The Past is Difference - The Difference is Past.

Education has been the main channel through which Finnish women have attempted to achieve the status of an individual. But what has the story of women's individualisation been like? The article examines women's educational life stories - 'independence narratives' - and highlights the gendered interpretations women have made of their lives. The gender difference in these stories is a temporal difference within the self: through the rhetorical construction of a dualistic division between the past and the present self, a qualitative hierarchy is introduced between a (past) woman and a seemingly gender-neutral individual. Moreover, the use of the woman as the temporal other of the individual reflects the timeless character of the individual. The individual constitutes a norm that determines the perspective from which the past and the present are viewed. While the individual is timeless, the difference is historicised and projected into the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]