All you need is love: feminist pedagogy for empowerment and emotional labour in the academy

Abstract

This paper critically examines the concept of empowerment and considers the contradictory role of feminist teachers and authority in dominant institutions of knowledge production. Questions are raised about the emotional labour required to sustain feminist pedagogy for empowerment in the academy. Issues of student resistance, group dynamics, difference and diversity in women‐only groups are interrogated using the theoretical frameworks of critical and feminist pedagogy and postmodernism. The paper draws illustratively on interviews with feminist academics who were asked how they applied feminism to their pedagogy/ teaching methodologies, and students who identified as feminists were asked for their views on styles of classroom interaction.

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Notes on contributors

Louise Morley

She has published widely on feminist education, power, policy, equity and empowerment in higher and professional education and public service organizations. Recent publications include Feminist Academics: Creative Agents for Change (1995), Breaking Boundaries: Women in Higher Education (1996) (both co‐edited with Val Walsh and published by Taylor & Francis Ltd). Her next book Organizing Feminisms; the Micropolitics of the Academy will be published by Macmillan in 1998. She is currently writing a book, with Naz Rassool, on Equity and School Effectiveness. This will be published by Falmer Press in 1999.