Barbara Spronk

VOL. 5, No. 2, 1-3

In her foreword in Toward New Horizons: International Perspectives on women in Distance Education, Liz Burge (1988) notes that "while talk about women distance learners and educators has been plentiful, writing and re-search has not" (p. xi). A year later, writing on women in distance education in the collection Post-Secondary Distance Education in Canada, Rebecca Coulter (1989) made the similar point that "virtually no attempt has been made to relate any of this material (on feminist theory and practice in the educational domain) to an analysis of women and distance education" (p. 11). Thanks, however, to the energy, insights, and scholarship of women like Burge, Faith, and Coulter in Canada, Kirkup and von Prümmer in Europe, and many more throughout the world, gender issues are being raised and discussed in professional and scholarly meetings of distance educators and increasingly in their writings.

The questions that are being posed go to the heart of how we as distance educators see our task. We who pride ourselves on being learner-centred are asked to consider the ways in which learning is a gendered activity. For example, the question, "How do adults learn?," is transformed into "How do women and men learn?" The question, "What sorts of conditions must we create for learners at a distance so that the open door does not become a revolving door?," becomes "What sorts of support do women and men need in order to succeed as distance learners?" Instead of worrying over what sorts of programs will meet the needs of our potential - and generic - learners, we are asked whether our course materials enable women as well as men to make sense of their experiences, to find their voice, and to take positive action on their worlds. Rather than urging on our colleagues the latest technology for connecting learners with teachers and with each other, we are asked to consider whether these technologies are equally available to women and men, and whether women and men are likely to approach and experience these technologies in the same way. And so on.

The articles in this special issue of the Journal of Distance Education pose such questions and suggest answers and directions for further research. Gill Kirkup and Christine von Prümmer question the universality of the notion of "independent" or "autonomous" learner, which enjoys such wide currency in the distance education literature. Based on the results of their comparative work on women and men learners in the British Open University and the German FernUniversität, the authors suggest that the notion of the "connected" learner more accurately takes account of women's learning styles. They then go on to explore the implications this difference in men's and women's learning needs has for the kind of support systems we design for learners at a distance.

Louise Moran looks at why the interinstitutional Women's Studies Major program, developed and taught jointly by three Australian universities, has been so successful, in contrast to other joint ventures among distance education institutions which have crashed and burned. Based on the project evaluation of which she was an author, Moran suggests that the conditions which all partnerships require in order to work - congruence of aims, parity among partners, commitment, confidence and trust, shared but adequate control, willingness to adapt and compromise, and effective communications - were reinforced by the commitment to feminist principles of collegiality and consensus and the goal of legitimizing women's studies as a program area that were shared by the program's creators.

In Asha Kanwar's article, the need for creating women's studies programs takes on an even greater urgency in the face of the enormous problems with which women in India are struggling. Kanwar writes with great passion of these problems, and of the necessity for institutions like Indira Gandhi Open University, which are mandated to be vehicles of social change, to help create the conditions for women's empowerment. Kanwar also reminds those of us who work as distance educators in conditions of relative affluence and safety of the ways in which poverty, illiteracy, and powerlessness are matters of life and death for Indian women and their children.

Cathy Bray's article returns us to the Western world of work and learning, with a provocative look at the ways in which women distance workers and their students can analyze computer-mediated forms of interaction and learn to use them to subvert the "informatics of domination." Bray applies insights from feminist analyses of computers and the workplace, with special attention to the working situations of nurses - who form a substantial portion of women learners at a distance - to the tasks that face women in our everyday work as distance educators.

In addition to these research articles, this issue also contains a special feature, Karlene Faith's first-person account of a conference held in India, which brought together women university vice chancellors and others. The conference, sponsored by the Commonwealth of Learning, focussed on women in development. Faith's reflections on her admiration for the women whose words gave meaning to the conference, her frustration with male-dominated agendas, her struggle with the contradiction between the opulence of the conference venues and endless banquets on the one hand and the grimness of street life on the other, and finally her devastating illness, give life to the feminist principle that "the personal is political." The two "For Your Information" items provide a useful counterpoint to Faith's reflections: Susan Phillips' item providing an overview of the aims of and recommendations arising from the conference described in Faith's account; and Uma Vandse's and S.A. Pol's contribution allowing us a glimpse of an Indian university set up specifically to meet the needs of women. Finally, although it was not submitted as part of this issue, Céline Lebel's response to an earlier "Dialogue" item by Jane Brindley and Maxim Jean-Louis provides us with a reminder of one of the primary aims of the Journal, which is to provoke and provide a forum for debate of issues in the field of distance education. If the articles and other pieces in this special issue stimulate thoughtful responses like Lebel's, the purpose of the issue will have been fulfilled.

Like all issues of the Journal, this one was a collaborative effort. The editors owe a special debt of thanks to the authors, and to those who reviewed their work in such a thorough and constructive manner: Liz Burge, Roberta Carey, Karlene Faith, Janet Jenkins, Barbara Roberts, Kay Rogers, and Judith Van Duren. To Liz, in addition, we owe the inspiration - and push - for this issue, as we do for so much of the work that has been devoted to gender in distance education in the years since the Vancouver ICDE conference. Thank you, Liz. Thank you, all.

We also acknowledge with gratitude the support provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the financial support provided by Simon Fraser University.

References

Burge, E. (1988). Foreword. In K. Faith (Ed.), Towards new horizons: International perspectives on women in distance education (pp. vii–xiv). London: Routledge.

Coulter, R. (1989). Women in distance education: Towards a feminist perspective. In R. Sweet (Ed.), Post-secondary distance education in Canada (pp. 11–22). Athabasca: Athabasca University and Canadian Society of Studies in Education.