Using Models of Feminist Pedagogies to Think About Issues and Directions in Graduate Education for Women Students

This essay begins with an overview of the contemporary status of graduate education for women students in the United States and Canada. It then presents a historical conspectus of the status of women's work and the socio-cultural location of the homeplace in relation to graduate education in these two countries. From these perspectives, it examines institutional and individual barriers affecting women students' access and accommodation in graduate education. It then addresses its main purpose: It takes up themes, concepts, and perspectives that shape psychologically oriented, liberatory, and positional models of feminist pedagogies, and it uses them to think about issues and directions in graduate education.