IntroductionThis article will explo

Introduction
This article will explore lifelong learning and community participation for older women. In doing so, it will draw on empirical work undertaken with the National Federation of Women's Institutes in England and Wales in the UK; and the Sydney Older Women's Network in Australia. The article will briefly outline something of the policies and practices of lifelong learning in the UK and Australia, the sites of the research. It will argue for a need to consider 'difference' in lifelong learning and community participation, and demonstrate how the women in this research project have found ways to bring the voices of older women to (local and national) political tables. In doing so, it will demonstrate the ways in which resistances and challenges to exclusion are made by older women through their participation in learning and in communities.
With an ageing population which consists predominantly of women, the development of lifelong learning for older women could have a significant effect on their continuing participation as active citizens in communities. The number of older women learners far outweighs the number of men (NIACE, 2003), and older women are far more likely than older men to participate in non-formal learning (Jenkins, 2011) yet there is little research on lifelong learning and community participation for older women.
Lifelong learning is a highly contestable and fluid concept, with multiple and complex meanings, although it is often described as if it were uncontestable, with little understanding of the ways in which learning can be constructed through inequalities, or how it is differently experienced by different groups and individuals (Jackson, 2011). All too often, definitions and conceptualisations of lifelong learning are limited to those based in the development of skills for work, without little discussion of diverse sites and modes of learning, nor of diverse learners and competing discourses of learning and who counts as a 'learner' (Burke and Jackson, 2007). Many nations -- including, for example, the UK and other European countries, Australia, North America and Japan -- have seen a focus on lifelong learning which concentrates on skills tied to the labour market and the development of a knowledge economy.
As Finger and Asun (2001: 132) argue, knowledge and skills for employability have become 'adult education's dominant frame of reference', with a need for workers to become ever more flexible and adaptable. Such a concentration on skills for employability excludes those that are perceived to make no contribution to the labour market. As I will show below, such a learning agenda can only continue to replicate the structural inequalities of gender, class and other differences, where only certain types of knowledge, skills and work are valued. In such a model, there is little or no recognition of the contribution that older people can make to their local, national or global communities. Although it has been argued that learning helps develop social capital and increases social cohesion, policies for lifelong learning are often separated from issues of active citizenship and community participation (see e.g. Field, 2000), especially for otherwise marginalised groups (Coare and Johnston, 2003), such as the older women in this research.
This study will add to current debates by examining lifelong learning and community participation for older women from a gender perspective. In doing so, it will draw on empirical work undertaken with the National Federation of Women's Institutes in England and Wales in the UK; and the Sydney Older Women's Network in Australia. Having described the empirical research, the article will briefly outline something of the policies and practices of lifelong learning in the UK and Australia. It will argue that in both countries' policies of lifelong learning there is little consideration of the relationship between gender and the knowledge-economy and even less concern regarding social class, race and ethnicity (Webb et al., 2006). Policies and practices of learning are described and instituted as if they are gender neutral, with little acknowledgement of ways in which learning is experienced through gendered and other inequalities (Jackson, 2011). The differing identities, experiences and contexts in which people live their lives are rarely discussed. However, as Leathwood and Francis (2006: 2) state, although seldom explicit 'policies and practices of lifelong learning, in very different contexts and with different groups of learners, are gendered in their construction and effects'. The article argues for a need to consider 'difference' in lifelong learning and community participation, and demonstrates how the women in this research project have found ways to bring the voices of older women to local and national political tables.
The research
This article reports on fieldwork located in two groups of networks for older women:2 the National Federation of Women's Institutes in England and Wales (NFWI),3 and the Sydney Older Women's Network in Australia (OWN).4 My interests in working with these two groups of women began through what I saw as the similarities as well as the differences between the two organisations. Their missions have much in common (see below), and I was especially interested in their explicit concerns with lifelong learning and community participation for older women. They are located on different sides of the world, but these nations have much in common in the directions of their lifelong learning policy agendas.
Whilst there are clear similarities between the two organisations, there are also differences: the NFWI is mainly located in rural areas, OWN Sydney is located in not just an urban area but a large global city. In addition, OWN Sydney has a more overtly political agenda, which includes a management group to ensure that the political as well as social needs of older women are met, and aims to influence the outcome of policy decisions affecting older women's lives. However, this is not a comparative study. Rather, the research with OWN Sydney was a smaller follow-on project which I conducted to complement the NFWI research. I was interested in seeing whether similar issues would present themselves for women in these two organisations in different parts of the world.