How schools deal with expectations of gender equality

The article looks at the implementation of 'National Daughters Day' in a selected canton in Switzerland and investigates how schools as organizations deal with expectations of educational reform and equal opportunity policy geared toward gender equality. The article draws on the sociology of critique and justification (Boltanski and Thévenot) to get a conceptual grasp on the heterogeneous positions adopted in matters of gender equality. We analyze interviews with school administrators and teaching staff who are responsible for organizing Daughters Day and with its initiators at the cantonal level. The results show that actor interpretations and justifications derive from the orders of justification found in the civic, domestic, and industrial world, which are combined into formulas of compromise in multiple ways. Reprinted by permission of Seismo Press