Agora débats/jeunesses 75, 2017

"All equal before science?"

Evaluating the effects of a project on gender equality in sciences

Christine Détrez, Clémence Perronnet

This article analyses the "evaluation" of an educational project on gender equality in sciences at primary school. It takes a reflexive perspective on the practices evaluating these programmes, revealing different socially situated meanings of the word “evaluate”. The results presented here are based on a longitudinal qualitative study using observations and interviews with children and adults participating in the project, and revealing the ambivalent effects of education for equality. A first analysis shows that equality is visible more in discourses than in practices, and that “repressed” stereotypes regularly resurface. However, unexpected results are also revealed, particularly in relation to the sociological study itself.

Dress practices and expressions of gender

Contrasting effects of school context

Stéphanie Barrau

Based on a comparative ethnographic study of dress practices among high school students, this study accounts for the effects of social and school contexts on the process of gender construction, and the various ways of investing it. The analysis questions the identification process within a group of the same sex, and the ways in which sexually differentiated and hierarchical norms and practices are internalised. Plural gender models coexist and can evolve from one school milieu to another, within the same milieu and within a group of the same sex. These variations underline the effects of bodily socialization and different socialising contexts in the various different ways of “doing gender.”

Non-use of international mobility among less privileged young people

An example of prevented empowerment in a non-formal framework

Francine Labadie, Clotilde Talleu

If allowing young people with fewer opportunities to access international mobility outside the school system is an important political objective at the European and national level, it does not yet seem to have been reached in France. Based on a qualitative study conducted by INJEP, this article shows the obstacles – stemming from representations, norms or institutional mechanisms – present in social and professional integration structures which are frontline advisors in these young people's mobility. These obstacles can lead to cases of “non-use” due to “non-proposition”, which is particularly regrettable given the significations this kind of experience can have for young people, who see them as an opportunity to shape themselves as autonomous beings, free to make their own choices and to decide which direction they will pursue.

SPECIAL ISSUE

Young people and entrepreneurship

Feature coordinated by Caroline Verzat, Angélica Trindade-Chadeau and Olivier Toutain

Introduction

Promises and realities of entrepreneurship for young people

Caroline Verzat, Angélica Trindade-Chadeau, Olivier Toutain

Entrepreneurial projects at primary school: inherent tensions in integrating the school form

Matthias Pepin

Although the object of a very motivating discourse on an international level, the introduction of entrepreneurship into the area of education is by no means selfevident. The author of this article develops the idea that one explanatory factor limiting the implementation of entrepreneurial projects at school, as privileged tools for developing entrepreneurial education, is found in the concept of the “school form”. Indeed the school form symbolises a movement of withdrawal, with the school being separated off from the rest of society, whilst entrepreneurial projects represent a movement of openness, reintroducing “real life” into the school. The tensions that stem from this encounter between two opposing logics are at the heart of this article, illustrated with results from doctoral research in education sciences conducted in Quebec.

Adolescent collective action : first steps as entrepreneurs?

Emmanuelle Maunaye, Fransez Poisson

This article questions the impact that collective experiences of entrepreneurship such as the Youth Services Cooperative (CJS) or the Junior Associations (JA), have on adolescents. The CJS and the JA constitute learning spaces which enable the development of knowledge and self-management skills. Collective entrepreneurial learning is more vague. The study conducted in these two organisations shows that although the CJS has an educational objective, it is not particularly involved in the pursuit of collective activities between members. However, the JA observed here was able to transform itself into an association that still operates according to an entrepreneurial logic based on volunteer-work.

Young people more or less ready to become entrepreneurs

From participation in amateur sports to creating sports tourism businesses

Fanny Dubois, Philippe Terral

The objective of this article is to examine young peoples' entrepreneurship in the sector of sports tourism. It explores the different ways these entrepreneurs “convert” their amateur sporting practice into professional activity. The analysis reveals two main profiles of young entrepreneurs and shows the different ways in which the need and the opportunity to create a business combine depending on the trajectories and resources accumulated by the creators. The authors also study the effects of public and private programmes to promote business creation. Finally, this research shows how the cultural practices of young people – in this case recreational sports – constitute essential resources for the development of various forms of entrepreneurship.

What is a startupper?

Tiphaine Liu

The study of startuppers – or those who create start-ups – constitutes the basis of this research, based on qualitative methodology through semi-directive interviews. Through discourse analysis and in light of the scientific literature, the author aims to question the attraction for start-up entrepreneurs in France – along the lines of their cousins in Silicon Valley. These results show that startuppers are driven by a strong desire for change, which is incarnated in their concrete creations, and that they take on paradoxical identity projections. In this respect they constitute the profile of an innovative and entirely new social actor.