Gendered Distance Education Spaces

Abstract

This chapter problematizes how gender is constructed and used in the arguments of flexible distance education. By using a gender and space analysis we destabilise the open, flexible and liberating features of distance higher education spaces, that are supposed to favour women. The questions are; How are the spaces of distance education gendered, and What power asymmetries are produced? The empirical material is Swedish education policies, mainly from the 1990s, concerned with the issue of creating new educational opportunities through a more open and flexible higher education. The chapter provides insights into the gender power asymmetries of these educational spaces through three lines of arguments: gendered technology use, off-campus studies and the home as place for learning. It is concluded that these spaces are characterized by enclosure and restrictions that risk “keeping women in place”, and thus need to be questioned and challenged by feminist readings.