The Challenges of Combatting Misogyny: Educational Interventions and Responses

Editors

• Alison MacKenzie, Queen's University Belfast
• Yuwei Xu, University of Nottingham
• Ming Cheng, Sheffield Hallam University
• Barbara Read, University of Glasgow

Description

This special issue seeks educational responses to online and offline misogyny across all educational settings including schools, universities, and prisons. The call welcomes empirical, theoretical, and philosophical contributions exploring how educators and institutions can effectively combat misogyny through interventions, peer culture initiatives, gender-sensitive pedagogy, and sex education programmes. International perspectives from researchers and educators worldwide are particularly valued.

Misogyny has intensified in online spaces, where girls and women encounter relentless gender-based abuse that affects their mental health, safety, and participation in digital society. The issue dehumanizes women and girls while reinforcing patriarchal norms, with evidence showing widespread harassment across educational environments. The special issue addresses how educational institutions can implement whole-institutional approaches, curricula incorporating anti-misogyny lessons, and safe reporting mechanisms to combat these harms and protect voices from marginalization.

Potential topics

• Clarity between misogyny and sexism, and gender-based violence and discrimination, and how they manifest
• Intersections of misogyny that encompass and enforce white supremacy, white male superiority, chauvinism, incel culture, far right ideology, Christian evangelism, cis-hetermormativity toward 'misogynoir', transmisogyny, homophobia, and settler colonialism
• How misogyny manifests across various educational cultures and contexts, and the extent to which culturally sensitive interventions are effective
• Understanding the affective impact of misogyny on girls, women, non-binary people, and trans women
• Relationship and sex education, and other curricular interventions on misogyny and their efficacy
• The role of schools, universities, organisations, policy makers and government in tackling misogyny, digital literacies and navigating social media
• The efficacy of international responses such as Sustainable Development Goal 4, the right to quality education, and Building Gender Transformative Systems
• Tools to assist teachers and academics in engaging learners to better understand, recognise, and challenge misogyny online and within educational environments