Women as Learners: The Significance of Gender in Adult Learning

In the Preface, the authors explain that this book "is intended to address the prevailing lack of information and understanding about adult women's learning and education....Changing social and economic factors have led to tremendous growth in the number of women who are participating in formal and informal learning activities....This book uses a feminine perspective as the organizing framework for the book's contents and as a standpoint from which to assess the current [i.e. 2000] understanding of women's learning." The authors identify several "key assumptions" and then explain in greater detail what their purposes are. (There are four.) The material is carefully organized and developed within nine chapters. The first sets the scene. Chapters Two through Six "explicate the major themes associated with women's learning." In Chapter Seven, the focus shifts to several feminist pedagogies. In Chapter Eight, the reader is asked to consider the implications of what has been presented thus far. The final chapter addresses other implications: those for urgently-needed and expanded future research and scholarship on women's learning. Then in a Postscript, the authors (in effect) congratulate women on what they have accomplished thus far and then challenge them to believe in their ability to achieve even more.Who will derive the greatest benefit from this book? Certainly those responsible for planning and conducting executive education programs in which women participate. Also, those participants. Finally, those who agree with the authors (as do I) that responsible and rigorous research and scholarship on the education of women has (in Paul Williams' words) "only just begun." One of my favorite passages is provided in the Postscript when the authors urge their reader to "journey into learning" and suggest three companions ("sister travelers") from Native American folklore: The Old Spider Woman who is the Great Mother ("creator, weaver, tender of the fires of life"), the Seeker Woman who is a guide for women on a journey into the unknown (providing "consciousness and enlightenment, insights and intuition, and unmasking, which reveals inner truth"), and the Woman of Knowledge who who serves as a guide for "turning things upside down on our learning journeys, for looking and listening and feeling and thinking with different eyes." In fact, anyone (indeed everyone) now preparing to to embark on or already involved in a "journey" to achieve knowledge and (hopefully) wisdom should have all three as companions. Faith, Curiosity, and Courage are obviously not gender-specific.