Girls who learn to serve: aAn ethnography exploring the gendered experience of school-based volunteering

This is a study of a school-based volunteering programme; an ethnography of six girls enrolled into the Duke of Edinburgh (DofE) scheme at their secondary school in a deprived coastal community in the South-East of England. Building on feminist research into the systematic gender inequalities created by school structures, identity and society, this thesis explores how these six girls experienced volunteering in different and gendered ways. Applying feminist theory including Gilligan’s theories of moral reasoning (1982), Arnot’s theory of gender code (2002), and Skeggs (2002) theories of identity, this ethnography demonstrates how the school’s prefect group, based on relations with school leaders and teachers, were, in many ways, coerced into the DofE award. The study reveals how gendered norms ensured the girls and boys volunteered with different motivations and were incentivised and rewarded differently. The PhD uses a feminist methodology to understand the realities of the girls’ lives, focusing on the girls’ experiences of school hierarchies and power to explore how the social structures within school are lived, reproduced, and challenged. Taking an insider approach, I participated in volunteering with the girls in order to live their experience, as well as conducting observations and focus groups. Reflexivity and sharing my ethnographic field diary were important ways I was able to work and my ethnography with the girls took me both in and out of school gaining access to their personal space and thinking. Constructs of classed and gendered identities, reinforced by school structures and practices, were evident in gendered school duties and caring responsibilities given to the girls. The study proposes that extending Bourdieu’s (1986) theories of capital to include the concept of ‘care capital’ would reposition the girls and recognise their contributions to society. This research raises important considerations for voluntary sector-school partnerships that aim to increase and improve student opportunities. In this school study, rather than challenge and empower young people, school-based volunteering served to reproduce societal classed and gendered inequalities.