What purpose, if any, could a feminine theory of education serve today?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to depict the contours of a feminine theory of education within the epistemological framework of phenomenology. Actually, in spite of the fact that a widespread appeal to the many aspects of feminist epistemology have so far been developed mainly in other branches of human sciences as well in many studies of history of education and pedagogical methods, considerable benefts can be gained also for the sake of a theory of education. It is argued that the seminal project of Women Studies – fghting women’s invisibility and exclusion also from the work of producing thought – together with the phenomenological account of personhood and, in particular, of human body can be a precious lens through which to view contemporary education, meeting the challenges of a merely biological and posivistic approach to the sexual diference, of the so-called “sexual diferentialism”, and of postmodern relativism.