Lalage Bown championed women’s education for women’s personal empowerment and social progress. She insisted that such empowerment and progress always risk being lost and must be continuously defended and fought for. Part of this project involves remembering past creative achievements and struggles for women’s rights to education and scholarship. The chapter therefore begins with a brief biography of Mary Somerville, the Scottish born scientist after whom the Oxford College attended by Lalage is named. Her name is now unknown to most people. This leads into a discussion of Lalage’s history of Women’s scholarship, past and future and belief that it has flourished where structures are less formal and there is a loosening of the ‘strange clerical culture of science’. A case study of women’s education in the West of Scotland in the 1980s follows to illustrate this view. Current narrowing of Adult Education’s horizons, alongside threats to women’s rights worldwide, is counterposed to Lalage’s and bell hooks’ vision for Adult Education as the ‘practice of freedom’.
University of Glasgow, United Kingdom - ORCID: 0009-0001-1903-7693
Chapter Title
Unfinished Business: Forgotten Histories of Women’s Scholarship and the Shifting Status of Women’s Education
Authors
Jean Barr
Language
English
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0253-4.09
Peer Reviewed
Publication Year
2023
Copyright Information
© 2023 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Book Title
Adult Education and Social Justice: International Perspectives
Editors
Maria Slowey, Heribert Hinzen, Michael Omolewa, Michael Osborne
Peer Reviewed
Number of Pages
324
Publication Year
2023
Copyright Information
© 2023 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Publisher Name
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0253-4
ISBN Print
979-12-215-0252-7
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0253-4
eISBN (xml)
979-12-215-0254-1
Series Title
Studies on Adult Learning and Education
Series ISSN
2704-596X
Series E-ISSN
2704-5781