ABSTRACT
The introductory chapter offers a brief overview of the place of gender within distance education, especially from the perspective of changing feminist evaluations. Feminist responses to distance and virtual pedagogies have undergone a sea change since the time distance education universities were primarily viewed and projected as digital factories. The re-conceptualization of responses towards distance education is due to several factors, including an evolution of distance education from print material and postal deliveries to virtual modes of online learning, as well as a critical self-appraisal of feminist pedagogy that is now more open to exploring the democratic potential of technology in education. Further, a scrutiny of the notion of ‘transactional distance’ as a psychological distance in all teaching-learning environments, including physical and online spaces, has led to a re-evaluation of negative associations of distance education. The democratic mandate of distance education and commitment to gender inclusivity can be allied with feminist pedagogical values for a productive interface. However, regional and socio-cultural circumstances, and inequities of gender, race, class and caste, must be considered in any such exploration, as is made clear from the four articles of the collection, which discuss these questions in Indian and international contexts.
