Gender and its implications in adult learning and education

Abstract

This issue of Studies in Adult Education and Learning explores gender and its implications in adult learning and education from different world perspectives. For Hearn and Collinson (2017, p. 27) the notion of gender is a “very complex set of embodied, institutionalized structures, practices and processes” and one of the most fundamental and powerful structuring social principles, which is constructed within very diverse contexts. Women and femininities, and men and masculinities, are seen as socially constructed, produced and reproduced, variable and changing across time and space, within societies, and through the life course. The notion of gender is local and global in nature but on the local level femininities and masculinities have to be understood within the context of culture, ethics, religion, space and language.