Citizens and Others: gender, democracy and education

Open Access
Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Western democracies are premised on a social contract between equal individuals. An individual, fully defined, is a legal personality, argue Abercrombie, Hill & Turner; it is, they claim, “on these grounds that children, women and lunatics at various times have not been regarded as autonomous, separate persons” . The achievement of legal rights for women has been a longer and a more contentious process than the achievement of such rights for men. Despite the fact that women in Western societies are, in a formal sense, equal individuals as citizens, I shall argue in this paper that their individuality is nevertheless relative rather than absolute. The discussion on ‘individuality’ and ‘otherness’ is relevant in the analysis of gender and education. The formal education system constructs girls and boys in schools as ‘pupils’ with ‘neutral’ characteristics, that is, as absolute individuals with equal opportunities for achievement in the school context. At this level the location of pupils in social relations, gender relations and particular cultures is irrelevant; like citizens, pupils as concrete individuals are not socially, politically or economically equal. On the basis of this framework I shall explore processes in schools: first, child‐centred education, and second, the debate of feminisation of education in Finland.

This publication has 9 references indexed in Scilit: