Feminist school governor

[TheFeministGovernor]

I wanted to start a thread to get ideas from my fellow feminists, and share some success stories, and some battles still to win.

I am a governor at a primary school. I have a good relationship with the school, and need to tread carefully in this thread, as I absolutely do not want to out the school, or myself. I believe I'm coming from a good, well-intentioned place in writing this as, during the year I have been doing the role, I have already come across several things that have made me anxious from the point of feminism.

I wanted to use this thread to catalogue successes (small though they may be) where I have challenged and improved school policy, places where I have challenged and made no progress, and places where I have not yet managed to challenge.

I also wanted to get ideas from parents, governors, non-parents, non-governors on what else can be improved (within a governor's remit) pertaining to equality and feminism.

Successes

• Challenged school on all-male curriculum "heroes" for early years. Head promised to revise it to include female role models.

• Picked up on and removed use of "gender" rather than "sex'' in school policies pertaining to the Equality Act. (NB This was slightly pedantic in terms of actual application, but erosion and distortion of language is important.)

Challenged (not yet successful)

• Within the next 3 years, the school will be getting a new building, and they have planned unisex toilets throughout all ages. I raised in very plain language with the headteacher (male) that older girls may not want to use communal sinks if they have blood on their hands. He might be avoiding me at social events from now on.

• Raised the issue that all meeting rooms in the school are named after male authors. This I have been told will not be changed.

Yet to challenge

• As with many schools, there is a discrepancy between boys' achievement and girls, with boys coming off worse. The strategy is currently to teach - and I quote - "boy-friendly topics" like racing cars and superheroes. I barely know where to start with this one, let alone with the fact that their actual published aim is to help make boys "better" progress than the girls. (I do appreciate they mean progress from a lower starting point - not necessarily to make boys achieve more than the girls, but it seems wrong.)

Of course the root of the problem is OFSTED who don't seem to look at equality in sex as a key focus, so understandably it's not the head's focus either (and arguably, therefore, nor should it be a governor's).

But I thought this might be of interest to some.

Can the loos be 'superloos' i.e. self contained loo with sink etc. These can easily be mixed sex

Thank you for what you are doing. There was an article on TES recently about child on child sexual abuse in primary schools which could be useful reference for you. I’ll try to find it.

Here you go:

www.tes.com/news/exclusive-school-staff-failed-stop-six-year-old-playground-rapes

I would raise how a space away from boys, even if it is just a toilet, is a valuable safe space for girls.

I do agree with the ‘blood on hands’ stuff being less relevant in primary school.

My DD says she unwraps her sanitary products really quietly because she’s embarrassed. She’s at high school and in single sex toilets, and is no way flower. It might not be logical but she doesn’t want anyone to know she’s got her period.

If she was in year 6, and there’s a boy in the cubicle next to her, that would increased x10.

Small boys aren’t well known for their mature attitude to female bodily functions. I had a governor say to me ‘well it’s a perfectly natural thing and we all need to accept that’. Err, my 11 year old doesn’t need to be humiliated while we make the point thanks.

In years 5&6, when the children become body conscious and curious, let’s let them retain some privacy so they can get used to what’s going on with their bodies. Year 6 is a particularly tough hormonal year, it’s important to send the message to girls that they are entitled to their own space.

(Also a governor, also a feminist).

TheFeministGovernor
Schools must have single sex toilets and washing facilities for children aged 8 and over. Guidance summarised here in the last point:

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/719398/Gender-separation-guidance.pdf

Send this the the Head and whoever is overseeing the new build now before the plans go any further

Dear god what a horrific experience for that poor child. What a disgusting response from the school. On a human level let alone an appropriate professional level.

What I would also liked raised is the discrepancy of behaviour expectations. When biys shove eachother around ir act like little shits it's expected because they are boys. This does them.no favours nore their victims. Likewise it's just accepted and assumed girls will be catty and bitch. All these open plan mixed sex toilets use the opposite sex to break up stereotyped expected behaviour from the other side and it's dangerous for the girls.

Behaviour expectations should be the same. And undesirable behaviour dealt with. Schools seem to be going down the route of assuming everything can be solved by making it as difficult as possible for girls to attend school.

Thank you for what you are doing.

And any parent / governor in a school considering mixed sex toilets - ask the school -how many pupils are asking for mixed sex toilets? Have they checked?

Tumbleweed will be the answer. They won't have asked them and kids don't want them . Nobody wants mixed sex toilets. It's just that we're never asked.

Please don't let go of the unisex loos thing...
I had to go to a new school just for 1 year but I was very badly bullied there, and quite often had to run into the loo to get away from the bullies during lunch. The boys could obviously wait for me outside if they wanted but normally I'd stay in there till they got bored or until the bell rang.
If they could actually follow me in there banging on the door and things, shouting and laughing hearing me crying, it would have been quite different.

Obviously "any bullying should be dealt with" and at your school it likely would be, but even still to take away that one single sex space if a girl needs to just have a quick break from the boys is cruel.

Clearly personal experiences differ here, but that’s the whole point, isn’t it?

Dealing with period blood is not always neat and easy if you are at primary school.
Girls don’t know when they will start their periods unprepared, and many willl likely not have spare pants or pant liners kept in a private place at school with them somewhere handy.

Girls may be very stressed out by what they find and want to wash off blood from their pants at a sink in the school toilets. They may be worried about keeping clean or have fears about something out of their body causing a smell in class or whatever. So, stood at the sink, washing out pants and blood on hands.

*so are unprepared

My DD would have hated unisex loos. She withheld from doing a poo (sorry tmi) at school because the toilets were grubby and it was the wrong sort of paper. She also went into the girls toilet to change for pe as she was and still is, a very private person and didn't want to change in front of anyone.
Whilst we're rightly focusing on the disproportionate effect unisex loos have on girls, i bet there are also many boys who would hate them too.
Surely the best option is to have the proper choice of boys/girls and unisex.

I agree. If there are 10 loos there should be 4 girls', 4 boys' and 2 unisex

What's all the 'blood on hands' stuff? We won't be taken seriously if things are overblown all the time

Disagree. A lot of this mixed sex provision is being proposed and accepted by men who think a toilet is just a place to piss and shit and have given it zero thought beyond that. We need to talk about periods and all their accompanying logistical issues very loudly to get them to understand that for women they are so so much more.

@chickendrizzlecake Agree it needs to be a point made loudly but we can't come off as 'hysterical' and 'dramatic' because that'll give men an excuse to ignore what is being said

^ That’s not how it works.

Men can find hysteria and drama whatever they don’t agree with or don’t care to understand.

So women should tell the truth and loudly.

I am in a primary school. We have same sex toilets all the way through primary. But they are off each classroom so each class has its own three toilets in a little unit. There is absolutely no issue. Teacher usually encourages one at a time so girls can have plenty of time to wash their hands in private. Toilets are always fine. Maybe having lots of boys use toilets encourages a mess. After all at home they all use the same bathroom and have to leave it fit for the next person.
We also have a few private toilets with their own sinks that anyone is free to use at anytime..no questions asked. They are in a communal area.
The teachers toilets are also mixed and while l was a bit taken aback by that at first it has never been an issue. They have their own private sink though so no standing next to male colleague washing your hands..
I can imagine its more difficult in bigger schools and a total no no for Secondary.

After all at home they all use the same bathroom and have to leave it fit for the next person.
and at home there are usually no strangers coming in to use the toilets at the same time/shortly after... the home toilet situation doesn't apply to public toilets.

At home you are in control of who is in your toilet. Totally not a comparison

IME Adult men often leave even their own workplace ‘gender neutral’/mixed sex cubicle toilets unclean with piss all over the seat and don’t clean it up, or they leave the seat up at best.. let’s be honest here.

Since some of the non-disabled, lazy men at work started using the self-contained accessible toilet within the women’s toilets area, there is, to be frank, far more piss spatter.

I imagine one reason men don’t concern themselves with the hygiene of the facilities so much is because they don’t need to use them for the insertion of anything into their bodies (tampons, mooncups).

junebirthdaygirl
Presumably you have no Muslim or Jewish staff or children? Many from these faiths would never share toilets / washing facilities with the opposite sex.
So are the rights of those with the protected characteristic of religion / belief of no concern in your school?

There was a bit of a hoo-ha over unisex toilets on a local primary school parents page recently; one parent posted a link to an article and said she was concerned as she'd just found out that loos at the school were unisex, and asked other parents if they knew and what they thought.

Loads of parents were concerned; it wasn't entirely clear if the school is exclusively unisex or had a mix but either way lots of parents really did not like the concept at all.

Then a parent of a trans child (apparently been trans since very early primary school) kicked off and started saying people were transphobic, they thought their child was more accepted than that, etc etc. It was a bit bonkers as trans had NEVER been mentioned until than and it wasn't the source of most parents concerns. Most were talking about privacy, dignity, risk of "I'll show you mine" type nonsense going on and so on. Lots were shocked that they were there at all, lots said their children refused to use them

I'd certainly be very unhappy with exclusively unisex/mixed loos. Girls are contending with period issues at the end of primary school and tend to find it really embarrassing. I know a few at this stage at the moment who have sometimes had to ask for help (confusion over how to use pads, things like that) which would be far worse for them in a mixed block of loos.

Individual cubicles with individual sinks, straight off a hall or classroom - different ball game.

Op it's probably worth always referring to them as mixed sex Loos rather than gender neutral if the school is using that term at all. The new language isn't an accurate description.

On encouraging boys attainment. It's true that in our society there are boy things like super hero and girl things like fairies. It's not right but that's how it is and toy, book, clothes manufacturers know that and use it which encourages children to think of it this way and enforce it on each other. As long as the school don't present the superheros etc as boy subjects to the children then there's no reason to see it as negative. At the moment education isn't working as well for boys as it is for girls in terms of attainment all the way up to uni. At our primary where I volunteer they introduced more comic style books to encourage boys to read, but girls were expected to read them too, and boys had to read the books which would be considered traditionally girls interest. It will come down to how they sell it to the kids.

I think some greater understand of the difference between boys achievement and girls achievement is needed here (can we not only discuss toilets again)

So what is the picture?

how is achievement overall compared to national and local averages
how are girls compared to national and local averages
how are boys compared to national and local averages
is the gap between boys and girls bigger than normal for instance
Is it a particular subject that's an issue

they you need to look at some schools that have a smaller gap or no gap and look at how they are achieving it

I know the school I clerk for was asked about doing some 'girls maths' and 'boys english' to try and change results and the head was quite robust in her response against this idea and has improved the gap without this kind of superhero stuff.

On a different note