IT COULD BE AN EFFECT OF THE “THE HIGH-PERFORMING GIRL SYNDROME”- DOING GENDER IN TEACHING AND LEARNING AT A SWEDISH UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

This paper is based on a study of the meaning of gender in teaching and learning at a newly started Bachelors Programme at a Swedish University of Technology. Starting with the assumption that organizations, universities or technologies are never gender neutral, the study explores the meaning of gender in the contents as well as in the form, i.e. the way of teaching and learning, in the Bachelors Programme. Also, the assumption is that gender is something that is done in people’s daily practices, in interplay with the specific context, as people go about in their daily activities in teaching and learning at the university. In the study, seven teachers in the faculty, six men and one woman, were interviewed about their experiences of the meaning of gender in their teaching and the students learning within the Bachelors Programme.
The Swedish University of Technology can be described as male dominated. Among the professors, 90 percent are men, the faculty consists of a majority of men and among the about 14.000 students, 70 percent are men and 30 percent are women. At the university the official ambition is to increase the number of women among students and faculty. The results show that the male domination at the university, i.e. in the management and in the faculty as well as the masculine gender typing of technology, influence the teaching and learning within the Programme and reproduce the gender order. Although, among the students in the studied newly started Bachelors Programme there is an even gender distribution. The results also show that numbers matter and that the gender order is being challenged.