Educational Change and the Women’s Movement: Lessons From British Columbia Schools in the 1970s

This article uses Melucci’s approach to social movements to explore how the women’s movement changed education in British Columbia in the 1970s. The women’s movement was a multifaceted social phenomenon with multiple agendas and actors. In the early 1970s, it developed a temporary sense of cohesion in the field of education in the context of a Royal Commission on the Status of Women. The movement remained constantly in tension with formal educational institutions but opened up new debates about education and new spaces in the provincial government and the teachers’ federation. The debates were not resolved and the spaces were not stable, but the movement brought about significant change that increased equity and enhanced the legitimacy of education. The article concludes with a discussion of the place of social movements in a democratic politics of education.