From Local to Transnational Discrimination and Privilege: Intersectionality and an Educational Network of Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Britain

This chapter seeks to further an understanding of the network of educational connections which assisted a British educationalist, Mary Gurney (1836–1917), to develop female education during her Victorian and Edwardian career. The chapter uses the lenses of intersectionality and network theory simultaneously to further such understanding. It investigates the similarities and differences in the social locations of Gurney’s identity and the identities of key members of her relational and spatial network. It also discusses how these advantageous and disadvantageous locations provided her and those members with networked opportunities to contribute to educational reform at local, national, and transnational levels during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition, it places those opportunities within the wider context of Gurney’s bureaucratic practices and some of the important economic, political, and social factors behind the educational reforms of her age. Nevertheless, the network’s fallible and biased nature is not ignored and neither are the consequent limitations in the outcomes of its members’ educational work. Although their networking for reform produced some significant change, that networking was not consistently or comprehensively productive.