Occasional paper compiled by the Gender Issues Working Party of the ASE Education (Research) Committee. Printed and published by the Association for Science Education, Hatfield, Herts, March 1990. [The paper was written in order to rehearse the key issues of the gender elements of the equal opportunities debate to which the Working Party’s attention had been drawn by Beryl Platt in 1988 while she was President of the Association - see Preface on p. ii of the paper.]