1. Education Success through Women???s Agencies and Feminist Activism: An Analysis of International, National, and Regional Policymaking in Spain.
- Author
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Ortbals, Candice
- Subjects
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SOCIALIZATION , *ECONOMIC systems , *ECONOMIC policy , *DICTATORSHIP , *FEMINISM - Abstract
Education policymaking is important to women's (and men's) lives, generally speaking, because the education system is a main source of socialization. Women must be educated if they are to be equal actors in the economic system and if they are to serve as influential citizens. Therefore, in any country, non-sexist education policymaking is crucial; yet, in the case of Spain and its transition to democracy, non-sexist education policymaking was imperative because the Franco dictatorship had promoted traditional women's identities through the classroom. Because education policymaking in Spain was devolved to the regional administrations over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, a ‘democratic transition’ to a more ‘sexfair’ system partially depended on sub-national institutions and actors. In this paper, I examine how regional women's policy agencies, education ministries, and activists have impacted the achievement of non-sexist education outcomes. The paper is a comparative case design that reviews the national case and two regional cases – split longitudinally into six cases. The cases show that the decentralization of education policymaking was not an immediate opportunity for women. Actually the national women's policy agency, after having been encouraged by European Community policy, laid down the groundwork for non-sexist education. Thus, the central administration and the international level were essential to education outcomes for women. In more recent times, however, sub-national actors and institutions have served as an open door to education success – especially as they have begun to pursue education programs that are culturally specific to their region's populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005