ITALIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION

This paper deals with the issues of gender diversity, and “male-female” interactions within a secondary school located in Apulia, Italy. This research shows the difficulties, expressed by High School students, as they try to manage their discourses around “equality and difference”, despite their apparent awareness, exposure, and knowledge of this phenomenon. As shown, the social negotiation of gender and sexual diversity, are neither simple nor unilateral, phenomenon. As shown the social negotiations of gender and sexual diversity, are neither simple nor unilateral, but rather they are the product of interaction of amultiplicity of factors, that evolve overtime, and are affected by different socio-political and power disparities. Demythologizing our assumption about gender diversity is just the beginning for lasting social change, especially as people internalized attitudes, opinions and stereotypes still persist and define their ineractive visions of the world and managing of differences. More crucially, they define people’s perpetuation and normalization about of violence against women.