State Policy and Ideology in the Education of Women, 1944‐1980

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Abstract
The paper examines changes in state policies and ideologies about women's education in Britain for the period 1944‐1980. It links policies and shifting ideologies about women to the development of the slate, dominant political ideology, the economy and general social policy, tracing the gradual evolution of policies and ideologies encouraging women's education and their participation in paid work through the period of social democracy which spanned the late 1950s, the 1960s and early 1970s. The twin consequences for women, of the collapse of social democratic ideology and a decline in the consensus about education, in the period since the early 1970s are also considered, and an attempt made to explain the limited impact of legislation on sex discrimination. The paper concludes by arguing that although some aspects of women's educational inequalities have been remedied, many still remain, in a political, economic and ideological climate that increasingly emphasises women's place in the home, and that educational inequalities can only be effectively tackled by women's development of an alternative set of coherent social and economic policies which challenge both capitalist and patriarchal social relations.

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