When we discuss gender-sensitive approaches to learning and teaching, a dominant philosophy that emerges in the literature is that of feminist pedagogy. In exploring what it takes to foster a feminist environment for students, it is worthwhile to begin with a glimpse of the feminist classroom:

Brady writes: The [feminist] classroom is not a neutral environment where knowledge is passed down from teacher to student, but a complex social site, a borderland – a domain of crossing – that offers the possibility for mutual negotiation and translation where both teachers and students bring with them subject positions that are informed by their class, gender, and ethnicity. (87) (Laverick, 2008, p. 49)

Perhaps the most important component of the feminist outlook is that it aims to give voices to the voiceless. Wang and colleagues (2011) underscore this quite powerfully as follows:

Poststructural feminist pedagogy is also intended to empower students and give them voices, as in a traditional classroom setting students’ voices are often silenced or trivialized. Postructural feminist pedagogy seeks to interrupt the reinforced patriarchal dominance in the classroom, giving power to all students, especially female and marginalized students. (p. 111)