Adult Education History and the Issue of Gender: Toward A Different History of adult Education In America

Adult education history suffers from gender bias. Historians of the field have marginalized or written women out of the historical narrative. Arguing for the inclusion of gender as a category of historical analysis, this paper first compares the visibility of women in the historical research literature with their visibility in field-sponsored publications drawn mainly from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Second, it identifies mechanisms within the field that fostered women's invisibility in adult education histories. To move toward a more inclusive historiography, historical researchers can take a compensatory approach to women's marginalization or a critical approach that makes the interplay of gender and education problematic and thus the source of new research questions.