ABSTRACT
As Sandra Acker (1980) has remarked, both family and higher education are 'greedy institutions'. Family and education together had shaped the course of the women's lives from childhood into adulthood. The amount of attention education required rarely turned to anger with lecturers or education institutions, as it could do within their families, no matter how 'irrational' or tired the women got. The counterposed values and meanings also resulted in a particular channelling of certain of the women's emotions, including the feelings generated by the prioritizing claims of each world. Women are under pressure to achieve success in each of the two greedy spheres by showing that neither suffers because of their participation in the other. They must show that their educational work is not affected by their family commitments, and that their family lives are not suffering because of their studies. Women cannot meet public world obligations without being accused of neglecting their duties in the private domain.
