A review on the text of Jean McKenzie Leiper:
Women, Death and Dying:
Distance Education as a Way of Linking Personal Experience with
Sociocultural Understanding

1. Introduction:

This text handles with the effects of the female majority of distance students on distance education and the evaluation of female experiences are based on the sociology course” entitled “DEATH AND SOCIETY” from University of Waterloo distance education program. Because of the subject they also had to include the “content and structure could be modified to address women´s issues more effectively.” The critical discussion about this subject is divided in “four issues associated with women´s views of education”:


1.1. The journey begins at the point of view from feminist theory – to recognize and understand the differences of women´s and men´s lives in a patriarchal society. The author also pointed out that aging, dying, death and grief are common themes in the lives of women – they usually act as caregivers. So this potential of experience shouldn´t be ignored and has to be integrated in the courses´ structure – in my opinion that’s the only way to give a real and objective overview in a sociological matter.


1.2. The Death and Society Course itself consists of lots of different, multimedia materials, which should lead the students through

• historical perspective,
• cultural background,
• demographic indicators and
• the different types of death (diff. circumstances).

After explaining the students had to do their first assignment, which invited them to transform their own experience into a boarder framework. They weren´t forced to be open about their feelings, but a lot of them were!

I´m certain, that a lot of these students were grateful for this “forum”, where the subject “death” could be treated without the common understanding and repression of the “western civilisation”.


1.3. Then findings were made by a questionnaire, which was designed to find out three important goals:

• Reasons for taking the course
• Would the course help the students?
• Has the assignment helped them in understanding cultural beliefs?

The answers were searched with 6 questions, which lead to the following results:

• 39 % referred a personal interest in the subject
• 50% personal experience with death had been a reason for taking the course
• 50% meant, that death mentioned personal loss, 35% mentioned societal awareness, and 15% reported socio-cultural understanding as “ways in which the deaths or others had spurred them to take the course”
• Most students generally were dealing with their own personal feelings and wanted to hear about the responses or feelings of the other students.
• 68% found the assignment very useful
• 56% said that they had gained socio-cultural understanding (with the assignment)


All in all I think that the direct confrontation with death often is the first release for explanation – because of the mentioned “repression-strategy”.

1.4. The Woman´s Perspective on Death and Society should present possibilities to integrate women´s perspectives into courses. Generally, distance education should help women to “find their voice”. This course did that by incorporating material “that links personal experience with boarder societal and cultural views of death”. A discussion of feminist theory can help to bring their experience and the academic settings together – I think that’s very important for understanding and integrating the (socio-)cultural dynamics.


It was interesting to read this text about this “special course with its special conditions”. I really think that some women only are available with this new form of (distance) education. Because of the majority of female distance students it was really important, that they payed attention to the women´s point of view. Over that I have to mention that they faced two so called “taboo subjects”: death and feminism. That´s great!