The educational system is a significant component of society and thus a major player in reproducing the societal and cultural norms. The persisting gender norms and stereotypes present in Austrian society are, thus, reproduced in educational institutions today. In order to contribute to the deconstruction of them, a broader approach is necessary. Therefore, this dissertation project proposes intergenerational storytelling workshops in combination with feminist literary analyses as a new cutting-edge epistemological and methodological approach to reflect and discuss gender norms and stereotypes and its reproduction in the educational sphere which ultimately contributes to the inequality of genders in society.

The aim of this research endeavor is to use intergenerational storytelling in combination with feminist literature as a tool to critically reflect, discuss, and ultimately deconstruct gender norms and stereotypes in education by combating generational divisions and creating a knowledge transfer across generations. Furthermore, the dissertation project questions, on the one hand, how processes and strategies of gender norm construction in education can be identified, and how they influence both collective and individual intergenerational gender narratives. On the other hand, the question of which methodologies can be developed for interdisciplinary and intersectional research of the reproduction of gender norms in education will be tackled. With regard to these research questions, the development of a merging of methods from literary and cultural studies with qualitative research in the form of participatory action research is a crucial aspect of this dissertation and which will eventually be the research method used to examine the research questions. The development of a new interdisciplinary research method will ultimately provide significant findings for the field of cultural gerontology, education, feminist and gender studies.