Adult Education from a Gender-Critical Perspective

Abstract

Until now, gender dimensions have rarely been at the center of research on adult education and training. In 2006, however, two works appeared simultaneously that dealt with adult education from the perspective of gender. Sabine Liedtkes study analyses a field that research rarely attends to, the occupational training system. Utilizing the reconstruction of the categories “profession” and “work,” she documents the dichotomous gender model in the German dual system of traineeship, which is founded on traditional gendered images. She concludes that occupational pedagogy promotes the dichotomous structure of gender because it concentrates on commercial, technical, and industrial areas and thus contributes to a reproduction of hierarchical gender models. Angela Venth focuses, conversely, on the second large sector, general adult education, and in so doing contributes to gender analysis. By using program analysis, interpretations of conferences, and documentation of continued learning, she suggests that general adult education is based on an image of gender dichotomy with a normative masculine standard. According to Venth, the binary structure of general and professional education as well as the disregard for education culled from everyday life each obstructs the possibility to change gender relations.