EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY

2019, VOL. 51, NO. 7, 731–743

https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2018.1488215

Calling for change: A feminist approach to women in art, politics,

philosophy and education
Elizabeth Mary Grierson 
School of Art, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Michel Foucault showed by his genealogical method that history is random. Feminism; women;
It comprises sites of disarray and dispersal. In those sites, Simone de Beauvoir art; politics; education;
wrote philosophy through lived experience of woman as Other in relation to philosophy
man as the Absolute. Here lies a fecund site for revisionist analysis of female
cultural production and its relevance to a philosophy of education. The paper
works with a feminist approach to the politics of knowledge, examining
textual and political strategies in the recording of history and the ‘othering’
of women through dominant cultural discourses. Infusing this discussion
is a feminist politics of interrogation on cultural change for women. The
paper investigates contributions of women to fields of art, politics, education
and philosophy, and to the ways their contributions have been considered,
received, positioned. Different approaches to feminism become apparent
in the different conditions of knowledge under discussion. This leads to
a final consideration of feminist challenges in context of the politics of
neoliberalism as it seeks to identify a feminist potential for ‘a cleansing fire’.
The interventions in this paper trace political strategies and challenges for
a philosophy of education to keep the momentum of feminist histories and
issues to the forefront of scholarly enquiry and political/social action.

Introduction
Michel Foucault (1994) showed by his genealogical method that history is random; it comprises sites of
disarray and dispersal. It is the codifying and categorising of evidence that makes sense of social and
epistemological narratives. In the discursive practices, some discourses become dominant and others
marginalised. According to Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949), in the dominant narratives
and practices ‘woman’ is positioned and categorised as inferior to ‘man’, as object to his subject, as
incidental to his absolute, always as Other to his One. How does this work? How could such narratives
hold sway? There is a politic to all this. When the codifying is undertaken by a normative liberal voice,
presumed to be male, white and Western, it will result in the formalisation and dissemination of a par-
ticular perspective of knowledge, and thus a particular perspective of history. Then that view will be
assimilated into a dominant culture and reproduced as epistemological truth.
In the discursive practices, some truths are spoken and others misspoken or omitted from the
acceptable fabric of the dominant discourses. Such normative practices in education and the histories
of cultural production were opened for interrogation in the revisionist decades of the 1960s to 1990s
when the ‘truths’ of colonisation, racialisation and masculinisation of Western cultural narratives came

CONTACT  Elizabeth Mary Grierson  griersonproductions@gmail.com, elizabeth.grierson@rmit.edu.au

© 2018 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia
732 E. M. GRIERSON

to the fore. Social-political contexts of disciplinary knowledge became a site of rigorous interrogation,
contention and critique.
By identifying dominant narratives and drawing on alternatives, this paper highlights women’s work
and achievements in waves of feminist sensibilities. It examines the textual strategies of art, politics,
education and philosophy by tracing the stories of women as cultural producers, women who advocated
for change. Selected for discussion are Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Siddall, Kate Wilson Sheppard,
Kate Milligan Edger, Kathleen Muriel Gresson, Simone de Beauvoir and Judy Chicago. They are all women
who have made not only a significant contribution to women’s lives and work, and to the politics of
women’s cultural production, but also have shone a light on normative and discriminatory practices.
In Foucauldian terms, the women selected for discussion are both subjects and objects of knowledge;
they are both actors and acted upon at one and the same time. They secure the potential for agency
through their lives and work to overturn any ‘othering’ of women. With great facility, othering continues
to occur and it often takes a brave voice to expose the politics of power, to speak out and say, ‘Enough!’
Change becomes a feminist demand.
These stories may be harnessed to inform a philosophy of education today, and in this way the
women under discussion are contributing to the philosophy of education. Drawing from them, educa-
tors may reinvigorate critical questions surrounding women, knowledge and labour. Perspectives and
politics of feminism have the potential to sustain a critical philosophical perspective, a critical educa-
tional perspective, a critical knowledge perspective in these neoliberal times when feminist voices are
too easily subsumed by generalised and uncritical narratives. It is the critical weave of feminist aspects
and practices that sustains this paper through raising and addressing a genealogy of political issues
for women.
Each of the women selected here worked assiduously for change; each was dedicated to their field
of practice; and each adds another piece of evidence to the sites of resistance that identify so much of
women’s work affecting change for women. The feminist politic in this paper provides a challenge in
neoliberal cultures whereby feminism appears to have lost its political tooth. A philosophy of education
would not be complete without a critical appraisal of these politics through a feminist approach to
the workings of power in the conditions of knowledge production, construction and dissemination.

Feminism(s)
‘At any historical moment, what kinds of conditions come into play in determining that a particular
subject is the legitimate executor of a certain kind of knowledge?’ asks Foucault (cited in Faubion, 1998,
p. xiv). What kinds of conditions come into play when a feminist interrogation is engaged? A feminist
ethos and methodology is at work here. It must be noted that there are many ‘feminisms’, although
their differences, relevance and sites of influence may be difficult to discern in neoliberal frameworks
of social and political life.
Feminist methodologies provide grist to the mill of enquiry in a philosophy of education. A brief
review of different approaches shows that American feminist, Carol Gilligan (1982) advocated for a fem-
inist ‘ethics of care’ through ethical relationships and community. This overturned the masculinist model
of individualised instrumentalism. Iris Marion Young (1990) called for structural change by focusing on
an approach from a Marxist perspective of structural oppression, identifying five aspects of structural
oppression demanding revision: exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and
violence. This approach claims that any feminist achievement depends on exposing injustice by over-
turning the normative systems of social, political and legal power. Sexuality and power became focus for
the ‘gender question’ in the writings of feminist legal scholar, Catharine MacKinnon (1987). Her critical
work shows how patriarchal power establishes systems of value, even determining the criteria for value;
and from this it is a small step to shape human beings and their relations in these terms.
The new feminist subject of neoliberal logics and rationale, according to Catherine Rottenberg,
‘accepts full responsibility for her own well-being and self-care, which is increasingly predicated on
crafting a felicitous work-family balance based on a cost-benefit calculus’ (Rottenberg, 2014). A critique
 EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 733

of this take on feminism might say that it follows a first-world perspective for a privileged feminist
subject whose conditions and personal lives are not, and never have been disenfranchised. If this is
the shape of a new feminist subject, then where did ‘she’ come from and what spawned these politics?
The decades of the 1960s to 1990s were a time of feminist advocacy for women’s equality and
rights. American liberal feminists mobilised a rights-based approach to demand equality in wage and
employment opportunities. With its roots in liberal values of individual freedom, progress and autonomy,
this approach seeks equal opportunities with men—‘the husk of liberalism … mobilised to spawn a
neoliberal feminism’ (Rottenberg, 2014, p. 418). But, does liberalism here bed down too comfortably
with neoliberalism?
Feminist approaches to rights have long sought to disclose, question, unsettle and displace norma-
tive discourses of patriarchy. Yet problems of inequality persist. In New Zealand and many other OECD
countries, there is much talk about a continuing gender pay gap through enculturated conscious and
unconscious bias against women. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was replete with
neoliberal rhetoric for consciousness-raising, improved opportunities in work conditions, wages and
attitudes. Clinton was claiming that to fix women’s issues is to fix America’s issues of family, economy
and competitiveness. Consider this logic in neoliberal terms. Is it not assimilating the feminist cause into
a universalising economic narrative? Substitute ‘men’s issues’ for ‘women’s issues’ here, and the sentence
would stay the same with no gain or loss of meaning. Just as all roads lead to Rome, all well-intentioned
words lead to economic imperatives. That is how the gender-neutral neoliberal mantra effectively
colonises other narratives. Clinton’s campaign against sexual violence for women really had teeth, but
where did it founder? It was drowned by other mainstreamed economic agendas. Although much is
made of Trump’s ‘post-truth’ utterances, he stepped easily into the normative space of neoliberal politics,
with its already gendered and racialised normative subject—male, white, Western and non-Muslim.
As gender-neutral norms continue to hold sway, feminism is mainstreamed to be all about (first-
world) women having choice, while violence continues unabated with one in three women suffering
physical or sexual violence. A ‘grave violation of human rights’ (UN Women, 2016) becomes increasingly
apparent. Educating philosophically may be one way to open these crucial and pressing issues for critical
examination by bringing a feminist ethos into education as a kind of ‘mainstreaming’, but a political one
at that. The problem today seems to be that feminist integration into neoliberal logics allows a norma-
tive view to persist. But norms are just that—they are assumed and reinscribed through the discursive
practices of dominant discourses and they will not be dismantled without radical action for change.

Old mistresses
Challenging normative attitudes, language and practices was the focus of radical action for change for
the women’s movement in the last quarter of the twentieth century. How did those challenges work to
effect change? The fields of art practice and its histories offer sites for exposing the politics of power in
the formations of knowledge. It will be seen that women’s stories often use different language forma-
tions in their telling and they engage different practices to formulate their outcomes.
In their groundbreaking book on women in art and its history, Old Mistresses: Women, art and ideol-
ogy (Parker & Pollock, 1981), Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock point out that the textual strategies of
history account for the way women have been regarded as both subject and object of art. There is an
assumption that the ‘great’ artists of the past are men. What criteria were employed for such judgement?
Were there any women artists of note and, if there were, why were they omitted from major surveys
of the history of art, such as the standard texts by Janson (1962) or Gombrich (1961)? In Janson, there
was not one woman artist listed in the index, and of the 87 colour-plates there was not one image by
a woman artist. The logical deduction is that women artists did not exist or their work was so insignif-
icant, or poorly executed, it did not merit a mention. This politic is demanding further investigation.
Notwithstanding that Michel Foucault ‘had little to say about women and gender or indeed feminism’
(Adkins, 2004, p. 1), he offered much in the way of a methodological approach to the politics of knowl-
edge. He examined the kinds of conditions that constitute knowledge in the disciplinary formations of
734 E. M. GRIERSON

practice. His questioning provides a critical fabric for a feminist investigation of the kinds of conditions
that constitute knowledge relating to the politics of cultural production, specifically by women artists
and of women in art.
Analysis of an image may tell much about knowledge conditions and the positioning of women
as cultural producers. In the Royal Collection Trust, there is a ‘conversation piece’ painted in 1772 by
Johan Zoffany RA, The Academicians of the Royal Academy, commissioned by King George III. It depicts
a dignified gathering of 33 distinguished male Academicians and two naked male models plus an
array of classical marble busts in the Somerset House life-room of the British Royal Academy (Royal
Collection, RCIN 400,747; Parker & Pollock, 1981, p. 88; figure 49). The male Academicians in relaxed
poses are conversing on the rational principles of the nude in art. ‘Zoffany uses the scene to convey the
importance of the intellect in art and to suggest by a series of visual clues what these artists might find
to talk about’ (Royal Collection Trust Royal Trust Collection, 2017). At that time there were two women
Academicians, artists Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffman. They became founding members of the
Royal Academy in 1768. Propriety ensured their exclusion from life-class, and also from any enlight-
ened discussion on the life form in art. In keeping with prevailing conditions, Zoffany relegated the
two female Academicians to the position of rather murky and indistinct portraits framed on the back
wall—‘a depressing confirmation that female institutional accreditation was grudging and tokenistic
at best’ (Vickery, 2016). After Moser’s death and Kauffman’s return to Rome, the Royal Academy denied
women’s election as Academicians. There were no more female Academicians in the Royal Academy
until Dame Laura Knight’s election in 1936 (Vickery, 2016).
It is important not to see this story as merely a quaint anecdote, but to mine its critical potential
for exposing the politics of knowledge production then and in our own times. The relevance of this
story to a philosophy of education today may be found easily in terms of the politics of labour, and
of cultural production in these economically driven neoliberal times. One would only have to look
as far as female exclusion from decision-making, or to trace the meaning and implications of gender
and the ‘glass ceiling’ or to critically analyse the positioning of women as objects of the male gaze via
social media and celebrity culture. How are women considered today in the construction and cause of
knowledge? How are women positioned in terms of sexual violence? Who are the dominant objects
of family violence? It would be an impoverished educator in the philosophy of education who did not
find ready pathways from stories of cultural and knowledge production of the past to activate these
kinds of questions in the present.
Language itself is a fraught site of analysis. In the broad field of art to find a term equivalent to ‘Old
Masters’, with its reverential connotation of ‘genius’, brings us into difficult linguistic terrain. Its feminine
equivalent, ‘Old Mistresses’ has an altogether different connotation, as pointed out by Gabhart and
Broun (1972) in the catalogue to the London exhibition, Old Mistresses: Women artists of the past in 1972
(cited in Parker & Pollock, 1981, p. 6). In the textual strategies of language lies the politics of knowledge
formations of which Foucault speaks. Simone de Beauvoir went as far as to use textual strategies from
her lived experience in her discursive approaches to knowledge formations of philosophy. By so doing,
she sought to unsettle the totalising systems and abstract principles upon which philosophy found
its authorising truths.
In the gendered discourses of art and philosophy, women are positioned as objects of a certain ‘kind
of knowledge’, either silenced by omission or mis-categorised to serve the dominant (male) narrative.
That is the crucial thread in the weave of knowledge politics throughout the centuries, as mined by
this discussion. When women are categorised it must be on terms different from (male) artists or (male)
philosophers, who are regarded simply as ‘artists’ or ‘philosophers’ minus the gendered term. Rather than
of ‘genius’ or ‘success’, or in terms of an ethics of value, women are categorised simply in relation to men,
through their gendered, sexual or bodily appearance or linguistic notation. What about their own terms?
As Parker and Pollock (1981) show, there were many successful women artists in the sixteenth
to nineteenth centuries, who were acknowledged in their time and documented in written records
from Europe and Britain. However, after the nineteenth century at the very time women were gaining
emancipation and educational opportunities, the documentation of women artists and their activities
 EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 735

dwindled. By the twentieth century, there was ‘a virtual silence on the subject of artistic activities of
women in the past’ (Parker & Pollock, 1981, p. 3). Then, when critics did mention women’s art it was
usually denigrated by virtue of its subject matter or approach, size, style or medium. In the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, if the subject matter was of flowers or had any domestic reference, it was cast
aside in terms of the received judgement of value that placed ‘feminine’ subject matter at the bottom
of the hierarchy of significance. If the medium engaged any form of textile, fabric or needlework, it
was considered to be domestic, denigrated as ‘craft’ and excommunicated from serious consideration.

Object of male gaze

The ‘history’ of art is presented as a monumental story of the creative male, a proposition that the work
of Simone de Beauvoir would attest to. The absence of women, other than as object of the male gaze
was cause for radical revision in the latter quarter of the twentieth century. Griselda Pollock shows how
the textual strategies of ‘art history as discourse actively produce its meanings by exclusion, repression
and subordination of its Other’ (Pollock, 1988, p. 91). Pollock makes clear the political effects:
The feminine is located by the textual strategies and ideological formations of art history as the passive, beautiful or
erotic object of a creativity exclusively tied to the masculine. Therefore feminist deconstruction of art historical texts
and their highly political effects is a fundamental necessity as a preliminary for developing appropriate strategies
for analyzing women as cultural producers. (Pollock, 1988, p. 91)
Images of women as subject matter in art produced by male artists, raise complex issues. Pollock
points out that Elizabeth Siddall, who was model, muse and eventual wife of the pre-eminent Pre-
Raphaelite artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was herself an artist and poet. Yet the writings of history have
ignored the fact of her work and focused on her role in the production of ‘male genius’. The compiling
of historical narratives of the Pre-Raphaelite circle has placed Elizabeth ‘Lizzie’ Siddall in the role of
tragic muse, who ‘functions as a sign of the genius of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. [She is] constructed as
fatally ill, consumptive, as a beautiful model, and as the beloved of Rossetti’ (Pollock, 1988, p. 93). The
‘tragic’ Siddall has no narrative beyond that of an inspiration for him. She functions as a sign, signifying
male creativity (Pollock, 1988, pp. 92–96). By the reinforcement of Elizabeth in the passive role of tragic
muse, consumptive, yet beautiful, she becomes a signifier of art history’s signifying systems that construct
‘masculine dominance/feminine subordination’ (Pollock, 1988, p. 96).

Political Othering and timely rescue

‘Women artists are not outside of history or culture but occupy and speak from a different position
and place within it’ (Parker & Pollock, 1981, pp. 80–81). A philosophy of education would not be com-
plete without a critical appreciation of this genealogy. The decades of the 1960s to 1990s was a time
of revisionism in the disciplines and the telling of history. Seminal texts by feminist writers at the time
include works by Firestone (1970), Friedan (1963), Greer (1970, 1979), Heller (1987), and Millett (1969),
to name a few. Through these scholars, feminist politics became the substance of everyday politics,
personal stories became political stories. Motivating the ‘women’s movement’ was a concern for wom-
en’s social and political subordination, and advocacy for women’s equality and rights. Women scholars,
artists and writers worked to raise awareness of the political othering of the female and all she signified
for patriarchal power and knowledge. This othering occurred whether or not the names or works of a
woman artist or writer were present.
In 1979, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presented The Dinner Party: Judy Chicago, an
exhibition conceived by Judy Chicago and executed by her in cooperation with a working community of
women and men (Chicago, 1979). This monumental work confronted dominant accounts of history as
narratives of female subordination and omission, thus opening the politics of cultural production and
its historical domain to long-needed interrogation. The art installation addressed not only issues of
marginalisation of women’s achievements, and their exclusion by the textual and political strategies of
recorded history, but also issues of women’s labour and ways of working. This major art statement taking
736 E. M. GRIERSON

five years and hundreds of people to execute, interrogated the values that supported individual (male)
art production to the denigration of collaborative (female) work. In this way, The Dinner Party became a
radical political event, feminist in its purpose and impact, its female iconography of central core imagery,
its media and collaborative means of production. Through the sheer size and scope of the installation,
it referenced the ‘heroism’ of a male artist’s production (as defined by normative accounts of history),
while questioning ‘his’ measure of ‘genius’, and reclaiming a space for the female as cultural producer.
Here at last was a women’s banquet, set for named women, celebrating women’s achievements and
challenging norms of cultural production and evaluation. Today this may not sound very radical, but
in 1979 the advent of an art installation as a political event was astonishing.
A description of The Dinner Party will serve to expose the ‘textual’ strategies of this artwork and
its outcomes. The artwork comprised three tables, each 14.6 metres long, arranged in a triangle as a
female symbol of equality. On each table, thirteen place-settings emulated the thirteen men present
at the Last Supper—that most normative of cultural narratives. The total of 39 place-settings named
for women from pre-history to the 1970s, and the 999 names of women on the ceramic floor tiles of
the Heritage Floor, celebrated 1,038 women. The artwork was produced in media, such as porcelain,
fabric, lace, weaving, embroidery and textiles, associated pejoratively with femininity and relegated
to the bottom of the normative hierarchy of value in art, as set by the (male) Academicians in Britain
and Europe. By prioritising and exposing such media forms, a critical reading and reception was called
for. Set on a decorated fabric tablecloth and stitched runners, each of the 39 place-settings displayed
a porcelain plate specially designed and decorated for a named woman in keeping with the ethos of
her work, and the cultural context and place of her times. There were women writers such as Emily
Dickinson and Virginia Woolf, artists including Artemisia Gentileschi and Georgia O’Keefe, musicians
such as Ethel Smyth, Mary Wollstonecraft at the forefront of eighteenth century advances for women’s
education, Mediaeval and Renaissance women, Hildegarde of Bingen, Christine de Pisan and Isabella
d’Este. Each one of these women was celebrated for her contributions to a history of women. The 999
names on the tiles of the Heritage Floor, drawn from a range of nationalities, cultures and contributions,
presented an influencing genealogy of women, suggesting a ‘handing-on’ to the place-setting on the
table tops and signifying the continuity between women from one generation to another.
Not only was the cooperative production a political statement exposing the norms and values of
patriarchal knowledge conditions and practices, but also it opened significant opportunities for revision
in the textual strategies of recorded history. The Dinner Party as ‘herstory’ was a narrative of difference
holding lasting potential for any critical approaches to the politics of knowledge informing the philo-
sophical terrain of education.

The telling of philosophy as lived experience

One of the named women inscribed on the Heritage Floor of The Dinner Party is Simone de Beauvoir,
‘writer, intellectual, existential philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist’ (Brooklyn
Museum, 2007). At the Elizabeth A. Sackler Centre for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, de Beauvoir’s
book, The Second Sex is chronicled as ‘a detailed analysis of women’s oppression and a foundational
tract of contemporary feminism’ (Brooklyn Museum, 2007).
As a philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir worked in the milieu of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and
Maurice Merleau-Ponty. As an existential philosopher, she was different from her male counterparts.
She ‘condemned the ‘spirit of seriousness’ in which people too readily identify with certain abstractions
at the expense of individual freedom and responsibility’ (Mussett, n.d.). In The Second Sex (1949/1973),
de Beauvoir was not prepared to take abstract principles of philosophy as immutable, nor to accept the
passivity of women’s roles as determined by society. So controversial were her explorations of the female
that the Vatican placed The Second Sex on an Index of prohibited books (Mussett, n.d.). It is relevant to
recognise how radical at that time were de Beauvoir’s feminist exposures of philosophical questions
about women. There had been little systematic investigation of women in terms of gender and societal
expectations, and certainly not regarding women’s oppression, placing woman as ‘Other’ in relation
 EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 737

to men. Following this line of philosophical analysis, de Beauvoir saw the potential of a philosophy of
‘Self’ as a serious philosophical pursuit. She enquired how the male could be the ‘Absolute’, positioning
the female as incidental ‘Other’, how this unequal relationship came to pass and how societal mores,
structures, assumptions and power held it in place. Against gender essentialism, de Beauvoir famously
said, ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ (Beauvoir 1973, p. 301). By her approach to philos-
ophy, and by raising such fundamental issues for the female, de Beauvoir’s work was highly influential
upon later scholars of the twentieth-century women’s movement, and ultimately on a philosophy of
education. A genealogy of philosophy shows how de Beauvoir’s writings contribute to a philosophy
of education today, in that she demonstrates how philosophy is not an absolutist discipline, is not a
process of logic in which anything outside of abstract principles is deemed to be illogical. Hers is a
philosophy of difference carried by linguistic strategies from lived experience.
James Marshall (2007, pp. 9–20) offers a cogent insight and analysis of Simone de Beauvoir’s approach
to philosophy. It was an approach to philosophical text that was different from Sartre’s quest of ‘a grand
totalising philosophical system’ (Marshall, 2007, p. 13). Marshall addresses de Beauvoir’s omission from
the authorised narrative of philosophy: ‘Simone de Beauvoir had been excluded almost totally from the
philosophical canon until the 1980s, and a revival and reinterpretation of her work by mainly feminist
philosophers’ (Marshall, 2007, pp. 12, 20). Once de Beauvoir’s life and philosophical works were rescued
from the literary and philosophical shadow of her husband, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, there could
be rightful recognition of her approach to philosophy and ‘her original contribution to existential ethics’
(Marshall, 2007, p. 9).
Analysing the effects of her ‘release’ from Sartre, Marshall shows how Simone de Beauvoir wrote
through a relationship between experience and text. ‘So, with de Beauvoir we have a mélange of bio-
graphical facts, memories, reported experiences in memories … of characters in her novels (often her
own), and her philosophy’ (Marshall, 2007, p. 10). This discursive approach to philosophy through per-
sonal experience and textual strategies appealed to feminist writers who sought authentic legitimation
of personal and social experiences.
Not until 1990 was there a thorough questioning of the received interpretation of de Beauvoir’s
philosophical work. This was through the posthumous publication of de Beauvoir’s Letters to Sartre
by Sylvie le Bon de Beauvoir, her adopted daughter. De Beauvoir abandoned abstract principles of
philosophy if they were inadequate to the test of lived experience. In endorsing de Beauvoir’s con-
tributions to philosophy, Marshall concludes: ‘I cannot prescribe studying de Beauvoir to others, but I
would suggest that they might step into the ‘waters’ themselves—if they believe themselves to be free’
(Marshall, 2007, pp. 16–17, emphasis in original). Her voice is deserving of close attention in today’s
troubling times when women occupy a contingent space in neoliberal economies with its diminishing
of analysis in public lives.

Giving women a voice

The waves of feminism and advocacy for women are a continual wash on the shores of political neces-
sity. A genealogy of de Beauvoir’s approach to philosophy traces to the late eighteenth century, a time
in Britain when women were seeking opportunities beyond the ‘natural’ course for women. Concepts
of ‘natural’ beliefs and theory much informed law, justice, education and religion at that time. Mary
Wollstonecraft—positioned as ‘the founder of modern feminism … brilliant, unconventional’ (Gordon,
2005; back cover), was advocating for women’s political and social rights, particularly rights to an educa-
tion. A Vindication of the Life of Woman (Wollstonecraft, 1792), ‘famous and forcefully argued’ (Brookes,
2016, p. 17), was looking ‘beyond rights as an end in themselves’ (Gordon, 2005, p. 452) and towards
women’s rights to an education beyond the domestic hearth. Wollstonecraft regarded women as rational
human beings, which went against the prevailing persuasions as portrayed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
in Émile or Treatise on Education (Rousseau, 1762/1979). Whereas Rousseau positioned the rationality
of ‘man’ as a natural goodness (the normative ‘male’ position), while portraying the natural condition
of ‘woman’ as passivity, weakness and lacking rationality, Wollstonecraft asserted that far from being
738 E. M. GRIERSON

weak and incapable of reasoning, women were deserving of an education fitting their rational minds.
Arguing ‘that women needed a ‘moral stake’ in civil society if they were to reach their potential’ (Brookes,
2016, p. 17), she advocated for a national system of education for boys and girls together at day school.
Wollstonecraft’s writings were influential on new generations of women and certainly deserve atten-
tion in education today. ‘The future poet Elizabeth Barrett (later Barrett Browning) was only twelve in
1818 when she read the Vindication. At fourteen she declares her ‘natural’ independence of mind and
‘spurns’ the triviality of women’s lives’ (Gordon, 2005, p. 449). The ‘nature’ of women remained a pressing
question for resolution, and it continued to be addressed throughout the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries and beyond. ‘Wollstonecraft was no longer prepared to take ideas about gender as immutable.
Women could reshape themselves in order to reshape social life’ (Brookes, 2016, p. 18).
Moves by women to remodel civil life in the nineteenth century present a contradictory picture of
social and cultural factors impinging on women’s quest for an education beyond the home (Purvis,
1981). An ‘ideology of domesticity’ (Abrams, 2001) prioritised domestic roles for both middle-class and
working-class women. It was not until women became involved in philanthropic activities outside the
home that growing awareness of the need for voice in the public sphere became apparent and women’s
mission to improve public morality became political.
Middle-class women looked to educational opportunity as a way to improve their private and pub-
lic conditions. These moves led to the establishment of the London Society for Women’s Suffrage in
1865. Women who sought professional work in education and medicine advocated for political change
through John Stuart Mill, British Member of Parliament. He saw the travesty of women’s submission to
male authority in private and public lives and advocated forcefully for radical changes for women (Mill,
1869/1997). In Britain, by 1882, married women gained legal rights of property ownership giving them
voice in the polis. And by the end of the nineteenth century in England, education for girls was legally
enshrined in a national system of compulsory education for both girls and boys.

Achieving franchise and political change

The efforts of women to improve educational opportunity and gain franchise became known as the
‘first wave’ of feminism. The New Zealand story is significant here. Women were on the move in the
public sphere and were working actively towards educational opportunity and franchise. National
compulsory education for girls and boys in New Zealand came with the passing of the Education Act
in 1877. Consistent with this time of advocacy for education, there was advocacy for votes for women.
It was considered that if women wanted to affect their conditions and the lives of those around them
they needed to be able to exercise a political voice in the affairs of the nation.
The significance and position of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of New Zealand is relevant
to this narrative. ‘Temperance was the international lightning rod that drew women together for political
action and led to an organisational basis from which to argue for the vote’ (Brookes, 2016, p. 122). The
Union’s chief cause was the welfare of women and children through generally accepted standards of
sobriety in the public and private spheres. It soon became apparent that this aim could be achieved
more effectively if women had a voice in political affairs, and such a voice would be achieved through
franchise and parliamentary representation. In the decades of the 1870s to 1890s, British-born New
Zealander Katherine Wilson Sheppard, better known as Kate Sheppard, worked assiduously to this end.
Her appointment in 1887 as national superintendent of the Temperance Union’s franchise and legislation
department (Malcolm, 1993), provided an official avenue to advocate for legal change. She organised
petitions, wrote pamphlets, involved notable figures, influenced opinion until the third Electoral Bill,
in 1893, extending franchise to women, was passed by the Upper House to become The Electoral Act
1893. New Zealand was the first country in the world to achieve franchise for women.
With franchise, political change was afoot for women. But if the wheels of change turn slowly, the
wheels of change for women are exceedingly slow. It was not until 1933 that the first female Member
of Parliament took office in New Zealand, when Elizabeth Reid McCombs represented the Labour seat
of Lyttelton. It had taken 40 years after franchise to achieve the voice of a woman at this political level,
 EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 739

and another 64 years before New Zealand saw its first female in the top political position. In 1997,
Jennifer ‘Jenny’ Shipley, once a teacher and community worker for the Plunket Society, led the New
Zealand National Party to victory as the first female leader of a political party, and New Zealand’s first
female Prime Minister.
One hundred and twenty-four years after New Zealand women became the first in the world to
achieve franchise, another notable first occurred for women. At 37 years of age, the Right Honourable
Jacinda Ardern, elected October 2017 as New Zealand’s 40th Prime Minister, famously became the
world’s youngest female head of state. Further, in 2018 she is the first New Zealand Prime Minister to
be pregnant in office.
Work for political voice and representation has been a long process for women in New Zealand as
elsewhere, with many setbacks and diverse paths, and if there has been any ‘revolution’ the evidence
shows it was not an overnight volte face.

Women in education
Following the 1893 political gains for women in New Zealand, another Kate was making significant
changes for women’s education during those decades. Kate Milligan Edger worked actively for girls’ edu-
cational opportunities, and also participated actively in the Suffrage movement and Women’s Christian
Temperance Union of New Zealand. The latter ‘called upon women to use their moral authority for the
betterment of society’ (Brookes, 2016, p. 122). Gains for women in education had been significant since
the 1870s when women were admitted to universities. In 1877, Kate Edger studied mathematics and
Latin as the only girl in a top-level class of boys at the Auckland College and Grammar School, affiliated
with the University of New Zealand. She became the first woman in New Zealand to be awarded a
degree, and the first woman in the British Empire to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts.
Kate Edger’s educational success left a legacy for young women to follow. She became First Assistant
of Christchurch Girls’ High School, then she and her sister, Lilian studied at Canterbury College for a
Master’s degree, both graduating in 1882. ‘A steady stream of women graduates provided leadership
for the new girls’ schools’ (Fry, 1985, p. 27), and Kate Edger was amongst them. She became the first
Principal and teacher of the new Nelson College for Girls, which opened in 1883 (Hughes, 1993).
Not only did Kate Edger become a role model for young women in striving for higher education, but
she also contributed to educational management thus shaping secondary education for girls in the latter
nineteenth and early twentieth century. Fry (1985, p. 4) calls the pioneer women teachers ‘Amazons’ for
the way they pursued the cause of education. For women in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, this pursuit was often in sub-standard conditions compared to their male counterparts. Fry
describes the ‘long struggle with inadequate accommodation … in a rat-ridden converted warehouse’
(Fry, 1985, p. 61). Elizabeth Gard’ner was one who worked in such conditions to pioneer the teaching of
the home sciences and to become, in 1908, head of the domestic science department of Christchurch
Technical School (Fry, 1985, pp. 60–61).
Of the next generation of women educational leaders, Kathleen Muriel Gresson stands out for her role
in girls’ education in Christchurch. Kathleen Gresson achieved a Master of Arts degree from Canterbury
University College then travelled to France to attend the University of Paris. From the Sorbonne, the
historic home of the University of Paris, Kathleen gained the Diplomée de la Sorbonne et de la Guilde
Internationale, equipping her with French language to a high level. This was a qualification of some
esteem and quite unheard of for a woman in New Zealand.
On her return to New Zealand, Kathleen Gresson was one of a number of female teachers who taught
French language with ‘real skill and enthusiasm’, French being ‘the international language of diplomacy’
(Fry, 1985, pp. 41–42). This was a time when girls’ schools were advertising for French teachers who
had lived in France and were able to substantiate their knowledge of French language with a thorough
grounding in French literature. Kathleen Gresson was considered highly suited to the task, with her
methods of teaching French to New Zealand girls through phonetics, conversations and French plays
(Fry, 1985 p. 41). At that time, the teaching of ‘modern languages’ featured as part of the curriculum for
740 E. M. GRIERSON

secondary schools not only for academic pupils, but also for general education, and by 1917, of New
Zealand girls 92 per cent, and 83 per cent of boys, studied French at secondary school (Fry, 1985, p. 41).
French language was considered an important part of a young person’s education.
Kathleen Gresson joined the Christchurch Girls’ High School staff in 1897 and was appointed in 1918
as first Principal of Avonside Girls’ High School, Christchurch, where she stayed until 1943. ‘There’s no
end to the reverberations of far-reaching lives’, said Gordon (2005, p. 446). Today, the name of Kathleen
Muriel Gresson lives on not only in the archives, and as one of the six ‘Houses’ named after past Principals,
but also in the lives of later generations of girls and women.
Beyond the cultural myth of the ‘male hero’ the women rehearsed in these stories were making
a mark for change through education in New Zealand, and urging young women to make the most
of opportunities and to exercise a voice in the cultural and political affairs of family, community and
nation. The inspiration of Kate Wilson Sheppard, Kate Milligan Edger and Kathleen Muriel Gresson lives
on through the influences of their life works, and the passing of the baton to later generations, as in
Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party (Chicago, 1979) where the women on the floor tiles ‘handed-on’ the mantle
to the women [named] on the table settings.

Call to action
Where does feminist purpose and obligation lie today? In the dominant practices of neoliberalism,
issues of gender hardly seem relevant in the political economies of education and cultural production
with their privileging of efficiency in the ‘market paradigm’ of objective ‘market settings’ (Veljanovski,
1980). In the world of neoliberalism, the demands of economic efficiency colonise the politics of gender.
Everything is measured in economic terms. Dominant forms of rationality, now given the uniform of
enterprise and innovation, shift the value of cultural production to that of cost analysis, the personal
subsumed. Trade flourishes in an e-world of transfer where even the Internet shadow economy flour-
ishes. Voices from the margins of gender, race and class, spurious cogs in an economic transactional
wheel, are now assimilated by economic imperatives.
However, gender disparities continue unabated. On International Women’s Day, 8 March 2017, the
New Zealand Herald reports the outcomes of a Human Rights Commission project: ‘Women are overrep-
resented and on the wrong side of the gender pay gap, domestic violence and sexual assault’ (Harris,
2017, p. A3), and for women, ‘human rights abuses continue year after year’ (Blue cited in Harris, 2017,
p. A3). These words from the Equal Opportunities Commissioner ought to make an entire nation bow
its head with shame.
Perhaps this first quarter of the twenty-first century is a timely moment for another wave of pur-
poseful feminism? Today there is renewed focus on claims for equality through ‘self-empowerment’
and ‘cracking the glass ceiling’, but is this really getting to the critical issues for women? What are the
critical issues? The lives and work of those leading innovators who made changes for women in edu-
cation, politics, art and philosophy, discussed in this article, may continue to shine as beacons for later
generations of women. But their relevance may wither if not critically addressed in terms relevant for
today’s women. The dismantling of gender-neutral norms, the silencing of voice and the workings of
power in the economies of neoliberalism call for a reintegration of these tenacious narratives in the
philosophy of education.
The demand here is for a robust interrogation of the politics of gender and situations for women in
terms of the politics of labour, cultural production, media-driven technologies and the anchorages of
female identity in body politics. The landscape of gender and sexuality might have changed, but have
the battles for gender equality been won? There is a backlash. Seeing feminism as something in the
past, and not wanting to be associated with its radicalism, a new brand of young women, ‘Alpha girls’, 
see market-driven achievements as within their grasp without the aid of feminist politics (McRobbie,
2016). If feminism is to have purchase today, it needs to critically question reinscriptions of liberal man-
tras of equality and choice. It needs to know where liberalism has come from and how women were
constructed within its framing discourses. It needs to engage critically with the politics of neoliberalism,
 EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 741

question the clichés of glamour that so characterise celebrity culture, examine neoliberal labour markets
and female production and interrogate the waves of inhumanity and violence against women and girls.
American critic, Jessa Crispin speaks out for feminist action while engaging the problems of fem-
inism today. She does not hold back when she calls for ‘a cleansing fire’ (Crispin cited in Catherall,
2017). Crispin (2017) is one of a number of young commentators claiming the death of feminism today,
but she announces her anger in the need for radical action. Crispin claims that feminism has been
‘rebranded into banality’, has become ‘pointless’ (cited in Moore, 2017) and not something to identify
with. ‘Feminism is—should be—a movement, not an excuse to stand still’, she says (Crispin, 2017). With
calls to go beyond neoliberalism with its middle-class aspirations for more money in an ever-multiplying
capitalist system of patriarchy, she urges:
We cannot create a safe world by dealing with misogyny on an individual basis. It is our entire culture, the way it
runs on money, rewards inhumanity, encourages disconnection and isolation, causes great inequality and suffering,
that’s the enemy. That is the only enemy worth fighting. (Crispin in Catherall, 2017, p. 15)
Crispin raises the important issue of feminist responsibility and the need for multiple voices if there
are to be any changes to the complacency bred by neoliberalism. Feminism needs a radical multipli-
cation of action, a ‘cleansing fire’ if it is to have power. ‘She counters the ‘spoil yourself stupid’ feminism
beloved of women’s magazines and lifestyle supplements. There is also an important argument here
about what radicalism actually is’ (Moore, 2017; emphasis added). Crispin draws us to a problem for
neoliberal feminism: ‘The mainstream wants to claim the radical space for itself while simultaneously
denying the work radicals do’ (Crispin cited in Moore, 2017). Moore comments, ‘In order for this to hap-
pen, there has been a disavowal of such radicals as Andrea Dworkin, Shulamith Firestone and Germaine
Greer’ (Moore, 2017). But women disavow at their peril.
Coinciding with these comments something has been happening in the world of women and fem-
inism in 2018. It is called the #MeToo movement. The discursive practices of feminism are renewing
their voice. Beyond the liberal quest for equality, those ‘cleansing fires’ against violence and suffering
are acting as a clarion call to break the silence, to expose the inhumanities against women and children,
the human rights abuses, to bring perpetrators to account and to infiltrate the power and politics of
twenty-first century cultural narratives.
From one small hashtag, a new kind of feminist voice raises its head from the neoliberal cultural
crustacean, gaining power via social media. One woman’s voice multiplies via a hashtag and women’s
experiences in a sexualised world of celebrity power-plays become a critical tidal wave—harassment
and sexual abuse exposed. As dominoes like Harvey Weinstein begin to fall, voices once silent are
now heard. Sexual abuse allegations expose Foucault’s conditions of knowledge by shining a renewed
laser beam on political issues of power and gender.

Conclusion
If the art of the writer is to make sense of the debris lying in the epistemic layers of knowledge, then
it matters what evidential debris is selected and how it is stitched into lasting narratives. The feminist
interventions in this article show the codifying and categorising of evidence as a way of making sense
of social and epistemological discourses. Recovery of the lives and works of the women here, paves the
ground for stories that must inform political knowledge and action for women coming after.
Many of the women engaged here did not know that any mark they might leave could be erased
by future cultural myopia. Neither would they know that a future re-inscription of liberal values, in the
form of neoliberalism, would mainstream feminist ideals of equality, while discarding the rest (sexual
harassment, violence, abuse) as being distasteful to a normative set of first-world values. The cultural
contributions of the women in this discussion and their feminist interventions remain as potent nar-
ratives to inform the lives and politics of women today. If the narratives are mainstreamed by the
monolithic voice of neoliberalism, then the sharpness of the barbs cease to press and tear the flesh.
742 E. M. GRIERSON

In the early dawn of International Women’s Day 2017, a bronze sculpture by Kristen Visbal appeared
in the financial district of Lower Manhatten. Fearless Girl, a figure of a little girl standing with hands on
hips, legs astride in defiant pose, confronts the might of Di Medica’s Charging Bull (1989). ‘Move over
bronze bull’ (Ortiz, 2017) was the headline in the Boston Globe (8 March 2017). It is possible that Fearless
Girl combined with #MeToo may signify a new textual strategy, a new movement, a flag of feminism
for a new generation.
It is to be hoped that a philosophy of education will heed the waves of these feminist flags. The way
educators draw from these stories can be palpable. But draw they must, if the gains are not to be lost,
and if a history of women and their achievements is not once more to be papered over by time and
political convenience. Continuing insurgency for political and social reconstruction is worth the effort
if it changes the life of one woman. It is crucial that a philosophy of education undertakes the work for
revolutionary change as it once was and could be again. The dwell period has gone on long enough.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Elizabeth M Grierson (also known as Elizabeth Gresson) works between Australia and New Zealand in education and law.
She is emeritus professor of RMIT University, Melbourne, and life fellow of Royal Society of Arts (UK). She has held inter-
national positions as the head of the School of Art and research professor at RMIT for 10 years, adjunct professor of AUT,
visiting research fellow at University of Brighton UK and world councillor of International Society of Education through
Art representing the Asia-Pacific Region for two terms. Prior to Australia, Elizabeth was the head of Research, AUT School
of Art and Design, Auckland. She holds a PhD in Education (Auckland); Juris Doctor with Distinction (RMIT); Master of
Arts, 1st Cl Hons, in Art History (Auckland); Grad. Dip. Legal Practice (Victoria); and Diplomas in Teaching, and Speech and
Drama (NZ and London). Elizabeth publishes in education, art and aesthetics, law and justice. Edited books are Activating
Aesthetics (Routledge 2017), Transformations (Intellect 2017), De-Signing Design (Lexington 2015), Re-Imagining the City
(Intellect 2013), Supervising Practices (Sense 2012), Thinking through Practice (RMIT 2007, 2008) and The Arts in Education
(Dunmore 2003). Her co-authored books include A Skilled Hand and Cultivated Mind (RMIT 2012, 2008); Designing Sound
for Health and Wellbeing (ASP 2012); and Creative Arts Research (Sense 2009). Elizabeth qualified as an Australian Lawyer,
worked in law in Victoria and then became a barrister at Vulcan Chambers in Auckland (as Gresson).

ORCID
Elizabeth Mary Grierson   http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7102-1464

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