Author: Jayme Wearn
Wearn, Jayme, 2025 In the wilderness and the lab, one learns to be a woman: the gendered constitution of experience in male-dominated school subjects, Flinders University, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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Both the wilderness and the laboratory are spaces from which women have been excluded throughout history. Today, girls in male-dominated educational spaces, such as STEM and outdoor education, continue to be outnumbered and face barriers to participation. Through educational and social practices, gender identities are (re)produced in complex assemblages of historical, social, and political forces specific to each disciplinary domain. In the context of STEM, there has been significant literature, policy and interventional attention directed to increasing girls’ participation, but little movement. Outdoor education literature explores its benefits for girls but acknowledges the field’s erasure of women despite efforts to address systemic inequalities. This remarkable resistance to transformation underscores the necessity for alternative narratives that accommodate the complex interplay of gender within these domains. Rather than addressing isolated barriers to girls' participation, this study troubles the foundational constructions of gender and disciplinary knowledge that fundamentally shape our understanding of girls’ participation and lived experience.
Drawing on data emerging from a series of focus groups with 29 girls in Years 9-11 and semi-structured interviews with three teachers, this thesis explored the overarching research question: In what ways, if any, are girls’ experiences in STEM and outdoor education subjects shaped by gendered discourses and practices? The methodological approach privileges two critical elements: participants' articulation and interpretation of their own experiences and the application of new materialist feminisms and posthumanist approaches. Combining these elements generates a richly textured portrayal of girls’ educational journeys.
The contributions of the participants presented in this thesis reveal a crucial asymmetry in the gendered ontology of STEM and outdoor education spaces: while the masculine subject dissolves into a presumed neutral, universal figure, feminine identities have been positioned in these subjects as other. Nevertheless, experiences of in/equalities and belonging emerge as fluid contingent upon individual and collective material-discursive-affective entanglements. Emerging from the findings are opportunities for transformative material-discursive practices: creating opportunities for young women to engage in meaningful intra-actions with STEM and outdoor spaces/objects; fostering collaborative, reflexive practices that challenge binary thinking about individual capacities; actively contesting the masculinization of educational assemblages; resisting superficial feminization or empowerment initiatives in favour of situated learning responsive to diverse identities; and cultivating authentic educational relationships built on trust and shared passion.
This thesis aims to tell stories that matter in new ways. By examining how gender materializes at the intersecting nodes of bodies, technologies, environments, and practices within STEM and outdoor education spaces, the work reveals gender as a fluid assemblage that continually reconfigures itself. This conceptualization destabilises traditional gender binaries present in girls’ experiences STEM and outdoor education, challenging the apparent neutrality of educational practices. In summary, it argues for the disruption of both constructions of gender and of male-dominated subjects in the pursuit of fostering belonging. The study's original contribution lies in mapping these complex intra-active processes within educational contexts, thereby opening pathways for interventions that foster transformative relationships and novel forms of agential subjectivity beyond restrictive gender norms.
Keywords: gender, STEM, outdoor education, secondary education, new materialist feminisms, educational assemblages, posthumanism, girls in STEM, girls in Outdoor Education
Subject: Humanities thesis
Thesis type: Doctor of Philosophy
Completed: 2025
School: College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Supervisor: Kristin Natalier