratives. It therefore aims at describing in what way the students represent gender. The method used was a qualitative text analysis from a feminist perspective. The research was carried out in the south of Sweden, with twelve students in year nine. These students’ narratives represented gender in various ways. The stories included representations of gender with both traditional and unconventional notions. Some of the stories showed a hierarchical relationship between men and women portrayed in the stories, while others, in some cases, depicted gender equality. Male and female characters were more often than not dichotomised and a heteronormative standard seemed to be present. On the other hand, the narratives appeared to contradict the notion of the woman merely belonging to the private sphere since many female characters were ascribed a student’s or a working role. Nevertheless, it seemed as if the narratives were unsuccessful in creating untraditional masculinities, since the male characters were often described as hero, saviour or offender