CULTURAL CAPITAL AND GENDER DISCRIMINATION IN THE FIELD OF EDUCATION: PIERRE BOURDIEU’S THEORY OF PRACTICE

Abstract

Gender discrimination can be observed in all historical periods in diverse societies and cultures in all fields, especially in the field of education. Having chosen Parinoush Saniee’s The Book of Fate and Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the present paper attempts to plot complex connections between cultural capital, gender discrimination, and education. This paper scrutinizes and examines how cultural capital has engaged with and fostered gender discrimination in the field of education based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice. The findings of this study represent that the individuals’ culturallycreated habitus renders gender discrimination seems natural and therefore contributes to the continuation of masculine domination and women’s submissiveness in the field of education. This paper also demonstrates that women are ultimately submitted to the prevailing culture of the patriarchal society in which they live despite their efforts to resist the confinements imposed on them by that culture.