208 pages
228mm x 145mm
ISBN-10: 1 85856 279 1
ISBN-13: 978 185856 279 7
July 2003

Universities have traditionally been spaces where men are constituted as powerful subjects and where they define what is worth knowing. Now that women students are emerging as the new majority, are they threatening to wrest this power from men, and are men fighting back?
This is the first book to explore the emerging female face of higher education, charting women's new position as the ' normal' student and the fear and resistance this has provoked. Feminists dreamed of transforming the malestream curriculum and culture in universities, precipitating a radical upheaval of what can and should be known, and the book examines how far this has been achieved. Qualitative research with women students of diverse backgrounds in the UK and with women academics internationally reveals the interplay between women's power, or lack of it, in the university and the world outside.

Lively, innovative and multi-dimensional, Powerful Subjects probes questions of gender, generation, class, misogyny and racism, drawing on multiple theories to push at the boundaries of educational research. It will excite the general reader, plus students, policy makers, educational researchers and those interested in feminist ideas.

Dr Jocey Quinn is Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for Access Studies, Staffordshire University.

'...the students' divergent views, concerns and responses add to the accessibility and liveliness of this thought provoking study and ensure that it is as likely to appeal to students as to those responsible for teaching and planning course curricula.' - Gender and Education
...undoubtedly a book I would recommend and which kept me engrossed throughout. - Studies in the Education of Adults