School identities and subject positions Building a feminist policy within schools for adults

The societal meanings attributed to education are the product of political struggle. One of the actors who play a role in this is the government. The development of Dutch government policy on education during the seventies and early eighties was based on the approach that education should function as a means of achieving a more democratic society. An equal opportunities policy was developed and policy objectives on gender equality were formulated. One of the objectives emphasized the fact that girls were lagging behind boys in education. Another, more critical objective included a plea for ‘reappraisal of the feminine’ (see Arends and Volman, 1992). These objectives represented ‘the feminine’ both as a set of skills and values that should be incorporated in education and as a problem, a cause of inequality.