Gender, Schooling and Global Social Justice

Elaine Unterhalter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415359221
• eBook ISBN: 9781134241811
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Timely and original, this book examines gender equality in schooling as an aspiration of global social justice. With nearly one billion people having little or no schooling and women and girls comprising nearly two-thirds of this total, this book analyses the historical, sociological, political and philosophical issues involved as well as exploring actions taken by governments, Inter-Government Organisations, NGOs and women's groups since 1990 to combat this injustice.

Written by a recognised expert in this field, the book is organised clearly into three parts:

• the first provides a background to the history of the provision of schooling for girls worldwide since 1945 and locates the challenges of gender inequality in education
• the second examines different views as to why questions of gender and schooling should be addressed globally, contrasting arguments based on human capital theory, rights and capabilities
• the third analyses how governments, Inter-Government Organisations and NGOs have put policy into practice.

Addressing the urgent global challenges in gender and schooling, this book calls for a new connected approach in policy and practice. It is essential reading for all those interested in education, along with developmental studies, sociology, politics and women's studies.

Part I

Context

History and concepts

Introduction

Throughout the world, gender often linked with injustice, marks life in schools. This book examines gender inequalities in schools and the forms of challenge to this mounted by global social justice, as an idea and form of practice. The chapters in this section set out some features of gender inequality in schooling worldwide, briefly introducing the history of attempts to tackle this. They go on to examine debates about global social justice and how some of the ethical discussions bear on the question of gender and schooling.

Several different meanings of the term global underpin the argument. Aspects of injustices associated with gender inequalities and schooling can be found in every country of the world so at one level this book is descriptively concerned with a meaning of global that signals ‘all countries’. However, historically, United Nations (UN) institutions and international non-government organizations (INGOs), two of the key players in this field, have given more attention to work on gender in developing countries. In some of these, very large proportions of the population of women and girls receive no schooling. Thus many of the examples are drawn from the field of international development. A second meaning of global is associated with the extensive discussions of globalization. Despite many differences, these have in common an acknowledgement that the contemporary era encompasses a significantly different phase of economic, political and social inter-relations across the boundaries of states and peoples. Against this background ‘global’ is used as a shorthand for heterodox relations which signal new forms of interconnectedness across the globe. This book is not about the globalization debate, but it is concerned with a wide range of global relationships across national boundaries. A third meaning of global is often linked with discussions of global justice and signals normative concerns with the form of morality and ideas about justice that may be appropriate for people who do not share citizenship or other forms of readily recognized affiliation. In this form the term global is sometimes used interchangeably with universal. Chapter 2, which deals with the theme of cosmopolitanism, considers this in greater depth.

1 Gender and Education for All

Setting the scene

From 1990 the Education for All (EFA) movement has been a loose term for the global mobilisation amongst disparate actors to advance demands for increased provision of schooling. Different meanings of gender and education can be discerned in this history (Unterhalter 2005a). The uneven presence and absence of girls and boys in schools has entailed a concern with gender as a noun, for example how many girls and boys attend school or pass a certain grade. A second meaning of gender is associated with changing social processes. Here gender is an adjective which describes a range of social relations and institutional forms which structure social relations leading to particular forms of action in school and as a consequence of school. This is sometimes termed the gender regime. An example is the way a gendered curriculum makes it difficult for girls to succeed in mathematics and provides openings to certain boys. The relational dynamic between men and women in particular social settings is also signalled by this meaning of gender which is alert to the ways in which, for example, assumptions about girls’ innate propensity to care for children and express emotions is in relational tension with assumptions about boys’ innate propensity to act rationally. A third meaning highlights the way gender can be a verb. This signals a process of being or becoming ‘girl’ or actions in accordance with particular forms of masculinity. Social actions entailed in performing gender and forming the self entail different actions in different settings. Changing social circumstances might mean that people of the same sex are required to act gender in different ways. For example in a society segregated by race white women and men might have more similarities in the way they consume resources. White and black women might perform gender in markedly different ways.

As the following chapters highlight, the emergence of gender and education as a theme in global social justice debates has been associated with tension and contestation. The main dispute has entailed differences between a focus primarily on girls, boys and schools, that is using gender as a noun, and a focus on gender as an adjective which entails looking at gendered relations within schools, households, and the broader political economy. Conceptions of gender as a form of action and identity formation – gender as a verb – have had somewhat less impact in social justice debates about gender and schooling, although they have been utilized in thinking about gender, sexuality and schooling, particularly in the context of the HIV epidemic. They also have particular salience in thinking about how poverty has diverse effects.

Expanding access: girls and schooling since 1945

The expansion of education to all citizens was an objective of nationalist movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America and of many social reform movements in Europe and America from the beginning of the twentieth century. Decolonisation and post-war reconstruction from the 1940s saw many new governments establishing mass systems of schooling linked to projects of national development which aimed to include all citizens. In newly independent states these expanded the limited provision of the colonial era when education had been largely provided for men and women from elites and was only sporadically available to the rest of the population in under resourced schools (Carnoy and Samoff 1990; Fagerlind and Saha 1989). The Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948 contained passages on universal rights to education irrespective of gender. Concerns to implement this were a part of the early years of the work of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). However in the 1950s gender equality in education as a separate policy area had little prominence in the work of global institutions. On the whole, girls and women benefited from the expansion of education provision within nation states, concerned with reaching all citizens, rather than specific groups.

The expansion of access to schooling and adult literacy was not uniform. Regional and social inequalities within countries were reflected in who did and did not enrol in school, magnifying existing social divisions. Table 1.2 (Appendix 1) shows the growth of enrolment in primary school by gender in different parts of the world since the 1960s. Although the proportion of girls and boys in primary school over the last 40 years has risen in every region, a gender gap, that is the difference between the enrolment rate or progression of girls and boys in school, persists. A gender gap was evident in all regions in the 1960s – except North America, Western Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. By 2000 it had only been eradicated in East Asia. It had narrowed in the Arab States, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, but it had not been eliminated. The proportion of girls and boys at primary school in Africa fell in the early 1990s, and then started to rise again at the end of the decade. From the 1980s the restrictions on public sector growth demanded by Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) meant that fees were often charged for schooling, teachers were not appointed and sometimes irregularly paid, and schools fell into disrepair. These conditions contributed to a slow growth in enrolments or a reversal of gains made in previous decades. They were associated with the persistence of the gender gap in three regions – Africa, South Asia and the Arab States.

Table 1.3 (Appendix 1) gives figures for the growth in enrolment for girls and boys in secondary schools from 1965–2000. There has been considerable expansion of access to secondary school for girls and boys worldwide from the 1960s, but it was only in the mid-1990s that roughly equal proportions of girls and boys were in secondary school in the Arab States, East Asia and the Pacific. Here and in Latin America between 20–30 per cent of girls and boys were not in secondary school in 2000. The picture was much bleaker in South and West Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Here, while the gender gap in secondary school narrowed as the twentieth century progressed, at its end only a quarter of girls in Africa were in secondary school and under half of all girls in South Asia. The gender gap in secondary school enrolments has narrowed more dramatically than in primary, because, by the 1990s if families could afford to educate children to secondary level, they tended to support girls and boys. Indeed in some regions – Arab States, East Asia and the Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean – by the mid-1990s the gender gap at secondary level was in favour of girls, as boys from poorer families left school to work.

Table 1.4 (Appendix 1) shows changes in enrolment and retention in selected countries where there is time series data since the 1960s. This shows up some of the differences within regions that the aggregated data in Tables 1.2 and 1.3 (Appendix 1) mask. In many countries in Africa, steady rises in girls’ and boys’ net enrolment ratio (NER) from the 1960s started to be reversed in the mid-1990s. Countries suffering the effects of HIV/AIDS, structural adjustment, and war were the hardest hit. However, in a small number of countries – Uganda, Malawi and Mozambique – this reversal did not happen, or a downward trend in the mid-1990s was halted and turned around by the end of the decade.

All the countries included in Table 1.4 (Appendix 1) from South, Central and East Asia show an increase in girls’ and boys’ primary NER and retention, with the exception of Afghanistan. All show increasing proportions of girls and boys enrolled in secondary schools with a pronounced gender gap in most countries, with the exception of the Philippines and Sri Lanka. A similar trend with increasing levels of primary enrolment and retention for girls and boys is evident in the countries listed from Latin America and the Caribbean, although in the 1990s Jamaica and Trinidad show falling rates of enrolment for girls, and more dramatically for boys. There are much higher proportions of girls and boys enrolled in secondary school in Latin America and the Caribbean, and considerable increases over the 40 years surveyed. Here, the picture is generally of equal proportions of girls and boys enrolled, but, in a number of countries, e.g. Chile, Columbia, and Nicaragua, a considerably larger proportion of girls.

Table 1.5 (Appendix 1) selects the countries with the highest, lowest and median girls’ NER in each region in the mid-1960s. Here we see that countries with high levels of girls’ NER in the 1960s were generally able to maintain this to the end of the century, while countries with low levels of girls’ NER in the 1960s increased this sporadically over the next 40 years, with acceleration taking place mainly in the 1990s.

There has been an accelerating rate of increase in enrolments in primary and secondary school in many countries since 1990, but for a large number this acceleration has been from an extremely low base. Table 1.6 (Appendix 1) lists 26 countries where there were increases in girls’ primary NER of more than 25 per cent between 1990 and 2000. In a number of countries – Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Eritrea, Chad and Ethiopia – starting from a very low NER for girls in 1990 there has been a huge percentage increase. Ethiopia, notable for a Minister of Education, who was in post for many years and was particularly committed to increasing girls’ enrolment, had a percentage gain of 95 and Malawi, with a similar high level of political focus on this issue had a percentage gain of 126. Girls’ NER in Chad doubled over the period and in Mali, where the government instituted extensive programmes supported by large development assistance programmes, there were similar huge increases (Ahouanmènou-Aguey 2002).

By 2005, despite this growth in enrolments and retention since 1960, millions of children remained out of school. Girls comprised a significant proportion. In 2005 UNESCO estimated there were 100 million children out of school, 55 per cent of whom were girls. Worldwide approximately 771 million adults were illiterate as a result of never accessing or completing school. Only 88 women were considered literate for every 100 men. In some countries this was much lower, with 60 or fewer women literate for every 100 men. The proportion of adults without literacy represented one-fifth of the world's adult population (UNESCO 2005a: 17). Thus, despite some energetic programmes, education was still denied in the poorest countries and for the poorest sections of the population. Gendered social relations were a feature of this injustice, simultaneously helping to shape and maintain it.

Gendered schools and societies: education and injustice

Gender has been implicated in forms of exclusion and discrimination which have denied millions of children access to school, regular attendance, conditions to learn appropriately, or progress beyond a few years of instruction. Gender structures the political economy and social conditions surrounding schools. The gender politics of power have particular consequences for children's wellbeing and gender dynamics often mean the outcomes of schooling are distributed unfairly.

The exclusion of girls from school takes a number of forms that are different to those entailed in the exclusion of boys. Some girls are never enrolled because the financial and social costs of schooling are too high, the quality of learning too low, or there is no school available locally (Colclough et al. 2004; Kane 2004). In some regions there are cultural prohibitions or cautions about girls’ schooling linked to assertions of particular cultural identities under certain circumstances. Sometimes these conditions are political, for example with the break-up of the USSR in Tajikistan (Waljee 2005). Cultural affirmation which shapes gendered ideas about schooling and households can be associated with strategies about livelihood and economic hardship as was the case for pastoralists in Northern Kenya in the 1990s (Leggatt 2005). Sometimes cultural identification, which entails the withdrawal of girls from school, is linked to violent and repressive regimes as in Afghanistan under the Taliban. It is generally in the poorest communities that gendered social relations have particularly harsh consequences for girls’ schooling. Some girls attend school infrequently because of work obligations, or inadequate facilities, for example no running water or long distances to travel to school. Some girls attend school but under-nourishment means they are unable to participate fully. Some girls leave school after a few months or years because of changes in the economic circumstances in a family, a fee increase, repeatedly failed grades or persistent lack of teaching (Vavrus 2003; Bista 200; Page 2005). Some leave because they experience a form of gender-based violence (Mirsky 2003; Leach et al. 2006). Sometimes armed conflict forces girls out of school and girls recruited as child soldiers have enormous difficulties in reintegrating once they return to school (Machel 1996; McKay and Mazurana 2004). The HIV/AIDS epidemic has meant girls are the family members generally preferred to leave school to look after relations who are ill, or orphaned (Zoll 2006). Girls, like boys suffering from HIV, have to abandon school because they are too weak to study further (UNAIDS et al. 2004).

Poverty is a major factor in the denial of schooling to girls. The poorest parents wish to educate their daughters, but cannot because of want and other dimensions of discrimination. Sometimes there are no schools available in the poorest communities because there has been no infrastructural or social development by the state or private organisations. Sometimes school fees or the costs associated with schooling, for example uniforms, books or transport, are economically and socially unaffordable for the poorest families. Sometimes the quality of learning and teaching in schools for the poorest is low which means parents see no reason for children to attend. While all these factors can result in the denial of schooling to boys as well as girls, the gendered dynamics in households and communities generally entail that where resources are restricted they go to boys before girls. This is the result of a complex interplay of relations. The financial costs of schooling for boys are somewhat lower for families than those for girls as the clothing boys wear to school is cheaper and they are perceived to be less vulnerable and therefore not in need of additional transport (Kingdon 2005). The social costs of schooling poor boys are also lower as there are fewer restrictions on their mobility post puberty. In most poor households children work, but the sexual division of labour generally entails girls’ responsibility for childcare and work inside the home can mean protracted periods when they are not in school, taking care of siblings, adults who are ill, and social obligations relating to the maintenance of the community. Boys’ responsibilities for work outside the home have more flexibility around time and can often be more easily combined with school attendance.

Within schools, gendered assumptions about what girls should learn, whether they can learn, and what the outcome of their learning will be often means that girls do not get adequate support from teachers, do not have knowledge in subjects that attract status and do not proceed to secondary school (Heward and Bunwaree 1999). Ames’ work in rural villages in Peru documents how teachers assumed girls were less clever than boys, required girls clean the school and perform domestic work for teachers, and did not support girls to proceed to secondary school (Ames 2005). Page's study of schools in a small town in Northern India showed how many teachers did not pay sufficient attention to what girls were learning and assumed their parents did not support their education, findings corroborated by Sarangapani through an ethnographic study in another state (Page 2005; Sarangapani 2003). Vavrus’ work in Tanzania shows how there is a complex interplay between the changing socio-economic circumstances of parents linked to structural adjustment, the employment opportunities for girls post-secondary school, girls’ views of their own identity and sexuality and conditions in schools which have a bearing on whether or not girls remain in school (Vavrus 2005). On the other hand, some schools have supported girls, even the most marginalized, to learn. Sometimes this is in extremely difficult circumstances, such as post-conflict Afghanistan (Kirk 2004) or a city divided by caste in India (Doggett 2005).

The absence of women from decision-making bodies concerning curriculum, learning and teaching helps maintain the gendered form of institutions. Although there are examples of women who maintain gender discrimination in schools, in a number of instances when women gain access to power in education, very dramatic changes have been recorded with regard to learning and teaching for all children. In 2003–4 women's presence on local school committees in Uganda led to improved monitoring and evaluation of schooling at village level as women attended to whether teachers performed their jobs, how budgets were spent and whether children progressed (Garrow 2004). Integrated social development planning in Brazil linked with higher levels of women's political visibility, resulted in the provision of direct cash grants to women whose children attend school and consequently better enrolment and retention (Palazzo 2005). Improvements in the quality of learn...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Foundations and Futures of Education
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• Series editors’ foreword
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• Part I Context: history and concepts
• PART II Why address gender and schooling globally?
• PART III Schooling and global social justice: interventions, institutions and interactions
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3
• Glossary
• Notes
• References
• Index