……“We’ve been through a decent amount of it, they’re a bit late to the party.” Relationships and Sex Education, girls’ media cultures and utilising the past in the present

Abstract

There is an abundance of research which examines girls’ comics, girls’ cultures and how girls read, negotiate, or participate in them. However, there is little which creates connections between girlhood(s) of past and present. Girlhood cultures are not ex-nihilo, and in this PhD, which takes an intergenerational approach, the rich history of girlhood media texts and their role in informal education is linked to contemporary girlhoods to show cyclical relationships of advice giving and receiving across generations. In exploring this, the thesis asks what the continued role of informal education for girls is should their formal education not be responsive to their needs.
Advice related elements from the Femorabilia collection of twentieth-century girls’ texts were employed in girl-led workshops with contemporary girls in the North-East of England as a stimulus to exploring advice giving. This was also a way of exploring the reformed Relationships and Sex Education Guidance (RSE) (2019) they have experienced. Whilst RSE became statutory for the first time at this point, it can still be seen to reflect earlier iterations of this aspect of education in failing to address the specific needs of girls. The girls used the historical texts as an elicitation tool and as physical objects to create their own artefacts and discuss their experiences of RSE, advice-seeking and giving practices, informal education, and girlhood more broadly.
In their artefacts the specific wants and needs of a community of girls are made visible who are routinely let down by formal advice-giving in education and can be seen as vulnerable in terms of age and gender (Cann, 2018, p.97). By allowing girls to slow down and consider their education, both formal and informal, within a slow pedagogical approach to the girl-led workshops, several key findings emerged. Generational advice was important, in that the girls turned to older female figures in their lives for advice, as was the continued role of the bedroom as a distinct space for girls. In addition, it was found that whilst they were articulate on many topics, the girls lacked the language to describe their experiences of sexism, and their bodies, effectively. Final key points were about the interconnection of the on and offline and how moral panics impact girls’ sexual expression.

Date of Award	27 Feb 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Northumbria University
Supervisor	Mel Gibson (Supervisor) & Sarah Ralph-Lane (Supervisor)