"Shoulders Squared Ready for Battle with Forces that Sought to Overwhelm". West-European and American Women Pioneers in the Educational Sciences, 1800-1910

Abstract

Based on a theoretical framework in which women's historical agency is set against the background of both domesticity and professionalism, this paper compares women's pioneering roles in education in the United States and the United Kingdom with the tradition of schooling in Germany and the Netherlands. This article reveals some basic similarities between them. These pioneering roles are partly related to the concept of domesticity insofar as they contributed mainly to educational domains close to the so-called female sphere, and all of these women started their careers in educational practice. On the other hand, the international kindergarten movement and the success of child studies enhanced the position held by women in the educational sciences and thereby their professional authority. Yet differences between the various national contexts can be perceived, showing that regional factors were just as important. In both the United Kingdom and the United States, women educationists had far more opportunities to participate in educational practices open to them than their counterparts in Germany and the Netherlands. Using the "strong-state, weak-state" perspective, this article attributes these differences to levels of government intervention in the educational sector. In retrospect, however, the similarities outweigh the differences. Participation in the new child studies did not lead to a general recognition of women's scientific contribution to the canon of educational sciences. After all, women's professional work in education kept being associated with domesticity, and thus with amateurism. The professional authority of the pioneering women educationists, based on their contribution to the rise of care and education as a powerful practice, was gradually broken down again by the progress of professionalism that accompanied this development.