Abstract
The central purpose of this thesis is to analyse changes of the barriers and opportunities for adult women returnees to education from the UK and Taiwan. The data presented were derived from six institutions in the two nations. The thesis demonstrates the ways in which globalisation as a driving force affected the women's lives in Taiwan regardless age cohorts. It is argued that women's lives are convergent due to the effect of globalisation in terms of the barriers and opportunities when returning to learn in a higher education institution. The thesis then focuses on the changes of social structure in higher education expansion, the changes of family ideology and gender inequality. The theoretical framework draws upon the comparison in which women are examined between the countries and across each nation. Further, the theoretical concepts of situational, dispositional and structural barriers are adopted from Patricia K. Cross to examine the changes of women returnees' barriers and opportunities. The research worked with five age cohorts from the two nations in total, and found that women's lives tend to be convergent between the UK and Taiwan regardless of age, possibly because Taiwan may have developed faster and caught up with the UK due to rapid developments in its social and economic process. However, cultural resistance was evident among women in Taiwan where women's lives are affected by Confucian cultural and family ideology, despite the global trends from the western countries. This study was conducted both quantitatively and qualitatively. The former used questionnaires and the latter was carried out with an open-ended interview. In total 267 out of 420 questionnaires were returned and 31 interviews took place. A small number of males were interviewed from both countries to show if the issues are gender-oriented.