The Key to the Lock of Shame: Shame in Educational Contexts as Resource for Women’s Empowerment

The aim of this chapter is to focus on shame in educational contextsShame in educational contexts as a resourceResource for women. To this end, four case studies from a research study in the German context are presented. The data was collected through guided interviews. The study explored conditions for success and the obstacles experienced in women’s educational storiesWomen’s educational stories in relation to their formal educational biographyFormal educational biography. Four women explicitly mentioned experiences of shameMentioned experiences of shame and shamingShaming as events that had a far-reaching impact on their educational historiesEducational histories. The interviews also show that in the course of their lives, the women succeeded in using these shame experiences as a resource for their personal and professional developmentPersonal and professional development and to realise their life goals through their transformationTransformation.