Women and Adult Education: Rethinking Androcentric Research

This article provides a framework which can be used to analyze adult education in terms of its androcentricity, that is, its male bias. It first identifies the characteristics of androcentricity and the nature of feminist agendas. The article then explores the treatment of both discourse and power relations to illustrate the domination of the male agenda. Adult education literature which has addressed each of these areas and new directions are explored within the subsets of these two categories. The paper contends that in order to use the framework productively, theoretical analysis is required. In particular, it recommends contemporary social theories as complementary ways in which to broaden our understanding of feminist agendas.