children. Second, as some parents negotiate new relations with school authorities, such
as the creation of student centres that could foster more student discretion, they are
opposed by other parents who are concerned with the morality of their daughters and
want to keep traditional authoritarian practices in schools. Schmukler describes an
experiment that was intended to increase the flexibility of key actors in the educational
system: parents, teachers, and school authorities. She discusses the limits of
participation-the school challenges the possible contributions of mothers as educators
and seeks collaboration only for the purpose of facilitating the school's task. A school's
call for participation will fail because teachers differentiate also among parents, the
good parents being those whose children have no problems. Thus, those more likely to
have legitimate demands upon the school are disqualified from participation. Further,
mothers continue to think in narrow, immediate family terms. Schools fragment
parental participation, so these women have little opportunity to organise themselves
autonomously. Hard-to-break authoritarian patterns of school and the fact that mothers
are the main interlocutors make it even more difficult because mothers are expected to
support, not question, the socialisation of their children. As children move up the
educational ladder, the role of mothers becomes further limited because they are seen as
resources to avoid school failure. Mothers are doubly subordinated (because of class
and gender) by school authorities to act as socialisation agents for children, and this
presumes that mothers accept the school's messages. The study by Schmukler shows
that it is possible for mothers to participate and to become more aware of their rights
regarding the education of their children. Yet this participation is fraught with self-
doubt and requires mothers to confront behaviours by school, authorities and teachers
that circumscribe participation to a few aspects of the educational setting. (Stromquist)
STROMQUIST, Nelly (ed) (1992) Women and Education in Latin America.
Knowledge, Power and Change, Lynne Rienner, London
This book is the prime text on women, education and development in Latin America, or
at least within the medium of English. It is a collective tour de force ranging across
several key areas of concern and a fair proportion of the countries within the region.
Many of the chapters form the basis of individual annotations below, but here we will
concentrate on the structure of book and the introduction by the editor.
Apart from the introduction, the thirteen chapters comprising this book are grouped into
four parts: education, the state and the economy; women and the formal education
system; adult women and formal educational efforts; making changes. Overall the book
explores the role of education -broadly defined - in reproducing inequality and sexual
divisions of labour, and finds the cause of women's inferior situation to be both
ideological and material. Central to the book, and relevant to the emerging process of
redemocratisation, is the point that knowledge can be used to contest and transform
meaning and thus to question existing authority and create new power.