Breaking out—Women in adult education

Adult Education is primarily a women's service: women are the majority of staff and students yet they are not represented at the decision-making levels where resources are allocated. Adult Education is not as effective as it should be in providing open, life-long education, if the argument that when women achieve equality of numbers they will achieve equality of opportunity is to be believed. It still reinforces women's domestic and secondary role through its structures, policies and programmes and this, combined with its powerlessness within the British education system, reinforces the marginality of women as second class citizens. But this paper will argue that it has potential for women.