Conclusion

Chapters in this book have traversed a diverse range of subjects and contexts, addressing issues as apparently varied as the education of elderly women; the experiences of black academics; and the constructions of masculinity among young non-participant working-class men. Yet across this diverse account of gender issues in lifelong learning, strong themes have emerged. The most persistent has probably been the problematisation of the encroachment by economic rationales as shaping and driving the concept of lifelong learning. Specifically, the dominance of the human capital model which (as Jacky Brine and Jill Blackmore’s chapters depict) is now hegemonic across the OECD, and arguably, given the directive power of the World Bank, increasingly across the ‘developing’ world. In this view, the function (and we use that word deliberately) of lifelong learning is to ensure economic survival in a competitive global market place via development of a responsive, flexible and highly skilled workforce. As contributers have argued, this model can and sometimes does incorporate a liberal account of lifelong learning increasing social inclusion and well-being – this view maintains that there may be individual and social benefits simultaneous with the perpetuation of a robust national economy. But as Carole Leathwood observes, the social justice elements of lifelong learning policy (though in any case clearly subsumed to those of ‘economic necessity’) cause little dissonance, as both economic and ‘social inclusion’ narratives are equally concerned with ‘inclusion into, conformity to, and the legitimation of, a starkly unequal and highly stratified society’ (p. 49).