Gender equality, pedagogy and citizenship

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between gender equality, pedagogy and citizenship. It locates the analysis of education within the gender dilemmas associated with liberal democratic citizenship. Of particular concern is the tension between the promotion of equality and difference. Nancy Fraser's distinctions between redistribution and recognition and between affirmative and transformative remedies are used to explore two phases in the pedagogical debate around gender equality and difference in the UK since the 1970s.These phases demonstrate the contradictions associated with gender as a ‘bivalent collectivity’ – a collectivity defined through both economic and cultural/representational forms. The conclusion argues for a ‘critical pedagogy of difference’which promotes pedagogic democratic rights as well as critical gender identities.