The Future of Girlhood Studies

Girlhood studies and identities will be more focused on education and technology.  Educational researchers who subscribe to postmodern feminist theories stress that the female’s position, in reference to culture and class identities, is not homogeneous.  Feminist educational theorists believe that education’s role is to provide an individual with the skills and habits necessary for participating within patriarchal society.  Socialization through education is the way social and cultural identity is attained.  Accordingly, the concept of cultural transmission (how culture communicates values) shows how culture, and in particular expectations of the genders, can be transmitted from one generation to the next.  Student cultures act as they have been taught.  Schools are instrumental in solidifying this identity formation, and resistance to school is a resistance to oppression and restricted life opportunities.  For the some girls, education is seen as a means to save them from the lower class lifestyles.   

The ideology that identity is formed within schools is the culmination of what is happening to adolescents who find themselves racially and ethnically marginalized.  It is very possible that in the future, girl studies’ will investigate adolescents and how they assert their voices in resistance to cultural and ethnic social categories.