ABSTRACT
When thinking about any distance education institution and its women students it is useful to separate out issues of access from issues of content. The key educational principle of the Open University (OU), alongside its distance teaching methodology, is equality of opportunity through open access. The Continuing Education sector contains a widely disparate selection of courses at different levels. The most well-established efforts to provide special help for women to enter courses where they have been previously underrepresented have been in technology faculty. In 1983, the OU presented its first management course, The Effective Manager, the foundation course for the rest of the management programme. The new initiative for change in distance education is neither small scale nor the work of a few committed women; rather it is large-scale, technology-driven, numbering among its most enthusiastic supporters a disproportionate number of men. Female distance educators have done a great deal to improve the receptiveness of the university for further initiatives.
