ISSUES IN WOMEN'S EDUCATION 101 In the sociology of education, the structural-functionalist school (Durkheim, Craft, Simpson, Rosenholtz, Rosenbaum and Shipton) looked at society as a smooth running system and were concerned mainly with ability and performance. Radical sociologists (Young, Bemstien) raised methodological questions, identifying the class view point in looking at the educational system, but not going so far as to raise the question of ideology and the state, as Freire, Althusser and Bowels and Gintis did. Although the Editor sees the distinction between radicals and Marxists as 'largely heuristic*, since the education as a tool in the hands of the ruling elite and the role of the 'hidden curriculum' in reproducing class or gender relations, she neither investigates the consequences nor the impact of such heuristic distinctions in confronting the dominant ideology which plays an important role in the field of women, education and work. As she quotes 'when educational inequalities were first examined the effects of being a male or a female were not considered relevant to educational performance.' (Chapman, 86) and concludes that where socialisation intervenes in a conclusive manner, education cannot play the role of an equalizer. This is because the feminist framework limits the concept of socialisation to the women-as-a-class approach, which is neither scientific nor analytically useful. The conclusive evidence suggests to her that the feminist argument of identifying existing educational inequalities through gender discrimination explains why there is gender asymmetry: assuming that this was always so and perhaps does not investigate why it continues to be so, even with the policy direction for a self-conscious approach towards women's education. Let us now see how the feminist argument has evolved. Biological differences are viewed as 'natural* and the social and cultural values that emerge from such physical distinctions are 'naturally given*. Socialisation indicates the process of value internalisation within the family and kinship groups and its reinforcement by religious ideology, myth and ritual. This is reflected in separate girl's and boy's schools, syllabi and extra curricular activities, views and comments of teachers and parents on gender roles and identity. Thus gender codes develop to determine seating arrangements, games, choice of subject, even competition. Such codes reinforce gender stereo-typing, the consequence of which is to combine the educational and social function for girls (what girls ought to do) whereas in the case of boys the role of education is quite separate from their social role. If education merely reinforces the role of a woman as housewife or mother what role does it perform in conditioning the image of men as breadwinners and protectors? Ms. Chanana then links up the gains of the women's movement in the West with a systematic study of gender and education. Feminists and likeminded sociologists identified the 'structural subordinatidn of women in all societies', resulting in differences in role expectation for men and women. They exposed the linkages between role expectations,