Misogynistic behaviour by some boys in Australian classrooms has become more overt, aggressive and normalised since around 2022, according to new research led by Monash University.
The study, The reanimation of normative manhood acts in schools: teachers’ accounts of boys’ manosphere-aggravated misogyny, draws on survey responses from 107 Australian teachers and examines how online misogynistic cultures are increasingly being enacted in school settings.
The research identifies a clear shift in how misogyny presents in classrooms, with behaviours described as more explicit, emboldened and marked by a growing sense of impunity. Teachers reported that attitudes and practices associated with online “manosphere” spaces are now being performed in front of peers and teachers, rather than remaining confined to digital environments.
Lead author Professor Steven Roberts, from Monash University’s School of Social Sciences, said teachers were seeing a qualitative change in boys’ behaviour.
“Misogyny in schools has become more explicit, more aggressive and marked by a growing sense of entitlement and impunity among some boys,” Professor Roberts said.
“What was once contained to online manosphere spaces is now being acted out in classrooms, often with little fear of consequences and a confidence that authority will not be enforced.”
The study describes these behaviours as “normative manhood acts” – performances through which boys seek to assert superiority, gain peer status and challenge authority, particularly the authority of women teachers.
Professor Roberts said women teachers were reporting deliberate tests of power rather than isolated incidents of disrespect.
“Women teachers report not just disrespect, but a deliberate testing of power,” he said. “Students are acting as though they are untouchable, and that women’s authority does not need to be taken seriously.”
Humour, he added, is often used strategically to deflect accountability.
“‘Just joking’ becomes a way to assert dominance while sidestepping consequences,” Professor Roberts said.
The research identifies five recurring forms of these “manhood acts”: backlash misogyny, homosocial harassment, humour-as-baiting, sexualisation of women, and disengagement from schooling. Together, the authors argue, they reflect a re-assertion of traditional gender hierarchies within school cultures.
Co-author Dr Stephanie Wescott, from Monash University’s Faculty of Education, said the findings raised serious concerns about how schools respond to gendered harm.
“Schools have clear, rehearsed responses when violence is seen as serious, but when the threat is gendered, sexualised or directed at women, it is routinely minimised, delayed or managed away,” Dr Wescott said.
“Misogyny in schools is not a ‘behaviour issue’ or a matter of resilience – it is a safety issue. When threats, harassment and intimidation of women are treated as low-level, harm is effectively sanctioned.
“This isn’t simply poor behaviour, it’s a culture where some boys feel entitled to dominate, disrupt and demean, confident that the system will absorb the harm rather than stop it.”
Dr Wescott said the study pointed to a broader cultural problem, where some boys feel entitled to dominate and demean, confident that systems will absorb the harm rather than intervene decisively.
The authors argue that addressing misogyny in schools requires recognising it as a structural and cultural issue, rather than an individual behavioural problem, and responding with consistent, system-level action.
