Feminist and gendered perceptions in the adult education work of museums and art galleries in Canada, the United Kingdom and Portugal: Implications for justice and change Darlene E. Clover and Emília Ferreira Abstract. Our study employed a feminist approach to explore how women museum adult educators, curators and community practitioners in Canada, Britain and Portugal, three socially, culturally similar countries understood, identified with, and took up gender issues or feminism in their work and the implications of this for gender and social justice and change. Keywords: museums, art galleries, gender, feminism, art and adult education Although there is limited research in the area, feminist museums scholars have drawn attention to the negative implications of the ‘feminisation’ of public museums, highlighting the plight of women frequently passed over for leadership positions, or in precarious employment arrangements (e.g. Glaser & Zenetou, 1994; Ellis, 2002). Yet others have found women are critical to the life of these institutions, and in 2006, feminist museum researcher Malt suggested As more women enter the museum profession…they are using their influence as instruments of change to put forward issues of women’s equality in museum programmes, displays, and publications and thus ultimately help shape the future image and status of women (p. 115). As feminist adult educators and researchers, these stances peaked our curiosity and begged the question: What is the gendered/feminist awareness of museum adult educators, curators and community practitioners 1 and what are the pedagogical, institutional and social implications of this? Although often reduced to mere conservers and preservers of objects or artworks, UNESCO (1997) and Taylor and Parrish (2010) reminded us public museums are first and foremost educational institutions, providing a plethora of informal and nonformal activities to literally thousands of adults. As the social and cultural fabrics of communities fray under the onslaught of political neo-conservatism and economic neoliberalism, public museums have been charged with becoming more pedagogically and socially responsible and responsive, and many are responding. As a result, scholars are therefore, beginning to position them as critical, albeit not unproblematic, public engagement and pedagogical sites (e.g. Barrett, 2010; Mayo, 2012; Nightingale & Sandell, 2012; Steedman, 2012). The two facts frequently left unacknowledged in the literature on museum change and public pedagogy, are that neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism have major gender implications despite the gains of the feminist movement (Walby, 2011), and those tasked with being the public face and initiators of change in museums are the adult educators and community practitioners who are predominantly women. Consequently, there are few studies on women in these sites, a gap this studies aims to being to fill. We used a feminist approach to explore how women adult educators, curators and community practitioners in Canada, Britain and 1 We use all these terms as they reflect the roles and titles of the women employed to do the pedagogical work both within and beyond the institutions.