The rise of misogyny in Australian schools and universities

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From high school classrooms to University lecture halls, experts warn that the Manosphere is seeping into Australia’s education system. 

The manosphere refers to an online network of influencers, content creators, podcasters and online communities that can be found on nearly any social media platform.

These digital mediascapes promote misogynistic and anti feminist ideologies to a predominantly young male audience. 

Monash University and Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) created a handbook on how the manosphere is impacting schools, teachers and young people. 

The guide was developed to help teachers and schools manage the influence of the manosphere in classrooms, finding a link between misogynistic attitudes and manosphere influencers. 

Co-author of the guidebook, Dr Sarah McCook from Monash University, said that young girls and women aren’t getting the support they need from schools. 

“They're not feeling safe. They're not feeling supported," Dr McCook said.

One in four girls felt unsafe at school because of boys' behaviour, and some have reported experiencing physical and sexual abuse both at school and online. 

Not only are female students feeling the impacts, so are teachers. 

The guide said female teachers have reported incidents of receiving comments like “make me a sandwich” and being barked at by male students.

There have also been reports of physical intimidation, like being circled by students in the school yard. 

Dr McCook said that as part of their research for the guide, she and her colleagues have been looking into the unwillingness of schools to take action to protect staff and students from harm. 

Many teachers have moved schools or left teaching entirely because of the lack of support from schools. 

“Women teachers are leaving the sector just because they just don't want to put up with it anymore, they're not safe, and they're not believing that other schools are going to be any different, so they're leaving the profession,” Dr McCook said.

The guide focuses on media literacy as a key tool to tackle these behaviours, but there isn’t enough in the current curriculum. 

“What we've heard from young people and from educators is it's absolutely not enough at the moment,” she said. 

She said there also needs to be an increase in government support to help develop the curriculum to adapt to the changing media climate.

 “If the government was better at speaking to and listening to young people about what's important or what's relevant, then we might see better responses in the curriculum and in other spaces too,” she said. 

Dr McCook said that it’s essential that schools have adequate resources and support set in place for staff and students.

“Things like making sure schools have good relationships with their local domestic and family violence services or youth services so that there's support and response mechanisms in place,” she said. 

But the problem doesn’t stop at high school; the manosphere is affecting universities, too.

“Women students in universities or students in universities not feeling safe or trusting that the institutions that they're in are going to take action and hold users of harm accountable,” Dr McCook said. 

Associate Professor Sam Schulz and Dr Sarah McDonald from Adelaide University said more work needs to be done on misogyny and gender based violence in tertiary education.

“We know that manosphere algorithms target boys as young as around ten to twelve. So fast forward to 2025, 2026, and those young men are starting to come to university,” Dr Schulz said.  

While sexism in universities isn’t new, female academics have reported that sexist extremism is on the rise. 

A 29-country survey found 59 per cent of Gen Z males believe that they are expected to do too much to support gender equality.

“We’ve got a lot of low-level everyday sexism happening in Universities, but the more exaggerated forms of sexist backlash that we’re seeing, they’ve come up in the last few years,” said Dr Schulz 

“It might be really obvious stuff, like groups of boys in their classes who swing on chairs and eat snacks during class and then leave rubbish for the tutor to clean up,” she said. 

For academics, this might also look like getting a negative evaluation from students, and females and minorities are the most impacted. 

“It is very common in academia for people to talk about allowing certain behaviours to go because they’re worried about their student evaluations at the end of the semester,” Dr McDonald said. 

“I had one a few years ago that said that I had screeched at them, and I had never yelled at a class. But I remember feeling like that word screech was so gendered, no one would accuse a man of screeching at someone,” she said.

Dr McDonald said that Universities need to have a bigger focus on gender literacy, including more focus on teaching aspects like gender, race and social class. 

“This is something where we can really build this strong understanding of what the world looks like for different kinds of people,” she said. 

If you or anyone you know is experiencing or at risk of domestic, family and sexual violence call 1800RESPECT, at 1800 737 732, text 0458 737 732 or chat online at https://1800respect.org.au/