Policy inroads undermining women in education

Abstract

Over the last decades, policy trends have differentially and negatively affected women educators, defied, denied or repressed feminist values and missed opportunities for using feminist insights to reframe policy issues. This article provides a critical feminist analysis of educational and social policies with negative implications for women in education. Specifically, a set of recent policies were tracked and then analysed using a feminist critical framework to determine how they have been shaped by discourses and relationships of power and how they have worked, either overtly or subtly, to counter the interests of women educators. Through these methods, we demonstrate not only how trends in education and social policy are increasingly undermining women’s power, pay, status and chances to speak their voices, but also the viability of feminist critical policy analysis.