Educating Adolescent Girls Around the Globe

Challenges and Opportunities

Sandra L. Stacki, Supriya Baily, Sandra L. Stacki, Supriya Baily

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138082175
• eBook ISBN: 9781317671831
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Comparative Education

While many initial education benchmarks are being met, new and continuing challenges exist for adolescent girls in the developing world. Discrimination, violence, marginalization, and health-related issues prevail, making proper education at the middle school level crucial during this unique development time. As we continue to see the expectations for girls grow, education for girls must also find a new place within the evolving norms of political, economic, cultural and social life.

This volume takes a global look at the obstacles and enablers in girls' education that can have lasting institutional, psychological and social consequences. It looks at many complex issues affecting education for adolescent girls around the world, including the underlying global demands for women in the formal workforce and the universal impact of gender-based violence, and provides a critical framework through which researchers may explore and critique these complexities.

Part I
Structural Domain

1
Transitions

Girls, Schooling, and Reproductive Realities in Malawi

Nancy Kendall and Zikani Kaunda

As formal schooling spreads within sub-Saharan Africa, a growing proportion of adolescents remain enrolled in school when they ‘come of age’ (NRC/IOM 2005; Lloyd forthcoming). As a consequence, more and more adolescents have to negotiate sexual maturation and sexual initiation in a different context than from that of counterparts in prior generations… it is increasingly important that policies and programs designed to encourage advancement in and completion of various levels of schooling be built on a clear understanding of the interrelationships between schooling and sexual transitions during the adolescent years.

(Biddlecom, Gregory, Lloyd, & Mensch, 2008, p. 337)

Since the 1990s, global frameworks such as Education For All (EFA) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have supported a rapid, absolute, and proportional increase in the number of girls attending lower primary school around the world. These increases were driven by universal, free or lower-cost primary school policies, which were instituted in the 1990s and 2000s by national governments across Southern Africa and other parts of the world. EFA-related policies were at least partially effective in lowering the barriers that marginalized children, including girls, faced in attending school. While significant constraints to access, retention, and learning still exist for marginalized youth (Lewis & Lockheed, 2006; MoEST, 2008), many girls and their families have taken advantage of these new educational opportunities. In less than 20 years, double-digit gender gaps in girls’ enrollment rates in the last grade of primary school have rapidly narrowed or entirely disappeared in countries as diverse as Bangladesh and Malawi (Chisamya, deJaghere, Kendall & Khan, 2012). In Malawi, where double-digit gender gaps existed in the early 1990s, girls’ primary and secondary net enrollment rates have now surpassed boys’ (84% to 82% and 15% to 12% respectively) (MoGCCD & NSO, 2012). Boys still complete primary school at higher rates than girls, and, boys’ gross enrollment rates at the secondary level are higher than girls’, pointing to the shorter age period in which girls are able to or want to stay in school.

These demographic shifts in lower primary school are resulting in an increase in the number and ratio of girls in Malawi transitioning to upper primary school (Standards 5–8), passing the Primary School Leaving Exam, and moving on to secondary school. Indeed, in this chapter we argue that, with the growing number of girls and boys able to complete primary school due to fee removals at the lower and upper primary school levels, a new moment of transition in young people’s lives is gaining prominence in many communities and countries: going from free primary education to fee-paying secondary education. The consequences are particularly important to understand in relation to girls’ lives because this transition (1) represents a new and powerful moment in which girls’ social roles and reproductive futures are negotiated; (2) catalyzes the need to further challenge gendered educational inequities in support for continued schooling; and (3) provides a site of new engagement with the increasing international attention being placed on girls’ education as a panacea for the world’s ills (Robinson-Pant, 2004; Vavrus, 2003). Expectations for girls’ education are particularly high around sexual and reproductive health, as correlations between schooling and lowered fertility, lowered HIV rates, delayed pregnancy, and improved child health and nutrition drive project planning and funding (UNESCO, 2012).¹ We believe this increased international attention on girls must be directed by and toward girls’ experiences and interests, not the rationalizations of international elites.²

Utilizing ethnographic data on girls’ educational experiences in rural Malawi, we respond to Biddlecom et al.’s (2008) call to analyze the interrelationship of this new shift in girls’ school attendance patterns and girls’ sexual transition to adulthood. We do so through the lens of the daily lives and experiences of a diverse group of girls and boys in rural Malawi. The analysis focuses particular attention on the meaning that girls, their male peers, and their families make of girls’ educational experiences and capacities in primary levels, and how sexual-social transitions become intertwined with girls’ transition out of primary schooling.

An Ethnographic Approach to Understanding Gender and Primary School Transitions

Given the rapid change in student body makeup in primary schools (and, increasingly, secondary schools) that has occurred in Malawi and many countries around the world, three areas of boys’ and girls’ experiences deserve analytic attention: how they navigate their fee-free upper primary years, their transition out of primary school, and for some, their transition into fee-paying secondary school. A careful examination of these experiences and transitions may support educators and policymakers in better understanding the changing social meanings of schooling in girls’ and boys’ lives and relationships; the economic consequences of increasing girls’ schooling for girls and their families; why and how increasing levels of schooling might affect demographic and social outcomes such as fertility, marriage, reproductive health, and employment rates; and the political implications of increasing numbers of young people completing primary and secondary school.

We use an ethnographic approach informed by critical theory and practice to examine adolescent girls’ and boys’ lives and experiences in and out of Malawian schools. The data analyzed in this chapter were collected through in-depth, short-term ethnographic research conducted in the village of Namithenje³ in Malawi’s Central region. The research had two phases—first a six-week comparative ethnographic study conducted in 2009 that examined the gender relations between girls and boys in upper primary school, and then a two-week follow-up study one year later. Data collection methods included a village-wide household survey to collect basic information about household living patterns (phase 1); in-depth individual and group interviews with 40 Standard 8 students, their out-of-school peers, teachers, and parents (phases 1 and 2); focus group discussions (both single-sex and mixed-sex) with 50 Standard 7 and 8 students and their out-of-school peers (phases 1 and 2); and participant observation and unstructured conversations with multiple students (phases 1 and 2).

These two months of fieldwork represent part of a longer history of engagement with girls’ education in Malawi for both authors, who have been involved in research, programming, and advocacy for girls’ education since the 1990s. These engagements have embodied a critical response to international development efforts to conceptualize and generate ‘solutions’ to educational ‘problems’ in Malawian schools. Such a critical response is, we believe, best generated by spending extended periods of time listening and working with communities (as colleagues, scribes, and supporters) to learn about the full consequences of current international development models and policies and to support communities as they generate alternatives that better serve all members of their community.

We began our relationship with Namithenje in 2009, conducting research on the experiences of children who were labeled as ‘vulnerable’ by international or governmental organizations. We then worked in Namithenje in 2010 and 2011 on a project successful in shifting control over school funding and development to community members, and on a 2013 project that had limited success in empowering youth through group-based social and economic empowerment. Throughout this time, we have continued to observe multiple cohorts of girls’ and boys’ transitions out of school, and the overall dynamics described herein have been evident in all cohorts.

Gender Norms and Practices in Early Primary Schooling

In 1994, newly elected Malawian president Bakili Muluzi declared immediate free primary education (FPE) for all Malawians. The declaration heralded symbolic and practical shifts in official Malawian education policy (Kendall, 2007) and resulted in a near doubling of the primary school population in under six months, from 1.8 to 3.2 million students (Chimombo, 2009). FPE led to an increase in girls’ gross enrollment rates from 75 percent in 1990 to 96 percent in 1994, but actually increased the enrollment gender gap, as overage boys’ enrollment rates surged and boys’ gross enrollment rates over the same time period increased from 86 percent to 121 percent. More positively, FPE raised girls’ survival rates by 5 percent, while narrowing the gap in retention rates by 3 points between 1994 and 1997 (Kadza-mira & Rose, 2001).

The increase in girls’ enrollment after FPE was likely fueled by a mix of events, including the policy itself, the shift to multiparty democracy, and the work done by the Girls’ Attainment in Basic Literacy and Education (GABLE) project to transform people’s expectations and assumptions about girls’ schooling. While GABLE worked to convince parents and children that girls’ schooling was a vehicle for improved individual and family thriving, democratization discursively linked schooling to new freedoms and socioeconomic opportunities, and the government’s FPE policy significantly lowered the costs to parents of sending girls to school. Although primary school was and is far from free for families (Kadzamira, 2001), the removal of school fees and the school uniform requirement assured that parents’ main cost for educating young girls and boys was lost labor instead of outof-pocket expenses. Indeed, despite the initial increase in the enrollment gender gap after FPE, within a brief 20 years gender and education data in Malawi flipped: Where boys had significantly outnumbered girls from first grade through university, girls outnumbered boys in Standards 1–7 in 2010–2011 (MESRP, 2010–2013). Observational attendance data from our own studies tell an even more compelling story about girls’ educational trajectories: During spot classroom checks conducted since 2000, girls have outnumbered boys in Standard 8 classrooms about two thirds of the time (this proportion is lower in the Northern region), even though boys continue on average to outperform girls on national exams.

Although schools’ institutional practices did not radically change to address girls’ (or any new students’) needs following the declaration of FPE, mounting evidence suggests that girls’ attendance and persistence in primary school resulted in cultural shifts. In previous research (Kendall, 2007), teachers and parents consistently said that in the pre-GABLE and FPE era, people assumed that girls were dull students and could not perform as well as boys in school. By 2008, survey research conducted in the same district by the international non-governmental organization CARE indicated that the gender norms shaping young Malawian girls’ and boys’ first few years in schools no longer appeared to consistently favor boys. Instead, teachers reported that they held generally gender-equitable perceptions of student ability across the early grade levels. In the CARE (2008) study, some teachers even said that girls are generally ‘smarter’ than boys when they are very young, and that they are better students because they are more obedient and able to sit still and concentrate while in school. A minority of students and parents also expressed this sentiment, mirroring similar statements that the authors collected from teachers and parents over the years and popular narratives that are well developed in countries like the United Kingdom and the United States concerning boys’ comparative ‘underachievement’ in school (e.g., Tyre, 2008; Younger, Warrington & McClelland, 2005).

While this new acknowledgement of girls’ academic capacities appears to represent a gendered sociocultural shift and has, we believe, contributed to the increasing normalization of young girls attending school, the CARE research and our own research found that positive expectations about girls’ intelligence and performance rapidly disappeared as girls got older and approached puberty. As one teacher stated during the CARE research, “When they grow breasts, they get stupid.” This new stupidity is fueled, teachers, parents, and peers said, by girls’ increasing interest in boys and decreasing time spent on school.

The girls with whom we spoke agreed with people’s perceptions that they spend increasingly less time focused on school as they get older. Instead of attributing this shift largely to interest in boys, however, girls described the shift as primarily about the growing expectations they faced to provide labor and/or material resources to their natal family. Not surprisingly, girls and boys said this was particularly true for girls who were living with relatives because their parents had died or were ill, or whose parents were divorced and remarried, alcoholics, or physically abusive.

Increasing demands on girls for their labor as they age are well documented in Malawi (MoGCCD & NSO, 2012) and around the world (e.g., through CARE’s Patsy Collins Trust Fund Initiative study). While young girls report having higher workloads than young boys in many countries, the workload disparities between girls and boys rapidly increase as girls approach puberty. By age 10, Malawian girls commonly report having little time for schoolwork outside of school, and differences between girls’ and boys’ out-of-school opportunities to do homework—and, particularly, to learn English—appear from observations of after-school routines to increase significantly. In our research, language learning opportunities were gender differentiated because girls had less time to review school materials due to household labor demands, while boys had more time and the physical freedom to attend English-language video shows and to practice language skills together. Opportunities to learn English are essential to prepare students for the Standard 4 transition from instruction primarily in Chichewa to instruction primarily in English, and for the Standard 8 final exams, which are conducted almost entirely in English and determine entrance to secondary school. Age at enrollment, grade repetition, and dropping out all affect students’ ages at the time of the Standard 4 transition and the Standard 8 exams. Lastly, and as discussed further below, our research indicates that many issues older girls face in navigating gendered school identities do not appear with regularity until girls have reached puberty, and particularly until they have developed breasts and their pubertal development is therefore visible to teachers and classmates. While younger girls may be harassed for not having good clothing or for answering questions incorrectly, they are less likely to face the evident and common sexual harassment that older girls sometimes face in Malawian classrooms, schoolyards, and communities. In summary, the early years of primary school appear to provide a learning environment in which peer and teacher relations and expectations of pupil performance, behavior, and outcomes are less consistently male-favorable than was the case just two decades earlier in Malawian schools (Davidson & Kanyuka, 1992). As girls age, however, gendered norms, expectations, and practices shift significantly.

Gender Norms and Practices in Upper Primary Schooling

Girls and boys face a number of significant transitions in Malawian schools at around the ages of 10–13. Physically, many girls and some boys enter puberty. Social, familial, and often labor norms shift in response. When asked how their parents/guardians responded to their ‘growing big’ (that is, entering puberty) while in school, the Standard 7 and 8 girls in our study reported that the social pressures to take on sexualized roles (wife, girlfriend, mother) increased significantly. Pressure to get married and to have children may begin quite early and for a variety of reasons: When asked in focus group discussions and interviews to describe common reasons, Standard 7 and 8 girls and boys reported that some parents encouraged girls to get married early so that they would not get pregnant while unmarried; other parents tried to deny continued responsibility to support their daughters by telling them that they were old enough that they should not come home until they could bring a packet of tea or sugar (requiring girls to somehow earn money); still others did not respond to girls’ concerns about receiving unwanted sexual attention, in some cases leading to sexual assault or to the girl deciding to become sexually active.

Other girls, however, narrated the great lengths to which their parents or guardians went to encourage them to stay in school and to not get pregnant or married. Mothers took on their daughters’ chores so that they could study, did extra piecework to raise money for new shoes or clothes, and asked about the school day. They encouraged girls on a daily basis by counseling them that school was the “only path to a bright future”...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Watering the Seeds: The Challenges and Opportunities for Educating Adolescent Girls Around the Globe
• PART I Structural Domain
• PART II Institutional Domain
• PART III Psychological and Social Domains
• PART IV Communal and Cultural Domains
• Conclusion: From Watering to Nurturing: Preparing Richer Ground for Young Adolescent Girls
• Contributors
• Index