ABSTRACT
Distance education’s mandate to expand outreach to those with limited access to higher education makes it a particularly welcome mode for non-traditional women learners. Feminist pedagogy, which has tended to privilege the classroom space in the learning experience, has stopped short of a wholehearted acceptance of distance education, which relies heavily on self-study and has become increasingly defined by technology-aided learning in recent years. Despite this conflicted relationship, their shared democratizing mandate and learner-centric approaches have made it possible to envision a rapprochement between the two. This has been aided by a revised understanding of ‘distance’, a dislodging of real/virtual dichotomies and an exploration of ‘hybrid’ spaces in the interest of feminist goals. After mapping these developments on an international canvas, the chapter explores a similar reconciliation in the context of developing countries, specifically India. Here, I argue that despite the significance of democratization, challenges posed by consumerist trends in mass-based open education call for suitable strategies, including a readaptation of the ‘hybrid’. Using the example of a ‘blended approach’ programme, the chapter shows how contextualized innovations may help to sustain the partnership between feminist pedagogy and ODL. It is hoped that such an illustration, despite its limitations and specificity, may provoke other experimentations in diverse sociocultural contexts.
