Gender and Education of youngsters and adults: the historical exclusion of women from the spaces of knowledge-power

Abstract

Studies have shown that the need of coping with family responsibilities is one of the main reasons for the evad­ing of adult women from school. With the intention to investigate whether and how gender issues were to­day marking the different occupation of spaces of knowledge-power in adult education is what we think of this work. Initially, we define some concepts, discussing the historical construction of gender inequali­ties. After this, we present preliminary results of research conducted with 100 students of EJA from the mu­nicipality of Alegrete - RS, which corroborate the influence of gender in school dropout: women drop out due to family and domestic responsibilities, while men depending on the labor market. At the end we bring forth some considerations about the need for public policies to cope with the identified problems.