The troublesome concept of 'gender': questions from feminist theology

This chapter explores the issue of ‘gender’ in order to highlight some of the tensions this concept poses for Catholic education. The term ‘gender’ is now a key idea in educational thinking, policy and practice. However, the term ‘gender’ is the subject of controversy in the Catholic Church with the Vatican (The Holy See, 2008) challenging the usage of this term in international documents on human rights. On the one hand, we seem faced with a clash between the understandings of the concept of ‘gender’ that inform equality policies and practice in education and the position of the Catholic Church with regard to the concept of ‘gender’ itself. On the other hand, however, feminist theorists have also questioned this concept of ‘gender’ (Butler, 1990, 1993; Cornell, 1992; Braidotti, 1994) and so the issues are more complex than simply the Church rejecting this concept while others promote its use. Therefore, it is important to examine why the term ‘gender’ is proving so troublesome and the questions this poses for Catholic education. This chapter draws from feminist theology and wider feminist scholarship on the philosophy of gender and education to identify the significant tensions that lie at the heart of the Catholic education for girls and young women. The tensions are inherent in the idea of gender and so are conceptual as well as practical and have significant consequences for the educational aspirations and experiences of girls and women and indeed boys and men. This chapter does not adopt a specific feminist position but instead, by drawing on different feminist discussions, seeks to illuminate the complex and contested concept of ‘gender’ and to examine critically the implications of the various constructions of this concept for Catholic education. The chapter begins with a discussion of gender and feminist theology. Here two aspects are explored, firstly the place of women’s experience and secondly our understandings of the concept of gender. In the final section I consider the implicati