17
Introduction
One of the problems in discussing the topic of gender and education is the lack of any single feminist perspective on women's education, with reference to the past or the present. As Purvis1 has pointed out, there are at least five different approaches which can be adopted - Marxist feminism, radical feminism, socialist feminism, liberal feminism and cultural feminism. Marxist feminism states that the oppression of women, through socialist inequalities and ownership of women by men, will end only when a communist society has been established; this will free women from the economic functions at present undertaken by families and will be taken over by the State. Radical feminism focuses on the power relationships between the sexes in a patriarchal society. Socialist feminism includes elements of the first two categories but argues that change can come about before a revolution in the ownership of the means of production. Liberal feminism posits a less radical approach, favouring gradual reform which would lead to the removal of legal, cultural and social constraints and equality with men. Cultural feminism favours the establishment of a separate women's culture which will endeavour to change the nature of society.
In what follows, it will become clear that educational thinkers have adopted some parts of these categories whilst ignoring others. Indeed, many leading writers on education have completely overlooked the needs of girls' and women's education. This may seem surprising in view of the fact that one of the earliest advocates of such education was as long ago as Plato in his books Republic and Laws.
Greece
The Republic, written in 411 or 412 BC, consists of a dialogue between Socrates and a friend, Glaucon. The latter, in Book V, points out that, in the training for occupations, both men and women equally vary in their capacity for learning. He therefore concludes that 'none of the occupations which comprehend the ordering of a state belong to a woman as woman, nor yet to man as man; but natural gifts are to be found here and there, in both sexes alike; and, so far as her nature is concerned, the woman is admissible to all pursuits as well as the man'. One theme, however, that runs throughout the Book is that woman is weaker than the man. Nevertheless, women's love of knowledge might qualify her to be a guardian, and the two men discuss the practical arrangements which would be required for this to happen. They conclude that 'If the question is how to render a woman fit for the office of guardian, we shall not have one education for men, and another for women, especially as the nature to be wrought upon is the same in both cases.'
A much more detailed programme of women's education was outlined in Plato's later work, Laws. Universal, compulsory schooling for all free citizens was advocated for both boys and girls in order to produce good citizens. Play was an important part of early learning and both sexes should play together in a nursery day school until they were six years old. They would then be separated but would continue to receive similar instruction. 'In stating my doctrine,' Plato wrote, 'I intend no reservation on any point of horsemanship or physical training, as appropriate for men but not for women.' Science, mathematics and music also formed an important part of the curriculum.
However, Plato expressed reservations about women, that they had an 'inherent weakness of the soul' and were mischief makers. He assumed that boys would become soldiers and girls in due course were destined to become mothers and take up domestic duties. For that reason, girls should learn the arts and knowledge that would be useful in running a home.
Early Christian
The Romans made little contribution to this topic and it was not until the early years of the fourth century ad, after Christianity had been accepted and established that theologians such as St Jerome (340-420) turned their attention to the analysis of girls' education. Jerome, who was renowned for his learning, propounded a philosophy which was to remain important in planning the curriculum of girls until as late as the eighteenth century. Jerome set out his beliefs in the form of letters. One important principle, in direct contradiction of Plato's, was that 'females should not know how to play with boys, nay, they should be afraid to do so. A girl should have no acquaintance with lewd talk, and if amid the noisy bustle of a household she hears an unclean word, she should not understand it.' The child should be taught to read and write, be adept at handicraft, especially needlework, and become immersed in the Holy Scriptures, both in Latin and Greek. No music was allowed - 'Paula must be deaf to all musical instruments, and never even know why the flute, the lyre, and the harp came into existence' - and dancing was also forbidden.2 Modesty in dress, deportment and behaviour was essential and the virtues of virginity were emphasised. Those who longed for a continuity of a sheltered and secluded existence were encouraged to lead a holy life as nuns.
Renaissance
The Renaissance, with its rediscovery of humanism and a revival of interest in Greek and Roman texts, was a stimulus for the founding of grammar schools offering a broad curriculum. Humanist scholars, such as Erasmus, More and Linacre, were advocates of girls' education, though it was a Spanish scholar, Joan Luis Vives (1492-1540) who was concerned with the theory as well as the practice of education for girls. He had been invited to England in 1523 by a fellow Spaniard, Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's wife, to suggest a plan for the studies of her seven-year-old daughter, Princess Mary, later Mary I.
Besides devising a course of studies which included attention to classical texts and poems, Plato's Dialogues and the New Testament, which was to be read every morning and night, Vives wrote two text books, De Institutione Faeminae Christianae (The Instruction of Christian Woman) and De Ratione Studii especially for the benefit of the young Mary. Vives advocated an education for women in order to make them suitable companions in marriage. Like St Jerome, he saw education as a protection against immorality and that 'nothing so completely preserves the modesty of young girls as learning'. One of the earliest writers to base education on psychology, he wrote, 'Observe the child and adapt your aims and methods to his needs.' He differed from other Renaissance tutors in recommending that mothers, rather than tutors, should instruct their offspring and guide them in infancy. Vives believed in life-long education for both sexes. He did not consider that too many concessions should be made to girls during their education. 'The daughter should be handled without any cherishing. For cherishing marreth sons, but it utterly destroys daughters.' Whilst Vives is often seen as taking an inferior view of women's intellect, nevertheless he adopted a pragmatic approach to their education. 'If any girl shows herself inclined for and capable of learning, she should be allowed to go further with it', a precept not acted upon in Britain until several centuries later.3
Within three years of Vives' arrival in England he fell into disfavour when Henry VIII began divorce proceedings against Catherine. However, Princess Mary's educational progress and accomplishments were a tribute to Vives' endeavours.
Another humanist writer, Richard Mulcaster (1530-1611), headmaster of Merchant Taylors' and St Paul's Schools, echoed sentiments similar to Vives. Whilst believing that girls a well as boys should be entitled to a sound education - 'Myself, I am for them tooth and nail.' - Mulcaster argued in his book Positions, Wherein Those Primitive Circumstances be examined, which are necessie [sic] for the Training up of Children either for Skill in their Boke or Health in their Bodie (1581) that there was a difference in the mental capacity of boys and girls:
Though the girls seem commonly to have a quicker ripening in wit than boys have, for all that seeming yet it is not so. Their natural weakness, which cannot hold long, delivers very soon and yet there be as prating boy as there be prattling wenches. Besides, their brains be not so much charged, neither with weight nor with multitude of matters, as boys' heads be, and therefore like empty casks, they make the greater noise.
This supposed difference assumed great importance in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debate on the provision of girls' education, as we shall see. Mulcaster, as a practical schoolmaster, though unlike other writers, drew attention to the need for appropriate training for girls who might not marry:
If a young maiden is to be brought up with a view to marriage, obedience to authority and similar qualities must for the best kind of training, but if from necessity she has to learn how to earn her own living some technical training must prepare her for a definite calling.4
Unfortunately, both Vives' and Mulcaster's positive ideas on the nature of girls' education were not generally translated into action. Few schools or teachers were available, except for refugees from the Low Countries and France and then mainly for their own children. Educational practice, therefore, lagged behind theory during the Renaissance period.
Enlightenment
Fashionable girls' boarding schools began to appear around London after the Restoration; we know for instance that Henry Purcell wrote his opera Dido and Aeneas for such a school at Chelsea in 1670. The movement received a stimulus with the writings in France of the cleric and teacher François de Solignac de la Mothe Fénelon (1651-1715). In his Traité de l'Education des Filles (1687) (Treatise on the Education of Girls). He emphasised the need for equal education. English women, such as Mary Astell (1668-1731) in her book A Serious Proposal to the Indies for the Advancement of True and Greatest Interest (1694) showed that women were regarded as inferior not because of their nature but because of their lack of education. Mary Astell, who had studied both Locke and Descartes, also proposed that there should be established a college for the higher education of 'the most neglected part of the World as to all Real improvement, the Ladies'. In a publication three years later, An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, she described the differences in education given to the two sexes, when at the age of six or seven, boys are sent to grammar school to learn Greek and Latin, while girls are sent to boarding schools to learn needlework, dancing and other accomplishments. She considered philosophy and a study of English important for women. 'The Men may have unrivalled the Glory of speaking as many Languages as Babel afforded; we only desire to express ourselves pertinently in One.'5
Even as progressive a writer as Jean Jacques Rousseau in his classic book Émile (1762), whilst drawing attention to the need to cultivate women's reasoning and understanding, also stated:
The whole education of women should be related to that of men. To please them, to be useful to them, to become loved and honoured by them; to bring them up when young, to care for them when grown; to advise, to console them, to make life easy and pleasant for them - these are the duties of women at every age, and this is what they should be taught from childhood (Book 5).
Precisely the opposite argument was used by the radical feminist Mary Wollstonecroft (1759-97), who stated that such subordination limited women's physical, mental and moral powers. She believed in equal rights for women and in her book, Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) condemned an education which was simply geared to marriage. Nor did Wollstonecroft approve of boarding schools for children; she favoured the establishment of co-educational day schools, organised by the State, in order to bring about better understanding between the sexes. 'Were boys and girls permitted to pursue the same studies together, those graceful decencies might early be inculcated which produce modesty without those sexual distinctions that taint the mind.'6 Education should also prepare women for independence and to play a part in public affairs (she advocated the election of women to Parliament) and the curriculum was to be geared to women's future needs. Wollstonecroft's views were ahead of her time, but after her early death at the age of 38 they became very influential.
Nineteenth Century
The provision of education in England by the beginning of the nineteenth century was organised strictly on class lines. Elementary education, with its concentration on the 3Rs, and provided at minimum cost for the poor, was a purely instrumental one. A typical example was Samuel Wilderspin (1782-1866), the father of the infant school movement. In his book On the Importance of Educating the Infant Children of the Poor, he stated that these schools were
for the acquisition of habits and cleanliness and decorum, of cheerful and ready subordination ... and of abstinence from everything impure and profane: a scene, in short, at once of activity and amusement, of intellectual improvement and moral discipline.
With the introduction of government financing of elementary education from 1833, there was increasing pressure for 'value for money'. One of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, appointed to supervise the expenditure of such monies, wrote in his report for 1862:
Girls have no knowledge of needlework, cannot cut out or mend, and darning stockings is an unknown science. But at an examination, a few will write lines upon a slate and cast up a sum, and the mistress will state that they are prepared to answer questions in history or geography, besides names of cities etc, etc. No needlework is ever displayed; no questions are asked on any subject which will be useful to them.
With the introduction of 'payment by results' in that same year, plain needlework became compulsory for girls. The effect of this was apparent some 26 years later when the Cross Commission on Elementary Education reported in 1888: 'As the time for the girls [in elementary schools] is largely taken up by needlework, the time they can give to arithmetic is less than that which can be given to boys.' The solution suggested was to modify the arithmetical requirements of the Code for girls, with exemptions from learning tables. Further differentiation of curriculum requirements followed in the next decade with the introduction into the Code of domestic economy for girls. Such differentiation represented the views of what seemed appropriate for the two sexes and continued into the twentieth century.
The question of co-education in elementary schools also indicates interesting attitudes towards girls and their education. A Committee of Council on Education pamphlet was issued to schools later in the century on the subject and was entitled Mixed Schools and Good Manners. HMI who reported on co-education argued that schools would be limited in their choice of masters 'for it is unavoidable that the master ought to be married. It is not right to place a young unmarried man in a position which undoubtedly may be one of temptation.' Furthermore, needlework was found to be inferior to those schools composed of girls only under the supervision of a mistress, and the teaching of girls by a master was not considered 'conducive to the early formation of habits and modesty'.
Middle-class education for girls followed a rather different pattern. Up to about 1850, many girls were educated at home under a governess. The main impetus to providing school education for girls came with the founding of the Governesses' Benevolent Institution which demonstrated the need for their suitable training starting at school level. Queen's College, Harley Street, opened in 1848, provided such courses. Two years later the North London Collegiate School for Ladies was established by Frances Buss, and Dorothea Beale became principal of the Cheltenham Ladies' College in 1857. Both Miss Buss and Miss Beale had been pupils at Queen's College. One interesting feature of girls' middle-class schooling at this time was that their theory of emancipation from boys' schools was based on one of imitation; for example, girls adopted boys' sports, such as cricket, stressed the importance of classics in the curriculum and competed with boys in the Cambridge Local Examinations which, after a struggle, girls were allowed to enter for from 1863.7 Not all headmistresses agreed that the new examinations were appropriate for girls. One who refused to enter any candidates did so on the grounds 'that no girl ought to go through anything that was public'.
There were three aspects of girls' education which reformers in the nineteenth century considered important:
Although girls were increasingly well provided for after the setting up of the Girls' Public Day Schools Company in 1872, there was much male opposition at all levels to the concept of the need for women's education. Anthropological and anatomical studies from the 1860s showed that it was impossible for women to compete successfully with men. One researcher, for instance, demonstrated that as the brains of men and women were different in size and structure, so women must be less intelligent than men:
The difference between the sexes as regards the cranial cavity increases with the development of the race, so that the male European excels more the female than does the negro the negress; and hence, with the progress of civilization, the men are in advance of the women, so that the inequality of the sexes increases with civilization.8
The opening of higher education to women, following Emily Davies' founding of the College at Hitchin in 1869 and transferred to Newnham, Cambridge in 1873, raised even more opposition. Physiologically, it was argued, they were unable to bear the strain of the necessary concentration required for a course of study and, it was claimed, they might become sterile as result; morally it was also unwise. One bitter opponent of women's education at Oxford was the Reverend John William Burgon. When women were allowed to enter for honours degree examinations, he gave a sermon which was published in 1884 entitled To Educate Young Women Like Men, and With Young Men - a Thing Inexpedient and Immodest. Some writers regarded women as temptresses and sinful, and stated that they would prove to be distracting to hard-working male students. The fear of Cambridge becoming a mixed university, with the prospect of women sharing the power to participate in decision-making led the professor of Philology, William Skeat, to write to a colleague, "Even the BA degree would enable them to take five books at a time out of University Library on a ticket countersigned by "their tutor". I am entirely opposed to the admission of women to "privileges" of this character. And I honestly believe they are better off as they are.'9 There was also the threat of competition for employment if women showed talent for a discipline. The long battle to exclude women from training to become doctors in England is a good example of this. Much of the opposition, though, stemmed from the traditional male view of the place of women in society.
The basic dilemma confronting proponents of women's education in the nineteenth century was whether to map out a justification based on theories of feminism or to emulate the education considered suitable for males. Emily Davies favoured a middle-ground approach. Giving evidence before the Schools Inquiry Commission, she was asked, ' In fact, you wish very much to assimilate the general mental training of boys and girls?' She replied, 'I think so. If we could find out what is the best mental training it would be best for both, but I suppose nobody has found that out yet.' This problem was to be widely addressed in the next century.
Twentieth Century
Social and political changes in the first half of the twentieth century did much to improve the educational chances of women. The suffragette movement was responsible for women obtaining the vote, service and clerical opportunities expanded and the Sex Disqualification Removal Act of 1919 broke down the barriers for women wishing to enter the professions. There was little change, however, in the proportion of women employed in wage labour between 1881 and 1951, some 25 per cent.
These changes did not have a dramatic effect on attitudes towards girls' education. Official reports and administrative memoranda reflect well the continuation of a traditional philosophy. The 1902 Education Act continued to provide, through the new Local Education Authorities, elementary education for the working class, though the 1907 Free Place Regulations allowed a sizeable number of bright working-class boys and girls to obtain free education at the newly established municipal grammar schools.
Differentiation of the curriculum prevailed in both types of school. The Boer War, which ended the same year that the Education Bill became law, revealed the poor physical condition of British Army volunteers, up to a third of whom were rejected as being unfit to serve. The subsequent Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration (1904) recommended that boys should be given more physical exercises and drill in schools while girls should prepare for their role as homemakers by lessons in cookery and domestic science. A series of Special Reports was issued on School Training for the Home Duties of Women.10 The Board of Education Elementary School Code of that year stated:
The purpose of the Public Elementary School is to form and strengthen the character and to develop the intelligence of the children entrusted to it, and to make the best of the school years available, in assisting both boys and girls, according to their different needs, to fit themselves, practically as well as intellectually, for the work of life.
At secondary school level, matters were little different. The Board of Education Regulations for 1904-05 laid down a four-year course for all pupils, with housewifery provided for girls. In 1906, the Board claimed that as the demands made on girls' lives out of school 'are greater and more various than is the case with boys, the risk of overpressure is much greater'. As a result, more elastic arrangements for the time spent on subjects were encouraged. The following year, Secondary School Regulations allowed girls aged 15 to replace science with practical housewifery and by 1913, the Board was warning of the overpressure on girls, but not boys, caused by a shorter school day combined with too many subjects. Interestingly, the situation was more acute in mixed than in single sex schools. The Board recommended that girls might, with advantage, postpone the taking of public examinations 'to an age rather later than that which is usual for boys'. Such delay was not seen as of great importance. In the same year, an eminent medical man, Sir Almnroth Wright, explained in his book The Unexpurgated Case Against Women Suffrage:
It must, as it will have come home to us, be clear to every thoughtful mind that woman's belief that she will, through education and the culmination of its effects upon her through generations, become a more glorious being, rests, not upon any rational basis, but only on the physiological fact that what is congenial to woman impresses itself upon her as true. All that sober science in the form of history and physiology would seem to entitle us to hope for the future of woman is that she will develop pari passu with man; and that education will teach her not to retard him overmuch by her lagging in the rear.11
Exactly ten years later, an authoritative survey by the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education was undertaken on the differentiation of curriculum between the two sexes in secondary schools. The recommendations of the Committee were liberal-minded. It advised the elevation of music and art to equal standing with other subjects in the School Leaving Certificate Examinations, and that girls should be responsible for taking the initiative and developing their own interests in school. More importantly, the Committee advised that there should be a greater assimilation of teaching methods for boys and girls, as the former were receiving superior instruction. Girls showing an aptitude for manual subjects should be allowed to pursue such courses. This potential breaking down of the gender-specific curriculum was, however, never implemented. The Committee mentioned that as secondary education for girls was only about 60 years old, it was still regarded as experimental. 'It would therefore,' the Report concluded, 'be too easy make mistakes, if far-reaching changes were made.' The sciences for many decades afterwards continued to be regarded as masculine subjects. Qualities such as 'ladylike behaviour' was stressed for girls attending secondary schools, whilst the new central schools, with their vocational bias, prepared girls for occupations such as nursing, office and the department store.12
It could be argued that one solution would have been the provision of a complete co-educational system of secondary education, as was the case for primary schools. However, in 1926 the Hadow Report on The Education of the Adolescent, based on current psychological research, came out in favour of separate schools for boys and girls, noting that 'such arrangements are especially desirable for pupils who are passing through the early years of adolescence'. Even after the Second World War, when some change in attitude might have been expected, the Ministry of Education pamphlet The Nation's Schools (1945) pronounced that 'where numbers permit, the balance of advantage may be held to be on the side of single-sex schools'.13 It was not until 1966, with the reorganisation of secondary schools into a comprehensive system, that the tempo of providing co-educational schools was hastened.
Two later reports adopted a more enlightened attitude. The Crowther Report 15-18 (1959) was one of the first official documents to recognise that girls would find themselves as adults playing a dual role of workers and wives and it also stressed the importance of girls continuing their education after leaving school. It noted that girls tended to specialise in arts subjects rather than the sciences. However, it was disappointing that only four years later the Newsom Report, which dealt with the education of average and below average ability students, recommended that, as girls were more interested in marriage, motherhood and personal relationships, their curriculum might differ in some respects from that of boys'. To give one example:
A boy is usually excited by the prospect of a science course... He experiences a sense of wonder and a sense of power. The growth of wheat, the birth of a lamb, the movement of clouds put him in awe of nature; the locomotive he sees as man's response; the switch and the throttle are his magic wands... The girl may come to the science lesson with a less eager curiosity than the boy but she too will need to feel at home with machinery.14
As long ago as 1923, the Committee on the Differentiation of Curriculum between the Sexes pursued three questions: Should boys and girls study the same subjects in secondary schools? Should they study all subjects in the same way and up to the same standard? And if any different treatment is desirable, what should the difference be?
It has been widely recognised that the 'hidden curriculum' of a school can be an important factor in determining the answer to these questions. Studies had shown that teachers reinforce sex-role stereotypes in many ways, not necessarily consciously. These extend to encouraging girls to take some subjects rather than others at examination level. For example, physics tends to be regarded in mixed schools as largely the province of boys. There are undoubtedly sex differences in cognitive skills and in academic performance: girls develop stronger reading and formal language skills at an earlier age than boys; more boys than girls are referred for learning disabilities. Girls' ability to solve visual spatial problems is of a lower order than boys', though whether it is due to genetic or environmental factors is still a matter for dispute.15 As late as 1975, the Department of Education and Science Survey Curricular Differences for Boys and Girls commented on the fact that 'there are significant differences in subjects studied by girls and boys and these differences are too striking to be accepted without question.'
During the last 30 or 40 years there have been a number of policy and social changes which have affected the gender issue. The growing feminine movement has turned its attention to examining deficiencies in education for women. Policy changes, such as the introduction of comprehensivisation and the raising of the school leaving age in 1971-72; the setting up of the Equal Opportunities Commission; the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975; and the increased access to higher education for women following the Robbins Report in 1963, have all had important implications for changing attitudes in society towards women's role in respect of education. More recently, the Education Reform Act of 1988, when schools could opt of local education control, and the growing diversity of types of secondary schools encouraged by successive governments of both major political parties, has implications for gender education as has the introduction of a National Curriculum into schools. Many of these areas, particularly the effect of changing policy since the 1944 Education Act on gender education, require further research.16
Conclusion
This chapter has dealt largely with the way in which, historically, girls and women have underachieved through a combination of structural, legislative and policy factors and some of the theories which have been propounded through the centuries which may have contributed to this situation. In fact, the word 'gender', of course, includes both sexes and attention is now being increasingly paid to studying why boys are underachieving in relation to girls. For example, at GCSE and A Level examinations in the 1990s, girls' results have improved faster than boys' and boys' problems with schooling, particularly their motivation to learn, is now a matter of major concern. A better understanding of how students, both boys and girls, make sense of learning situations would help towards more equitable teaching assessment practice for both sexes.17
References
1. J. Purvis, 'A Feminist Perspective on the History of Women's Education,' in The Education of Girls and Women (History of Education Society, 1984), pp. 2-3.
2. S.N. Kersey, Classics in the Education of Girls arid Women (Scarecrow Press Inc., Metuchen, NJ, 1981), p. 13.
3. M.C. Borer, Willingly to School. A History of Women's Education (Lutterworth Press, Guildford, 1976), pp. 52-4.
4. D. Gardiner, English Girlhood At School (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1929), p. 192.
5. A. Wallas, Before the Bluestockings (Allen and Unwin, 1929), p. 135.
6. M. Wollstonecroft, Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792, Penguin English Library, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1982 edn), p. 283.
7. J. Kamm, Hope Deferred. Girls' Education in English History (Methuen, 1965), p. 230.
8. J. Burstyn, Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood (Croom Helm, 1980), p. 78.
9. R.M. Tullberg, Women at Cambridge (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998 edn), p. 73.
10. C. Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up in Late Edwardian and Victorian England (Routledge & KeganPaul, 1981), p. 93.
11. Sir A. Wright, The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage (Constable, 1913), pp. 39-40.
12. P. Gordon. R. Aldrich and D. Dean, Education and Policy in England in the Twentieth Century (Woburn Press, 1991), p. 192.
13. D.W. Dean, 'Education for Moral Improvement: Domesticity and Social Cohesion. The Labour Government, 1945-1951', in L. Dawtrey, et al. (eds), Equality and Inequality in Educational Policy (Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, Avon, 1995), p. 25.
14. R. Deem, Women and Schooling (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 60-1
15. L.A. Serbin, 'The Hidden Curriculum: Academic Consequences of Teacher Expectations', in M. Marland (ed.), Sex Differences and Schooling (Heinemann, 1983), p. 224.
16. S. Delamont, 'Gender', in P. Gordon (ed.), A Guide to Educational Research (Woburn Press, 1996), p. 345.
17. P. Murphy, and J. Elwood, 'Gendered Learning Outside and Inside School: Influence on Achievement', in D. Epstein et al. (eds). Failing Boys? Issues in Gender and Achievement (Open University Press, Buckingham, 1998), p. 179.
Further Reading
Delamont, S., A Woman's Place in Education: Historical and Sociological Perspectives on Gender and Education (Aldershot, Brookfield, 1996).
Diller, A. (ed.), The Gender Question in Education: Theory, Pedagogy and Politics (Westview, BO, 1996).
Equal Opportunities Commission / Chief Inspector of Schools, The Gender Divide: Performance Differences between Boys and Girls at School (Equal Opportunities Commission, 1996).
Goodman, J. and Martin, J., 'Breaking Boundaries: Gender, Politics and the History of Education', History of Education, 29, 5, 2000.
Hunt, F., Gender and Policy in English Education, Schooling for Girls, 1902-44 (Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead, 1991).