ABSTRACT

Access, in its most obvious sense, means the right to attend an educational institution in the first place. But a central obstruction to equitable access to education lies in the very use of concepts embedded in sex role socialisation theory. The bulk of the gender equity literature in relation to schooling is flawed because of its embeddedness in socialisation and role theory. The removal of the more obvious rules of exclusion is of itself insufficient to bring about equity. The construction of the person doing the socialising as the active agent and the person being socialised as passive recipient, the "object" or the "raw material of socialisation" is highly problematic. Reproduction theory shifts the focus from individuals and the way in which they become male or female to the capitalist social structure as a whole, and focuses on the fact that schools reproduce the class/gender structure of society.