Imagining Patterns of Learned Culture: A Cross-Cultural View

This essay offers a broad survey of the patterns in the formation of and participation in 'learned cultures' across time and place. It compares women's experiences in many times and places: for example, in early Chinese dynastic and twelfth-century monastic culture and universities on many continents, ending with twenty-first-century technology cultures. Though successfulwomen's strategies for acceptance into learned cultures and hierarchies are documented, the essay also describes continuing obstacles and circumstances of inequality faced by women. The essay concludes by identifying denigrating gendered attitudes as the key causative factor.