How do we stand a chance of transforming our culture and traditions into something more fit for purpose in the 21st century? Education, of course.

In a period where women are haemorrhaging from the workforce, and when state welfare, elder care and childcare provisions are under attack, the wider social purpose of schooling – and the importance of the feminist lens in public policy and decision-making – are hoving into view.

As a group, women rely more upon the state to mitigate the disproportionate burden of care placed upon them, yet the government appears to be turning back the clock on women's equality, setting in motion a resurgence of feminist protest.

Had any of our current crop of politicians engaged with feminism and gender studies, the public interest in performing a gender equality impact assessment on the proposed cuts would have been apparent, as would the ethical and legal transgression of failing to do one.

A critically important dimension of philosophy and history is not being passed on from one generation to the next. When feminism and the challenging questions thrown up by gender are overlooked is it any wonder that British institutions – from Parliament to the BBC – continue to be dominated by men?

As long as only a handful of schools teach gender issues and address feminist thought and history, women only discover the tradition when they hit glass ceilings in the workplace, or become mothers, and begin to seek insight into their experiences.

To understand why it is time to place gender at the centre of the education agenda, it helps to place the 5,400 women "missing" from top public sector jobs in the UK in a broader context. The exclusion of women from positions of power in the public sector is but one manifestation of the cultural devaluation of females.

We have serious work to do to shift the norms. Teaching about gender is increasingly looked to as a way to make progress in a global culture that continues to uphold men and boys' entitlement to control women and girls.

The schooling system is one of our most precious assetsand holds the key to improving the lot of women and girls in the workplace, family and culture. Empowering girls to fight their individual battles, unsupported, can only take us so far. Educating men and boys – in particular – to question the beliefs, customs, traditions on which the oppression, abuse and devaluing of females depends seems an obvious and profoundly necessary step.

Aside from the moral case, there is a legal dimension to the call for gender studies in schools. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, ratified by the UK in April 1986, is an international bill of rights for women which recognises the role of culture and tradition in perpetuating gender discrimination. This expressly includes schooling. In addition, the public sector equality duty, which came into force in 2011, makes it clear that where schools and other public bodies can eliminate discrimination, they must.

Young people must be educated to recognise the manifestations of gender inequality. This calls for teachers who have addressed gender in their professional training.

In addition, headteachers must take care to avoid discriminating against women teachers by failing to promote them or, for example, making it difficult for them to return after becoming parents.

The reality of leadership jobs is that conflict abounds. Given education and opportunity, women have flooded into the lower ranks of all professions. Few would deny that they shoulder an additional burden in overcoming discrimination, exclusion and stereotyping, be it simply to stay in the job or climb the ranks.

Although women cannot afford to shirk the conflict necessary to take what they're entitled to – an equal share in the running of their institution – they do so from a position of systemic disadvantage and varying degrees of precariousness. Men who hold the keys to power need to develop awareness of the broader impact of reflexive modes of sex discrimination. They have major critical analysis to do, and yet no time, support or guidance is set aside for that task.

I hope that in the future, women and girls will litigate and protest about serious failures to safeguard their most basic rights to teach and learn in school environments free from discrimination, harassment and abuse. Empowering victims of discrimination to question acts and omissions of the executive through the courts may animate the spirit of our equality laws.

The government's target is that 50% of new appointments to public boards should be held by women by 2015. While getting more female representation at senior levels of the public sector is a laudable goal, as is the goal of 25% female representation on corporate boards by 2015, I would also add to our list of demands that women and gender studies must be included in the national curriculum by that date.

If we start by educating the educators, subsequent generations of women and girls won't have to battle with half-changed minds and institutions which fail to represent their interests.

• Triona Kennedy is the founder of The Astell Project for Women & Gender Studies

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