ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the challenges encountered by women within the distance education enterprise reflect universal educational inequities. Distance education is a global and rapidly growing phenomenon which offers formal learning opportunities to people who would not otherwise have access to schooling. The high level of enrolment by women in many home study programmes world-wide in part reflects the still-prevalent assumption that a woman's place is in the home. People know that women in virtually every country are promoting equal educational opportunities for females. Women, who enrol in distance education programmes, including those who are employed, commonly cite their responsibilities as mothers of young children as their reason for choosing home study. Feminists have come to appreciate that the invisibility of women is not a problem of individual male historians or philosophers conducting a personal campaign to keep women out of their respective disciplines but a structural problem which has been built into the production of knowledge.
