Pedagogical Pathways: How community-based adult education generates pathways of participation to the feminist and women’s movements in the Netherlands

How do civic associations devoted to community-based adult education enhance the presence and impacts of broader-level social movements in democratic societies? This article utilizes the concepts of ‘free space’ and ‘pathways of participation’ to investigate how the educational actions deployed by several women’s associations in the southern Netherlands generate strategic connections to the feminist and women’s movements. Drawing on a qualitative case study, attention is placed on four types of educational action that produce pathways of participation to social movements: raising public awareness, promoting emancipatory literacy, building solidarity, and stimulating transformative action. By way of conclusion, future avenues of research are suggested to promote scholarship on the nexus of social movements and community-based adult education.