Histoire de l'éducation, n°156/2021

At the crossroads of the history of the education of adults and the history of women and gender, the issue focuses on adult women's education - according to a broad conception including general, social, trade union and professional education - aimed at adult women, notably from working-class backgrounds, in various contexts throughout the 20th century.

Five articles choose to deal with women as targets, educators, or organizers, at different times in Belgium, the United States, Italy, and France. Each in its own way raises main questions for researchers on this specific domain. Indeed, taking women into account does not only aim to complete the historiography of the education of adults, but also to propose an epistemological and methodological shift. This issue opens to at least three ways that are likely to move the lines. The first concerns the question of sources, which must be entirely rethought; the second questions the contribution of the international dimension to a renewed understanding of the object; the third returns to a recurring theme in the history of the education of adults, namely social control versus emancipation, with the idea that the fortuitous or the random could eventually blur the boundaries.