Chapter 5: Freedom to Choose?: Girls, Mathematics and the Gendered Construction of Mathematical Identity

This chapter is based on data gathered through a longitudinal ethnographic study in which the mathematics education histories of ten New Zealand children—four girls and six boys—were tracked from the beginning of their third year of elementary schooling as seven-year-olds, into their upper secondary schooling and occupational decision-making, as eighteen-year- olds. The experiences of the children are examined for the ways in which male and female are produced as sexuate occupational identities through the learning of mathematics—a process I call mathematical genderfication— and how this process is implicated in the ways in which girls and boys engage with mathematics, whether they choose to study mathematics during their upper secondary schooling and the kinds of occupation or further study they elect to take up beyond school. The chapter casts further light on the complex social processes that produce gendered patterns of mathematical participation. Key findings of the study are presented that link: (1) the children’s interests outside of school; (2) the children’s changing vocational aspirations through their schooling; (3) the schooling, qualifications, and mathematical experiences of the parents; and (4) the children’s evolving affective engagement with mathematics over time and the children’s participation in mathematics over their schooling careers.