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The purpose of this paper is to assess how public libraries can help girls to learn and practice technology skills.

The paper discusses why girls are under‐represented in technology careers and successful public library programs aimed at solving this problem.

Even though the majority of internet users are females, girls tend to under‐value technology. Girls relate differently to technology from boys, and are often disadvantaged. Public libraries can provide opportunities for girls to learn and practice technology skills.

This meta‐synthesis of research and best practices provides guidelines for public librarians to help girls become more technologically literate. Recommendations include: offering choices, facilitating girl planning, encouraging collaboration, providing active and hands‐on learning, and incorporating career exploration.

Reports how schools could do better to help girls cope with their periods while at school. Considers problems arising in school when girls are menstruating – problems of attitude as well as practical matters. Suggests that P.E. teachers could play a key role in educating girls about tampons; also, that schools should organize liaison groups which could try to obtain an overall picture of the ease/difficulty girls experience when coping with periods in school and try to improve matters for them. Concludes that some schools are asking girls to cope with facilities that no woman would tolerate.

The low number of women in the information technology (IT) field is a concern. The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors behind the exclusion of girls from the IT field.

The present work includes a narrative literature review and an exploratory interview study with ten girls and six study guidance counsellors (GCs) from Finnish senior high schools. Using the nexus analysis as a theoretical lens, the authors examined the exclusion of girls from IT.

Earlier literature directed attention to the cultural norms, assumptions and stereotypes still prevalent in society and the lack of role models and positive media as factors contributing to girls excluding themselves from the IT field. In this research study’s data, the authors not only found evidence of the unintentional exclusion of girls from IT by others but also by the girls themselves. Findings of this research study illustrate the various discourses, actors and their interactions, their background and history-related factors affecting girls' career choices. The novelty of this study is in approaching high school as a site of exclusion, where problematic discourses, interactions and histories come together, reproducing exclusion of girls from the IT field.

The authors contribute with a literature review of the research study on gender and IT and the inclusion/exclusion dynamics around IT. Using the nexus analysis, the authors identify the exclusion dynamics in this complex social issue. Several decades of research have shown that the inclusion of women remains low in IT disciplines. In this study, high schools are viewed as sites of exclusion, engendering a prevalent lack of information and education on the field. The authors offer novel insights into the role of curriculum, GCs and online information excluding girls from the IT field.

This study aims to investigate the ways affective intensities arise in the intra-actions within an assemblage (three Black girls, objects such as computers and hoodies, institutionalized discourse associated with race and successful participation in schools) as the girls create multimodal responses to literature. This paper shows how the intra-actions among the girls and material objects produce affective intensities or new ways of being and becoming through which youth reauthor themselves as central and peripheral participants.

The authors present an illustrative case of the ways girls’ embodied literacy identities emerge when Jillian, Isa, and Rhianna intra-act with materials in an assemblage that includes their material-discursive positionings through qualitative and multimodal interaction analysis.

The analysis describes the ways the girls agentively participate through play, composing and moments of becoming (fluid subjectivities) that include emotive acts such as acts of solidarity, loving connectedness and possible frustration that inform who counts and who can be successful in the classroom.

This single case study gives a descriptive, in-depth analysis of the ways affective intensities emerge as three girls respond to literature to understand their embodied and discursive practices within the composing process.

To fully understand agency and the students’ emergent subjectivities, the authors combine embodiment and material-discursive analysis to understand affective intensities that evolve during three Black girls’ composing processes and the ways the girls’ subjectivities shift within the intra-actions.

The underrepresentation of Black girls in gifted programs has received attention in both education and counseling literature. Nevertheless, scholars have given less emphasis to the intersections of intellectual ability, race, gender, social class, and place, particularly the idiosyncratic experiences of gifted Black girls from rural, economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The authors of this chapter discuss this unique positionality, with a focus on historical segregation and exclusionary practices within the American educational system. The authors discuss the tenets of critical race feminism and identify factors that may foster educational resilience for Black girls from rural, low-income communities. Recommendations are provided to address pertinent issues related to structural educational reform and inclusive gifted education. The chapter concludes with a call for education and counseling professionals to fundamentally change the systems and processes that perpetuate systematic inequity for this underserved population.

Medicalization is the increasing social control of the everyday by medical experts. It is a key concept in the sociology of health and illness because it sees medicine as not merely a scientific endeavor, but a social one as well. Medicalization is a “process whereby more and more of everyday life has come under medical dominion, influence, and supervision” (Zola, 1983, p. 295); previously these areas of everyday life were viewed in religious or moral terms (Conrad & Schneider, 1980; Weeks, 2003). More specifically, medicalization is the process of “defining a problem in medical terms, using medical language to describe a problem, adopting a medical framework to understand a problem, or using a medical intervention to ‘treat’ it” (Conrad, 1992, p. 211). Sociologists have used this concept to describe the shift in the site of decision-making and knowledge about health from the lay public to the medical profession.

This paper is the first to use the individual level, longitudinal catch-up growth of boys and girls in a historical population to measure their relative deprivation. The data is drawn from two government schools, the Marcella Street Home (MSH) in Boston, MA (1889–1898), and the Ashford School of the West London School District (1908–1917). The paper provides an extensive discussion of the two schools including the characteristics of the children, their representativeness, selection bias and the conditions in each school. It also provides a methodological introduction to measuring children’s longitudinal catch-up growth. After analysing the catch-up growth of boys and girls in the schools, it finds that there were no substantial differences between the catch-up growth by gender. Thus, these data suggest that there were not major health disparities between boys and girls in late-nineteenth-century America and early-twentieth-century Britain.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine everyday multilingual peer play interactions through their implications for the development of friendships among immigrant children.

Bringing together linguistic anthropology and conversation analysis as methodological approaches, this chapter explores friendship processes among Moroccan immigrant girls in Spain, specifically by analyzing the structure and composition of one such peer group, as well as their multilingual and multimodal interactions.

The main findings are that the multi-age, mixed-expertise composition of this peer group, as well as the semiotically flexible forms of participation and interaction that it encourages, are conducive to remarkably inclusive groups and strong friendships among a diverse group of Moroccan immigrant girls (including, younger and older girls, girls with disabilities and girls with very different immigration histories). Solid inclusive friendships are cemented in this peer interactional environment first because being able to interchangeably negotiate expert/novice participation roles in game interactions affirms feelings of social competence among all the girls, and second because achieving shared understandings in play entails successfully negotiating rules and expectations, which promotes trust and collaboration, while minimizing conflict. The inclusive nature of these girls’ peer-groups contrasts with the exclusion they encounter in other social settings and relationships.

In this sense, this chapter has important implications for understanding immigrant children’s abilities to respond to forms of social exclusion by forming diverse peer groups and strong friendships of their own. These friendships offer them a path to combat the marginalization they experience in other domains of social life.

This study examines the experiences and perceptions of boys and girls vis-à-vis racial integration in two former segregated South African secondary schools. The study is presented in a twofold way since it explores the ethnographic methodological understanding and dilemmas of conducting ethnographic race research in South Africa, and the gendered differences and identities through the manner in which the boys and the girls mediated racial integration in a micro school setting. These two dimensions are tied together in order to present a coherent relationship from the conceptual understanding of ethnographic race research to the dominant themes that emerged in the process of generating that knowledge. The study is part of a Ph.D. project, which was conducted in order to understand how the process of racial integration was experienced and perceived by students in two South African Secondary schools. In 1996 the South African government passed legislation desegregating segregated schools. However, a number of exclusive schools had already opened their doors to non-white students in the 1990’s. There had been studies conducted on these former segregated schools, which mirrored different dimensions from racial desegregation of schools to complex processes of racial integration (Bhana, 1994; Carrim & Mkwanazi, 1993; Dolby, 2001; Metcalfe, 1991; Valley & Dalamba, 1999). This study moved from a premise to study racially integrated schools with a relatively stable reputation in order to find out what is happening today in these schools vis-à-vis the process and extent of racial desegregation. What emerged at the end was a dialectic relationship between the gendered reaction to integration and the dominant school ethos.

Issues of diversity and inclusion are at the forefront of public discourse and policy initiatives. Media and product lines have recently faced scrutiny for not being inclusive of difference. We conducted a content analysis of books intended for the tween (ages 8–12) girl. More specifically, these books were from the preeminent tween girl company, American Girl. A company perhaps best known for their line of dolls and historical fiction books, American Girl also publishes advice books with the intention of addressing a range of topics pertinent to the tween girl. Since the company strives to appeal to all girls, the authors analyzed these advice books for images and messages of racial, religious, ability, and sexuality difference in an effort to identify who American Girl’s American girl truly is. The findings of this chapter revealed an overall lack of diversity in the American Girl advice books in not only images but also messages. Images of White girls were more common than those of non-White girls, and any representation of religious, ability, or sexuality difference was minimal. Analysis of the content of the messages also revealed few mentions of difference, and categorization of the books suggested an emphasis on relationships with other people and bodies/appearance as important. It is apparent from this analysis that American Girl’s American girl is White, able-bodied, religiously ambiguous (though presumably Christian), and heterosexual. The need for American Girl to be fully inclusive of diversity across all their product lines is apparent.