The Research On British Higher Education Of Women After World WarⅡ(1945-2007)

Women’s higher education has become a worldwide topic nowadays, which wins muchattention to various governments. In Britain, the impact of the industrial revolution, theexplosion of feminist activity and the introduction of formal schooling for youth allcontributed to the release of women from expected societal roles. Women’s higher educationin the UK has been started in the middle of the 19thcentury and has been developed in the lastone and a half century. In the process, women’s education is changing in enrolling way andknowledge acquired, and the scale is expanded. This dissertation uses historical methodologyto analyze and research women’s higher education in Britain after World War II, thencomments and evaluates the phenomenon.This thesis contains five parts: The introduction is about the meaning of this topic, as wellas the summary of former academic research, the elaboration of academic points anddefinition of related conception. Chapter I elaborates on the problems of the women’shigher education in UK history，which contains the inequality of education, curriculum,economic support and enrollment between girls and the boys. Chapter II analyses the Britishwomen’s higher education stage of development after World War II, which is divided intothree periods. From 1945 to 1979 is the first period, during which the Robbins Reportpublished promoted the women’s access to higher education .From 1979 to 1997 is the secondperiod of higher education for women, during which although the government enacted theAct to promote the development of education, the leadership of Margaret Thatcher’sgovernment’s abatement expenditure of public policy and the 1988 Education Reform Actbrought about the higher education for women stagnation exacerbated by the trend ofinequality in education. From 1997 to 2007 is the third stage, which describes the Blairgovernment came to power and attached great importance to the development of HigherEducation, so that women’s higher education has achieved qualitative changes. Chapter IIIanalyzes the characteristics of the British women’s higher education after the Second WorldWar: two changes in three periods. In 1979 when Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government took office, the higher education policy changed from steered by nationalpolicies to market-oriented policies. As the Blair government came to power in 1997, itshigher education policy tend to integrate the national policies and market together .At thesame time, in this process, the welfare policy and the country’s highest educational institutionchanges also exist. The reasons for the two changes: the Keynesian state intervention theorybecame the main government-led theory in 1945 to 1979; After 1979 Neo-conservatismbecame the dominant ideology and government theory of society were changed; In 1997“thethird way”to Blair laissez-faire and state intervention policy combination put education in thefirst place by raising the level of education and strengthen the construction of infrastructure.Chapter IV conducts a comprehensive evaluation of British higher education for women, andanalyzes the positive and negative aspects. The positive aspect is that girls’ proportion inhigher education becomes higher and higher. They have many ways to get higher education,in which the coeducation as the main body, and women’s College as a complement. At thesame time the rapid development of Open University provides plenty of learningopportunities for them. Discipline Distribution diversification: breaking from the femaleadvantage discipline boundaries to the male dominated field penetration. But we need toremember there are still many inequalities behind these equalities that the educated womenstill not have achieved equal status as men do either within or outside the sphere of education.Such as uneven sex-distribution in different courses, the sex bias within academicdevelopment, the minority position of females in professions, etc.The last part is the assessment and positioning of the comprehensive evaluation aboutBritain women’s higher education. At last the thesis concludes that the British women’s highereducation is in a leading position in the world’s women’s higher education history.