Women Education

In Indian context.

This work is a celebration of Canadian women in adult education and in community or institutional leadership. Through chapters and vignettes, this edited volume highlights the challenges these women have faced, and continue to face, as well as the remarkable contributions, as individuals and collectives, that women have made along the road to knowledge creation, empowerment, and social change. As such, this book is a legacy of feminist and women's struggles recorded for future generations. The contributing authors to this volume are scholars, researchers, community educators, students, and activists. They are themselves leaders in the cause of adult education, continuing a tradition set by the early feminist educators and activists in the field. There has never been a volume of work documenting the initiatives and accomplishments of women in adult education and leadership in Canada. This edited volume seeks to redress this imbalance. Book jacket.

Why do women in most developing countries lag behind men in literacy? Why do women get less schooling than men? This anthology examines the educational decisions that deprive women of an equal education. It assembles the most up-to-date data, organized by region. Each paper links the data with other measures of economic and social development. This approach helps explain the effects different levels of education have on womens' fertility, mortality rates, life expectancy, and income. Also described are the effects of women's education on family welfare. The authors look at family size and women's labor status and earnings. They examine child and maternal health, as well as investments in children's education. Their investigation demonstrates that women with a better education enjoy greater economic growth and provide a more nurturing family life. It suggests that when a country denies women an equal education, the nation's welfare suffers. Current strategies used to improve schooling for girls and women are examined in detail. The authors suggest an ambitious agenda for educating women. It seeks to close the gender gap by the next century. Published for The World Bank by The Johns Hopkins University Press.

While powerful gender inequalities remain in American society, women have made substantial gains and now largely surpass men in one crucial arena: education. Women now outperform men academically at all levels of school, and are more likely to obtain college degrees and enroll in graduate school. What accounts for this enormous reversal in the gender education gap? In The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What It Means for American Schools, Thomas DiPrete and Claudia Buchmann provide a detailed and accessible account of women’s educational advantage and suggest new strategies to improve schooling outcomes for both boys and girls. The Rise of Women opens with a masterful overview of the broader societal changes that accompanied the change in gender trends in higher education. The rise of egalitarian gender norms and a growing demand for college-educated workers allowed more women to enroll in colleges and universities nationwide. As this shift occurred, women quickly reversed the historical male advantage in education. By 2010, young women in their mid-twenties surpassed their male counterparts in earning college degrees by more than eight percentage points. The authors, however, reveal an important exception: While women have achieved parity in fields such as medicine and the law, they lag far behind men in engineering and physical science degrees. To explain these trends, The Rise of Women charts the performance of boys and girls over the course of their schooling. At each stage in the education process, they consider the gender-specific impact of factors such as families, schools, peers, race and class. Important differences emerge as early as kindergarten, where girls show higher levels of essential learning skills such as persistence and self-control. Girls also derive more intrinsic gratification from performing well on a day-to-day basis, a crucial advantage in the learning process. By contrast, boys must often navigate a conflict between their emerging masculine identity and a strong attachment to school. Families and peers play a crucial role at this juncture. The authors show the gender gap in educational attainment between children in the same families tends to be lower when the father is present and more highly educated. A strong academic climate, both among friends and at home, also tends to erode stereotypes that disconnect academic prowess and a healthy, masculine identity. Similarly, high schools with strong science curricula reduce the power of gender stereotypes concerning science and technology and encourage girls to major in scientific fields. As the value of a highly skilled workforce continues to grow, The Rise of Women argues that understanding the source and extent of the gender gap in higher education is essential to improving our schools and the economy. With its rigorous data and clear recommendations, this volume illuminates new ground for future education policies and research.

This brief, interpretive history of American schooling focuses on the evolving relationship between education and social change. Like its predecessors, this new edition adopts a thematic approach, investigating the impact of social forces such as industrialization, urbanization, immigration, globalization, and cultural conflict on the development of schools and other educational institutions. It also examines the various ways that schools have contributed to social change, particularly in enhancing the status and accomplishments of certain social groups and not others. Detailed accounts of the experiences of women and minority groups in American history consider how their lives have been affected by education, while "Focal Point" sections within each chapter allow the reader to hone in on key moments in history and their relevance within the broader scope of American schooling from the colonial era to the present. This new edition has been comprehensively updated and edited for greater readability and clarity. It offers a revised final chapter, updated to include recent change in education politics and policy, in particular the decline of No Child Left Behind and the impact of the Common Core and movements against it. Further additions include enhanced coverage of colonial and early post-colonial American schooling, added materials on persistent issues such as race in education, an updated discussion of the GED program, and a closer look at the role of technology in schools. With its nuanced treatment of both historical and contemporary factors influencing the modern school system, this book remains an excellent resource for investigating and critiquing the social, economic, and cultural development of American education.

Female seminaries in nineteenth-century America offered middle-class women the rare privilege of training in music and the liberal arts. A music background in particular provided the foundation for a teaching career, one of the few paths open to women. Jewel A. Smith opens the doors of four female seminaries, revealing a milieu where rigorous training focused on music as an artistic pursuit rather than a social skill. Drawing on previously untapped archives, Smith charts women's musical experiences and training as well as the curricula and instruction available to them, the repertoire they mastered, and the philosophies undergirding their education. She also examines the complex tensions between the ideals of a young democracy and a deeply gendered system of education and professional advancement. An in-depth study of female seminaries as major institutions of learning, Transforming Women's Education illuminates how musical training added to women's lives and how their artistic acumen contributed to American society.

Although much less well known than some other nineteenth century female campaigners, such as Florence Nightingale or Emmeline Pankhurst, Dorothea Beale is nonetheless deserving of wide recognition for her pioneering, and at times radical, ideas. Dorothea's work for the education of girls made just as significant an impact on the liberation of women as did that of Florence Nightingale in ennobling the nursing profession or Emmeline Pankhurst in drawing attention to women's political inferiority. Although very much a woman of her times, through her work as Principal of the Cheltenham Ladies' College, her writings, her speeches and her widespread involvement in societies promoting women's interests, Dorothea helped to show what women were capable of, providing them with greater confidence and self-belief. Drawing on a wide range of original sources, this book traces Dorothea's life and work. It considers the formative influences of her youth, her response to the disappointments of her early career and examines how her own educational ideas evolved, were put into practice and came to influence schools and colleges both at home and abroad. As well as an in-depth analysis of her pioneering work in Cheltenham, her many other interests, connections and involvements, including her contribution to the suffrage campaign are also explored. However this book is not just a story of one woman's achievements, great though they were. There is an attempt to understand Dorothea as a person with reflections on her character and personal life throughout and the book ends with an appraisal of the many contradictions to be found in this intriguing 'conservative reformer'. Dorothea Beale was a woman whose quiet and unassuming manner hid a strong sense of vocation, a fierce determination and an undoubted practical ability to achieve her ends. Dorothea would have been amazed at the changes that occurred in the position of women in the century after her death in 1906, and yet it was in no small measure thanks to her work that this breakthrough in female opportunities occurred.