ABSTRACT
The promise of education is of knowledge and understanding which will enrich life, and of qualifications which will sweep individuals out of drudgery and meaningless employment into well-paid and satisfying careers. And as adult education is charged with new significance, it is interesting to consider its past record and present possibilities so far as women are concerned. Feminist analysis of education has tended to concentrate on period of formal schooling and, as people have seen, presents a fairly gloomy picture so far as young women are concerned. The provision of post-graduate studies and the organisation and control of research by universities is not regarded as 'adult education'. The justification for extending adult education provision to women was based principally upon patriarchal assumptions about women's incompetence in those duties for which it was assumed they were inevitably responsible. Roland Detrosier, an earlier champion of education for working-class women, preached 'positive discrimination' in terms of improving their performance as wives and mothers.
