19世紀イギリスにおける成人教育活動としての女性の職業支援 : 女性雇用促進協会の実践的取り組みから

Abstract

This paper focuses on the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women (SPEW), which is a feminism movement in nineteenth century Britain. This paper intends to clarify how SPEW helped lower middle-class women gain independence through "occupations". They were considered as ladies who should not work, but in reality, they needed a means for living. Although SPEW and its practices were involved with learning of women as adults, such practices for lower middle class women have been excluded in the framework of British adult education. In this paper, SPEW is considered as one form of adult education. With such perspective, it would be possible to see how adult women learned and developed in relation to work and how it was supported, and to see why such learning and teaching activities had not been considered as adult education throughout its history. SPEW reported its practices to English Woman's Journal (EWJ), which was published from 1858 to 1864. According to EWJ, SPEW launched the following four projects. 1. Law-Copying Office, 2. Victoria Press, 3. Adult Class for arithmetic and bookkeeping, 4. Ladies Institute. The first two were enterprises which SPEW provided funding for, where women learned and worked as employees. The latter two were learning opportunities which SPEW delivered in order to meet these women's needs.