Abstract

In this chapter I argue that, in the drive to subvert the gender status quo and bring about gender justice, women's personal development education should not be abandoned. It should, however, be reconstituted and radically politicised, by taking on board feminist poststructuralist insights about the human subject and the social world. Such insights challenge the liberal humanist models of the person which dominate most approaches to adult education, including women's personal development education In turn, these models have much in common with mainstream psychology. In attending to the personal, we need to recognise the restrictive nature of the dominant frameworks which shape our thinking about the personal and the emotional.