What Purpose, if any, could a Feminine Theory of Education serve Today?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to depict the contours of a feminine theory of education within the epistemological framework of phenomenology. Actually, in spite of the fact that a widespread appeal to the many aspects of feminist epistemology has so far been developed mainly in other branches of human sciences as well in many studies of the history of education and pedagogical methods, considerable benefits can be gained also for the sake of a theory of education. It is argued that the seminal project of Women Studies – fighting women’s invisibility and exclusion also from the work of producing thought – together with the phenomenological account of personhood and, in particular, of human body can be a precious lens through which to view contemporary education, meeting the challenges of a merely biological and positivistic approach to the sexual difference, of the so-called “sexual differentials”, and of postmodern relativism.