Ironically, much of the social justice based reforms/frameworks being implemented in K-12 contexts are highly exclusionary.  Gender equity work is often completely missing from the conversation.  Open hostility resulting from male fragility and highly sexist ideas permeate the K-12 world.  One might find this rather ironic, considering the high volume of females in our profession, but ours was a profession started explicitly for women–in the 1830s—to be able to pay teachers a “third” of the salaries of similarly qualified men. 

Deeply paternalistic ideas about teacher agency and our abilities to lead our own profession got baked in from the start.  The resulting structural forms of sexism have created incredibly entrenched, highly sexist forms of implicit bias in our world.

The result? There is no social justice warrior movement for feminism inside of K-12 education for you to envelope yourself in.  You will be greeted with institutional indifference, or down right open hostility, even by so-called social justice leaders. 

Even so, you should try to join any groups available to you which are attempting to advocate for social justice based reforms within your district. You will need to slowly chip away at the problem of the absence of a conversation about gender equity. Begin by investigating and discussing what is missing from the groups they are discussing. For example, if they are discussing overrepresentation of African American students in disciplinary data, dig into what is going on specifically with the girls in that data set, because it is often very different.  Keep bringing up gender minorities in all of their talks.

Remember that while all social justice movements have both dominant and subordinate group identities within their ranks, feminist groups are called out far more than most for their privilege.  All groups struggle in this way—there is male privilege in the LGBTQIA movement, Christian privilege in the civil rights movement, and there has been white privilege in the feminist movement. You will need to do the work of understanding your privileged identities, and trying hard to be humbled, loving, and open to criticism. 

You need to “come correct” by understanding the nuance of other people’s oppression, and the compounding nature of intersectionality.  Do your reading, listen with curiosity, and grow your empathy for other historically marginalized identities—it will make you a better, more effective feminist!