Beyond Access:
Transforming Policy and Practice
for Gender Equality in Education

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Beyond Access:
Transforming Policy and Practice
for Gender Equality in Education
Edited by
Sheila Aikman and Elaine Unterhalter

First published by Oxfam GB in 2005
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
Sheila Aikman and Elaine Unterhalter

Part One: The Challenges for Gender Equality in Education
1 Fragmented frameworks? Researching women, gender, education, and development 15
Elaine Unterhalter
2 Ensuring a fair chance for girls 36
Global Campaign for Education
3 Measuring gender equality in education 60
Elaine Unterhalter, Chloe Challender, and Rajee Rajagopalan
Part Two: Transforming Action – Changing Policy through Practice
4 Educating girls in Bangladesh: watering a neighbour’s tree? 83
Janet Raynor
5 The challenge of educating girls in Kenya 106
Elimu Yetu Coalition
6 Learning to improve policy for pastoralists in Kenya 128
Ian Leggett
7 When access is not enough: educational exclusion of rural girls in Peru 149
Patricia Ames
8 Crossing boundaries and stepping out of purdah in India 166
Mora Oommen
9 Pastoralist schools in Mali: gendered roles and curriculum realities 181
Salina Sanou and Sheila Aikman
Part Three: The Challenge of Local Practices – Doing Policy Differently?
10 Learning about HIV/AIDS in schools: does a gender-equality approach make a difference? 199
Mark Thorpe
11 Gender, education, and Pentecostalism: the women’s movement within the Assemblies of
God in Burkina Faso 212
Alicia Zents
12 Enabling education for girls: the Loreto Day School Sealdah, India 227
Ruth Doggett
13 Conclusion: policy and practice change for gender equality 245
Sheila Aikman and Elaine Unterhalter
Index 250
v


Acknowledgements
Many people have helped to bring this book to completion. Our thanks to all the
authors for their contributions and their willingness to work with us on revising
material which in most cases was initially produced for different audiences. We are
grateful to members of the Beyond Access: Gender, Education, and Development
project team, in particular Chloe Challender and Rajee Rajagopalan, who have
given unstinting help with the preparation of the final text, as well as making the
project work at many different levels.We also want to acknowledge the support and
enthusiasm that Amy North has brought to the project and the book. Our thanks
to Nina Henderson, who contributed to some of the early editorial work, and to
Julieanne Porter and Catherine Robinson in the Oxfam GB publishing team for
their close and supportive guidance in the editing and production process.
The advisory committee of the Beyond Access project has contributed both
critiques and encouragement, each valuable in different ways. We also wish to
thank Rachel Hinton, who represents the UK government’s Department for
International Development (DFID) in the Beyond Access partnership – DFID,
Oxfam GB, and the Institute of Education, University of London. Rachel has
constantly encouraged our work, and DFID has funded the Beyond Access
project from its inception. We are also grateful for the support of colleagues in
our respective organisations, and in particular we would like to thank Ines Smyth
and Diana Leonard for their comments and encouragement.
Last but not least, we want to thank our families for all their support, without
which the book would have been neither started nor completed.
Sheila Aikman (Oxfam GB)
Elaine Unterhalter (Institute of Education, University of London)
vii

Introduction
Sheila Aikman and Elaine Unterhalter
This is a book about transforming policy and practice to promote equitable
processes in education, in response to the need for equality, quality, and justice for
all. It considers the significance of gender equality in education, and the ways in
which gender inequality relates to other sources of division and conflict in society.
We live in a world in which education is characterised by extensive gender
inequalities. Two thirds of all those who have no access to education are girls and
women. Sixty-five million girls never even start school, and an estimated 100
million do not complete primary education, often because its quality is poor and
their opportunities are far from equal to those of boys (Herz and Spurling 2004:
2). More than 542 million women are illiterate, many as a result of inadequate or
incomplete schooling. Lack of literacy is generally associated with poverty and
discrimination (UNESCO 2003: 87). In an age of enormously expanded access to
all levels of education, of high aspirations for political participation, and huge
growth of knowledge economies, nearly three quarters of a billion girls and
women are being denied education.
The manifest injustice of this state of affairs, and the marked gender inequalities
associated with it, prompted the United Nations Millennium Summit in
September 2000 to set two Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to address
the problem:
MDG 2: achieve universal primary education, with the target of ensuring that all
boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling by 2015.
MDG 3: promote gender equality and empower women, with the target of
eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and
in all levels of education by 2015.
The MDGs complement other international declarations on gender equality in
education, formulated several years ago but not yet realised: the Beijing Platform
for Action for gender equality (1995), and the Dakar Education For All (EFA)
Framework of Action (2000).
This book examines policies and practices which can contribute towards achieving
these goals and declarations. For decades, governments, non-government
1

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
organisations (NGOs), and individuals have been working to improve girls’ access
to formal education and the quality of education that they receive in school. Their
initiatives have been linked to widely differing aims and expectations of what the
education of girls and women can do for economic and political development,
social change, and women’s empowerment; but these diverse aspirations have
often resulted in programmes with significant similarities, supporting both the
access of girls to education and greater gender equality and quality beyond the
point of access. Considerable knowledge and experience have been accumulated to
indicate the policies, strategies, and approaches that improve the access and
retention of girls in school in different contexts. But much of this knowledge is not
widely shared. We need to learn more from the outcomes of initiatives to promote
gender equality in particular economic, social, cultural, and geographical contexts.
We need to consider what has made them successful or unsuccessful, in order to
develop policies and practices that will transform girls’ and women’s lives and thus
contribute to achieving wide goals for gender equality.
Considerable momentum has built up around the world in support of the
commitments expressed in the MDGs. Signatory governments are engaging in
debates and negotiations on the question of how to put the goals into practice.
There is a huge popular demand for education and for governments to fulfil the
promises that they made at the Millennium Summit. During the Global Week of
Action for Education in April 2005, hundreds of thousands of activists in 110
countries urged governments and international organisations to recognise
education as the key to ending poverty, and to fulfil their millennium commit-
ments. The popular demands are echoed by governments, UN agencies,
multilateral financial institutions, and a very wide range of civil-society
organisations and coalitions. For Northern donor governments, there is
pressure to meet financial commitments made in 2000; for developing-country
governments, there is pressure to develop good-quality plans and transparent
means of achieving Education For All (EFA).
Parity, equality, equity, and quality
However, while widespread support has been expressed for the challenge of
achieving universal primary education by 2015 (MDG 2), the target for MDG 3
(gender parity in primary and secondary schooling by 2005) has not been met.
Gender parity means that the same proportions of girls and boys enter and
complete schooling. When there is no gender parity, there is a gender gap, and a
greater proportion of either boys or girls is receiving education. While there are
encouraging moves towards increased parity in many countries (for example in
Bangladesh and Malawi), in many others the gap in favour of boys is wide (in
Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Pakistan, Chad, Yemen, and Ethiopia, to name a few).
2

Introduction
UNICEF estimates that across all developing countries the gender gap is 10
percentage points (UNICEF 2003). In sub-Saharan Africa, 54 per cent of all girls
do not even complete primary education, and only 17 per cent go on to secondary
education. At least one in every three girls who completes primary schooling in
South Asia cannot read, write, or do arithmetic (Herz and Spurling 2004: 2).
In our view, gender parity is a rather narrow aspiration. A focus on gender parity
means measuring quantitative change and counting the numbers of girls, as
compared with the numbers of boys, enrolling in school. Concern with parity
may be complemented by a focus on other tangible and measurable factors, such
as quality of infrastructure and facilities, numbers of textbooks and supplies of
teaching/learning materials available to teachers and students, and the
measurement of performance through examination results and numbers of girls
graduating from primary school. But this is not always the case. Many countries
are making progress on gender parity, but the limited concept of parity means
that more challenging dimensions of gender equality and equity are often not
considered, analysed, and monitored.
This book is concerned with a wider notion of gender equality, which is expressed
most fully by the Beijing Platform of Action. Gender equality is an aspiration
contained in many international conventions and national constitutions; but its
precise meaning in relation to education is often unclear. We interpret gender
equality in terms of respect for human rights and a set of ethical demands for
securing the conditions for all people, men and women, to live a full life. We use
the term gender equity to characterise institutional and social processes that work
for this interpretation of equality. But often equality and equity are used
interchangeably. Some approaches to equality are based on a limited definition,
requiring only that resources should be equal: for example, there should be equal
numbers of places in school for boys and girls. Other approaches consider that
equality entails the removal of deeply embedded obstacles and structures of
power and exclusion, such as discriminatory laws, customs, practices, and
institutional processes, all of which undermine opportunities and outcomes in
education (Unterhalter 2005). Drawing on Amartya Sen’s ‘capability approach’,
we consider that achieving gender equality entails developing the freedoms of all
individuals, irrespective of gender or other markers of discrimination, to choose
actions, aspirations, and attributes that they have reason to value (Sen 1999).
Gender equity entails putting in place the social and institutional arrangements
that would secure these freedoms. An education system would lack key
dimensions of equality in this sense if it was discriminatory or did not develop
capabilities in children to achieve an education that was personally and socially
attuned to developing freedoms. Some aspects of this equality are the freedom to
attend school, to learn and participate there in safety and security, to develop
identities that tolerate others, and to enjoy economic, political, and cultural
3

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
opportunities. Putting gender equity in place in the classroom is a key to
connecting schooling and citizenship with human rights. Equity and equality
underpin values of care and respect for children and their teachers.
Evidence from the UK, where girls perform as well as (if not better than) boys in
examinations, is taken to mean that gender equality has largely been addressed,
and quality education has been achieved for all. Focus has shifted to the task of
widening access to higher education for all social classes, without attention to
gender. But research suggests that women’s opportunities to secure graduate and
professional employment on a par with men are still constrained by their
domestic and family responsibilities (David 2005). Thus gender equality entails
more than the attainment of equal numbers in school, or parity in examination
results: it implies a fuller meaning of equality, which includes conditions in
school and post-school opportunities. We believe that gender equality in
education cannot be separated as a goal from gender equality in society as a
whole.
Educational quality is crucial for the achievement of gender equality in
schooling. Concerns to improve quality include the framing of the curriculum,
the content and form of learning materials, the nature of the pedagogy, and
teacher–pupil relations. Quality requires gender-sensitive use of human
resources, and consideration of gender in the allocation of finances. Quality
education entails a concern to include the views of all members of a community,
and to take account of local languages and cultures. A quality education is not
therefore acquired in isolation from the social setting in which students live. It
embraces the notion of education as a transformative process which promotes
social change and contributes to building a just and democratic society. A quality
education rejects gender discrimination and social injustice. Quality education
cannot be achieved without gender equality and equity.
Beyond Access
This book has developed out of the work of our project Beyond Access: Gender,
Education and Development
, a partnership between an NGO (Oxfam GB), a
research organisation (Institute of Education, University of London), and a UK
government department (the Department for International Development – DFID),
working together to contribute to the achievement of Millennium Development
Goal 3, by generating and critically examining knowledge and practice regarding
gender equality and education, and second by providing appropriate resources to
share and disseminate the lessons learned, in order to influence the policies of
government departments, national and international NGOs, and international
institutions, including UN agencies. The founders of the project were concerned to
4

Introduction
address the fact that the three constituencies – policy makers, practitioners and
activists, and researchers – generally worked in isolation from each other, unaware
or unappreciative of each other’s work; they feared that this fragmentation of effort
would hamper work to achieve and support MDG 3.
The project’s concern to maintain dialogue between these three constituencies is
reflected in this book. Some of the chapters have developed from the work of MA
students at the Institute of Education, where we have both worked. Other
chapters are based on the work of NGO coalitions like the Global Campaign for
Education, and Elimu Yetu in Kenya. Some chapters were initially presented at a
series of Beyond Access seminars which ran from 2003 to 2005 as a discussion
forum for policy makers, practitioners, and researchers. Chapter 3 draws on
work on measurement commissioned by policy makers in the Commonwealth
Secretariat, UNESCO, and UNICEF.
Advancing MDG 3
Because MDG 3 is a key concern of the work of Beyond Access, this book
addresses several issues related to the MDG project. First, it is concerned to raise
the importance of gender equality and ensure that it is not overlooked in the big
push towards achieving EFA by 2015. There is no room for complacency: the
2005 target has been missed, and there is a need to question why this has
happened and what can be done to ensure that gender equality is recognised as a
key element of a rights-based approach to EFA and quality education.
Second, the book challenges the narrow framing of the 2005 target in terms of
parity, emphasising the need to engage with all the complexities of gender
equality, as it is expressed and manifest both within the education system and in
the wider society in which that system operates. Where relations within school
and between school and family contribute to maintaining gender inequalities,
the MDGs and other international targets have not provided a strong impetus for
change. On the contrary, the apparent sequencing of gender targets in the MDGs
has put a misplaced emphasis on gender parity, with the result that it seems as if
gender equality and equity can be addressed only after the achievement of parity.
This presents us all with the challenge of switching the focus of the debate from
parity of access to quality, equality, and equity.
Third, the book questions the overwhelming focus of the MDGs on primary
education and schooling, which results in the neglect of adult basic education and
literacy. Despite the existence of more than 800 million non-literate adults in 2002,
of whom 64 per cent are women (UNESCO 2003: 225) and despite widespread
agreement that adult education and literacy are crucial for achieving many of the
goals currently enshrined in the MDGs, there are no commonly agreed goals or
5

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
targets for adult education, and very limited resources devoted to it. Governments
proclaim their commitment to ensuring adult education and literacy, but their
actions belie their words. It has been a low priority for most governments and has
been addressed through inconsistent and unco-ordinated programmes of
different sizes, durations, and aims, implemented by NGOs and community-based
organisations (CBOs). While there are good examples of innovative practice –
although only a limited number have been documented and disseminated – they
remain isolated examples, unable to influence government policy or practice.
Fourthly the book demands that education planners, policy makers, and
practitioners adopt a comprehensive approach to HIV/AIDS and gender, because
gender inequality is a major driving force behind HIV epidemics. The importance
of promoting girls’ education in addressing gender inequality cannot be
overemphasised, but it should be addressed as part of a holistic approach to gender
equality. The development needs of boys should not be neglected in initiatives to
combat HIV/AIDS, and there needs to be a strong focus on addressing traditional
concepts of masculinity and some forms of male sexual behaviour. At the same
time, harmful practices, such as violence at school and the sexual harassment and
abuse of girls by teachers, need to be eliminated (Clarke 2005:1).
Advocating the need for a wider framing of the MDGs, contributors to this book
illustrate what needs to change in order to bring about gender equality in
education. They present factors that make schooling and education gender-
inequitable, and they indicate factors that contribute to positive change. It becomes
clear from a reading of these chapters that women and girls are not a homogeneous
category, and that a one-size policy, approach, or curriculum will not fit all.Women
themselves need to participate in decision making about their own education, to
ensure that it is flexible and meets a wide range of different needs.
The chapters reveal the complex interrelationships between poverty, cultural and
ethnic differences, geographical marginalisation, and gender inequalities, which
are obscured by nationally aggregated statistics. For this reason, many of the
authors choose to examine initiatives for change in some of the most complex
and marginalised contexts, involving some of the poorest girls and women, who
experience the most extreme exclusion from State provision. What strategies can
be employed, and what lessons can be drawn upon in contexts where
governments are fragile and/or communities are nomadic or semi-nomadic?
What are the options available in countries where decentralised governments
have no budgets for education, and communities are expected to raise their own
revenues? These questions need to be considered in relation to countries affected
by conflict, as well as those that relate to more stable settings, because there may
well be lessons in societies emerging from conflict – for instance, South Africa or
Northern Ireland – for countries where conflict is still acute.
6

Introduction
A key theme of the book is the interplay between policy and practice. We do not
consider policy to be expressed only in official documents and made only by
people in leadership positions. We consider that the policy expressed in official
documents is made each day by practitioners. Policy making is a diffuse process.
Our contributors consider the ways in which official policy is re-interpreted in
practice, and how policy is itself a form of practice. Some present examples of
practice that offer particularly challenging issues to be considered in the
remaking of policy.
The structure of the book
The book is divided into three parts. The first examines the extent of inequality
and the nature of the challenge to achieve gender equality in education. It
provides a picture of what has been learned, and identifies some changes that are
needed if gender equality is to be achieved. The second part presents accounts of
government policies and their intended and unintended consequences for
women’s empowerment. They examine the dynamics of policy making and
policy implementation, and pose questions about how policy promotes and
secures gender equality in education. The third part examines a range of local
settings where gender-equality initiatives have flourished, and raises questions
about the policy implications of different forms of practice. The examples in this
section present work for gender equality in education by an HIV/AIDS drama
group, a faith-based organisation, and a girls-only private school. These are
settings outside the remit of conventional work with State institutions and large
NGOs, and these chapters raise some key issues that are still unaddressed in
policy declarations.
The concluding chapter considers the challenges that remain for policy makers,
practitioners, and researchers if they are to advance concerns for gender equality
in education as part of work to promote the MDGs.
Part One: The Challenges for Gender Equality in Education
The scene is set in the first chapter, written by Elaine Unterhalter, which reviews
various approaches to gender, education, and development. Approaches
associated with WID (women in development), GAD (gender and
development), post-structuralism, and human rights and capabilities variously
define the nature of the problem of gender inequality in education and have led
researchers from different disciplines to emphasise different aspects of the issues
and suggest contrasting policies. This chapter sets subsequent chapters in the
context of this framework.
7

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
The second chapter, contributed by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE),
reports on a study of the state of girls’ education in nine countries in Africa and
Asia which informed a week of campaigning throughout the world on girls’
education in April 2003. The research indicates that progress has been made
towards gender equality in education in places where a range of factors cohere
and reinforce each other. These include a strong political commitment by the
government to gender equality, and a policy development process that actively
involves an informed body of teachers, parents, and representatives of the
women’s movement. This combination of forces, working together with
strategies that are not isolated or ad hoc initiatives but a series of interrelated
measures, supported by government and donor resources to sustain
implementation, can deliver change.
Where change is not happening or is very slow to take place, a range of measures
need to be taken; they include ending the queue for education: all children
should have access to school. This is not an end in itself, but a means towards
achieving gender equality. Governments need to invest in girls and their
education, and invest in poor families and poor schools so that they can offer a
high-quality experience for all children.
The GCE analysis is reinforced by the work on new strategies for measuring
achievement, documented by Elaine Unterhalter, Chloe Challender, and Rajee
Rajagopalan
. Their chapter questions the limited measures of quality and
empowerment currently in use and calls for a wider conception of gender
equality, over and above mere attendance at school and completion of primary
education. The authors suggest a new form of measurement of progress towards
gender equality and education. Using this measure indicates the level of global
mobilisation needed to achieve gender equality in and through education.
Part Two: Transforming Action – Changing Policy Through
Practice

The chapters in this section take a critical look at contexts and experiences where
changes in government policy, together with alliances developed with civil
society, have promoted changes in practice, of different types and different
degrees, in the direction of greater gender quality. They question the forms of
policy and partnership needed to ensure that educational practices intersect
appropriately with policy to promote gender equality and quality education.
Janet Raynor shows how policy and practice in Bangladesh are sometimes out of
step with each other. The government’s attempts to increase the access of girls to
secondary education have brought about change in terms of large numbers of
adolescent girls now attending secondary school. Raynor argues, however, that it
8

Introduction
is now time for this programme, which has been greeted with international
acclaim, to make modifications to allow the programme to adopt an agenda of
empowering girls and women, rather than merely aiming to extend existing
gendered roles. Raynor considers the need to improve the quality of girls’
education in seriously overcrowded schools, argues for efforts to increase the
supply of women teachers to be accompanied by the provision of gender training,
and asks why, if the main purpose of education is seen to be enabling girls to take
up paid employment, there has been no research into employment opportunities
for girls.
The chapter contributed by the Kenyan national education coalition, Elimu
Yetu
, based on its own research in Kenya into the status of girls’ education, charts
the government’s commitments to achieve gender equality through enabling
legislation. It counterposes this with the variety of initiatives that members of the
coalition have been developing and implementing, both in response to increased
government-sanctioned opportunities for increasing gender equality in basic
education, and to provide evidence for civil-society’s adversarial role in lobbying
the government for change. It also emphasises the important role played by civil
society in holding government accountable to its commitments, and it offers
valuable information about grassroots contexts and issues which demand
innovative and context-specific responses.
The chapter by Ian Leggett illustrates some of the issues raised in preceding
chapters. While national statistics show high rates of gender parity in overall
access to education, only by understanding local dynamics and factors external to
the school will current policies of building more schools actually achieve progress
towards educational equality for girls from groups that are marginalised from the
mainstream society. Leggett shows how the national picture of expansion of
education in Kenya belies what is happening in one province. He reflects on how
a national policy aimed at expanding access where there is demand, but with
inadequate resources or acknowledgement of local conditions, falls far short of its
objectives. In this case it is the needs of pastoralists and their children that have
not been sufficiently acknowledged. Without a comprehensive and imaginative
set of initiatives which recognise the depth and breadth of the subordinate status
of girls and women and provide specific measures to promote the participation of
girls, the policy of expansion is doomed to failure in this province.
From the other side of the globe, Patricia Ames contributes a study of Peru
which reinforces the message that merely accessing schooling is not enough to
ensure a gender- equitable education. Her chapter exemplifies the fact that while
national statistics may show 100 per cent enrolment and gender parity,
inequalities of access exist for some of the poorest and most disadvantaged
groups in society. Research in rural schools identifies a range of external and
9

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
internal inequities which influence the retention of girls in school and shape
expectations of their performance and ability. Teachers’ low expectations of rural
indigenous children, compounded by their low expectations of girls, in a school
environment characterised by aggression and physical punishment, have meant
that for girls the social costs of schooling are often too high, and they drop out in
large numbers. This cycle of low achievement and high drop-out rates has
reinforced girls’ low social status.
While the general situation in these Peruvian rural schools is bleak, Ames is
careful to maintain that girls are not passive victims of the schooling in their
communities; she suggests that a range of strategies could be adopted to improve
girls’ educational experience dramatically. As earlier chapters confirm, there
needs to be a package of integrated measures for change and gender equality,
including teacher training, support for schools in poor communities, and social
provision that emphasises the importance of investing in girls’ education.
The chapter by Mora Oommen, on the other hand, evaluates the degree to which
women were empowered by the national literacy campaign in India. Although
this was a national government initiative, responsibility for its implementation
was given to local government and CBOs. This encouraged local ownership and
unprecedented voluntary participation. The author argues that the large-scale
mobilisation acted as a ‘social sanction’ for women’s participation in the literacy
programme, thus breaking through traditional limitations on their participation
in the public sphere. To this extent the programme went beyond imparting
literacy and questioned a number of social norms constraining women’s
participation in public life.
From Mali, Salina Salou and Sheila Aikman contribute an example of strategies
for transforming gender relations in the school and the wider environment. They
remind us that poor quality and poor provision of education have a greater
negative effect on girls than on boys. In northern Mali, where women’s
educational attainment rates are very low, few positive examples of what
education can do for girls are available to be used to challenge strong patriarchal
systems. The chapter examines multiple interventions – school and family
animators, curriculum reform, and decentralised decision-making – stressing
that several different changes have to take place at the same time for them to have
a sustainable impact and improve not only girls’ educational experience but also
their lives. While education reform at the national level has opened up new
opportunities for a skills-based curriculum which reflects the differing cultural
and geographical realities of the learners, these realities are also gendered and
demand a gender analysis that challenges the continuity of long-established
attitudes and practices.
10

Introduction
Part Three: The Challenge of Local Practices
The third section of the book highlights a range of innovative approaches being
taken at the community and school levels, in response to specific contexts in
which women and girls aspire to equality. The chapters show how these
approaches and practices are founded on the energy, commitment, and
determination of learners and teachers/facilitators.
The challenge of gender inequality is well documented in the fight against AIDS,
but the importance of taking a gendered approach to HIV/AIDS education
programmes is not well understood. The chapter by Mark Thorpe documents a
non-formal education approach which used drama in schools to increase young
people’s understanding of HIV/AIDS prevention in South Africa and
Mozambique. To ensure that inequitable relations are not reinforced during and
through HIV education itself, they need to be challenged in a process-based
approach with specially trained staff who can ensure that young women and men
have the space to ask questions and explore issues that closely affect their lives.
Alicia Zents provides an insight into the participation of women in the
Pentecostal movement in Burkina Faso. In contexts where African women have a
long history of maintaining the vitality of the church, yet occupy a low position
in Burkinabé society, Zents examines the extent to which the movement is able to
transform concepts of gender, and documents the ways in which women are
pushing against the movement’s gender hierarchies.
The final chapter in this section considers the case of Loreto Sealdah, a high-
prestige girls-only school in India, its ethos of reaching out to girls from
underprivileged families, and its philosophy of education for community and
solidarity. Ruth Doggett discusses the meaning and values that girls (both fee-
paying and non-paying ‘underprivileged’ students) attach to their schooling and
its enabling curriculum, which encourages students to identify with their own
and others’ realities and become active agents of their own lives, able to take on
non-traditional roles. The evidence suggests that the fee-paying students were
better able to do this than the non-paying students, who were more aware of
external constraints on their future options.
The Conclusion highlights some of the intersections and disjunctures of policy
and practice, assesses the nature of change that has been achieved, and considers
some of the key challenges that the chapters have highlighted which need to be
addressed if MDG 2 and MDG 3 are to be achieved. It emphasises the importance
of multi-sectoral initiatives and a respect for human rights in support of gender
equality in education, to ensure high-quality education and consequently a
better quality of life. A multi-sector approach entails partnerships, and many of
the chapters illustrate the importance of partnerships outside the education
11

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
sector for initiating and sustaining gender equality. While the book indicates that
there are no ‘quick fixes’ to the deep-rooted and often widely accepted forms of
gender discrimination that limit girls’ educational opportunities, it also
demonstrates the imperative need for political will at all levels if change is to be
achieved. It shows how dramatic actions, such as the abolition of school fees, can
have a major impact in terms of increased numbers of girls in school, and how
training or other forms of structured reflection on gender inequality by teachers,
officials, and NGOs can yield significant results.
Sheila Aikman is the Global Education Policy Adviser with Oxfam GB, and
co-ordinator of the DFID-funded ‘Beyond Access’ Project. She formerly taught at the
Institute of Education, University of London, in the Department of Education and
International Development. She has conducted long-term ethnographic field work on
indigenous education with indigenous peoples of Peru and has published widely on
intercultural bilingual education, language policy, and gender.

Elaine Unterhalter is a senior Lecturer in Education and International Development
at the Institute of Education, University of London. She was born and educated in
South Africa and has written a number of books and articles on gender in South
Africa. She has also done work on India, Bangladesh, and global institutions. With
Sheila Aikman, she has co-ordinated the Beyond Access project since 2003.

References
Clarke, D. (2005) ‘Planning and Evaluation for Gender Equality in Education in the Context of HIV
and AIDS’, paper presented at Beyond Access Seminar 5 on ‘Partnerships for Gender Equality’,
Dhaka, 31 January –2 February 2005 (www.ungei.org)
David, M. (2005) ‘A Feminist and Critical Perspective on Family-Education Partnerships for
Gender Equality and Quality Basic Education’, paper delivered at Beyond Access Seminar 5, 31
January-1 February 2005, Dhaka. Full text can be found at
http://k1.ioe.ac.uk/schools/efps/GenderEducDev/Miriam%20David%20paper%20final.pdf
Herz, G. and B. Sperling (2004) ‘What Works in Girls’ Education: Evidence and Policies from the
Developing World’, Council on Foreign Relations
Sen, A. (1999) Development as Freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press
UNESCO (2003) Gender and Education for All: the Leap to Equality, Global Monitoring Report
2003/4
Unterhalter, E. (2005) ‘Gender equality and education in South Africa: measurements, scores and
strategies’ in L. Chisholm and J. September (eds.) Gender Equity in South African Education,
1994-2004,
Pretoria: HSRC
12

Part One
The Challenges for
Gender Equality in Education
13

1 Fragmented frameworks?
Researching women, gender, education,
and development

Elaine Unterhalter
This chapter critically reviews contrasting frameworks which present different
ways of understanding the nature of the challenge to achieve gender equality in
education. Different meanings of gender equality and schooling have conse-
quences for our understanding of two Millennium Development Goals (MDGs):
MDG 2, which is concerned with gender equality in schooling, and MDG 3,
concerned with the empowerment of women. Different meanings entail
different actions, and, as will be shown, organisations have interpreted gender,
education, development, empowerment
, and equality in very different ways. These
interpretations are underpinned by different approaches to research and
analysis: how one undertakes research on gender and women will determine the
conclusions. This chapter examines different meanings of the challenge for
gender equality in education and evaluates the implications of each approach for
policy and practice.
Four approaches to gender equality in education
Table 1 summarises the four approaches and main phases of thinking and action
concerning gender education, development, and equality that have prevailed
since approximately 1970. (For a fuller discussion of some of the theoretical
issues raised, see Unterhalter 2003a, 2005a.)
In practice there are considerable overlaps between the four approaches, but I
have separated them out analytically to emphasise some of their key differences.
The WID (women in development) framework, with its stress on expansion of
education for girls and women, linked to efficiency and economic growth, is the
framework with the longest history and the most powerful advocates in
governments, inter-government organisations, and NGOs. It is the framework
that views gender in relatively uncomplicated ways and generates clear policy
directives regarding, for example, the employment of more women teachers to
reassure parents about girls’ safety at school.
The GAD (gender and development) framework considers gender as part of
complex and changing social relations. Influential for more than twenty years
15

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
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16

Fragmented frameworks? Researching women, gender, education, and development
among women’s organisations concerned with development, GAD has only
slowly made an impact on the thinking of some governments and education
NGOs. Because GAD is alert to complex processes entailed in the reproduction
and transformation of gendered relations, it is less easily translatable into simple
policy demands. However, GAD approaches have had some impact on practice,
particularly with regard to teachers’ understanding of work in a gendered
classroom, women’s organisations’ linking of education-related demands to
wider demands for empowerment, and the ways in which advocates of gender
equality work in institutions.
The post-structuralist approach questions the stability of definitions of gender,
paying particular attention to fluid processes of gendered identification and
shifting forms of action. While the issues raised by this approach have not influ-
enced government policies directly, they have put on the agenda the affirmation
of subordinated identities, and they have made some impact on the development
of learning materials and forms of organisation that recognise the complexity of
social identities.
The final framework analysed is concerned with human development and
human rights in development. In some ways this is a meta-theory, working at a
higher level of abstraction, and suggesting not concrete policies or forms of
practice but rather a framework in which these can be developed ethically.
However, the human-development approach also differs significantly from the
other three with regard to how gender and education are understood, and some
of the processes entailed in developing policy. It thus allows us to see the three
other approaches in a somewhat different light.
I now want to look in more depth at the assumptions and research base of each
approach, drawing out its policy and practice implications, its achievements, and
some associated problems and questions.
Bringing girls and women into school: the dominance
of the WID approach

The WID framework, with its emphasis on bringing women into development,
and thus girls and women into school, has links to aspects of liberal feminism in
Northern contexts. It stresses the importance of including women in develop-
ment planning to improve efficiency, but not necessarily challenging the
multiple sources of women’s subordination. Histories of the WID approach
point to its beginnings in the early 1970s with the work of Ester Boserup, which
illustrated how women, who do the bulk of farming in Africa, were neglected in
rural development projects (Boserup 1970; Moser 1994).
17

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
WID has had the strongest resonance for analysts of education in governments
and inter-government organisations. The most influential policy thinking on
gender, education, and development in the 1990s drew on this approach,
expressed most clearly in a collection of papers edited by King and Hill and first
published in mimeographed form in 1991 for the World Bank. This was to have
enormous influence on governments, and on large-scale development assistance
projects. King and Hill emphasised the importance of counting girls and women
inside and outside schooling, overcoming the barriers to access, and realising the
social benefits of their presence in school: increased GDP per capita, reduced
birth rates and infant mortality, and increased longevity (King and Hill 1991;
1993). This analysis was framed in key policy documents throughout the 1990s,
including the World Bank’s Priorities and Strategies in Education and UNESCO’s
Delors Commission Report (World Bank 1995; Delors 1996). Its influence is still
evident in key passages of important strategy documents from the World Bank,
including Engendering Development (2001), and DFID’s Girls’ Education:
Towards a Better Future for All
(DFID 2005).
In the WID approach, ‘gender’ is equated with women and girls, who are
identified descriptively in terms of biological differences. ‘Education’ is
understood as schooling. ‘Development’ or ‘empowerment’ is linked with
economic growth or social cohesion and sometimes improved governance. Herz
and Sperling’s influential analysis What Works in Girls’ Education, written in 2004
in response to the failure to meet the MDG on gender parity in schooling, uses
some forms of WID analysis, identifying the benefits of girls’ education in terms
of faster economic growth, more productive farming, smaller and better-
educated families, and reduced infant and child mortality. While the report also
argues that the education of girls will result in benefits to them, such as higher
earning potential, better protection from HIV and domestic violence, and
greater political participation, the assumption is that these personal benefits are
acceptable because they fit with accepted social benefits (Herz and Sperling
2004). Intrinsic benefits from education that might be more personal and private
are not acknowledged.
Questions of exploitation, subordination, and social division are generally not
considered in this framework. The slogan ‘If you educate a woman you educate the
nation’
nicely captures the thinking that underpins the mainstream policy
support for WID. The education of women is for others, not for themselves. The
benefits of women’s education are to be realised in the household, often the site
of the harshest discrimination. Some critiques draw attention to WID’s narrow
assumption that ‘education’ is always delivered in formal schools; that gender is
not a political relationship, but merely a set of descriptive categories; and that the
concerns of individual women are not to be taken into account (Unterhalter
2000; Fine and Rose 2001; Brighouse and Unterhalter 2002).
18

Fragmented frameworks? Researching women, gender, education, and development
The WID approach to the challenge of gender inequality in education is to get
more girls into school. A great deal of the empirical work using this framework
has concentrated on counting the numbers of girls in or out of school and
measuring the breadth of the gender gap between girls and boys in enrolments or
achievement (UNESCO 2003; UNICEF 2000–2004). This work has been carried
out by government ministries, including census departments. District household
surveys have been a key instrument in collecting data on school attendance.
Additional surveys have looked at how household relations affect decisions about
sending girls to school and keeping them there (Hadden and London 1996; Filmer
and Pritchett 1999; Alderman, Orrazo and Patterno 1996). Analysis has also
concentrated on quantifying the benefits of girls’ and women’s schooling in terms
of reduced birth rates and improved uptake of immunisation (Klansen 1999;
Subbarao and Raney 1995; Gage et al. 1997). Much of this work has been
undertaken by researchers working for multilateral organisations, including the
World Bank, UNICEF, and UNESCO. Generally these researchers are economists,
and very often research teams have been led by international experts who employ
local research assistants for fieldwork.
Some work mixes qualitative and quantitative data to consider gender in relation to
achievement at school (Nath and Chowdhury 2001). In the Caribbean this work has
studied how boys underachieve because of their relations with female teachers and
other boys (Kutnick et al. 1997; Parry 1997). While the qualitative research provides
some of the insight about social relations that is difficult to discern in the quanti-
tative work, the assumptions that underpin it are the same: that is, the importance
of bringing girls into school and assuring achievement for girls and boys.
This quantitative work on gender, access, retention, and achievement tends not
to deal with other dimensions of inequality, particularly race, ethnicity, caste, and
disability. While some acknowledgement is made of differences between rural
and urban girls, there is little engagement with the complexity of social division.
This resonates with the way in which writers in the WID framework interpret
equality. Within this framework, equality is generally understood in terms of
equal numbers of resources: for example, places in school for girls and boys, male
and female teachers employed, or equal numbers of images of women and men
in textbooks. Studies thus concentrate on describing the gender gap, that is the
inequality in numbers of boys and girls at school (UNESCO 2003), the lack of
female teachers (King and Hill 1994; Herz and Sperling 2004), and the numbers
of boys and girls in children’s textbooks (Joshi and Anderson 1992; Obura 1991).
This approach pays little attention to gendered processes of learning, the
conditions in which women teachers work, the way their work is regarded by
their societies, or the meanings that children make and take from the images they
see in textbooks. Chapters in this book by the Global Campaign for Education
(Chapter 2) and Elimu Yetu (Chapter 5) are examples of a WID approach.
19

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Policies associated with the WID approach have concentrated on improving
access for girls, through giving them stipends or abolishing school fees, providing
food in return for attendance at school, developing the infrastructure of training
or accommodation to ensure that more women teachers are employed, digging
latrines, and providing water. Some associated practice has entailed mobilising
teachers and communities to encourage girls to enrol in school and ensure that
they pass examinations. These are often seen as ends in themselves. In Malawi
and Kenya, the abolition of school fees led to hundreds of thousands of girls
enrolling in school – with little provision to support them. WID practice is not
much concerned with the content of what girls learn, how they learn, or whether
gender inequalities face them after their years in school are over. Generally WID
analysts will comment on the content of schooling when it has a bearing on
access, but not more generally. For example, Herz et al. highlight the importance
of girls’ studying science in Kenya because it encourages parents to send their
daughters to school, not because learning science might provide intrinsically
useful knowledge (Herz et al. 1991). The stress in WID practice is on bringing
girls into school and ensuring that they learn appropriately. The framework is
not concerned to raise questions about the gendered practice of teachers in
relation to children’s learning styles, management practices in school, or
gendered structures of power in society.
The WID framework is not able to explain more complex aspects of gender
equality and inequality in school. GAD critiques of WID, discussed below, have
taken issue with some of these limitations. However, it must be acknowledged that
WID’s simple messages about policy and practice, despite – or possibly because of
– their lack of analytical complexity, have galvanised huge programmes by
government and inter-government organisations, mobilised additional funding,
and led to some important legal changes with regard to the provision of
education. Despite the many limitations of WID’s failure to look beyond the
school gate, the policy achievements associated with the framework in the past
two decades must be acknowledged.
The gendered power structures of school and society:
drawing on GAD in education

In opposition to WID, the GAD (gender and development) approach emerged in
the late 1980s, emphasising the significance of gendered power structures of
inequality in a range of contexts. GAD theorists argued that inequality needed to
be challenged politically and could not merely be ameliorated by a process of
inclusion, by the provision of welfare support, or by a belief in the greater
efficiency of projects or programmes that included women (Moser 1993). GAD
20

Fragmented frameworks? Researching women, gender, education, and development
grew mainly out of women’s organisations (primarily but not exclusively those of
poor rural and urban women). It was also linked to debates about feminism in
the third world, and the contributions of critical theorists in development
studies who highlighted the inadequate ways in which women and gender were
conceptualised in the work of mainstream development theory (Kabeer 1994;
Elson 1995; DAWN 1995; Randall and Waylen 1998; Molyneux 1998; Rai 2002).
In some ways this work resonated with the approach of socialist feminists in
Western Europe. (Radical feminism, with its trenchant critique of the politics of
the family, had considerable impact in North America, Western Europe, and
Australia, but was less significant politically in developing countries, although
there are some notable exceptions, particularly in Latin America.)
GAD work focused on the sexual division of labour inside and outside the
household, on forms of political mobilisation, and changing gendered structures
of power. As a form of political analysis and action, GAD paid relatively little
attention to issues concerning formal schooling. Partly because education is so
centrally concerned with the State, which provides an ambiguous partner for
transforming gendered social relations (Stromquist 1995), the writings of
influential GAD theorists tended not to deal with formal education.
A key element in GAD analysis was to make a distinction between practical
gender needs and strategic gender interests. Practical gender needs are concerns
with immediate day-to-day requirements like food, water, and shelter. Strategic
gender interests are concerns with challenging the deeply entrenched forms of
gender discrimination in the legal system, sexual violence in the family, the lack
of political representation, and discrimination in the workplace (Moser 1993;
Kabeer 1994; Molyneux 1998). Although there was considerable debate about
the link between gender needs and gender interests, GAD theorists considered
the importance of developing programmes that could operate at both levels to
bring about significant changes and redistribution of power to achieve greater
equality (Molyneux 1998; Elson 2002). Very little writing on gender, education,
and development engaged with these GAD debates, and it is unclear whether
education can be categorised as a practical gender need or a strategic gender
interest. Indeed, in writings critical of the WID approach and influenced by GAD
theories, the two tended to be conflated (Chisholm and Unterhalter 1999).
A second central concern of GAD writers was the debate about empowerment
that had some bearing on understandings of equality. Use of the concept grew out
of feminist movements that stressed the importance of enhancing agency among
the poorest. However, initial attempts to give empowerment conceptual
coherence suffered from a number of difficulties. These included how to specify
the social context (an important concern for GAD analysts); how to work with
changing meanings of empowerment, often linked to agendas about privatisation
21

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
very different from those of the women’s movement; how to engage with
questions of justice; and how to define the nature of agency or relate women’s
interests strategically to the agendas of those in power (Yuval Davis 1994;
Rowlands 1997; Kabeer 1999; Rai 2001; Brighouse and Unterhalter 2002).
In an important paper which addresses the need for a clearer conceptualisation,
Kabeer discusses how empowerment might be measured. She distinguishes
three different dimensions that need to be examined when considering women’s
choices (singly or collectively). Firstly, empowerment entails choice with regard
to access to resources; secondly it entails agency in decision making and
negotiating power; and thirdly it comprises achievements of outcomes of value.
Kabeer argues that an adequate assessment of empowerment requires triangu-
lation of measurement of all three sources (Kabeer 1999).
• First, translating this into a definition of what is implied in measuring
gender empowerment in education would entail measuring access to
schooling up to a certain level. (Note that here access includes retention –
that is, the capacity to retain access – and achievement – that is, capacity to
gain knowledge from schooling.)
• Secondly, measuring empowerment would imply measuring agency in how
decisions about education are made, thus placing more emphasis on gender
equality with regard to decision making about education by adult women. It
might consider decision making about access to schooling in households, as
well as decision making in schools or in education ministries, or in local
authorities, like village education councils in India with devolved
responsibilities for some aspects of education management.
• Lastly, measuring empowerment would also need to be analysed with regard
to achievements that flow from education – not just narrowly defined
notions of reading and writing up to a certain level, or GDP per capita, but
more complex notions of well-being.
It is evident that this approach differs somewhat from WID, because access to
resources and decision making, not simple inclusion, is at issue. Similarly there
are different inflections to GAD, particularly the varying stresses on resources
and distribution, not merely agency.
The discussion of empowerment identifies some key areas that are relevant to
GAD theorists’ understandings of equality. In contrast with the WID
interpretation of equality based on equality of resources, GAD theorists consider
equality in terms of the removal of the structural barriers to gender equality:
unfair laws; labour-market practices; management regimes in institutions;
barriers to women’s decision making in all settings; inequitable processes with
regard to the distribution of time, money, and schooling. The process of remedy
22

Fragmented frameworks? Researching women, gender, education, and development
was sometimes seen as ‘empowerment’, but was also called ‘equity’, an approach
to instituting fairness. This might entail inequalities in resources, for example in
affirmative-action programmes. Thus equality was an ideal of equal power,
participation, and distribution, but the process of achieving it might sometimes
look inequitable because of historical and contextual issues that could not be
excluded from analysis.
The literature that draws on a GAD framework to analyse education policy has
tended to focus more on the gendered politics of aid and national policy than on
ethnographic work on gender relations in schools and communities (Swainson
2000, Hossain et al. 2002; Sato 1997; Oda 2000; Stromquist 1997, 2000). Some
GAD-influenced studies have considered levels of sexual violence in school
(Leach et al. 2003; Mirembe and Davies 2001), and gender, school management,
and school improvement, highlighting the substantial difficulties that women
face in management (Davies 1998; Chisholm 2001; Coleman, Haiyan, and
Yanping 1998). Analyses of the gendered politics of community involvement in
education indicate the ambiguity inherent in decentralisation policies in
societies where there are severe constraints on women’s participation in decision
making (Subrahmanian 2005; Vavrus 2003). GAD ideas were influential in the
design and delivery of adult literacy projects such as REFLECT (Archer and
Cottingham 1996). GAD aspirations were given a particular organisational form
in the emergence of NGOs and new social movements from the mid-1980s, with
a particular focus on aspects of gender inequality, often including components of
adult education in their forms of mobilisation. The ways in which these organis-
ations linked education to other forms of social development illuminated issues
of empowerment and the interlinking of practical needs and strategic interests
(Basu 1995; Stromquist 2000; Unterhalter and Dutt 2001; Khandekhar 2004).
Contributions to this book by Raynor (Chapter 4), Leggett (Chapter 6), Ames
(Chapter 7), Sanou and Aikman (Chapter 9), Thorpe (Chapter 10), and Zentz
(Chapter 11) all use elements of a GAD approach.
In contrast to the prevalence of economists in research associated with WID,
writers working on education within a GAD framework draw on history,
sociology, anthropology, politics, and development studies. Generally GAD
research has not been conducted for commissions from large multilateral
organisations, but represents small-scale projects, often by academics living in
developing countries. Two notable exceptions were the studies in six countries in
Africa carried out by a team led by Christopher Colclough in partnership with
FAWE, studying gendered social relations and girls’ access to schooling
(Colclough, Rose, and Tembon 2001; Colclough et al. 2004). This study, by a
multidisciplinary team with some contributions by economists, contained some
elements of a WID approach; but, because it also contained detailed data gleaned
from interviews in communities, it was able to present a finely nuanced analysis.
23

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
The research commissioned by UNESCO for the 2003 Global Monitoring Report
(GMR), synthesised in Chapter 3 of that report, also takes a predominantly GAD-
type perspective, looking in considerable detail at gendered relations in schools
and post-schooling, not only at barriers to access (UNESCO 2003). These two
studies, particularly at the level of detailed analysis, represent a hybrid of WID and
GAD positions; however, as evinced in the Executive Summary to the GMR, WID
is the framework that is seen to have more wide-ranging policy leverage.
It is notable how little of the GAD-inspired literature on gendered relations in
education deals with schools and classrooms. In high-income countries, gender
and education, as an area of political engagement and academic debate, was
centrally influenced by the women’s movement in the 1970s. While many of the
demands of the women’s movement in these countries had resonance with
demands in Third World countries, there were a number of key differences.
Among these, one of the most important was the significant participation of
highly educated women in feminist organisation: in many Third World contexts,
highly educated women were generally a minority in feminist mobilisation,
although there are some important exceptions to this observation, most notably
in Egypt and Iran.1 A second difference lay in the fact that in high-income
countries feminists frequently occupied important, though often fragile,
positions in the leadership of trade unions, including teachers’ unions, in
established political parties, and as policy makers, particularly at local and district
levels. These were generally not spaces available to a feminist leadership elsewhere
in the world. When women did gain senior positions, it was not very frequently on
terms associated with a politics concerning gender equality.
The articulation of concerns about gender and education in developing
countries often linked with the mobilisation of grassroots women’s organisation,
but was given institutional form by education ministries and powerful donors in
development assistance, which often had very little connection with this popular
constituency (Swainson 2000). By contrast in Western Europe, North America,
and Australia, gender and education was given political and theoretical
coherence largely by teachers in schools and teacher-education institutions who
were directly involved in the women’s movement. A number of these later moved
on to work in higher education, continuing to research in schools. The political
and academic work was thus organically linked with practice. Many of the issues
of concern to these activist teachers and researchers, such as gender bias in the
curriculum, co-educational or single-sex schools, the formation of femininities
(and later masculinities) in schools, approaches to sex education, levels of sexual
harassment at school and university, and the intersections of race and gender
discrimination, were issues that arose out of practice (Lees 1993; Weiner 1994;
Kenway et al. 1998; Arnot, Weiner, and David 1999; Epstein and Johnson 1998;
Paechter 2000; Francis and Skelton 2001; Arnot 2002; Leonard 2001). In some
24

Fragmented frameworks? Researching women, gender, education, and development
contexts, remarkable spaces opened in the education bureaucracy for women
who had a particular combination of knowledge about gender and connection
with the women’s movement. Termed femocrats in Australia, but recognisable in
a number of different contexts of institutional leadership, they were sometimes
able to secure considerable resources for gender equality in education, although
often at grave personal cost (Blackmore 1995; Morley 1999).
For this group of writers, the analysis of liberal feminists, so influential with
regard to WID elsewhere in the world, had very little to say, largely because access
was not the problem, except to some areas of higher education. Even this ceased
to be a major barrier in the 1990s, as access to higher education by previously
excluded groups was widely encouraged in the drive to build high-skilled
economies. While girls’ achievement at school initially seemed to be lower than
that of boys, by the 1990s there was a moral panic about boys’ underachievement
(Epstein, Elwood, and Maw 1998; Kenway and Kraack 2003).
Much more influential for these writers were theorists who could help to analyse
the persistence of inequalities of gender, class, and race/ethnic identity, despite
universal access and high levels of achievement by girls. Thus Bernstein’s work on
class, Bourdieu’s work on habitus, Foucault’s analysis of power, concerns with the
simultaneous exclusions and inclusions of citizenship, a number of feminist
post-structuralist accounts regarding the negotiations of meaning, and feminist
analysis of embodiment generated the most useful theoretical and political
insights. In contrast with writings on gender, education, and development, this
literature has been more theoretically engaged with debates in sociology, cultural
studies, and women’s studies, and more focused on practice. Concomitantly it
has taken rather less account of education in relation to economics, political
philosophy, or the changing nature of households, although there are important
exceptions to this generalisation (Crompton 1999; Moller Okin 1999;
Walkerdine, Lucey, and Melody 2000).
The work of theorists using GAD in education has not generated the simple
‘what works’ messages associated with WID. GAD influence on policy and
practice can be seen at two levels. Firstly, GAD thinkers have developed critiques
of policy making that are concerned with the gendered processes of decision
making. Gender budgeting and gender mainstreaming are both planning tools
that have been developed in an attempt to make gender central to the concerns of
policy makers, rather than seeing it as a quick solution to a range of social
problems (Jahan 1995; Kabeer 2002; Budlender and Hewitt 2002). Gender
mainstreaming seeks to legitimise gender equality as a fundamental value that is
reflected in development choices and institutional practices for a society as a
whole; to advance gender equality from central, key ministries; and to facilitate
the presence of women as decision makers (UNDP 2002). UNICEF and DFID
25

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
have developed gender-mainstreaming guides for policy makers, taking
particular account of education (UNICEF 2003; Derbyshire 1998). Gender
budgeting seeks to identify the gendered expenditure of a departmental budget,
focusing on elements that can be seen to yield specific benefits to women and
girls. Some evaluative work on gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting has
been published, showing some of the uneven processes and outcomes entailed
(Razavi and Miller 1995; Derbyshire 1998; Goetz 1997; Schalkwyk 1998), but
studies of gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting in education have yet to
be undertaken. These concerns with attending to gendered processes in
organisations may well be amenable to further adaptation for schools and their
management committees. Gender training, which often underpins gender
mainstreaming work (Williams et al. 1999), has much potential for use in the
development of teacher-education modules that consider gender.
While WID has been successful in generating simple messages and clear policy
directives, the achievement of GAD has been to highlight the complexity of
institutional change. GAD researchers and policy activists have demonstrated
the importance of having appropriate processes in place to redress imbalances in
gendered power in organisations. They reveal how much care and time needs to
be allocated to redressing deeply entrenched and sometimes unacknowledged
gender inequities in schools, education ministries, political decision making,
families, and the labour market.
Problematising universal categories: the challenge of
post-structuralism to gender, education, and
development

While WID and GAD emerged out of development politics and practice, post-
structuralism (and related ideas, loosely grouped together as ‘post-colonial
theory’), was primarily an approach located in universities or among groups of
highly educated critics. The approaches that they developed were applied as a form
of critique to a range of development practice and the methodologies associated
with thinking about the Third World. Commentaries highlighted problems in the
universalisation of a notion of ‘third-world woman’ and ‘development’, and the
power relations masked and perpetuated by development-assistance rhetoric
(Mohanty 1988; Marchand and Parpart 1995; Spivak 1999). An important strand
of the literature presents schooling as a space that disrupts and diminishes the
power of local or indigenous knowledges (Tuhiwai Smith 1999; Kowakole 1997). A
key question posed by writers who used this framework, which is largely absent
from most WID and GAD discussions of gender, education, and development,
concerns questions of methodology and the ‘colonial gaze’: the process by which
26

Fragmented frameworks? Researching women, gender, education, and development
research participants ‘become gendered’, in accordance with certain ascribed
meanings of the term and the silencing and erasure of women from many
conventional sources for data collection (Spivak 1999).
Post-structuralist thinkers have raised critical questions about identity and shown
how the meaning of gender entails fluid and shifting processes of identification in
tension with the fixed structures noted by GAD analysts. For these writers, the
process of education is partly a process of recognising this fluidity and critiquing
the process of marginalisation of non-mainstream identities. Thus in this
framework equality is not the major concern, as a key political and theoretical
objective is the recognition of difference (Mannathoko 1999).
Relatively little work has used a post-structuralist framework to consider gender
and education in development settings, in contrast to the rich literature on this
theme in Western Europe, North America, and Australia. However, the
complexity of the challenges posed by the HIV/AIDS epidemic has generated
work that considers the gendered and sexualised identities of learners and
teachers (Pattman and Chege 2003; Pattman 2004), and ways in which meanings
associated with school spaces can subvert concerns with gender equality (Kent
2004). The fluid identities of educated women in Africa and India have also been
documented (Stambach 2000; Narayan 1997).
Generally post-structuralist writers on gender, education, and development have
been employed in higher education, either working in or closely connected with
Western European and North American institutions. It is here that their
influence has been most pronounced in course content and in the focus of what
is published. While their influence on government and NGO policies has not
been large, their analysis of the importance of identities has had resonance with
political mobilisation to address subordinated identities, for example gay and
lesbian identities in South Africa, or Dalit identities in India (Gevisser and
Cameron 1995; Khandekhar 2004).
Equality of what in education? Rights and capabilities
The WID framework draws primarily on economic analyses, GAD on
sociological approaches, and the post-structuralist approach on insights from
literary theory and cultural studies. Each has had a different constituency with
regard to policy making and practice. The generally acknowledged context to the
work in all three approaches is the global compact on human rights, gender
equality, and education, specifically the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Jomtien and Beijing
Declarations. While WID and GAD theorists use these documents to legitimise
their concerns, some post-structuralist writers are critical of their universal
27

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
aspirations and the disjuncture between declared intent and actual practice.
However, questions posed in political philosophy regarding the nature of rights,
needs, and capabilities and their implications for thinking about gender and
education are outside the scope of all three frameworks.
These questions have been addressed in the formulation of the ‘capability
approach’ by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, who have posed questions
concerning the definitions of rights to education and the political foundation of
the demand for gender equality (Sen 1999; Nussbaum 2000). The capability
approach considers that the evaluation of equality, for example in education
provision, needs to be based on an understanding of human capabilities – that is,
what it is that each individual has reason to value. This contrasts sharply with the
human-capital approach, influential in WID analysis, which stresses that the
evaluation of education provision is about some aggregated benefit to society or
future society. While human-capital theory has little to say about injustices and
inequality in the household, the workplace, or the State, the capability approach
is centrally concerned with these, but relies not on outlining the structures of
inequality (as GAD does), but on positing a strategy based on an ethical notion
of valuing freedoms and affirming rights as ethical obligations of each person to
another.
Sen and Nussbaum have expounded their views of the significance of education
as a key capability (Saito 2003; Nussbaum 2004). Sen drew on this analysis in a
key speech to the Commonwealth Education Ministers’ conference in 2003,
when he explained how education capabilities and enlarged capabilities for
women underpinned other freedoms (Sen 2003). The concern of the capability
approach with multi-dimensionality, linking provision of education with health
services, income, aspects of trade, and governance, has been a key influence on
UNDP’s Human Development Reports (Fukuda and Parr 2003). Research using
the approach is characterised by multidisciplinary approaches which mix
economics, political philosophy, education, and health.
The capability approach is not without important critics, particularly with
regard to its failure to take account of injustices of recognition, not solely
distribution (Fraser 1997), its inability to engage with dimensions of group-
based social mobilisation for democratisation and gender equality (Young 2000;
Stewart 2004), and its tendency to universalise, which may not take sufficient
account of particular contexts.
To some extent, empirical work drawing on the approach shows how issues of
recognition and social context can be accommodated. Research on women,
gender, education, and the capability approach considers the ways in which
evaluations of literacy can be enhanced by drawing on the approach (Alkire
2002). This approach might also be used in relation to evaluating policy to
28

Fragmented frameworks? Researching women, gender, education, and development
overcome gender violence in the context of HIV in South Africa (Unterhalter
2003), and it might inform an understanding of education linked to gender
equality (Walker 2004). Contributions by Oommen (Chapter 8) and Doggett
(Chapter 12) in this book, while not working explicitly with a capability
framework, still express concerns with rights and the enlargement of freedoms
that resonate with work linked to the capability approach.
There are some clear policy implications of the approach. Governments using
the capability approach have an obligation to establish and sustain the
conditions for each and every individual, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, race,
or regional location, to achieve valued outcomes. These may entail ensuring that
each person acquires a certain level of educational attainment, but they
undoubtedly entail ensuring the freedoms that allow valued outcomes to be
articulated and achieved (Gasper 2004; Unterhalter 2005b). Thus, for example,
failing to ensure conditions where sexual violence in and on the way to school can
be identified and eradicated would be a failure to ensure freedom for valued
outcomes. While GAD writers have tended to describe the structures that
generate these problems, the capability approach contains an ethical injunction
with regard to formulating policy for change. Similarly, failure to ensure oppor-
tunities for a particular group to participate in decision making about valued
outcomes, again well documented in GAD literature, would also be a limitation
on freedoms or capabilities. Sen’s capability approach highlights the importance
of diverse social settings where capabilities will be articulated. He emphasises the
importance of free forms of discussion and association in articulating
capabilities. Sen writes about development as freedom because the freedom to
think, talk, and act concerning what one values is a meaning of development
closer to a concern with human flourishing than narrower notions of a certain
level of GDP per capita, or a pre-specified level of resource.
The capability approach attempts to overcome some of the difficulties with the
universalism in the concept of rights by highlighting the importance of securing
the conditions for individuals articulating ‘valued beings and doings’. The stress
on securing conditions for social justice sets this approach apart from WID, with
its stress on practical strategies, GAD with its focus on disempowering structures,
and post-structuralism with its emphasis on identities. A combination of the
capability approach with other analytical frameworks seems a useful way forward
for future policy work.
Conclusion
This chapter has identified four frameworks in which the debate about gender,
education, and development has been set. It can be seen that while each has a
29

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
distinctive set of concerns, demands, policy implications, and favoured
researchers, in particular settings there is considerable overlap. The policy paper
produced by the Global Campaign for Education for the Commission on the
Status of Women in New York in 2005 articulated many key WID demands for an
end to user fees and expanded access to school. But it also highlighted GAD
concerns with gendered processes of learning in school and gender inequalities
outside school. It presents a view of multiple actors in development that has
some resonance with the post-structuralist critique and emphasises the
importance of girls’ learning linked to outcomes that they value, which resonates
with the capability approach (GCE 2005). It may be that the failure to meet the
2005 MDG will catalyse new thinking, bringing together the richness of the
insights associated with the different frameworks, and thus generating new
forms of action that go beyond the fragmented achievements of the past.
Elaine Unterhalter is a senior lecturer in Education and International Development
at the Institute of Education, University of London. She has written a number of
books and articles on gender in South Africa and has also done work on India,
Bangladesh, and global institutions. With Sheila Aikman, she has co-ordinated the
Beyond Access: Gender, Education and Development project since 2003.

Note
1
My thanks to Niloufar Pourzand for clarification on this point.
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35

2 Ensuring a fair chance for girls
Global Campaign for Education
This chapter is based on a report by the Global Campaign for Education, entitled
‘A Fair Chance: Attaining Gender Equality in Basic Education by 2005’ (GCE
2003). The report drew on secondary research conducted in nine countries:
Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ethiopia, India, Malawi, Mali, Nepal, Nigeria, and
Pakistan. Using evidence from case studies and the wider literature, the first
section of this chapter considers the causes of gender inequality in basic
education, and more specifically the additional barriers that girls face when
enrolling in school and attending classes. The second section investigates what
has been done to close the gender gap. It cites four main success factors for
eliminating gender inequalities, and analyses the interventions within integrated
strategies that have been particularly effective. The third and concluding section
considers what needs to be done now to make gender equality in education a
reality.
The success stories from our case-study countries have several factors in
common. In particular, they have discarded a project-by-project approach in
favour of comprehensive plans to tackle all of the main factors that keep girls out
of school. The success of their ambitious approaches has been guaranteed by
high-level political support; organised backing from powerful women and other
gender advocates and civil-society organisations within the country in question;
the participation of key education stakeholders, including teachers and
communities; realistic resource allocations; and, in the case of most low-income
countries, sustained and co-ordinated donor support. In several of our case-
study countries, political commitment to girls’ education was closely linked to
wider struggles to empower women and overcome gender injustice. Moreover,
programmes specifically aimed at increasing the enrolment of girls have been
most effective when they are accompanied by a nationwide effort to expand
access for all children, for example by removing school fees, constructing more
schools, and hiring more teachers. As long as education opportunities are costly
or in short supply, access will continue to be ‘rationed’, with those who are
wealthy, urban, and male at the front of a very long queue.
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Ensuring a fair chance for girls
Why do fewer girls than boys go to school?
Girls face many barriers in their attempts to gain an education. In most
developing countries, the economic benefits that families will receive are usually
much lower than the social returns, and considerably lower than the returns
from boys’ education. The precise causes and consequences of gender inequality
in basic education vary from country to country, but there is a common set of
constraints that must be tackled. The most important are endemic poverty; the
unaffordable costs of schooling; the burden of household labour; shortage of
school facilities, especially in rural areas; negative and even dangerous school
environments; cultural and social practices that discriminate against girls,
including early marriage and restrictions on female mobility; and limited
employment opportunities for women. Even when girls do manage to gain access
to school, their self-confidence is not reinforced by the content of the
curriculum, which tends to perpetuate gender stereotypes. Girls are trapped in a
vicious circle. Because they face such difficulties at school, many of them struggle
to complete their education and to pass key national examinations. As a result,
their parents are less inclined to invest heavily in their education. The story of
Kanchi from Nepal (see Box 1) illustrates how endemic poverty is preventing
girls from realising their full potential at school.
Son preference
Cultural and social beliefs, attitudes, and practices prevent girls from benefiting
from educational opportunities to the same extent as boys. There is often a
powerful economic and social rationale for investing in the education of sons
rather than daughters. In most countries, both the public and private sectors
continue to be dominated by men. Consequently, the chances of a young woman,
especially from a poor rural background, finding a ‘good job’ remain extremely
limited. In Ethiopia, for example, only 18 per cent of senior officials and
managers, and 25 per cent of technical and associated professionals, are women
(Rugh 2000). In Mali, parents commonly regard girls’ education as a ‘lost
investment’, because it is the future husband’s family who reap the returns, not
the girl’s own family.
However, it is important to emphasise that parental decision making with regard
to schooling is complicated and multidimensional. Parents’ preferences often
change quickly when the direct and indirect costs of educating girls fall
significantly. Recent surveys in the highly conservative Pakistani provinces of
North West Frontier and Baluchistan, where until recently more than 40 per cent
of villages had no government-funded schools that were open to girls (Rugh
2000: 15), show that the same parents increasingly aspire for both sons and
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Box 1: Kanchi’s story
Kanchi is eight years old. She lives with her family in a village in south-east Nepal. They
belong to the community of mushars (‘the mice eaters’). Her family is considered
‘untouchable’. They live as landless squatters on government-owned land, or on the edge
of the landlord’s farm. Her father and mother are agricultural labourers. They survive on
the grain that they receive as compensation for their work of harvesting and winnowing.
Children start working from an early age: as soon as they are able to walk, they are
assigned duties. The younger ones either work as domestic servants or they help with
carrying firewood, herding the goats and cattle, and taking the midday meal to their
parents in the field.
There are nine people in Kanchi’s family. She started school with the help of a local NGO,
but she stopped attending because her parents could not afford the school books that she
needed. The costs of the books are reimbursable, but her parents do not know this. Her
community faces another problem in educating its children: most are not citizens and
therefore do not have birth certificates, which are required in order to enrol in school. The
upper castes and local landlords who control the government bureaucracy are opposed to
their obtaining citizenship, because they fear that this will enable them to buy land and free
themselves from their abject status as bonded labourers.
Kanchi says: ‘My father has been trying to find the money to buy my schoolbooks’.
But her parents are more determined to send their second son to school. When asked how
she will manage to find the money for his education, Kanchi’s mother says, ‘I will try all
means. After all, he is a son.’

Another daughter in the family also no longer attends school, because she must stay at
home to cook, clean, and look after the younger ones while their mother is away at work.
The eldest sister is married. At the age of 18, she has a son, aged two and a half. She
encourages Kanchi to study, and wishes that she too had had the chance.
(Source: GCE 2003)
daughters to become doctors, civil servants, teachers, and business people.
Parents’ attitudes also change fast when the private returns to girls’ education
increase. However, most developing countries made only limited progress in
expanding female employment opportunities during the 1990s. Given the very
direct link between education and obtaining a good job, this has been a major
disincentive for parents to educate girls.
Early marriage
The low value attached to girls’ education reinforces early marriage, and vice versa.
In the late 1990s, the median age of marriage was 17.1 in Malawi; 16.1 in Mali; 16.5
in Nepal; 17.2 in Nigeria; and 15.6 in Ethiopia (Demographic and Health Surveys,
38

Ensuring a fair chance for girls
various). In Nepal, 40 per cent of girls are married by the age of 15. Too often,
marriage is seen as a higher priority than education. In Mali, for example, parents’
unwavering expectations of marriage for their daughters are combined with
cultural traditions that dictate that the woman enters into her husband’s family
upon marriage and, is in many ways,‘lost’ to her parental family (GCE 2003).
However, marriage does not always work against girls’ education. For example,
where a girl’s family receives dowry, there are incentives to educate daughters. In
Muslim countries such as Bangladesh, being educated can help to secure a
husband from a higher social class. In the Punjab and Pakistan, however, the
necessity to give dowry impedes education, because many families have to
choose between saving money for their daughters’ dowry and saving it to pay for
their education.
In some African countries, girls are withdrawn from school in order to
participate in circumcision ceremonies in preparation for marriage. Many
parents also withdraw their daughters from school because local and national
authorities are failing to protect them from sexual abuse, creating a very real fear
of their becoming pregnant or contracting HIV. A significant proportion of
female drop-out in the higher grades of secondary school is due to pregnancy in
many countries, especially in East and Southern Africa.
School is too expensive
The direct costs of sending all children to school are usually too high for poor
parents. While primary-school tuition fees have now been abolished in many
countries, nearly all developing countries still require parents to pay charges of
various kinds; in many cases, these charges are far higher than the tuition fees.
They include charges for books, stationery, exam fees, uniforms, contributions to
‘building funds’, levies imposed by the school management committees, informal
‘tips’ to teachers, and travel costs.
In Tanzania, before the removal of school fees, it cost about half of the annual
income of poor rural families to send one child to primary school for one year
(Penrose 1998: 104; Watkins 2000: 178). Secondary-school tuition fees alone cost
the equivalent of three months’ minimum wage (Tomasevski 2003). Parents in
234 villages in rural India cited ‘unaffordability’ as the single most important
factor keeping children out of school (PROBE 2000).
Girls have too much to do at home
‘Needed at home’ and/or ‘need to earn money’ are major reasons why poor girls
drop out of school in most countries.‘Opportunity costs’ refer to labour time lost
39

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
to the parent when the child goes to school. These opportunity costs are usually
much higher for girls than for boys, since girls are expected to do more domestic
work than boys. For example, poor girls in rural India are expected to clean the
house, wash clothes and utensils, and collect water before school; and collect
firewood, cook the evening meal, look after siblings, feed cattle, and fetch water
after school. Ethiopian girls of primary age work for 14–16 hours a day (Watkins
2000: 191). A study in Egypt showed that boys do only 15 per cent of the chores
(Rugh 2000: 31).
In the case-study countries, there are very few Centres for Early Childhood
Development to relieve older sisters of their child-care obligations. In the context
of HIV/AIDS in high-prevalence countries in Africa, the burden of work at home
for girls is particularly acute, because they are increasingly required to stay at
home to nurse sick relatives, look after siblings, and do domestic tasks normally
done by adults. In addition to their domestic chores at home, girls are expected
to do work around the school and in the fields, which leaves them very little time
to study and complete homework. In Nepal, girls contribute at least 50 per cent
more labour than boys.
Government schools are too few and too far
In Mali, the average distance to school exceeds 7 km in rural regions; in the
capital region, the average distance is less than 1 km (Watkins 2000: 193–4).
Ministry of Education planners do not always take girls’ enrolment targets into
consideration when determining how many schools should be built. The need to
travel long distances to school is a particular barrier for girls, especially (but not
only) in countries where a cultural premium is placed on female seclusion. For
reasons of safety and security, most parents are reluctant to let their daughters
walk long distances to school. In Egypt, another study found that girls’ enrolment
dropped off sharply when schools were located more than 1.5 km away, while in
Pakistan the threshold was 1 km (Rugh 2000: 31).
In parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the compelling shortage of
secondary-school places has fuelled the expansion of private schools. In many
countries, particularly in South Asia, the burgeoning private sector has attracted
mainly male students. In some countries (including India and Nepal), the
expansion of private secondary schools has resulted in expanded enrolments of
girls in government secondary schools. Although the private sector is relieving
governments of the burden of providing secondary-education facilities, there is
clearly a danger that the rapid expansion of private education is creating a two-
tiered system which entrenches inequalities based on social class, caste, and
gender.
40

Ensuring a fair chance for girls
Schools fail to protect the basic rights and dignity of girls
Schools in most countries are not girl-friendly, and girls often suffer sexual
harassment, bullying, and other forms of intimidation, sometimes even rape.
These abuses often meet with silence and inaction on the part of local and
national authorities.
Failure to provide adequate physical facilities, such as toilets and running water,
is an inconvenience for boys, but a disaster for girls. During menstruation, most
girls will not attend school if there are no toilet facilities. Also, sexual harassment
may occur unless separate toilets for girls and boys are provided. If toilets are
provided, they are often poorly serviced and maintained.
Teachers frequently pay more attention in class to boys than girls. A study in
Nigeria showed that while positive interactions between teacher and student
were almost equally divided between boys and girls in the early years of
schooling, by the sixth grade teachers were significantly more positive towards
boys than towards girls, spending more time on the former (Rugh 2000: 57). This
tends to perpetuate the already low self-esteem of many young girls.
In some countries, including large parts of India, gender segregation persists in
the classroom. Teachers routinely use biased language which reinforces
distinctions of class, caste, and gender. Children from poor and lower-caste
backgrounds are particularly discriminated against and are sometimes subject to
beatings and forms of verbal abuse (Subrahmaniam 2003; Ramachandran 2003).
They are not helped by the fact that most teachers in India belong to upper castes.
Schools fail to motivate or encourage girls
It is widely believed that the limited number of female teachers in both primary
and secondary schools is a major constraint on girls’ education. The presence of
female teachers tends to make schools more girl-friendly and provide role
models for girls.
Most countries in our study had long-established quotas for the recruitment of
women teachers, yet none had managed to fill these quotas, primarily because
governments have failed to develop effective incentives to encourage female
teachers to work in rural areas. Teacher deployment in some countries is so
blatantly corrupt that it is impossible for rational and objective staffing practices
to be adopted. Access for young women to teacher-training colleges is still
severely limited.
Across the developing world, typically less than one-quarter of primary-school
teachers are women. In rural and remote areas, there are usually even fewer
41

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
female teachers. In Nepal, nearly 66 per cent of primary-school teachers in
Kathmandu are women, but only 15 per cent in the Far West Region. The number
of female teachers in the upper primary grades is also much lower than that of
males. This reflects the failure of girls to progress through secondary school to
obtain teaching qualifications.
Considerable progress has been made in designing more gender-sensitive
curricula. However, the use of textbooks with stereotypical images of women and
men is still common in many countries. Women are consistently depicted solely as
mothers and housewives, while men are portrayed in adventurous and decisive
roles such as property owners. Seven out of our nine case-study countries now
have gender-sensitive curricula at primary level. But the challenge is not merely to
transform the content of the curriculum, but also to improve teacher training so
that teachers are adequately equipped to deliver it.
NGOs have powerfully demonstrated and advocated the need for education that
enhances children’s capacity and self-confidence to address real-life challenges.
For girls, knowledge and self-confidence in sexual and reproductive-health
matters can be transformative; in the context of the AIDS epidemic, it has
become an issue of life or death. But promoting awareness of students’ rights as
citizens and as women is equally important. Most fundamentally, as captured by
the South Asian concept of ‘joyful learning’, education perhaps does most to
empower girls when it affords children the confidence to express themselves as
individuals.
The long list of constraints that result in sizeable gender gaps in many countries
looks formidable. However, a number of countries, including Bangladesh and
Malawi, have made remarkable progress during the past decade or so towards
increasing girls’ enrolments in both primary and secondary school and
dramatically reducing, and indeed eliminating altogether, the gender gap in
enrolments and achievements. The next section explores how they have done so.
What has been done to close the gender gap?
Our research suggests that the countries that have made the greatest progress in
eliminating gender inequalities have four main things in common.
• First and most important, there has been strong political commitment to
supporting women in both development and education.
• Related to this, policy development has been informed and influenced by
the demands of strong women’s networks, and other key stakeholders such
as teachers and parents.
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Ensuring a fair chance for girls
• Third, alongside overarching efforts to provide free and universal access for
all groups, comprehensive strategies have been implemented which
specifically tackle the key causes of gender inequality in education. Each
strategy comprises a package of inter-related measures, rather than isolated
and ad hoc interventions.
• And finally, both governments and donors have been willing to allocate the
resources necessary to sustain implementation.
Taking women and education seriously
Eliminating gender inequality in education will not work unless it is part of a
much broader nationwide mobilisation with ambitious goals to ensure that
women fully and equally participate in all aspects of economic, social, and
political development. This creates an enabling environment for Ministries of
Education and education NGOs to work together to achieve gender equality in
education. Effective ‘gender and development’ strategies include active labour-
market policies that promote skills and tackle pervasive discriminatory practices
in the workplace; reform of patriarchal inheritance laws; tackling violence
against women; greater political involvement of women at both national and
local levels; and raising the legal age of marriage. Supporting the economic
empowerment of women through small-enterprise and micro-enterprise
development, especially through the provision of credit, is also critically
important. In other words, a ‘package deal’ is required: one which covers all
aspects of gender inequality and not merely the denial of educational
opportunities.
Signing up to international agreements such as those reached in Jomtien and
Dakar is of course important, but it is the manner in which governments,
working with civil society, translate these well-intentioned goals into action that
is most critical. Until gender equity becomes a visible and popular cause,
governments and elites are likely to continue neglecting it.
Indigenous struggles for democratisation have been very important in
empowering women and ensuring that gender is increasingly mainstreamed in
all key areas of policy. Veteran Nepali activist Shahana Pradhan describes the
deep links between the democracy movement and the girls’ education movement
in Nepal:
I came into politics, not because I was interested in politics, but as a young girl I
wanted to be educated and attend school along with my brothers… We joined the
first political rally against the Ranas [the monarchs]. We were immediately
arrested, and upon inquiry our strong and assertive demand was a school for girls
… By 1947, the Nepal Mahila Singh [Nepal Women’s Association] had been

43

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
formed by a very large number of women, with the major objective of bringing
about social and political changes through education. Therefore, ‘Education for
Women’ was its initial objective. By 1949, there was an [increasing] sense of
responsibility among parents about sending girls to school. There was a
mushroom growth of schools after democracy was established in 1951.
(Belbase 1998: 187)1
Mainstreaming gender within EFA strategies
To achieve gender parity, education-sector plans must respond to poor people’s
needs, and they must include a comprehensive attack on all forms of educational
inequality – recognising that girls typically face more than one source of
disadvantage (gender, class, caste, ethnicity, physical disability, etc.). It is also
important to develop locally appropriate strategies to overcome the multiple
economic, cultural, and social barriers that keep girls out of schools (see Box 2).
In practice, this has happened in relatively few countries. Most EFA programmes
have focused on easing general constraints on access, but without planning specific
steps to ensure that girls benefit equally from the new opportunities created (falsely
assuming that gender inequalities would be automatically redressed by the
expansion of free primary education). Or they have focused on separate girls’
programmes without doing anything to address the overwhelming constraints on
access – such as high costs and shortages of schools and teachers – that place all
disadvantaged groups, especially poor, rural girls, at a permanent disadvantage.
Another problem is that politicians have found it easy to dismiss ‘gender’ as a
foreign concept, partly because women’s groups, NGOs, and other civil-society
members who could act as champions for girls’education have been excluded from
policy dialogue between governments and donors. In Pakistan and Nigeria, it has
been a long struggle to get politicians and policy makers to mainstream gender in
major donor-supported education projects. A key factor behind recent progress
has been the co-option of gender advocates from the NGO sector into influential
policy-making positions in government, bringing with them not only their own
commitment but also their capacity to reach out to, and mobilise, wider civil-
society networks. Clearly there is no universal solution, because these constraints
vary so much from one country to another. However, a balanced package
addressing all aspects of gender inequalities in education is essential.
Priority measures for integrated strategies
Governments and NGOs have adopted a range of policies, programmes, and
projects in order to improve girls’ education. Comparative analysis suggests that
within an integrated strategy, the following interventions have been especially
44

Ensuring a fair chance for girls
Box 2: Getting girls into school the BRAC way
The approach of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) to non-formal
primary education has been instrumental in proving that gender and poverty are not
necessarily impediments to education. An innovative approach to curriculum design and
school management encourages attendance by poor children, and by poor girls in
particular, who are typically excluded by the formal system. Crucially, BRAC has
succeeded in channelling poor children into the mainstream, by qualifying them to enter
the formal system on graduation. The success of the approach lies in the way in which it
has evolved to respond to poor people’s needs, while tackling sensitive problems of
gender relations with locally appropriate strategies. Not only are BRAC schools thus
attractive to children and parents, they are also accessible in terms of the direct costs and
opportunity costs to parents of sending their children to school.
BRAC’s success in widening educational access for poor students, and poor girls in
particular, can be attributed to the responsiveness and flexibility of the approach. From the
outset, the programme has evolved to be relevant to the needs and interests of the
community. Parents must request a school for their village and support the programme by
finding a location for it, setting school hours, and attending monthly parent–teacher
meetings. A committee of three parents, a local leader, and a teacher has overall
responsibility for school management. Teachers are usually women with secondary-school
education, recruited from the local community. They receive initial and refresher training, in
short but intensive sessions. Local community involvement ensures that parents remain
committed to and involved with the school, and that the school remains responsive to the
learning needs of its pupils. The curriculum is practical, including issues relating to
everyday life, and the fact that school hours are set to allow for other activities helps to
minimise the opportunity costs of sending children to school. Unlike in the formal sector,
there are no hidden costs for poor families who send their children to BRAC schools.
(Source: Hossain in Subrahmanian 2002)
effective: free primary education, increased incentives, more accessible schools,
tackling sexual harassment and discrimination against pregnant pupils,
developing a network of community schools, introducing bridging programmes
to mainstream non-formal education, and promoting early childhood education
and care.
Free primary education for all
The whole or partial abolition of primary-school fees has been a central element
of recent strategies for Universal Primary Education (UPE) in many countries,
including Kenya, Tanzania, The Gambia, Malawi, Ethiopia, Uganda, Bangladesh,
Cambodia, India, and Nepal. Removing these fees has signalled government
commitment to education as a right, and has helped to release enormous pent-up
45

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
demand for education, causing massive increases in both girls’ and boys’
enrolments. In Malawi, for example, the number of primary school pupils soared
by 50 per cent, from 1.9 million to 3 million, in just one year. In Bangladesh, total
enrolment in primary and basic education rose from nearly 12 million in 1990 to
18 million in 2001.
The very success of free primary education has in turn created new financial and
administrative challenges. Ministries face urgent needs to train and employ more
teachers and to supply more classrooms and learning materials at primary level, in
order to reduce class sizes to reasonable levels: in government primary schools in
Bangladesh, class numbers often reach 200. They must simultaneously respond to
unprecedented demand for secondary-school places, which remain in severely
short supply in most African and South Asian countries. If this problem is not
quickly addressed, there is a real risk of recreating inequalities at the next stage of
education, and perhaps ultimately undermining demand for primary education.
The ‘hidden costs’ of sending children to school remain high in most countries.
Efforts to regulate or abolish ‘unofficial’ charges levied by school committees and
head teachers have achieved mixed results. In Tanzania, a new block grant to
schools was introduced in 2002 to reduce the risk of schools imposing additional
charges to compensate for lost income from official fees. However, ensuring that
these grants actually reach the schools is difficult.
All of these challenges reinforce the need for donors to deliver a better-
coordinated and more generous response when governments take the
fundamental step of abolishing fees. Otherwise, it is very difficult to see how the
education MDGs can be attained.
Parental incentives to educate girls
Incentive schemes have been introduced in many countries to reduce the overall
costs of primary and secondary schooling for girls. Incentives are both in cash
and in kind.
Primary-school stipends: Small stipends have been offered to needy girls in
many countries to support their primary schooling. In Nepal, for example, nearly
40,000 poor girls have received small scholarships (Rupees 250 per annum) in
order to support their primary schooling. The impact of this programme has
been significant in terms of increasing girls’ intake and retention, and reducing
their drop-out rates.
Improved nutrition: Feeding programmes are also increasingly common. One
of the main problems facing the drought-stricken countries of sub-Saharan
Africa has been the inability of children to attend school on account of hunger.
46

Ensuring a fair chance for girls
Even if they do attend, they have limited concentration. In Malawi, the World
Food Programme introduced a pilot feeding programme for primary-school
children in 2000. Initially, only the ‘most needy’ children were targeted, but in
response to the overwhelming levels of poverty, it was decided to provide free
meals for all children. This illustrates the difficulty of targeting by ‘need’ or
‘gender’ in a situation of general deprivation. In-school feeding programmes (at
pre-school and primary schools) in Central and Southern Africa have also
become an important means of supporting children affected by HIV/AIDS. The
provision of free school meals has a major impact on school attendance. Under
the Food for Education programme for primary-school children from poor
families in Bangladesh, parents have to guarantee 75 per cent attendance of their
supported children and a minimum of 40 per cent marks in the end-of-year
examinations, in return for food. In mid-2002, this scheme was converted into a
cash grant. Both boys and girls benefit. The impact of the programme on
schooling attendance has been very positive.
Secondary-school scholarships: A major challenge facing countries that have
achieved UPE is to respond to the demand created by the increased numbers of
those who do manage to complete primary school. In most countries, only
children from better-off families are able to afford secondary school and, without
financial incentives for poorer children, this will continue to be the case.
Although girls’ enrolments at primary level have improved, they are often less
likely than boys to complete primary school and move on to secondary school.
The same applies to the transition from secondary to tertiary education.
Ensuring girls’ safety and dignity at school
While societal and family issues are important, the presence of a vibrant and
happy school in the neighbourhood can dramatically change the way
communities view education for their children.
(GCE 2003)
The low quality of basic education has been recognised as a fundamental
constraint on attempts to expand girls’ education in virtually every country. From
a gender-equality perspective, quality means creating a functioning and positive
school environment in which girls can learn. We have reviewed a number of
interventions that have attempted, with very limited success, to make schools ‘girl-
friendly’, reduce female drop-out, and improve girls’ learning attainment. Given
the immensity of the task and the difficulty of making an impact, we recommend
that governments start with the basics: by eliminating the sexual intimidation and
harassment of girl pupils, and providing basic facilities for their safety and dignity.
Unless and until these prerequisites are in place, more ambitious targets for
improving quality are unlikely to be achieved. Governments that are serious about
47

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
getting girls into school must prioritise the provision of toilets and running water
above other infrastructural improvements.
Dealing with sexual harassment and intimidation of girl pupils is an uphill
struggle in most countries, because it means challenging deeply entrenched male
attitudes towards female sexuality; but, by the same token, it is very difficult to see
how schools can ever become ‘girl-friendly’ as long as such attitudes and practices
are allowed to persist.
Box 3: Challenging sexual harassment
A primary school in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, has more than 1000 pupils.
Harassment of female students, child labour, abduction, and rape are some of the harmful
practices in the school. Solutions to these problems have been proposed by the school’s
Girls’ Club. Teachers, NGOs, community members, students, and the police force are also
involved in challenging harassment. Teachers give lectures on some of the harmful
practices, both to other staff members and to the students.
Female teachers provide sex education and discuss the problems that arise for girls and
women. In one incident, a girl in Grade 3 had stopped attending school. The fact was
reported to the Girls’ Club. The members followed it up and found that the girl had been
raped at the school by an 18-year-old student in Grade 4. The girl was brought back to
school, and the boy was taken into police custody the same day. The girl’s father was
contacted and brought in for discussions with the Director.
In another incident, a girl was forced to marry against her will. The Girls’ Club intervened
and succeeded in getting a divorce for her. The girl was able to resume her studies.
Another girl was forced to quit school because of repeated harassment. After a year’s
absence, she was approached by teachers and club members, who persuaded her to
continue her lessons. Girls are encouraged to participate in all extra-curricular activities,
including sports. The Family Planning Club provides sex education, especially for girls who
are older but are still in lower grades.
(Source: GCE 2003)
In many countries, girls who get pregnant, often as a result of unwanted
encounters with teachers or male pupils, are penalised by being forced to drop
out of school (while the baby’s father seldom faces any kind of sanction).
Pregnant girls are reportedly expelled from school in Liberia, Mali, Nigeria,
Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda and Zambia, while the rules have been
changed in Bolivia, Botswana, Chile, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Kenya, and Malawi
(Tomasevski 2003: 165). However, even where laws and regulations have been
enacted to guarantee young mothers the right to continue their education, it is
48

Ensuring a fair chance for girls
equally important that school management provides a sympathetic and
constructive environment in which girls can return after giving birth. Botswana
has found it necessary to deal with many obstacles in order to encourage girls to
return, including relaxing age limits and procedures for re-admission (FAWE
2000, quoted in Tomasevski 2003).
Community schools
The emergence of various kinds of community school has had a major impact on
efforts to redress gender inequalities in education in a growing number of
countries. Community schools have been developed in different shapes and
forms, mainly in South Asia and Africa over the past two decades. They differ
from government schools in that they are mainly funded by contributions and
are managed by the local community. They also tend to be located in the more
remote areas, where populations have had little contact with ‘modern’ schooling
(Hyde 2003).
The success of the BRAC model (see Box 2) has inspired the development of
similar community schools in a growing number of countries elsewhere in Asia,
and also in Africa. For example, UNICEF has supported the development of
community schools in Uganda, Guinea, Zambia, and Egypt. The government
provides classrooms and pays the salaries of teachers, while UNICEF trains the
facilitators. Schooling is free of charge, and children are not required to wear
uniforms. The project has had high levels of school attendance and low rates of
drop-out, while student performance is generally better than in State primary
schools. Evaluations show that, despite often very different country contexts,
learning outcomes of community schools are frequently better, and certainly no
worse, than in government schools. Furthermore, relationships between
teachers, students, and communities appear to be good, and these schools
provide opportunities for basic education for children who might otherwise
have had none at all.
However, a number of common problems have also been identified: community
schools tend to be introduced in poor areas with low access to schooling, lacking
transport and communication; the community is compelled to provide
significant (and often onerous) support for the construction and management of
the schools and payment of the teachers. The teachers/instructors are often less
qualified, and/or paid less, than teachers in government schools. Sponsors of
community schools have attempted to use age, and geography, as criteria to
restrict access to the schools (in order to maintain small class sizes), whereas the
communities often want a more inclusive approach.
49

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Para-teachers
In India, as in several francophone African countries, the present expansion of
government schools is being made possible by the employment of ‘para-
teachers’, who come from the local communities, are paid less, enjoy fewer
benefits or career-development opportunities, and have less training and lower
qualifications than professional teachers in State schools. This presents a
dilemma for government policy, because the use of such teachers does enable
schools to function, but at the risk of developing a ‘second tier’ of education.
Systematic evaluation is needed to ascertain the impact of these schemes on
quality and equity.
Bridging (accelerated) programmes
The main aim of bridging, or accelerated, programmes has been to get children
back into school. They share some of the characteristics of community schools,
but tend to be more remedial in their approach.
Box 4: Mahila Shikshan Vihar, Jalore
Situated in the Jodhpur District of Rajasthan, the Mahila Shikshan Vihar (MSV), Jalore, is
an institution with a difference. Young women are motivated to take part in a residential,
intensive education programme. Most have either dropped out of school or have never
attended one. Women are divided into eight groups, consisting of 9–12 students,
according to their educational level and pace of learning. Teachers work with the groups,
teaching, testing, and preparing them to take the Grade V exam. There is one teacher for
every group of 10–12 women, moving along at the pace of the learners. These young
women learn at such a fast pace that it leaves the teachers exhausted. They seem to have
boundless energy for games, music, theatre, cycling, and even driving the solitary auto-
rickshaw parked on the campus. They manage their own cooking, washing, and cleaning,
and they maintain the school premises, including the kitchen and the garden. In the
evenings and late at night, these bright young women can be seen huddled together,
studying, teaching, and learning. Twenty-four hours seem too short. It almost seems as if
they were trying to catch up on every minute of their lost childhood – and enjoying every bit
of it. The Jalore MSV can leave a visitor feeling dizzy.
(Source: GCE 2003)
The idea of attaching bridging courses to a government school would seem
sensible and likely to reinforce the importance of the mainstream. However, such
schemes should not be accepted as permanent solutions. The aim should be to
get the education system functioning properly, so that the need for such
programmes is gradually reduced and eventually eliminated.
50

Ensuring a fair chance for girls
Promoting early childhood education and care
Pre-school children benefit greatly from attending Early Childhood
Development and Care (ECDC) centres. The benefits include improved social-
isation and improved learning. Such facilities also free up older girls to attend
class, instead of looking after younger siblings. Community-based pre-schools
have been established on a pilot basis in Cambodia, in order to promote girls’
enrolment in Grade 1, with excellent results. However, cost considerations have
prevented most countries from significantly expanding this type of educational
provision. A study of early-learning childhood-development programmes in
Kenya concluded that ‘in addition to increasing the future productivity of
children, low cost ECDC programmes would be likely to produce the twin effects
of releasing the mothers’ time for market work and allowing older girl siblings to
participate in school. ECDC programmes may be seen as optimal investments
that affect both the current and future welfare of households with small children’
(Lokshin et al. 2000: 22).
Involving communities
A lot has been done to raise community awareness of the importance of
educating girls. Participatory methods are now commonplace and used by
NGOs and governments alike to promote grassroots participation in education.
Lok Jumbish (meaning People’s Movement) was jointly established by an NGO
and the government of Rajasthan in northern India in the early 1990s to respond
to very low enrolment of girls, high drop-out rates, teacher absenteeism, and lack
of schools close to home. A highly effective and innovative approach has evolved
on the basis of widespread participation and experimentation. Huge strides have
been made in increasing enrolments and encouraging more girls to stay on at
school. UNICEF also has two major awareness-raising programmes. The Meena
Initiative in Bangladesh uses a multimedia approach to raise the profile of girls,
as well as stressing the importance of education. The Sara initiative in East,
Central, and Southern Africa was modelled on ‘Meena’. Materials produced are
used in both formal and non-formal settings. Both programmes have been
supported by bilateral donors. However, although Meena is considered to be a
success in the South Asian context, adapting the same set of materials from one
cultural environment to another has been problematic.
Involving and nurturing gender advocates
In Malawi, local women’s groups played an important role in lobbying for special
attention to be given to female education (Swainson 1998: 35). In particular, the
organised political power of the League of Malawi Women greatly enhanced the
51

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
influence of gender advocates within the Ministry of Education and Ministry of
Community Services. In addition, the first woman Minister of Education,
appointed in 1993, ‘played a central role in steering through the pregnancy and
school uniform reforms ... she was ideally placed as a gender advocate to
introduce what were culturally-sensitive and controversial measures, such as
those dealing with schoolgirl pregnancy’ (Swainson 1998: 37).
Similar conclusions can be derived from experience in Bangladesh. According to
Jahan (1998: 33-4), the government’s commitment to girls’ education was
galvanised in the mid-1990s by a substantially strengthened women’s movement,
which effectively ‘articulated women’s demand for equal access to, and control
over, all social resources and services’. Their leverage was increased by the actions
of international bodies, resulting in commitments to women’s education and
gender equity that were signed by the government. A recent assessment of three
Sector Wide Approaches (SWAPs) to donor aid for education suggests that their
success in promoting gender-equity goals could be greatly increased if donors
made more active efforts to reach out to, consult, and support indigenous gender
networks. Donors should ‘work on the assumption that gender equality is an
inseparable part of the sustainable development agenda, which already has the
support of many key players in education in the partner country; [and] ensure
that support to “champions of reform” extends to these “gender champions’’’
(Norton et al. 2000: 15).
Beyond rhetoric: making gender equality in education
a reality

Setting clear operational targets
Clear, time-bound targets for the elimination of gender gaps in access and
completion must be supported by the commitment of necessary resources and
proper management systems. Gender targets should be incorporated into the
performance targets, appraisal systems, and career incentives of every education
worker, from government ministers down to classroom teachers.
Bilateral and multilateral donors should also translate the education MDGs into
clear outcome-targets for their own support for girls’ education. While the trend
towards comprehensive sector-development plans and budgetary support may
make it difficult or impossible to identify how much aid has been committed to
‘girls’ education’ per se, donors could set specific targets for the numbers of out-
of-school girls whom their aid programmes will have assisted to enter and
complete school by 2010.
52

Ensuring a fair chance for girls
The size of the challenge
Gender-enrolment parity has already been largely achieved in Latin America, the
Caribbean, East Asia, and the Pacific. South and West Asia still pose the greatest
challenge, followed by the Middle East, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the overall female net enrolment rate will have to almost
double from its current level in order to meet the 2015 target. Among the group
of French-speaking African countries where gender inequalities are particularly
acute, female enrolments will have to increase by more than 200 per cent
(assuming zero repetition), compared with around 120 per cent for males. In
Southern Africa, on the other hand, female enrolments will have to increase by
only six per cent to meet the 2015 target, mainly because of the impact of
HIV/AIDS on the school-age population.
What must be done?
Clearly, there is no single formula that can be applied to all countries. The need
for diverse and creative national policy responses is underlined in Table 1, which
shows the major recommendations made by the local researchers for eight case-
study countries in the Fair Chance Report.
Table 1: Recommended initiatives to improve girls’ access to education in
eight countries

I
N
P
C
E
M
M
N
n
Priority Gender Interventions
d
e
a
a
t
h

a
a
i
i
p
k
m
g
i
l
l
a
a
i
o
a
i
e
s
b
l
t
p
w
r
a
o
i
i
a
n
d
a
i
i
a

NFE/Bridging for Adolescent Girls
l
l
l
Female Literacy
l
l
l
Gender Sensitive Curriculum and Practice
l
l
l
Integrate Life Skills into Curriculum
l
Protection Against Sexual Harrassment at School
l
Support for Children Affected by HIV/Aids and
l
Pregnant School Girls
Improve Separate Toilets at School for Girls and Boys
l
Day Care Facilities
l
l
l
Compulsory Education
l
l
Mentoring for Girls
l
Incentives (fee subsidies, cash or kind) for Pupils
l
l
l
l
l
Participation in Community/School Management
l
l
l
l
l
Improve and Expand Teacher Training for Women
l
l
l
Incentives for Women Teachers
53

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
However, there are also certain basic concerns that must be addressed in nearly
all countries. In order to achieve the 2005 and 2015 Millennium Development
Goals for education, governments and donors must work together as follows.
End the education queue
In Ethiopia, almost two-thirds of rural girls have never been to school. Gender
gaps are often greatest in countries where overall net enrolments are low. By
failing to provide enough free school places to accommodate all of the boys and
all of the girls, governments create an education queue in which the poorest and
least privileged groups, including girls, are almost certain to come last (Filmer
1999). The following steps are needed to eliminate this queue:

Build enough schools and hire enough teachers to guarantee that all
communities are served by a school within safe walking distance for girls.

Remove school fees, which guarantee the continuing exclusion of poor rural
girls (in Uganda, following the introduction of free primary education, the
number of girls enrolled increased from 1.4 million in 1996, to 3 million in
1999).

Expand ‘bridging’ schemes developed by NGOs to attract hard-to-reach
children into the school system.

To avoid recreating the queue at secondary level, governments must plan to
rapidly extend free and universal access to secondary schools. Currently,
only one in five girls in Africa and two in five girls in South and West Asia
get the chance to go to secondary school.
Offer extra help for poor families to keep girls in school
Positive action must be taken so that girls – especially those who are poor, lower-
caste, and living in remote rural areas – can benefit from educational expansion
in equal measure – or greater measure – than boys. In particular, extra assistance,
such as a free school meal, or stipends linked to regular attendance, helps poor
families to keep daughters in school for longer. It is also an inexpensive and
effective way to redistribute resources towards poor communities, since a
relatively small up-front investment by governments enables poor girls to
acquire a lifelong asset which helps them to escape the poverty trap. Stipends for
secondary-school girls have been particularly effective: they not only increase
secondary enrolments, but also create strong incentives for girls to enter and
complete primary school. In Bangladesh, districts where secondary-school
bursaries were introduced experienced a sharp decline in child marriages, as well
as soaring girls’ enrolments. Governments need to involve communities and
civil-society groups in developing incentive packages that are appropriate to
54

Ensuring a fair chance for girls
local circumstances, and the costs of implementing such programmes in all
districts need to be factored into donor and government plans.
Launch a rescue plan for schools in poor communities
The problem today is not that parents do not want to send their daughters to
school. The tragedy is that they would like to send them, but the absence of a
proper functioning school and the poor quality of education comes in the way of
realising their aspirations.
(India report)
Many schools in poor, rural areas (and urban slums) lack even the basics needed
to function. All schools need a trained, motivated teacher who turns up every day
to teach, and enough books and desks for all the pupils. Construction of safe and
private toilet facilities for girls should be mandatory. Strong sanctions against the
sexual abuse and harassment of girl pupils must be enacted and enforced.
A first priority should be improving the status, pay, and support of teachers,
especially those who are posted to rural or ‘difficult’ areas. Long-established
quotas for gender parity among rural teachers should be backed up with efforts
to extend and improve teacher training facilities in the rural areas as well as the
urban areas, with additional incentives and career-development opportunities
for female teachers willing to take up posts in the rural areas.
While learning outcomes are unacceptably low in many countries, it is essential
that reforms are rooted in the local realities. Experience of the last 20 years shows
that attempts to import learner-centred learning methodologies without taking
local cultures into account have often been problematic.
Encourage a range of education provision
The scale and urgency of the action necessary to meet the targets of gender parity
and gender equality make it essential that NGOs are strongly supported in
playing a complementary role in developing sustainable education provision.
Sadly, not every country has an NGO of the size and vision of BRAC in
Bangladesh, but much more can be done to expand and mainstream the
provision by NGOs of basic education, especially for hard-to-reach groups.
These schools need to develop clear pathways into and links with the formal
system, so that the non-formal sector does not become a ghetto for girls and poor
students. Greater flexibility is needed, so that eventual transfer to State schools is
facilitated and encouraged. Some of the new, wide-ranging education-sector
development plans currently being implemented in many countries do not pay
enough attention to this key role of NGOs, nor have NGOs been sufficiently
involved in the design and management of these sector plans.
55

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Engage with civil society
Experience shows that a top–down approach to girls’ education is not only
ineffective, but it may create resistance and resentment that will ultimately be
counter-productive – a leading cause of ‘implementation failure’ in girls’
education (Ramachandran 1998). Acting with urgency must not be confused
with acting in haste, or used as an excuse for shutting out the participation of
parents, teachers, and gender experts in designing reforms.
The participation of communities, teachers, and women’s groups in the policy-
making process is crucial to developing appropriate, well-informed responses to
local complexities, and generating the broad-based support needed to implement
them successfully.
Governments and donors must open the door to robust and regular exchange
with civil-society groups, instead of the usual one-off ‘consultations’; they must
also provide timely access to information and support civil-society efforts to
build advocacy skills.
Break the glass ceiling
Expanding primary-school opportunities for girls is obviously a first priority for
the countries furthest off track for achieving the 2005 goal. But, given the very
severe shortages of secondary-school places in most developing countries, a sole
focus on attaining UPE may have the unintended effect of turning the primary-
school leaving exam into a ‘glass ceiling’ that few girls are able to break through.
To avoid creating a new education queue at secondary level, governments must
plan for the rapid extension of free and universal access to secondary schools.
Given the unemployment crisis in most countries, school leavers stand little
chance of finding a job in the formal sector, unless they have performed well in
their secondary-school leaving examinations. Moreover, many of the health and
productivity benefits of educating girls are not fully unlocked until secondary
education is attained. This illustrates the importance of balanced investment by
donors and governments in increasing girls’ access, completion, and
achievement at secondary level.
In a large majority of countries, gender inequalities are most severe at
universities and other higher-education institutions. It is often forgotten that the
gender-parity goal includes equity at tertiary level by 2015. Expanding the output
of female graduates from these institutions is essential in order to ensure that
women can begin to occupy the full range of professional and managerial jobs,
and in doing so, can break down dominant patriarchal views about gender and
employment. Increasing the numbers of educated and qualified women can act
as a powerful and positive influence on girls.
56

Ensuring a fair chance for girls
Counter the impact of HIV/AIDS
The AIDS epidemic has very serious implications for the attainment of gender
equality in basic education, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The three main areas
of impact are lower enrolment growth, increased teacher morbidity and
mortality, and increased numbers of orphans and other children directly affected
by the epidemic. Girls are likely to be particularly badly affected by the impact,
because they will be expected to look after sick parents and other family members,
and take over some of their household activities. Girl orphans are also thought to
be more vulnerable than boys and are, therefore, very likely to drop out of school.
Given that AIDS-related mortality is expected to be highest among young female
adults, this has far-reaching implications for female teachers and any attempt to
increase the number of female teaching staff. It is essential, therefore, that in high-
prevalence countries, comprehensive strategies are developed by Ministries of
Education with their partners to both prevent and mitigate the impact of the
epidemic on students and teachers, particularly females.
Invest more in girls
Countries that have achieved success in girls’ schooling are the ones that have
dramatically increased their own spending on basic education until it constitutes
as much as 20 per cent of their budget, or 3 per cent of their GDP. Yet even at this
high level of government commitment, low-income countries will still need
substantial help – in the order of US$ 5.6 bn per year in external resources – in
order to achieve the education MDGs (UNESCO 2002). However, the total value
of bilateral education aid in 2000 was 30 per cent lower in real terms than in 1999.
The nine countries in this study alone face a financing gap of about US$ 1bn per
year. Until the financing gap is closed, the gender gap cannot be closed.
Aid not only needs to be increased: it needs to be intelligently targeted towards
countries that face the greatest numerical and financial challenges in attaining
the 2005 and 2015 goals, and whose governments show real and demonstrated
commitment to redressing gender inequalities. Sustained, long-term financial
aid is required to enable governments to commit external resources to meet
salary costs and other recurrent expenditures. If the payment of teachers’ salaries
relies exclusively on domestic resources, this is likely to be a major constraint on
the expansion of basic and secondary education. The impact of increased
financing for education for all through the Fast Track Initiative (FTI) will be
limited unless it includes funding for programmes to get girls into school.
FTI financing estimates also need urgent revision, to take into account the cost of
implementing measures which can help to achieve gender equity – including the
removal of fees and charges, the introduction of nation-wide subsidy or incentive
schemes for the poorest families, and positive steps to improve conditions for both
57

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
teachers and students.We know what needs to be done to provide all girls with their
right to a basic education, and we know what it will cost. We also know what a high
price there is to be paid for failure. We must now mobilise this ambition and all the
available resources to implement and achieve what we know to be right.
The Global Campaign for Education, founded in 1999, brings together major NGOs
and teachers’ unions in more than 150 countries around the world to promote
education as a basic human right. The elected GCE Board takes policy decisions and
oversees the development of campaign strategy, and a World Assembly meets every
two years. It works to mobilise public pressure on governments and the international
community to fulfil their promises to provide free, compulsory, public, basic
education for all people; in particular for children, women, and all disadvantaged,
deprived sections of society.

Note
1
However, the repression of civil society after 1960 impeded the development of the women’s
movement, and for the next 30 years government action on girls’ education was largely restricted
to token measures. Since the reinstatement of multi-party democracy in 1990, growing freedom
of association has made space for cross-party groups such as the Women’s Security Pressure
Group (WSPG) to put pressure on the government for policy reforms in all areas relevant to
women. Significant progress on girls’ enrolment and retention is finally being made.
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GCE (2003) ‘A Fair Chance: attaining gender equality in basic education by 2005’, Global Campaign
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Ensuring a fair chance for girls
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59

3 Measuring gender equality in education1
Elaine Unterhalter, Chloe Challender, and Rajee Rajagopalan
Developing an understanding of how to improve gender equality in education is
not a simple matter. One of the many challenges that it poses is the nature of the
information base. Qualitative work has provided insights into how social
relations inside and outside schools shape gender inequalities and can contribute
to change; but generally this work is based on small-scale, in-depth research.
Qualitative work can deepen knowledge about the nature of gender inequalities,
but it cannot provide an overview of their extent, or an indication of where
additional resources to address their consequences would best be deployed. For
this purpose, quantitative work is needed – but there are major problems with
the methods by which gender inequality in education is currently measured. This
chapter critically reviews the existing measures of gender equality in education
used by international agencies and governments. It goes on to propose
alternative forms of measurement which seem to us better able to capture the
aspirations of Education For All and the understanding that gender equality
requires forms of counting that themselves go beyond mere statistics about
access.
Current measures of gender equality in education
The mobilisation of resources for Education For All (EFA) after the Jomtien
conference in 1990, and the follow-up meeting at Dakar in 2000, resulted in more
punctilious collection of gender-disaggregated data on primary gross enrolment
ratios (GER) and net enrolment ratios (NER). GER is the number of children
enrolled in school, expressed as a proportion of the children of a specific age cohort
(say 5–11) who should be enrolled in school. GER can sometimes be more than 100
per cent if there are large numbers of under-age and over-age pupils in school. NER
is the number of children in the appropriate age group enrolled in school,
expressed as a proportion of the official age group required to be in school. GER
and NER, even when disaggregated by sex, only give us a picture of the number of
children on the school register. They can tell us nothing about whether children
attend regularly, once registered; whether they complete grades successfully; or
whether passing a grade means that children have acquired knowledge that they
60

Measuring gender equality in education
can use outside the school context. In addition, because in many countries
children’s births are not registered, NER is often based on estimations.
Acronyms used in this chapter
EDI
Education Development Index, used in GMR
EFA
Education For All
EMIS
Education Management Information System
GDI
Gender Development Index, used by UNDP
GEEI
Gender Equality in Education Index
GEI
Gender-related EFA index, used in GMR
GER
Gross Enrolment Ratio
GMR
Global Monitoring Report (UNESCO)
HDI
Human Development Index
MDG
Millennium Development Goal
NER
Net Enrolment Ratio
Generally GER and NER data are based on the Education Management
Information System (EMIS) of education ministries, and are passed to the
UNESCO Institute for Statistics for the compilation of international datasets.
EMIS is only as good as the relations of trust, truthfulness, and accuracy that
underpin the system. In some contexts local officials do not know the reasons
why they collect data for EMIS. They may have difficulties in reaching areas that
are socially or geographically distant to collect information; they may believe
that underestimating or overestimating children on the school register may
bring additional facilities to a locality. Carr Hill et al. (1999) emphasise the
fragility of the data on which many national and international conclusions are
based. When participatory activities are held in villages to identify children who
are not at school, more robust data are assembled. However, there are difficulties
in translating local mobilising actions into official data on GER and NER,
although in some countries this form of micro-planning is used by governments
as well as NGOs.
Throughout the 1990s, GER and NER in many countries showed a gap between
girls’ and boys’ levels of enrolment. This gender gap came to be seen as a major
source of concern, demonstrating that in many countries fewer girls than boys
were enrolled in primary and secondary schools (although it should be noted
61

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
that there can be gender parity – equal numbers of boys and girls in school –
when there is low GER or NER). So great was the concern with reaching gender
parity that this became the chief indicator for the Millennium Development
Goal 3 on the empowerment of women (Millennium Commission 2000).
Recent developments in measuring gender equality in
education

The gender-related EFA index (GEI), developed by UNESCO for use in its Global
Monitoring Reports (GMR), is an attempt to indicate the extent to which boys
and girls are equally present at different levels in the education system (primary,
secondary, and adult education). However, a country can have a GEI of 1,
indicating complete equality between boys and girls, but still have low rates of
access, retention, and achievement for girls and boys. For example, in 2003
Myanmar had a GEI of 0.949, with only 84 per cent primary NER; and Kuwait had
a GEI of 0.966 with a primary NER of 83 per cent (UNESCO 2003: 288-9). Gender
parity on its own cannot tell us much about gender equality in relation to
accessing education, progressing through school, and living in a gender-equitable
society after school.
From the late 1990s, gender-disaggregated data have become available on
progression through school (that is, the completion of primary and secondary
school), with data often available by district. These data give richer insight than
mere enrolment figures can provide on whether or not an education system is
delivering gender equity in progression. Generally the statistics show that with the
exception of a very few countries – for example, Angola, Benin, Ethiopia, Guinea,
and Mozambique – once girls gain access to school, their rate of repetition is less
than or the same as that of boys, and so girls in school do as well as boys (UNESCO
2003: 336-43). However, an assessment of research evidence on gender and
learning achievement in developing countries found considerable variation
between countries. In some countries, girls achieved as well as boys, while in
others their learning achievement was at a markedly lower level (UNESCO
2000a).
In GMR, ‘gender’ is viewed as merely the numbers of boys and girls entering and
progressing through a school system. These forms of measurement give no
indication of gendered power relations in schooling, which have a marked
impact on progression and achievement. This approach to measuring gender
equality does not provide information on the ways in which gender equality or
inequality link with other dimensions of human flourishing, for example health,
access to decision making, the labour market, or income. In fact, these figures can
give an impression quite at odds with the literature based on qualitative research
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Measuring gender equality in education
Box 1: Case study – Bangladesh
In Bangladesh, which saw a rapid increase in the numbers of girls in school throughout
the 1990s, the Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE) established Education
Wat ch
in 1999. This initiative, run by civil-society organisations, monitors progress in the
quality and availability of primary education.
Data on enrolment were collected household by household from 312 villages in 64
districts. In total, 45,548 households were visited during the survey. In addition, school
records were scrutinised for information on completion and attendance (885 schools
were assessed). The quality of the educational experience was measured by carrying
out individual interviews with more than 3,350 children (11–12 years old) through the
Assessment of Basic Competencies Test, independent of the set curriculum. The test
assessed the 53 competencies that the Bangladesh government had specified as central
to the curriculum. Those children achieving a minimum level of competency in the four
separate areas of reading, writing, arithmetic, and life skills/knowledge were classified as
having received a ‘basic education’. Only 29.6 per cent of pupils who had completed
primary school attained all the competencies tested. This figure contrasts sharply with
Bangladesh’s high enrolment figures. Bangladesh has a gross enrolment ratio of 100.2
per cent – yet CAMPE’s findings expose the fact that educational access does not
necessarily ensure high quality. This lack of educational quality works to the
disadvantage of girls. Boys performed better than girls in CAMPE’s assessments of
learning achievements. Even in non-formal schools, considered to be relatively gender-
sensitive, girls’ results were lower than boys’.
(Source: CAMPE 1999)
in a country. In South Africa, for example, quantitative data show high levels
of gender equality in access and progression, but qualitative data highlight
danger at school from sexual harassment and violence, girls’ anxiety about their
futures, and considerable discrimination against many women teachers
(Unterhalter 2005a).
The UNESCO GMR has tried to develop a definition of quality in schools,
linking it analytically with equality. Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of
UNESCO, in his Foreword to the 2005 GMR, commented that ‘Quality must pass
the test of equity: an education system characterized by discrimination against
any particular group is not fulfilling its mission’ (UNESCO 2004). However, the
2004 GMR itself pays little attention to gender dimensions of quality and does
not suggest what the ‘test of equity’ might be. The GMR focuses instead on four
proxy measures for quality, only one of which has data with a gender dimension.
The measures used are pupil/teacher ratios, teachers’ qualifications, expenditure
on education, and learning achievements. Only this last has been measured with
respect to girls and boys. The failure of the GMR to link quality substantively
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Box 2: Case study – Jordan
The limitations of quantitative measures of gender parity are exemplified by the case of
Jordan. Jordan has achieved gender parity at all levels of education – and indeed has a
ratio of women to men students of 1.06 at tertiary level – yet women struggle to become
economically or politically empowered in adulthood. Women hold only 8 per cent of
parliamentary seats. Women’s estimated annual earned income is very low: $1896,
compared with men’s annual earned income of $6118 (UNDP 2004).The ILO estimates
that women make up less than one quarter of the labour force in Jordan (ILO
2003–2004). Indicators of women’s income and workforce participation in Jordan are
among the lowest in the world, despite the fact that their access to education equals that
of their male contemporaries. This highlights the limited scope of the gender-parity
indicators. The complex reasons behind women’s lack of empowerment in Jordan and
many other Arab States include patriarchal family structures, restrictive social and
gender relations within society, and actual State policies (Khoury and Moghadam 1995).
So while on paper girls and boys in Jordan appear to have equal opportunities, in
practice it is clear that social, cultural, and economic norms limit the opportunities
available to adult women.
with equity is a problem of both measurement and analysis. The assumption of
the report is that girls and boys enter schools which are unmarked by gender with
regard to quality. The gender-neutral ways in which quality has been assessed
offer no opportunity to understand the similar or different achievements of
children.
In an attempt to bring together information on access, quality, and the gender
gap, UNESCO developed the Education Development Index (EDI) from 2003.
The EDI constituents and related indicators are as follows:

universal primary education: net enrolment ratio;

adult literacy: literacy rate of the group aged 15 and over;

gender: gender-specific EFA index (GEI, the arithmetical mean of the
Gender Parity Indices for the primary and secondary gross enrolment ratios
and the adult literacy rate);

progression: survival rate to grade 5.
The problem with the EDI with regard to gender is threefold:

Its main gender component, the GEI, is concerned with parity, which, as
discussed above, gives insufficient insight into context. Men and women, or
girls and boys, may have gender parity in literacy or access to schooling but
have low levels of participation.
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Measuring gender equality in education

The EDI does not take account of gender in children’s survival in schooling.
It primarily considers gender in relation to access and not achievement.

The EDI weights each of its four components equally. Thus enrolments, and
gender parity in enrolments, are weighted equally with achievements.
However, research in many countries shows that enrolling children in
school is only the first hurdle. Ensuring attendance and completion are
much harder tasks, and this is particularly the case for girls, whose progress
is constrained by many factors linked to safety, hygiene, nutrition, and
family responsibilities (Watkins 2000; Tomasevski 2003). Weighting access
as equivalent to achievement underestimates the EFA challenge that
confronts governments, but it is particularly serious because of its failure to
assess gender-related aspects of school achievement adequately.
Towards an alternative measure
There are three major problems with the existing measures of gender equality
and inequality in education. Gender parity and the gender gap are inadequate
measures of gender equality, because they do not acknowledge context. Existing
measures of quality obscure the gender question. And the EDI fails to take full
account of the significance of gender inequality in achievement. These problems
have led the Beyond Access project to develop a new measure which expresses
more accurately the aspiration for gender equality in education.
The approach has been developed as a contribution to the debate about the need
for a publicly accountable criterion of justice in terms of gender equality in
education. Thus the approach is offered partly in the hope that it will elicit
useful critical discussion. It draws on work undertaken by Amartya Sen and
Martha Nussbaum, who distilled a general approach to human flourishing
based on capabilities and human rights (Sen 1999; Nussbaum 2000). These
ideas have been operationalised in the UNDP’s Human Development Reports,
which have developed the Human Development Index and the Gender
Development Index (GDI) (Fukuda Parr and Kumar 2003; UNDP 1995–2004).
A number of writers explore capabilities in relation to aspects of education
(Alkire 2002; Unterhalter 2003; Unterhalter and Brighouse 2003; Terzi 2004;
Walker 2004; Unterhalter 2005b).
A key idea when measuring capabilities (which might be termed valued doings
and beings
) is that they are multi-dimensional. Measuring capabilities entails
measuring functionings – that is, what people achieve, for example completing
five years at school – and measuring the freedoms or opportunities that people
have to achieve them (Sen 1999: 74). Measuring gender equality in education is
65

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
not only about recording the gender gap in enrolments of girls and boys in
school (gender parity), but about measuring some of the other cross-sectoral
aspects of gender equality and equity in relation to health, wealth, and decision
making which all have a bearing on gender equality in school. A second aspect
of capabilities is that, while the concept has particular strengths with regard to
other measures of equality – for example, people’s expressed desires, or
aggregated utility (the greatest good for the greatest number) – the more one
needs to draw comparison at a cross-country level, the less fine-grained are the
capabilities that can be measured, and the more one has to rely either on
measures of resources (like access to school) or on other routinely collected data
that can act as some kind of proxy for capabilities (Unterhalter and Brighouse
2003; Unterhalter 2005a).
There are many problems with developing a quantitative measure of gender
equality in education. It represents the interrelationship between countries or
regions as competitive – creating a culture of winners and losers – when in fact
they are deeply interlinked and in need of each other’s support. It sets up an
arbitrary board of scorers, who usually have little experience of delivery, to judge
performance. And it tends to extinguish the processes of working towards
achievement. These are compelling reasons not to proceed down this path of
analysis, relying either on scorecards or on quantitative measures of gender
equality. However, alongside these arguments must be considered the confusion
that results from not knowing which countries or districts are improving gender
equality in education; which areas need resources, and why we deem this to be
the case; and in what areas countries can learn from each other. These reasons,
based on harnessing available resources to work together on developing a
methodology for measurement of a problem of global significance, seem to
mitigate to some degree the negative dimensions described above (Unterhalter
2005c).
However, it should be stressed that the utilisation of this or any other version of
measurement of gender equality in education should not be a substitute for
detailed quantitative and qualitative research. A key dimension that requires
consideration in any form of measurement is an analysis of social and cultural
relations and the opportunity for dialogue, debate, and the exploration of
differences, particularly with regard to the public–private interface. Such work
must be conducted rigorously to provide a corrective to the simplifications and
crude assumptions of any approach based on scorecards or league tables. Only
in-depth analysis will furnish the detailed knowledge of local contexts and
actions necessary to take forward any of the very general directions that
measurements of gender equality in education might point to.
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Measuring gender equality in education
The Gender Equality in Education Index
Bearing these issues in mind, we developed the Beyond Access Project scorecard
for gender equality in education, which we have renamed the Gender Equality in
Education Index (GEEI)
. The GEEI puts together data gathered by UNICEF on
girls’ attendance at school, by UNESCO on girls’ achievement in primary school
and access to secondary school, and by UNDP on the gender development index
(GDI). The GDI is a measure that consists of the distribution of female to male
life-expectancy in a country, literacy and enrolment in school, and estimated
earned income. The three indicators (life-expectancy, education, and income)
are equally weighted when compiling the index, although the education index
gives two-thirds weight to the adult literacy index and one-third weight to the
gross enrolment rate (UNDP 2003: 343-4).
The Beyond Access GEEI has been developed to assess both access and retention
in broader ways than hitherto. It includes not only the numbers of girls who
attend and remain in primary school, but also an assessment of whether those
girls are able to translate that attendance and retention into future secondary
schooling, healthy lives, and reasonable incomes. Four widely used measures
have been used to develop the GEEI for girls’ access to and retention in school:

girls’ net attendance rate at primary school

girls’ survival rate over five years in primary schooling

girls’ secondary Net Enrolment Ratio (NER)

a country’s gender development index (GDI).
These measures were selected because they indicate access to primary schooling
(net attendance rate), derived from household surveys; retention in primary
schooling (survival rates); the potential of the education system to generate
teachers and managers who are concerned to achieve gender equality (girls’
secondary NER); and the possibilities for these women to survive and flourish as
adults (GDI).
The Beyond Access scorecard is not an unweighted index. In compiling our
index, we weighted girls’ survival over five years in primary school and the
capacity of women to survive into adulthood, retain literacy, and earn a decent
livelihood (signalled by the GDI) as twice as important as attendance in primary
schools. We weighted girls’ enrolment in secondary school, which we believe
points to the emergence of a cadre of women who will work in social develop-
ment with some orientation towards gender equality and equity, as 50 per cent
more important than attendance. (See Appendix for a more detailed explanation
of how the GEEI is calculated.)
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
There are a number of critiques of the GDI as a measure of gender equality.
Charmes and Wieringa point out that the GDI measures general welfare, rather
than gender inequality. In fact, the values for the GDI are very similar to those for
the HDI, particularly for countries with high human development (Charmes
and Wieringa 2003). They also point out that the choice of measuring health by
using life-expectancy, a very long-term measurement, is not likely to offer a
precise indication of women’s health for the current time period – unlike, for
instance, infant and child mortality rates. Other critics point out that statistics of
earned income do not include the work that women do in the subsistence
economy (Elson 1999). Brandolini (2004) argues that the calculations for the
HDI and GDI are problematic, because it is implied that gains in one dimension,
for example in schooling or income, can be traded off against losses in another,
for example longevity. These are substantial criticisms, but in our view they do
not negate the usefulness of the GDI as an easily accessible measure of some
aspects of gender in relation to human well-being, which is why we have used it
in the GEEI.
The UNDP’s Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) might have been a better
measure of how girls and women are able to translate their education into earning
and political decision-making. The GEM is an average of three indices: women’s
share of parliamentary representation; their economic participation through
share of positions as legislators, senior officials, managers, and professionals; and
their share of earned income. There are criticisms of the GEM. For example, the
number of seats in parliament occupied by women does not fully indicate how
much power women actually have. Emphasising women’s earned income in the
formal sector undervalues women’s earnings in the informal sector or care
economy ,where a great many exchanges that are of value to women and their
societies take place. However, despite these limitations, the GEM does provide a
proxy measure of the level to which women are visible in key political posts, earn
equivalent amounts to men in the formal sector, and have professional
employment. Unfortunately, however, the GEM has not been calculated for many
countries, and if it has been calculated recently there are no time-series data, so
comparisons cannot be made. Because GDI has generally been calculated for the
early 1990s and 2000s for most countries, it has therefore been used in GEEI
instead of GEM.
Tables 1–3 present the GEEI for Commonwealth countries in Africa, Asia, and
Latin America between c. 1993 and 2003. They are based on work commissioned
from the Beyond Access project by the Commonwealth Secretariat, UNESCO
Bangkok, and UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia (Unterhalter et al. 2004;
Unterhalter, Rajagopalan, and Challender 2005; Unterhalter and McCowan
2005).
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Measuring gender equality in education
Table 1: GEEI for Commonwealth Africa, c. 1993–2001
GEEI %
Rank
GEEI %
Rank
Percentage
c.1993
c.2003
increase/
decrease

Mauritius
89
1
81
1
-9
Botswana
73
2
78
2
7
Zimbabwe
73
2
42
7
- 42
Swaziland
68
4
60
5
-11
South Africa 64
5
66
4
3
Namibia
62
6
72
3
16
Zambia
42
7
36
11
-14
Lesotho
37
8
42
7
14
Kenya
36
9
26
12
- 28
Ghana
34
10
39
9
15
Tanzania
33
11
39
9
18
Cameroon
33
11
15
16
- 55
Nigeria
26
13
20
14
- 23
Uganda
24
14
54
6
125
Mozambique 20
15
20
14
0
Malawi
20
15
26
12
30
Source: Unterhalter et al. 2004
The changes in GEEI for Commonwealth countries in Africa from the early
1990s to approximately 2003 tell a devastating story. Of the top six countries in
approximately 1993, only Botswana, South Africa, and Namibia have made
gains. These gains are not large, and the highest-scoring countries in Africa rank
well below countries like Sri Lanka in Asia and most of the countries in Latin
America (see Tables 2 and 3). Zimbabwe’s GEEI has declined more than 40 per
cent. There have been similar large declines in countries lower down the ranking
order. Cameroon has declined by more than 50 per cent in GEEI, Nigeria by 23
per cent, and Kenya by 28 per cent. Although there was a small decrease in GEEI
in Trinidad (see Table 3) and in Philippines and Pakistan (Table 2), in no other
region were there spectacular declines in GEEI like those observed in Africa. The
combination of debt, decline in social-sector provision, war, and repressive
governments has had devastating effects on gender equality in education. The
data in Table 1 show that only in Uganda, where there was huge government and
civil-society mobilisation for gender equality in education, were there significant
gains; but the task ahead even for Uganda is still considerable (see Table 4).
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Table 2: GEEI for Asia, c. 1993–2001
GEEI %
Rank
GEEI %
Rank
Percentage
c.1993
c.2001
increase/
decrease

Korea, Rep. Of
100
1=
100
1=
0
Singapore
100
1=
100
1=
0
Japan
100
1=
100
1=
0
Kazakhstan
91
4
91
9
0
Malaysia
89
5
94
4=
6
Kyrgyzstan
88
6=
94
4=
Georgia
88
6=
88
11
Armenia
84
8=
94
4=
12
Azerbaijan
84
8=
84
12=
Fiji
83
10
94
4=
13
Uzbekistan
81
11
81
15=
China
79
12
89
10
13
Tajikistan
78
13=
84
12=
8
Mongolia
78
13=
81
15=
4
Philippines
75
16
68
18
-9
Sri Lanka
68*
17=
94
4=
38
Indonesia
68
17=
76
17
12
India
28
19
41
20
46
Bangladesh
23
20=
48
19
109
Pakistan
23
20=
20
23
-13
Nepal
20
22=
36
21
80
Lao, PDR
20
22=
26
22
30
Sources: Unterhalter, Rajagopalan, and Challender 2005; Unterhalter and
McCowan 2005
Table 2 shows Asia divided into two halves with regard to gender equality in
education. A large number of countries, predominantly in South East Asia, and
some in Central Asia, already have relatively high GEEI. Sri Lanka made
spectacular gains in GEEI in a decade of low economic growth. The most
populous countries in the region – Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan – score low
on GEEI. Some countries – Bangladesh, Nepal, and Lao PDR – have made huge
gains in GEEI, but are still in the lower half of the table.
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Measuring gender equality in education
Table 3: GEEI for Latin America, c. 1993–2004
GEEI %
Rank
GEEI %
Rank
Percentage
c.1993
c.2003
increase/
decrease

Trinidad
100
1
94
3
-6
Cuba
88
2
94
3
7
Jamaica
88
2
91
6
3
Chile
86
4
97
2
13
Guyana
84
5
84
9
0
Panama
83
6
94
3
13
Costa Rica
78
78
89
7
14
Ecuador
71
8
72
12
1
Venezuela
70
9
86
8
23
Paraguay
58
10
76
11
31
Dominican Republic 42
11
72
12
71
Bolivia
33
12
81
10
145
El Salvador
33
12
69
14
109
Nicaragua
33
12
46
15
39
Guatemala
26
15
39
16
50
Source: Challender and Unterhalter 2004
Table 3 shows that while many countries in Latin America have much higher
levels of GEEI than do countries in Asia and Africa, two countries – Nicaragua
and Guatemala – with histories of war and repression continue to have low GEEI,
despite considerable gains during the decade. There have also been enormous
gains in El Salvador and Bolivia. But Table 3 also tells another story that resonates
for Africa and Asia. Countries with relatively high GEEI in 1993 did not reach 100
per cent by 2003, and Trinidad, despite its natural resources and high levels of
industrialisation, experienced a fall in GEEI. Raising GEEI requires constant
attention; it does not automatically follow from a relatively high score that
forward momentum will be maintained. In fact it might be as hard to move from
80 to 100 per cent GEEI as from 33 per cent to 81 per cent, as Bolivia did.
What does the GEEI tell us?
Similar trends can be discerned across all three regions from the GEEI. Countries
with long and devastating histories of war or repressive government are at or near
the bottom of the league. Conversely, countries with long histories of democratic
71

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
government are at the top. Countries which, despite a history of war and undemo-
cratic government, have paid attention to reconstruction also come near the top
(Namibia and South Africa; Malaysia and China; Chile and Cuba). Countries with
high levels of women’s mobilisation or political participation, such as Uganda, Fiji
and Chile, score higher than countries where there has been minimal or only
‘top–down’ mobilisation on these issues. Countries with vast regional inequalities
(Kenya and Ghana; Indonesia and India; Chile and Venezuela) score considerably
lower than countries where regional inequalities are not an issue on this scale
(Mauritius and Botswana; Korea and Malaysia; Trinidad and Cuba).
Other interesting issues emerging from the tables include the large overall rise in
GEEI in Latin America over the course of the 1990s: in 1990 the median GEEI
score was 71; in 2000 it was 87. However, there is a sharp division in these
increases: the two lowest scorers have remained in this position, with relatively
small rises. Thus, Nicaragua’s score rose from 33 to 46 and Guatemala’s from 26 to
39 between 1990 and 2000. Meanwhile, several countries just above them in the
GEEI in 1990 have experienced meteoric rises in their GEEI: for instance Bolivia
and El Salvador, which more than doubled their scores between 1990 and 2000.
Larger economies do not equate with higher scores. The largest economy in Latin
America, Brazil, was ranked joint tenth in 2000. Of the two lowest scorers,
Nicaragua is classified by the World Bank as a low-income economy, and yet
Guatemala – a middle-income economy – appears below it. This trend is also
apparent on the Africa Scorecard: South Africa, with the largest economy on the
continent, is not the country with the highest GEEI. While it is no surprise that
Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, and Singapore, which have a high GDP per
capita, come at the top of the scorecard for GEEI, it is notable that countries with
relatively low GDP per capita, such as Sri Lanka and China, score so highly.
The division of the GEEI for Asia into two very distinct halves is also interesting.
There is a big gap between the lowest-ranking ‘high scorer’, the Philippines, on 67
per cent, and the highest-ranking ‘low scorer’, Bangladesh, on 47 per cent. While in
Africa there are many low-scoring countries, a regional disjuncture of this form is
not evident. Another notable aspect of the Asia scorecard is that countries which
have or have had communist governments for long periods (China, the former
Soviet republics, Mongolia, and Vietnam) and countries which have had many
decades of government commitment to the expansion of education (South Korea)
score far higher than countries such as India and Pakistan which have had less co-
ordinated policies on mass education. Bangladesh, which has mobilised huge local
and international resources to improve education, scores far more highly than other
countries in South Asia, where policy on education has been less clearly directed.
What does the GEEI tell us about how far the world needs to go to meet the two
Millennium Development Goals that relate to education: MDG 2 and MDG 3?
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Measuring gender equality in education
Tables 4–6 compare the rate of improvement in GEEI for countries in Africa,
Asia, and Latin America between c. 1993 and 2001 and estimate the level of
further improvement that would be needed in order to reach a GEEI score of 95
per cent. A GEEI score of 95 per cent would indicate net girls’ primary attendance
of 90 per cent and above, girls’ primary survival rate of 90 per cent and above,
girls’ secondary NER of 60 per cent and above, and GDI of 0.800 and above
(equivalent to the gender-equality levels in life-expectancy, education, and
income of Korea, Singapore, and Japan in 2003).
Table 4 shows the extensive mobilisation of resources that will be needed in
Africa to reach a GEEI of 95 per cent. Every single country will have to increase
the level of effort expended between 1993 and 2003. Countries at the top of the
scorecard, like Namibia, Botswana, and Mauritius will need to invest two to three
times the amount of effort in gender-equality programmes. South Africa will
need to achieve 14 times the level of improvement attained in the first decade of
democracy. But the majority of the countries will need to invest hundreds of
times the level of resources and effort mobilised in the previous decade.
Table 4: GEEI scores for Africa, c.1993–2003, and improvements needed to
reach GEEI 95 per cent by 2015

GEEI %
GEEI %
Percentage
% increase
c.1993
c.2003
increase/
needed to reach
decrease
GEEI of 95
Mauritius
89
81
-9
17.28
Botswana
73
78
7
21.79
Zimbabwe
73
42
-42
126.19
Swaziland
68
60
-11
58.33
South Africa
64
66
3
43.93
Namibia
62
72
16
31.94
Zambia
42
36
-14
163.89
Lesotho
37
42
14
126.19
Kenya
36
26
-28
265.38
Ghana
34
39
15
143.59
Tanzania
33
39
18
143.59
Cameroon
33
15
-55
533.33
Nigeria
26
20
-23
375.00
Uganda
24
54
125
75.93
Mozambique
20
20
0
375.00
Malawi
20
26
30
265.396
73

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Table 5: GEEI scores in Asia, c. 1993–2003, and improvements needed to
reach GEEI 95 per cent by 2015

GEEI %
GEEI %
Percentage
% increase
c.1993
c.2003
increase/
needed to reach
decrease
GEEI of 95
Korea, Rep. of
100
100
0
0
Singapore
100
100
0
0
Japan
100
100
0
0
Kazakhstan
91
91
0
4.40
Malaysia
89
94
6
1.06
Kyrgyzstan
88
94
1.06
Georgia
88
88
7.95
Armenia
84
94
12
1.06
Azerbaijan
84
84
13.09
Fiji
83
94
13
1.06
Uzbekistan
81
81
17.28
China
79
89
13
6.74
Tajikistan
78
84
8
13.10
Mongolia
78
81
4
17.28
Philippines
75
68
-9
39.70
Sri Lanka
68*
94
38
1.06
Indonesia
68
76
12
25
India
28
41
46
131.70
Bangladesh
23
48
109
97.91
Pakistan
23
20
-13
375.00
Nepal
20
36
80
163.89
Lao PDR
20
26
30
265.39
Table 5 shows that while many countries in Asia will have to sustain the gains of
the previous decade, some relatively high scorers will have to double or treble the
level of mobilisation (Indonesia and Mongolia). Countries in the bottom half of
the scorecard will either have to equal the very high level of mobilisation of the
previous decade (Bangladesh), or double or treble it (Nepal and India). Lao will
need levels of mobilisation ten times as great as the previous decade, while
Pakistan will need 300 times greater mobilisation (although there is some doubt
about the figures reported in this case).
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Measuring gender equality in education
Table 6: GEEI scores for Latin America, c.1993–2003, and improvements
needed to reach GEEI 95 per cent by 2015

GEEI %
GEEI %
Percentage
% increase
c.1993
c.2003
increase/
needed to reach
decrease
GEEI of 95
Trinidad
100
94
-6
1
Cuba
88
94
7
Jamaica
88
91
3
1
Chile
86
97
13
4
Guyana
84
84
0
13
Panama
83
94
13
1
Costa Rica
78
89
14
8
Ecuador
71
72
1
32
Venezuela
70
86
23
11
Paraguay
58
76
31
25
Dominican Republic 42
72
71
32
Bolivia
33
81
145
17
El Salvador
33
69
109
38
Nicaragua
33
46
39
107
Guatemala
26
39
50
144
Table 6 shows that working to achieve the two education MDGs will entail for
many Latin American countries sustaining the growth of the last ten years in
relation to gender equality, or slightly increasing resources for this area. El
Salvador will need to increase momentum by 40 per cent, not losing the
significant gains of the previous decade. Nicaragua and Guatemala, however, will
have to nearly treble the gains that they made from 1993.
Conclusion
The GEEI presents an alternative means of measuring gender-equality gains and
losses in and through education. GEEI calculations show catastrophic falls in
many countries in Africa through the 1990s, and they indicate that maximum
mobilisation of resources is needed for that continent to halt this under-
acknowledged disaster and achieve good levels of gender equality. While the
extent of the task in Africa is enormous, huge challenges also remain to increase
GEEI in many countries in Asia and Latin America. Reaching the targets for
75

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
MDG 2 and MDG 3 by 2015 is not impossible, given the talent and wealth of the
world. This assessment of GEEI gives some indication of the size of the task and
the levels of mobilisation needed. This task falls not only to the people who live
in the countries with low GEEI. The MDGs are challenges to global collaboration
and resource mobilisation. The numbers point to the heightened levels at which
we need to work together.
Appendix: Calculating the GEEI
The GEEI was constructed by using four measures deemed useful as indicators of
girls’ access to and retention in school, and women’s health and levels of income
after school. The indicators selected were girls’ primary attendance, girls’ survival
rate over five years of primary schooling, girls’ secondary NER, and the Gender
Development Index (GDI).
Data from the EFA Monitoring Reports, UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children,
the Human Development Reports, World Bank reports, and countries’ own EFA
assessments were used. Occasionally, where there were no figures available,
secondary literature was consulted.
Net primary attendance rates, survival at school, secondary NER, and GDI levels
were given a value based on the following assessments shown in Table 7.
Table 7: Criteria for scoring achievements with regard to access and
achievement in girls’ education

Score
Criteria to achieve the score
5
Excellent conditions. Already at (or extremely well positioned to achieve) gender
equity in 2015 and likely to fulfil the aspirations of the Beijing Declaration.
4
Very good conditions. Substantial achievement with regard to gender equity
and well on the path to achieving 2015 goal with regard to access. Some gains
needed in order to improve retention.
3
Good conditions. Progress towards 2015 evident, but further work necessary
on access and retention.
2
Poor conditions. Progress towards 2015 slow. Considerable and intensive
work needed on access and retention.
1
Very poor conditions. 2015 goals unlikely to be reached without massive
mobilisation on all fronts to secure access and achievement.
Using these criteria, the scoring system illustrated in Table 8 was developed with
regard to the indicators.
76

Measuring gender equality in education
Table 8: GEEI scores and indicators
Score Net girls’ primary
Girls’ primary
Girls’ secondary
GDI
attendance
survival rate
NER
5
90% and above
90% and above
60% and above
0.800 and above
4
80–89%
80–89%
50–59%
0.700–.799
3
70–79%
70–79%
40–49%
0.600–.699
2
60–69%
60–69%
30–39%
0.500–.599
1
59% and below
59% and below
29% and below
Below 0.499
Raw scores on the basis of this table were then weighted as follows:
Net girls’
Girls’ primary Girls
GDI
GEEI
primary
survival rate
secondary NER (raw score
(sum of
attendance
(raw score
(raw Score
x 2.5)
weighted
(raw score
x 2.5)
x 1.75)
measures
x 1.25)
divided by 4)
Detailed calculations of the GEEI for Africa and Asia are to be found in earlier
papers (Unterhalter et al. 2004; Unterhalter, Rajagopalan, and Challender 2005).
Elaine Unterhalter is a senior lecturer in Education and International Development
at the Institute of Education, University of London, where (with Sheila Aikman) she
has co-ordinated the Beyond Access: Gender, Education and Development project
since 2003.

Chloe Challender is Editor for the Beyond Access project. She has worked for NGOs
and the UK Treasury on international development issues, especially children’s
rights, for several years.

Rajee Rajagopalan is a part-time research assistant on the Beyond Access project.
Previously she worked as administrator of the International Development Unit at
the Institute of Education, University of London.

Note
1
This paper is based on work commissioned from the Beyond Access project in 2004–05 by the
Commonwealth Secretariat, UNESCO Bangkok, and UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia.
We are grateful to all three organisations for permission to publish this chapter, which draws on
reports prepared for them. A further paper, with a detailed consideration of these issues as they
apply in South Asia, is to be published by UNICEF in 2005.
77

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
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Unterhalter, E. (2005a) ‘Gender Equality and Education in South Africa: Measurements, Scores and
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Watkins, K. (2000) The Oxfam Education Report, Oxford: Oxfam
79

80

Part Two
Transforming Action:
Changing Policy through Practice
81

4 Educating girls in Bangladesh: watering
a neighbour’s tree?

Janet Raynor
There is an old Bengali saying which observes: ‘Caring for a daughter is like
watering a neighbour’s tree’
. It reflects the view that it is a waste of resources to
invest in a daughter who will be ‘lost’ to another family through marriage. It is
one of the arguments that have been used in the past to justify girls’ exclusion
from school in Bangladesh. However, various recent education initiatives by both
government and NGOs have placed stronger emphasis on girls’ education,
leading to a widely praised increase in access over the last ten years. They include
a secondary stipend programme which started on a small scale in 1982 and
became a nationwide programme in 1994. The expansion of girls’ education in
Bangladesh – and how it is perceived – is the subject of this study, with the
government’s secondary Female Stipend Programme (FSP) used as a case study.1
The study examines attitudes towards girls’ education and educated girls and
women in Bangladesh. It explores attitudes towards the programme, and the
programme’s effects on social attitudes. Many reports on the various forms of
the FSP offer a quantitative analysis, showing the success of the project in terms
of access or retention (Sarker, Chowdhury, and Tariq 1995; Khandker and
Samad 1996; Daily Star 2003a; New Nation 2004b). However, few reports offer
insight into the ways in which lives and attitudes are being affected. Little
attention has been paid to the impact of the programme at the family or
individual level, or how stated values compare with observed behaviour. This
study examines these aspects, exploring the attitudes of girls and boys, mothers
and fathers, teachers and education officials, and project personnel. Specific
focus areas include the following:

Perceptions: does girls’ education strengthen traditional gendered roles or
lead to empowerment? Is it seen to be beneficial or detrimental to the
individual girl, to boys and men, and to society as a whole?

Purpose: in the past, girls in Bangladesh have been denied formal
education. Is girls’ education regarded now as a need, a right, or a luxury,
and what is its perceived purpose?

Culture: is maintenance of cultural values seen to be more important than
formal education for girls? Do dominant social groups use ‘culture’ as an
argument to preserve the status quo?
83

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Background to the study
Working in education in Bangladesh over the past 12 years, I have come into
regular contact with people who were in some way connected to or affected by
the FSP. This was particularly so during 1998–99, when I was involved in a
secondary-level programme in eastern Bangladesh, where discussions arising in
informal meetings with those involved in secondary education indicated that
there was a general lack of understanding of the rationale behind the FSP, and
that there were various forms of resistance to it. This resistance might take the
form of, for example, an influential village leader and member of a School
Management Committee insisting that it was a waste of resources to educate a
girl from a rural area, because she would be unable to use that education to find
suitable employment. A government education official declared to a group of
teachers that the programme discriminated against boys and was therefore
unacceptable. Others, however, were very supportive of the project. These
attitudes seemed worth exploring, because the success of the project depends to
a large extent on how ‘acceptable’ it is within the context in which it is operating.
The Bangladeshi context
Bangladesh has a population of approximately 138.5 million people, making it
the ninth most populated country in the world (CIA 2003), and (barring a few
island nations) the most densely populated country in the world. Since its
independence from West Pakistan in 1971, it has been devastated by war and
natural disasters, and has attracted much international aid. Until 2003, it was
ranked as having ‘low human development’, but it has recently edged into the
medium development range, ranking 138 out of 177 countries in the 2004
UNDP Human Development Index, which indicates that there has been some
positive development (UNDP 2004).
However, in terms of the UNDP’s Gender Empowerment Measure, Bangladesh
ranks 76th out of the 78 countries included (UNDP 2004). Although under the
1972 constitution women and men have equal rights (Government of Bangladesh
1996), and although various legal measures have been taken to improve the
position of women, in practice little has changed – especially for poor women and
girls in rural areas (Mannan 2002; Koenig et al. 2003). When the government of
Bangladesh (GoB) ratified the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), it ‘maintained reservations on all
articles calling for women’s equal rights in the family’ (Jahan 1995a: 102). The 1980
Prohibition of Dowry Act has done little to reduce dowry practice, with the
incidence of dowry substantially increasing since the 1970s (Esteve-Volart 2003),
and 247 reports of dowry violence – including 122 deaths – in the last three months
84

Educating girls in Bangladesh: watering a neighbour’s tree?
of 2004 (Daily Star 2005). Similarly, in 1961 family ordinance laws set a minimum
age for marriage and restricted men’s rights to polygamy and divorce, but in rural
areas these laws are often overlooked (Jahan 1995a; Khan 2001). The International
Centre for Research on Women’s Demographic Health Survey 1996–2001 lists
Bangladesh as the country with the second-highest rate of child marriage, with an
estimated 75 per cent of girls married before they reach the age of 18 (ICRW 2003),
although the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics gives a figure of 47 per cent (cited in
UNESCO Bangkok 2003). Sweetser, in a report exploring gender relations, non-
formal education, and social change, notes a marked generational difference in
attitudes towards women. She gives examples of attitudes displayed by the older
men, which included their disapproval of ‘modern trends’ of women or girls going
to school, working in the fields, arranging their own marriages, riding bicycles and
motorcycles, taking up seats on buses, and being served in a shop first. One man
seemed to sum it up by saying: ‘All the degradation in the world starts with the
loosening on the restrictions on women’ (Sweetser 1999:16). In such a context,
there could well be a struggle for girls’ and women’s rights to participate in
education, and any empowerment that it might be seen to lead to.
Education in Bangladesh
One of the first documents advocating formal education for girls in Bangladesh
(then part of India) is ‘Wood’s Education Despatch’ of 1854. In that document,
‘female education’ was promoted because it enhanced the educational and moral
tone of the people (excerpts annexed in Jalaluddin and Chowdhury 1997). What
educational provision there was for girls focused on ‘education for enlightened
motherhood’ (Chanana 1994): they were being trained to be mothers, rather than
– for example – being prepared for paid employment or for tertiary education. The
1974 Qudrat-e-Khuda Education Commission Report of the newly independent
Bangladesh firmly asserted that ‘women’s education should be such as to be of help
to them in their domestic life’, and stressed that subjects such as ‘child-care, the
nursing of the sick, preservation of health, food and nutrition’ must be included. It
also suggested that girls should be channelled into ‘vocations specially suitable to
them’, such as primary-school teaching, nursing, and typing (Jalaluddin and
Chowdhury 1997: 290). For more than 100 years, formal education for girls was
not designed to bring about fundamental change in society.
The Female Stipend Programme
The stipend programme has brought about change. Adolescent girls are now
visible in large numbers, going to and from school in rural areas – in itself a
fundamental change.
85

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
The FSP offers an allowance to encourage families to send girls to school, and to
help to meet the costs of education. The first form of the FSP for secondary-level
girls was set up by Bangladesh Association for Community Education (BACE) in
1982. According to Mr Azizul Huq, Director of BACE (personal interview), the
initiative was ‘100 per cent Bangladeshi’, the prime mover being Dr Mohammed
Abdus Sattar, at that time Secretary for Population Control and Family Planning in
the Ministry of Health and Population Control. The pilot project was reportedly
inspired by population-related literature which suggested that girls’ enrolment in
secondary education would delay marriage and increase contraceptive use, and
thus reduce fertility levels. It was initially supported by USAID, and later by the Asia
Foundation, before being taken up by NORAD in 1992. There were remarkably
positive results, with female enrolment almost doubling in some project areas, and
drop-out rates being dramatically reduced (Haq and Haq 1998). Based on the
success of the pilot projects, a nationwide programme was launched in 1994 under
the umbrella term of Nationwide Female Stipend Programme. All rural districts
became part of the programme, with funding from NORAD, the World Bank, the
Asian Development Bank, and the government itself.
Under the programme, girls in rural areas in Classes 6–10 are eligible for the
stipend, conditional on their maintaining a minimum of 75 per cent attendance,
obtaining a minimum of 45 per cent in annual school exams, and remaining
unmarried up to the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) examination in Year 10.
The award consists of an allowance, free tuition, a book allowance for Year 9, and
SSC examination fees in Year 10. The stipend is not large: girls receive a sum
equivalent to no more than US$ 1.00 a month, and schools get US$ 1.50–2.00 a
semester in tuition fees. It is paid to all girls who meet the eligibility criteria,
regardless of family wealth. Means-testing was introduced as an experiment in the
1980s, but proved to be too problematic (Valad 1995). However, there is
continuing pressure from donors for the introduction of means-testing to
increase the sustainability of the programme, and to target impoverished families
(Mahmud 2003).
The model has been praised internationally as a means of achieving Millennium
Development Goals. For example, a conference in Shanghai in May 2004 on
‘Reducing Poverty, Sustaining Growth’, co-hosted by the World Bank and the
Chinese government, focused on successful examples of scaling up anti-poverty
interventions, and the FSP was one of them. The conference – and Bangladesh’s
success in promoting girl’s education – attracted much positive media attention
(for example, Agence France Presse 2004; Daily Star 2004; New Nation 2004c),
along with claims that Bangladesh had already achieved the Millennium
Development Goals of eliminating gender disparity in education (emphasis
added). What is meant here is parity of enrolment; that is, equal numbers of boys
and girls in school.
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Educating girls in Bangladesh: watering a neighbour’s tree?
In terms of increasing enrolment, the FSP has undoubtedly been a success. Rising
from about 700,000 beneficiaries in the first year of the nationwide programme,
the number peaked in 2001 at more than 4 million as more girls completed
primary school, more schools joined the programme, new girls joined the
programme, and more girls stayed on at higher levels. There has been a drop
since 2002: the numbers were down to about 2.25 million beneficiaries in 2004.
This drop is largely due to stricter criteria for awarding stipends. There have been
various reports of widespread corruption, with well-informed unofficial
estimates of the number of ‘irregular’ awards being as high as 50 per cent
(BANBEIS 1998, 1999, 2001; FSSAP 1999, 2004; Mahmud 2003; World Bank
2003; FESP 2004; and discussions with project personnel). The corruption issue
is not the focus of this study, but it is real and should be noted. However, it is an
undeniable fact that girls are now in secondary school in Bangladesh in large
numbers, and that gender parity of enrolment was apparently achieved in 2000.
It should be noted that – as Figure 1 shows – while there have definitely been
increases in girls’ enrolment, and most significantly since the introduction of the
FSP, there has also been an increase for boys, perhaps in part because of the FSP.
It should also be noted that the increase in girls’ enrolment cannot simply be
ascribed to the FSP: it is one of many education initiatives in Bangladesh, but the
FSP is also seen as having had a positive impact on the enrolment of girls in
primary schools (Thein, Kabir, and Islam 1988; Chowdhury, Choudhury, and
Nath 1999; Ahmed and Ahmed 2002). Most of the more recent statistical data
shown here were collected for a study commissioned by DFID Bangladesh, on
which this section draws heavily (Raynor and Chowdhury 2004).The 2003
figures given here are provisional only, and they show only those who enrolled at
the beginning of the academic year, with no indication of how many girls actually
completed the year. We must wait to see what impact the ‘tightening up’ has had
on the overall enrolment of girls, but there has almost certainly been a drop in
girls’ enrolment in 2004 and 2005 (Thornton et al. 2005).
The FSP was, and still is, based within a Women in Development (WID)
framework, with a focus on what women can do for development, rather than vice
versa – an example of what Unterhalter describes as programmes that ‘utilise
women as a tool for a greater good’ (Unterhalter 2000:17). Herz’s (1991) World
Bank Discussion Paper Letting Girls Learn is a fairly representative example. It
focuses on the education of girls, cites early forms of the FSP as a ‘promising
approach’ in education, and represents the thinking of at least one of the major
external agencies involved in the FSP. It was written when plans for the nationwide
programme were being considered. It lists the standard WID justifications for
greater investment in girls’ education, such as healthier, better-educated children
and reduced population growth. In what can be seen as an extension of the
attitude expressed in the adage about ‘watering a neighbour’s tree’, Herz
87

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Figure 1: Growth of secondary-school enrolment in Bangladesh, 1970–2003
Sources: BANBEIS 2002; BANBEIS 2003, and discussions with BANBEIS
personnel 2004. Note: the columns on the left are at five-year intervals; those on
the right relate to one year.
recommends financial incentives and subsidies for girls’ education, arguing that
they are ‘economically justifiable because the parents who pay … have little to
gain, but society benefits greatly from the presence of educated women’ (op. cit.,
p. xiii). FSP policies, like the instrumentalist WID policies from which they are
drawn, take account of women’s productive and reproductive roles, but do not go
beyond them. For example, the FSP focus on delayed marriage is for fertility
control, rather than representing a rights-based approach to the prevention of
child marriage.
Although current official government policy strongly promotes girls’ and women’s
education, private resistance may work against that public policy. Some research
indicates that her father’s education and assets may actually have a negative impact
on a girl’s schooling in Bangladesh. This finding comes from a comparative study
of four countries – including 826 households in 47 villages in three sites in
Bangladesh – exploring factors that influence the bargaining power of household
members. The authors speculate that ‘wealthier Bangladeshi fathers may attach a
higher premium to marrying their daughters off earlier’ (Quisumbing and
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Educating girls in Bangladesh: watering a neighbour’s tree?
Maluccio 2000:54), although this goes against the widely held belief that poverty is
a driving factor in early marriage. There have also been public outbreaks of (male)
resistance to certain education programmes, particularly in the east of the country,
and particularly around 1994, when the stipend programme was introduced
(Sultan 1994, Jahan 1995b, Momen 1995, and Kabir 1996 all report such cases).
However, these were reports of responses to education programmes with some sort
of overt empowerment agenda such as the teaching of legal rights, and all were
linked to programmes for women rather than girls.
While twenty years ago girls were visible to some extent in primary classes, very
few girls were allowed to attend secondary school: they tended to be withdrawn at
or around puberty (Sattar 1982). Most recent figures indicate that girls’ enrolment
– primary and secondary – is now about equal to that of boys. Bellamy (2004)
indicates that girls’ net primary enrolment had risen to nearly 90 per cent by 2000
– compared with 48 per cent in 1996 (BANBEIS 1999) – and gives the 2000
secondary Gross Enrolment Rate as 45 per cent for boys and 47 per cent for girls.
Thus, if figures are correct, Bangladesh has succeeded in providing equal access to
girls and boys at primary and secondary levels. However, there are strong
reservations about the quality and relevance of education in Bangladesh for both
boys and girls (Sen 2002; Mahmud 2003); this has particular consequences for
girls, who are still less likely to complete secondary school, gain an academic
qualification, or enter secure paid employment (Ahmed 2000; Daily Star 2003b;
UNESCO Bangkok 2003; World Bank 2003). Parity of enrolment is no mean
achievement, but Bangladesh still has a long way to go in terms of meeting the EFA
goals of quality and equality in education (World Education Forum 2000) or the
Millennium Development Goals relating to gender in education in particular, and
gender equality and empowerment in general (United Nations 2000).
Das Gupta et al. (1993), in a study prepared during the run-up to the
implementation of the nationwide FSP in 1994, indicate that the most frequently
mentioned advantage of educating girls was that they could get jobs. Although
both men and women said this, almost 50 per cent of women cited it, compared
with only about 30 per cent of men, men’s responses tending to be spread over
other categories such as ‘educate her own children’. The second most frequently
cited advantage overall was that education would help a girl to get a better
husband. Sarker et al. (1995), in an evaluation of FSP pilot programmes, indicate
that education for girls is mostly perceived as a domestic benefit, enabling them
to get better husbands, to help their husbands, or to teach and look after their
own children better. Similarly, Sweetser found that ‘Typically, the first benefit of
girls’ education cited by villagers pertains to their future roles managing the
home economy’ (1999:17). As Haider notes, ‘most of society’s justifications for
educating girls remains one of counting the benefits at large, while ignoring her
individual rights and personal worth’ (1995:121).
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The 1993 Das Gupta study indicated that men in particular cite the cost of girls’
education as a reason for not sending girls to school. All those interviewed for
this study were worried that schooling endangers girls’ morality and reputation,
with mothers being particularly concerned that boys might harass their
daughters on the way to and from school (Das Gupta, Islam, and Siddiq 1993).
Sweetser’s study shows older men focusing on the concern that education might
lead to the undermining of traditional social and economic structures. Nor is
everyone sure that education should or can help a girl to get a job. Sweetser
reports one man’s statement that it was pointless sending girls to secondary
school because they would still have to bribe someone to get a job: ‘what they
really need, in his view, is a husband’ (1999:18).
One issue which produces remarkably mixed reports is that of the impact of
education on dowry, which can be seen as an indicator of the status and value of
girls in society. Reduction in dowry is often cited as one of the benefits of girls’
education (see Bellew and King 1993, for example). Several early FSP texts
comment positively on the impact of education on dowry, although most cite no
empirical evidence to support the claim (Thein, Kabir and Islam 1988; Mustafa
et al. 1990; Das Gupta et al. 1993). More recent studies, such as Amin (1996),
Jeffrey and Jeffrey (1998), and Arends-Kuenning and Amin (2001), link
education to increased dowry demands. If this is the case, many parents may feel
hesitant about sending their daughters to school beyond an age at which they can
be ‘married off ’ cheaply.
At the secondary level, apart from targeting girls’ enrolment, many education
programmes – the FSP being one – also have an objective of channelling girls into
teaching. This is partly to ensure that girls have female role-models in schools,
partly because teaching is seen as an ‘appropriate’ job for women, but also to meet
the needs of the ever-expanding education system.
The study
The FSP ‘case’ was studied through interviews, questionnaires, observation, and
a review of documentation. Most of the research for this paper was conducted in
2000; it was followed by work in Bangladesh which kept me in touch with the
project, visits to donor and project staff, and a review of recent project
documentation in 2004. The main fieldwork undertaken in Bangladesh
consisted of 31 visits to schools and project offices, set up with the help of the
Project Director of the GoB element of the project. To respect participants’
privacy and to preserve confidentiality, the thana (small administrative area /
district council), schools, and individuals are not named – or they have been
given different names.
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Forty-one interviews were conducted, with six secondary-school girls, four
secondary-school boys, nine mothers, five fathers, nine head-teachers (some of
whom also spoke as parents), and ten ‘implementers’ (project personnel, etc).
A large proportion of those interviewed came from comparatively wealthy
families, which is not representative of the country as a whole but is fairly
representative of families with children in secondary schools in Bangladesh. Of
the 24 parents and children interviewed, only five acknowledged that the stipend
was the determining factor in school enrolment.
The questionnaires, administered to 456 respondents, indicated the degree to
which a view expressed in an interview might be regarded as representative of a
wider group. The questionnaire was given mainly to groups of students and
teachers within the designated thana, because it was safe to assume that they were
literate and therefore able to complete it. Questionnaires were completed by 233
girls, 166 boys, 15 female teachers, 31 male teachers, and five ‘others’ (for example,
school-management committee members).
Limitations of the study include the fact that it was restricted to those in or
connected with secondary schools; the case study covers only one thana, so
findings are illustrative rather than generalisable; and all interviews were
conducted in English (either directly or through an interpreter), which may have
limited the articulation and detection of certain attitudes. The administration of
written questionnaires was necessarily restricted to those who were literate; and
the sensitivity of the subject may have inhibited some participants. The schools
were in a thana only about 50 km from Dhaka, and the findings in this study are
inevitably affected by the proximity to Dhaka.
Findings: the multiple meanings of girls’ education
While collating questionnaire data, I was struck by the overall tendency of
women and girls to use the ‘extremes’ of the attitudinal scale, while men and boys
generally favoured the middle categories. Where girls/women had ‘strong’
opinions in 58 per cent of responses, only 46 per cent of responses from
boys/men used these categories, and they were more likely to use the ‘neutral’ box
(11 per cent male versus 6 per cent female). This strength of feeling was evident
in the interviews, where women and girls gave answers with little or no
hesitation; men and boys needed more time to formulate responses – and were
occasionally unwilling or unable to answer. The difference in degree between
male and female responses may well translate into different male and female
behaviours, with girls/women acting in accordance with their strongly stated
beliefs, and the behaviour of boys/men perhaps even contradicting stated
opinions.
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Perceptions of FSP and girls’ education
Some interviewees see girls’ education as strengthening traditional roles; others
see it as leading to some sort of empowerment. Still others see it as a threat.
Of the nine mothers interviewed, four not only supported the project but also
felt that it was right that it should be restricted to girls. One middle-class woman
said:
I have a son, but I have no objection to boys not getting it – girls need it more. I
think the government recognises that girls … don’t get to study as much as boys
so they’ve done this to push them ahead. It’s good that it’s for girls only. The
only negative thing I can think of about the FSP is that it would be bad if they
got rid of it!

However, this woman would send her children to school with or without the
stipend, and she was obviously not familiar with financial hardship. Another
woman, veiled but vocal and obviously not wealthy, was adamant:
No, it’s not necessary for boys, they have enough advantages. Both my sons –
they’re now 20 and 25 – completed up to Class 4. My older daughter, she’s 20
now, and married, had no school at all. But the last one is OK. She’s lucky
because she’s the last one and we can get her educated. She’s in Class 8 now, and
we let her finish primary school because I knew she’d get the stipend in
secondary school. My own life would have been much better if I’d been educated.

The switch of pronouns here is revealing: ‘we’ let the girl finish primary school,
but ‘I’ knew she would get the stipend. The ‘I’ almost certainly persuaded the ‘we’
that represents the husband, with whom she has to present a united front. The
last sentence shows her wistful personal views of the value of education.
However, ‘stipends for boys’ is an issue, especially where there is poverty. A
woman from a poor family said she thought it was a good thing that the FSP was
for girls only, but – placing poor boys in the same marginalised area as girls in
general – added that ‘it would be OK if it was for very poor boys too’. And one father
with a large family, a low income, and one daughter receiving the stipend said:
I want the stipend for my sons. It’s unfair that girls get it but boys don’t. I agree
that girls have definitely been less fortunate than boys in society, so maybe the
programme has been introduced so girls can have a better future? But I’ve got
five sons, and they need education.

Fathers, most of whom had daughters benefiting from the FSP, were generally in
favour of the programme – perhaps because it saved them having to decide
whether to spend money on a daughter’s education. However, the four boys
interviewed felt that the programme was unfair to boys or ‘not a very good idea’
but the opinions expressed were mild.
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The majority of girls strongly agreed with the questionnaire statement saying
The FSP is beneficial to me’, but a surprisingly high percentage of boys did too (40
per cent strongly agreed, with another 36 per cent ticking the ‘agree’ box).
Interestingly, in the piloting stage of the questionnaire one project administrator
questioned the validity of that statement in a questionnaire to be administered to
boys as well as girls. He felt that no boy would be able to respond positively to it,
because the FSP was clearly designed to benefit girls. Most of the boys
interviewed felt that the FSP would benefit them by giving them an educated wife
who would have a better chance of adding to the family income, and being a
better mother to their children.
As to whether education will empower/liberate girls, there were marked
differences between male and female responses. Girls/women optimistically felt
that education was the answer to their problems. Boys/men also generally
indicated that there was an element of liberation in girls’ education, but the
questionnaires did not show whether this was seen as a threat or not. The
interviews were more enlightening.
One person in the ‘implementers’ category provided a good example of
conflicting private and public views. The man (‘Mostafa’) was a loud advocate of
girls’ education, saying that educated women could be equal participants in the
country’s development, and his questionnaire presented model ‘correct’
responses. But his actions spoke even more loudly. When we visited Mostafa, we
were given red-carpet treatment. While we were talking in his office, a woman
moved among us, serving refreshments and making sure that our needs were
met. At some stage, she was referred to as a mother of one of the schoolchildren.
Only later were we informed that she was Mostafa’s wife, a full-time teacher at the
school, and that she had arisen at 5 am to cook in honour of our visit. After
school, she took us to a neighbouring house to interview another woman, and we
were then pressed into going to her own house for a meal. She did not sit down to
eat with us, and when I suggested that she might, Mostafa spoke for her and said
that it was ‘her pleasure’ to serve us. I tried several times to engage her in
conversation, but each time, Mostafa responded for her. He had also arranged for
a photographer to come and take pictures of his children with the visiting
dignitaries (us). Mostafa was included in the photo; the woman/mother/
wife/teacher was not.
Like many other respondents, Mostafa is happy for women to be educated and
undertake paid employment – as long as it does not erode his position within the
traditional patriarchal structure. It seems that there is a general desire among
men/boys for education to lead to employment – but not to empowerment. Both
boys and girls tended to repeat the accepted view that girls’ education makes
them better wives and mothers, and benefits society as a whole. None spoke of
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individual benefits to the girls themselves. Only the mothers envisioned better
things for their daughters. One, herself educated to the level of Higher School
Certificate, said:
It’s changing social status in the family. She’s going to get a better job and
because of that a better life, and better living conditions will follow. In the past
it was only boys, but now it’s also girls, and girls are a huge proportion of the
population and girls and boys together add up, and that’s going to develop
economic and social status much more. Girls are already much more free
because of this programme and they have new aspirations and hopes and they
can probably discern a brighter future.

Another, who had set up her own poultry-farming business and was earning an
enviable US$ 42 a month (significantly more than her husband), said:
I can see the change already, especially a significant change in the neighbourhood,
seeing so many women who were destined to be housewives, but got education
and now have jobs. It’s a revolution. After a girl is educated, why shouldn’t she
work for a better future? Why should anyone have anything negative to say about
it? We all need to be independent. When they won’t feed us, why not let each
individual take care of themselves and make their own decisions?

The ‘they’ in this last sentence presumably applies to patriarchy in general, and
perhaps to her husband in particular.
If girls can get into the position where they can ‘take care of themselves’ (as this
woman suggested), perhaps the need for dowry will disappear. Questionnaire
responses conformed to the generally received wisdom that education reduces
dowry demands (69 per cent agreed, noticeably girls/women). However,
interviews produced more mixed views. Two of the boys were adamant that they
did not expect a dowry if their wife-to-be was educated (‘it’s illegal and it’s bad’).
Two of the fathers also felt that dowry would not be necessary for an educated
girl; another said ‘it depends on individual families’. But one bitterly reported:
I want to marry off my second daughter as soon as possible. She’s just done her
BA at college... I’ve paid all that for her education and now I have to find the
dowry money. It will cost me not less than Tk 30,000–40,000 [about US$ 600].
The only reason I’m having to give the dowry is because she’s educated, and she
needs an educated husband. My eldest daughter wasn’t educated, and I didn’t
have to give a dowry for her.

Class-related issues may come into this. The man is an uneducated vegetable
seller who has made exceptional sacrifices to provide education for his daughter.
Prospective families willing to take on such a girl may ask more in dowry to
compensate for her humble origins.
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Most of the women/mothers felt that dowry demands would be lower for
educated girls, but not all. Two did not, and they presented avoidance of marriage
as a solution to the dowry problem:
Education for girls means you have to get a better-educated husband. That
costs more… Having girls educated might help in the long run. It depends. By
and large, there’s probably a positive effect, because a girl who’s educated can
stand on her own two feet and look after herself. Marriage isn’t as essential for
her as it is for someone who’s not educated.

A second woman said:
I don’t like dowry. I’m not planning it for my daughter and I won’t ask for one
for my son. Parents are still willing to pay for dowry for educated daughters, but
what I’m saying is that girls, they can refuse it themselves, saying: ‘No, we’re
educated, we can work on our own, we can survive on our own. There’s no need
to get us married now.’

Further research is needed, but if it is shown that under certain circumstances
education adds significantly to dowry costs, and the most commonly stated
reason for not sending girls to school is financial, it may be that dowry costs
should be factored into the standard direct costs and opportunity costs of
educating girls. A stipend of about fifty cents a month is not much of a
compensation for having to pay an increased dowry.
The purpose of girls’ education
Girls’ education was variously seen by respondents as a need, a right, or a luxury,
as indicated by the perceived or stated purpose, the main purpose being
‘employment’. It may be that women view education as a way of escaping
tradition, whereas men (who tend to have more ‘domestic’ views of the purpose
of girls’ education) see it as a way of enhancing it. However, interviews with
boys/men indicated that they were coming to terms with the idea of women
working outside the home, although in particular households this may be a
problem. Even if an educated girl/woman is allowed to work outside the home,
paid employment opportunities for girls/women in rural areas are very limited,
and attempts to promote income-generating activities for women have met with
limited success – partly because of women’s restricted access to markets.
Interviews showed that most people linked girls’ education to employment, but
for men/boys the stated reason was almost exclusively financial, whereas
women/girls linked employment to such things as ‘independence’, ‘confidence’,
and ‘worth’. Views of what type of work is suitable for a woman were generally
very stereotyped, based on an extension of women’s traditional domestic roles, as
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
the following ‘public’ interview example shows. A girl was asked what she wanted
to do on leaving school:
Zakera: I want to have a job; I want to work – wherever there’s a job. I’d like to
work in a hospital.

JR: What sort of job exactly?
(Interruption from Iqbal, a high-status man present): A nurse, she wants to be
a nurse.

Zakera: (nods agreement)
She might privately have higher aspirations, but publicly accepts being
channelled into the lower-status option. An FSP promotional text presents a girl
aspiring to be a doctor, but her motivation (‘I want to be a doctor to serve the
sick…’
) conforms to traditional ‘feminine’ attributes (World Bank 1993:3).
The majority of questionnaire respondents felt that secondary education for girls
was good for society. However, although adult questionnaire respondents were
unanimous in saying that education was a right, the children were less sure.
Education and cultural values
The official view – and that presented by FSP – is that education for girls
generally enhances traditional cultural values (in preparing them to be better
wives and mothers), and is for the national good. This is graphically depicted in
a set of posters and calendars to promote girls’ education (FSSAP / FEAP).
Captions on the pictures present girls’ education as contributing to the greater
good; illiteracy is presented as a tragedy, with pictures of smiling school students
and messages such as ‘The sorrowful days are over’ and ‘Call the bird of happiness
into this house of sorrow’.
The posters depict happy studious girls, almost all of whom modestly cover their
bosoms with their schoolbooks. Girls’ uniforms in Bangladesh have a stylised
form of dupatta, a cloth that conceals the shape of the breasts. As if the dupatta
were not enough, the books in the FEAP pictures even more effectively hide
potentially disturbing signs of womanhood – and hence perhaps marriageability?
In addition, all pictures are girls-only, even though most girls have no choice but
to attend co-educational schools. Thus, the pictures show girls’ education as
posing little threat to cultural values. The only apparent cultural deviation is that
many of the girls are making eye-contact with the camera, whereas adolescent
girls are generally expected to keep their eyes modestly lowered. Perhaps because
the books have obscured signs of sexuality, this eye-contact adds to the picture of
youthful innocence: these girls do not yet know about sex; it is safe to let them out.
Also revealing of the ‘official’ view of girls’ education is the logo on FSP
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Educating girls in Bangladesh: watering a neighbour’s tree?
promotional materials. It depicts a girl firmly placed within a home, interacting
with her book rather than with the outside world. There is nothing to threaten
cultural practices here.
However, despite the official ‘public’ view, there is evidence of private misgivings
about girls’ education. This emerged in the questionnaires rather than the
interviews, although only as a minority view. It could be that people are more
willing to be honest in their responses to written questionnaires than in face-to-
face interviews, or simply that the questionnaire sample was large enough to
detect these misgivings.
For the questionnaire statements ‘Educating girls will cause problems for the
husbands’, ‘Adolescent girls should stay at home’, and ‘Secondary education is
wasted on girls’ there were distinct generational differences, with both girls and
boys perhaps surprisingly showing more conservative views than the adults.
The statement ‘Boys need secondary education more than girls’ produced the
widest spread of answers, with a quarter of respondents strongly disagreeing
with the statement; other answers were spread over other categories. This is an
indication that education may be viewed by some as a luxury for girls, but as a
necessity for boys. A total of 16 per cent of respondents strongly agreed with the
statement, the majority of these responses being from boys and male teachers.
And as one father said: ‘I suppose it’s a good idea, girls getting education, but boys’
need for education is bigger than girls’. They will be the breadwinners.’

While the interviews produced little evidence of cultural bias against girls’
education, it is worth noting that where it was evident, it was from boys/men, and
most openly from boys. A couple of examples are given here, the first from the
eldest of a family of three boys:
It’s OK if she’s educated to the same level as me, but I don’t want her [i.e. his
future wife] to work, I want her to stay at home. Most parents feel their
daughters are going to get married when they grow up and they’ll be
housewives, so there’s no need for them to get educated. It’s a waste of money if
they’re going to spend all their time at home. But if they’re educated, then
maybe they can stand on their own feet, and can get jobs.

Joynal seems rather confused. On the one hand he is saying that he wants an
educated wife, but not for her to work; on the other hand, he says that the only
point of education is to get a job. As he has no sisters, this is perhaps an issue that
he has not yet had time or cause to consider fully. Another boy, Mokhles, simply
asked: ‘What’s the point of getting girls educated when they’re going to be married
off as soon as possible?’
He has two brothers and one sister. The sister received no
formal education (‘She was needed to help in the house and stuff like that’), and was
‘married off ’ at 16. Presumably his attitudes towards girls’ education come from
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his family. But he too is confused about what he wants in a wife:
I want my wife to be educated to university level and good at all sorts of
housework, and I would definitely like her to work outside the house to
contribute to the family’s income. But it’s important that I am more educated
than my wife.

Mokhles expects a lot from his wife, but not equality. He was unable to say why
he felt that he should have a higher level of education. Yet another boy felt that
husbands should be older than their wives, thus providing more inbuilt
inequality within the relationship. (The average age-gap between husbands and
wives in Bangladesh is about seven years.)
It is difficult to know what these few muddled thoughts of adolescents mean. But
if they are at all typical, they seem to be in conflict with Sweetser’s 1999 findings
of more conservative attitudes in older men. Or perhaps the boys have simply not
learned to dissemble in the way that the men had? I suspect that the men whom I
interviewed used ‘money’ as a coded argument against educating girls. With
men, the cost of girls’ education came up repeatedly, even though all but one were
financially ‘comfortable’ and had no obvious problems in putting their sons
through school. There is a detailed account (PROMOTE 2000) of a mother and
a (woman) teacher trying to persuade a father to allow his daughter to stay in
school. His sons were in Classes 8 and 10. His daughter was in Class 7, but he was
arranging marriage for her because he was not willing to spend any more on her
education. The argument is not about poverty, but about prejudice. Perhaps
when men mention cost, they mean ‘waste’ (as in ‘watering a neighbour’s tree’),
but they know this is no longer a publicly acceptable view. It could be that men
use money as a convenient excuse, whereas women see it as less of a barrier.
Perhaps the women know that if there is a will to educate daughters, there is
usually a way. Unfortunately, the decision usually depends on the will of the
husband/father.
The impact of expanded access to schooling
This case study revealed widespread approval of the FSP and the increase in girls’
access to education. However, the study produced evidence that the impact of the
expansion was not necessarily always good for girls, or that certain assumptions
about girls’ education were not necessarily true.
With regard to the quality of education, there is some evidence of negative
impact. Many of the schools visited were seriously overcrowded, with classes of
well over 100 students – a direct result of the FSP. In at least one co-educational
but segregated school that I visited, boys’ classes were divided into two sections,
whereas the girls were squeezed into one section. The girls – who have a higher
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Educating girls in Bangladesh: watering a neighbour’s tree?
attendance rate than boys – were working in extremely cramped conditions.
Thus, while the school benefits from the guaranteed fees paid for the girls, the
girls are receiving a lower-quality education than the boys. In addition, the
project is not linked to curricular change processes, so the schooling received has
little relevance to the world outside, no direct links with employment or
employers, and – apart from the stipend itself – no direct challenge to the
gendered inequities that exist in Bangladesh.
Exam results indicate that there is still a significant gap between the achieve-
ments of boys and those of girls. In the 1998 SSC exams, girls in metropolitan
areas achieved better results than boys for the first time. This caused a flurry of
editorials and letters to the newspapers. There are indications that girls’
achievements in ‘good’ rural schools are now almost matching those of boys, but
that in the majority of rural schools not only do girls have a lower pass-rate, but
far fewer girls are entered for the exam. Phase II of the FSP (Mahmud 2003) has
addressed this to some extent by increasing the SSC allowance to cover the full
fee, but as girls are still – for financial and ‘security’ reasons – denied the private
tuition that is so necessary for passing the exam, this will probably not have much
positive impact on results. It could even increase the gap, with more girls being
entered for the exam but not given the academic support that they need in order
to pass it.
To date, one of the criteria for continued receipt of the stipend is obtaining marks
of 45 per cent or above in end-of-year examinations. For non-recipients, a pass
mark of 33 per cent is sufficient to allow promotion to the next grade. This
naturally works against the interest of girls from poorer families, who have less
support in their schooling; but it has also led to many of the ‘irregularities’, with
girls’ grades being adjusted – for a variety of reasons – to ensure the continuation
of stipends and fees. All strands of the FSP are currently considering lowering the
requirement to 33 per cent, the main reason being to reduce the ‘irregularities’
(discussions with project personnel, 2004). While this could be seen as a more
equitable measure for girls, it will probably result in more girls continuing to
Class 10 without much hope of passing the SSC exam. Unless other measures are
taken to support girls in their schooling, this might reinforce the idea that girls
are simply not capable of academic success.
The final point relates to the need for women teachers to encourage girls’
enrolment (Bellew and King 1993, World Bank 1997, Bellamy 2004). Many
education initiatives are designed to increase the number of women teachers,
partly for this reason. However, in the field study conducted in 2000 in which
nine rural schools were visited, the most remote had no woman teacher
(although the Head had made several requests for at least one – to teach Home
Economics), but girls outnumbered boys 725 : 675. All schools visited had high
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girls’ enrolment, regardless of how many women teachers they had. An estimated
55 per cent of rural schools have never had a woman teacher (Sanghbad 2000,
newspaper article citing BANBEIS statistics). While there are many good reasons
for encouraging women to enter the teaching profession, one might question the
belief that the presence of women teachers is needed to encourage enrolment.
Conclusion
Overall, findings were positive, with widespread support for the FSP in particular,
and the expansion of girls’ education in general. The study showed that all groups
saw the main purpose of education as enabling girls to take up paid employment.
In the light of this, it is important to find out what employment opportunities
there are for girls once they leave school. Given stated FSP project objectives of
getting more girls into paid employment, it seems remarkable that there are no
large-scale tracer studies to show how effective the project has been in meeting
those objectives. If it is found that the chances of finding paid employment are too
limited, the programme might lose its impetus and could even suffer a reversal.
There is a strong need for the project to be linked to existing or future initiatives in
employment opportunities and income generation, which must include a realistic
appraisal of such opportunities in an essentially agrarian economy with limited
scope for formal employment – for men or women.
As many of the interviews showed, most of the children in the sample would have
been sent to school whether there was a stipend programme or not; only for a few
was the stipend a determining factor. This finding strengthens arguments for the
introduction of means-testing. Those families in which girls are sent to
secondary school are those that have positive attitudes towards girls’ education;
more research is needed on the attitudes of those families from which girls do not
attend school. In a country like Bangladesh, much non-enrolment can be
attributed to poverty, but it may be that in some cases poverty is used as an excuse
for not sending girls to school – when the real reason is based on traditional
patriarchal values, and parents’ reluctance to ‘water a neighbour’s tree’. Of
particular interest is the effect of education on dowry demands. There is some
evidence to show that increased dowry, linked to increased education, may be an
inhibiting factor for some parents. It would be useful to establish the extent of
this, and it may need to be factored into standard calculations of the cost of
educating girls.
The attitudes of boys/younger men have been neglected in past studies relating to
girls’ education; but, as the patriarchs, husbands, and fathers of the future, their
favourable views are vital for the continued expansion of education for girls.
However, this study indicated that the views of the boys were less favourable than
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Educating girls in Bangladesh: watering a neighbour’s tree?
those of any other sub-group. Further research into the attitudes of this group
could lead to better-targeted awareness programmes, and a long-term objective
of making the husbands and fathers of the future more open to the possibilities
offered by the education of girls.
Although the word ‘empowerment’ has crept into recent FSP documents,
empowerment of women/girls is not an overt part of the programme. In this
study, women/mothers were seen to be the strongest advocates of girls’
education, but their own lack of empowerment restricts their role in decision
making. A re-orientation of project objectives towards strengthening women’s
influence on family decisions would enhance the achievement of other project
objectives (as well as enhancing the lives of the women). Such changes might best
be achieved by linking with other programmes working in such areas as non-
formal education, curriculum reform, and employment for empowerment,
rather than a simple extension of traditional gendered roles. The FSP has a very
strong momentum. By capitalising on that momentum and the widespread
acceptance of the programme, the time seems right to build in modifications that
actively promote the empowerment and equality of girls and women.
The parents in the case study are happy to send their daughters to school while
someone else – in this case, the FSP – is ‘watering the neighbour’s tree’. But the
project is not sustainable in its present form: proof of lasting change will be seen
if the ‘watering’ continues even though funding stops.
Janet Raynor has worked as a teacher and education programme manager in
Indonesia, South Africa, and Bangladesh. She has lived in Bangladesh for five years
and worked on a range of education projects. She is currently completing her doctoral
research at the Institute of Education, University of London.

Note
1
There are a number of names and acronyms for the various forms of the stipend programme.
Here, I use ‘FSP’ as an umbrella term for all current and earlier versions of the programme.
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105

5 The challenge of educating girls in Kenya
Elimu Yetu Coalition
Although Kenya’s education policy does not discriminate against girls and
women, their participation is characterised by manifest disparities. There are
serious regional disparities in primary enrolment, particularly in the Arid and
Semi-Arid Lands, where pastoralism and nomadism predominate. There are also
wide variations in drop-out rates between regions, and in the last ten years
completion rates in Kenya have never exceeded 50 per cent. Low completion
rates, especially for girls, mean that few pupils who do succeed in completing
their schooling manage to penetrate the labour market.
The challenges that confront girls’ education in Kenya include both in-school
and out-of-school factors; they span the economic, cultural, social, regional, and
policy realms. Since 2000, government and non-government agencies have tried
to address these challenges, which are expressed in the interlinked problems of
unequal access, poor rates of retention, and poor quality of education for girls.
Their concerted efforts have in fact reduced the differential in girls’ and boys’
participation in basic education.
This chapter reports the findings of research conducted by the Elimu Yetu
Coalition with the broad aim of reviewing the progress made in girls’ education
in Kenya, primarily in primary education, since the World Education Forum in
Dakar in 2000.1 It aimed to do this by identifying the problems and challenges
facing girls in achieving equal and full participation in basic education, especially
girls from marginal communities, hardship areas, and disadvantaged families/
backgrounds. The research also aimed to assess existing and on-going efforts by
government and NGOs to map who is doing what in the field of girls’ education,
and what has and has not worked. A second set of objectives concerned
documentation of best practice, aiming to provide information to inform Elimu
Yetu’s campaigning and other advocacy work for girls’ education in order to
achieve the Millennium Development Goals on gender parity and gender
equality.
The first section of this chapter considers the factors that hinder girls’
participation in education – both the out-of-school and in-school factors – in the
three areas. It then examines the main interventions and programmes which the
government of Kenya and a range of NGOs have been implementing to increase
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The challenge of educating girls in Kenya
girls’ participation. The third section considers the advocacy work that is being
increasingly carried out to raise awareness of the importance of girls’ education;
it also considers the dynamics of policy and planning for the promotion of girls’
education in Kenya.
The research methodology
The research was conducted in March 2003, using a variety of qualitative
methods which included in-depth interviews with education officials, civil-
society organisations, community leaders, and teachers. Interviews were
conducted with out-of-school children, children newly enrolled through the
government’s Free Primary Education legislation, and girls ‘rescued’ from early
marriages. Focus-group discussions were held with parents, community
members/leaders, and pupils. In addition, a literature review of policy
documents and research reports was carried out.
The interviews were conducted in two predominantly rural Districts – Tharaka
and Kajiado – and in informal settlements in Nairobi. The information gathered
in these areas was supplemented by interviews with NGOs working in a range of
other rural and urban slum contexts. Kajiado and Tharaka are areas where the
population is predominantly pastoralist, and the districts rural.
Kajiado district is one of the 17 districts in the Rift Valley Province. It covers an
area of 21,105 km2. The general topography of the district is characterised by
plains and volcanic hills. The plains are dissected by several valleys. Children have
to walk up and down the ridges in order to reach their schools. Cultural beliefs
among the Maasai, who are the dominant ethnic group in the district, have
affected children’s education, and especially that of girls.
Tharaka district, carved out of the former Tharaka Nithi district in 1998, is one
of the poorest districts in the country. The poverty level stands at 65 per cent in
absolute terms. The average income for most people in the district per month is
Ksh 500 (about US$ 6.50). The main factors that damage girls’ educational
progress in the district are female genital mutilation (FGM) and early marriages.
The informal settlements in Nairobi are characterised by poor living conditions,
insecurity, environmental degradation, congestion, and unemployment. High
heaps of garbage are common, there are few toilet facilities, and health-care
facilities are absent – all of which creates the conditions for environmental
diseases. Even basic schooling is not provided. Kibera, Kariobangi, and Mukuru
are informal slums on the outskirts of Nairobi with high population densities.
The occupants do not have legal tenure of the land, and schools are consequently
not supported by the government.
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Factors influencing girls’ educational prospects
Across all the areas in the study, the out-of-school issues that influence girls’
prospects of education can be classified as social and cultural practices (early
marriage, FGM, and student pregnancies); the low social status of girls and
women; poverty; and girls’ and boys’ unequal labour burdens. In-school factors
include sexual harassment; teachers’ low expectations of girls’ performance;
gender-stereotyped learning materials; high rates of repetition for girls; and
inadequate sanitary facilities.
Out-of-school factors
Early marriage
The practice of early marriage was found to be most pronounced in Kajiado
district, where girls are married at a young age (under 15 years) and often to older,
wealthy men in order to fetch a good dowry, which in this region takes the form of
cattle. (See Box 1.) In Nairobi, however, early marriage was not so pronounced,
although it was found that girls becoming pregnant often dropped out of school
and sought marriage.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is another factor behind girls’ premature
withdrawal from school. FGM is widely practised among the Maasai communities
(and others in Kenya). Once a girl has undergone it, she is considered an adult
woman and ready for marriage. The age at which girls are circumcised has been
declining, and their subsequent ‘adult behaviour’includes sexual activity and a lack
of interest in schooling. Medical complications resulting from FGM and
pregnancy contribute to drop-out rates in some communities.
Low values attributed to girls and their education
In communities where ‘traditional’ practices such as FMG are widespread, both
girls and boys interviewed felt that girls’ education was not valued as highly as
boys’ education. Boys in particular emphasised the fact that girls were often kept
at home, but parents insisted that they valued education for their sons and
daughters equally. In the informal urban settlements, some parents expressed the
belief that educating a girl simply enriches her husband’s family, while educating
a boy is seen as enriching his own family. Interviewees noted that too much
education may prevent a girl from getting a suitable husband, and that educated
girls may cause difficulties in marriage, which could lead to divorce.
The study also made clear the unequal gender division of labour in households.
The work burden on girls at home was repeatedly cited as a negative factor
affecting their education.
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The challenge of educating girls in Kenya
Box 1: Early marriage and schooling
I am from Engaroni Division of Kajiado District. I have three brothers and four sisters. Two
of my siblings, one brother and one sister, have gone to school up to primary level. They
are sponsored by our uncle, who is working in Nairobi.
I attended Engaroni primary school up to Class 2; then my father said he had no money to
educate me. I was circumcised in 1996 and stayed at home the whole year. In 1997 I got
married to an old friend of my father. He was my father’s age; the old man (my husband)
was around 40 years old. He paid dowry in terms of two cows and an unknown amount of
money.
My mother told me of the arrangements, but I was too young to take any action. I was only
9 years old by then. Then one Saturday morning I went to the chief to report the matter.
The chief came to my husband’s home and demanded that I be taken back to my parents’
home, but my in-laws made plans to take me somewhere else to hide from the chief.
When I heard about this plan, I ran away from my marriage and returned to my home. My
father shouted at me and asked whether the chief had become my father. The following
day my husband came and talked with my father. I was then ordered to go back with him,
which I obeyed. After spending one night at my husband’s home, I ran back home. My
father asked me why I was back, but this time he did not send me back to my husband’s
home, because he feared the chief, who had threatened to jail him.
Therefore they allowed me to go back to school, but on condition that I would see my
husband every weekend. I went to school for one week but refused to see my husband
during the weekend, because it was shameful: other children would laugh at me, a married
wife in school.
(14-year-old girl, Class 8, AIC Primary School)
One informant said, ‘If there is a baby to be taken care of, it will be the girl to do so
– at the expense of her education.’
Also, parents keep children – most often girls -
at home on market days. Many girls are expected to take their younger siblings
with them to school – a practice which many teachers do not encourage. ‘But
teachers also realise that forbidding girls to bring siblings increased the girls’ drop-
out rates, so they allowed them’
(interviewee, Aga Khan Foundation Nairobi).
In informal settlements in Nairobi, both boys and girls interviewed reported that
girls were overburdened with housework, which included cooking, cleaning,
washing, and taking care of the young ones. ‘My sister is my mother’s assistant. She
even takes the baby to hospital. She also goes looking for water, where she might have
to queue the whole day’
(pupil, Shadrack Kimalel School, Kibera, Nairobi).
In Kibera, where children attend private and community schools in the informal
settlements, boys engage in hawking wares at weekends in order to earn money
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
for school fees. They also seek casual labour during the holidays. Girls often work
in saloons, and some resort to providing sex in exchange for money. Most girls
who were interviewed lacked money to buy sanitary wear and consequently
stayed away from school during their menstrual periods. Pornographic movies
in the neighbourhood exposed girls to negative gender images. Drunkenness and
drug abuse are daily activities in these settlements, and in Kibera drugs and beer
are sold in the kiosks. Girls are exposed to this hostile environment on their way
to and from school.
The number of HIV/AIDS orphans in Kenya is projected to be around 1.5
million in 2005 (MoH/NACC 2002). In the three areas surveyed for the study,
informal settlements in Nairobi were hardest hit by the impact of HIV/AIDS.
Here, many girls have assumed the extra responsibility of looking after their
siblings, and child-headed families are on the increase. However, in Kajiado and
Tharaka, HIV/AIDS cases are minimal. Both the government officials and
teachers interviewed in these districts said they knew of few pupils who had
dropped out of school in response to the impact of HIV/AIDS on their lives.
The case described in Box 2 illustrates effects of poverty on girls’ education.
Safety and security factors also play a key role in keeping girls out of school. Long
Box 2: Dropping out of school
I was born in 1989, and my mother is single. I was enrolled in Class 1 in 1995 in Majengo
primary school [a private school], but my mother had a lot of problems, like raising money
for food and rent. We were occasionally locked out by the landlord for not paying rent on
time. So we moved to Mukuru informal settlement, and my mother managed to pay rent for
some time. Initially, I found it difficult to cope, but later adjusted to the cramped and squalid
living conditions in Mukuru.
When I was in Class 3, my mother had a baby and life became difficult. I began going to
school without lunch, although our neighbour, called Baba Amos, would bring some food
for us and give my mother some money. I learned later that he was my sister’s father, and
we eventually moved in with him.
My mother tried doing some business and she would travel up-country to buy cereals for
sale. But one day in 1999 I returned home from school to learn that she had died in a road
accident. There was no money for the funeral, and I have never seen her grave.
We still live with Baba Amos in one room. I wash clothes in people’s homes to provide for my
sister and I help Baba to sell busaa. I dropped out of school because there was no money for
my fees, but recently I got a sponsor for my sister, so that she can go to school. When Free
Primary Education was introduced, I wanted to go back to school, but Baba Amos became
very angry. I don’t think he has ever been to school, though he knows how to count money.
(Out-of-school girl, 14 years old, Mukuru Slum, Nairobi)
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The challenge of educating girls in Kenya
distances to schools from home expose girls to physical and sexual dangers and
lead to drop-out. Distances are long in the Kajiado region (16 km–40 km), while
in the urban areas commuting to school on public transport poses dangers to
girls from harassment by drunks (Chege 1995).
Teenage pregnancy, a direct result of the security and poverty issues outlined
above, strongly affects girls’ ability to participate in education. According to
the Kenya Domestic Household Survey, adolescent mothers constitute more
than half (55 per cent) of adolescent girls. Although the Kenyan government
has a policy of allowing the re-entry of girls to schools after giving birth, many
girls and parents are not aware of it, and those who do return suffer from
stigmatisation, ridicule, and abuse from both teachers and other pupils.
However, it is the lack of child-care facilities that seems the main factor that keeps
girls at home.
In-school factors
A clear finding to emerge from the study was that both teachers and male pupils
harass girls. Teachers seek sexual favours from girls and are sometimes in
competition with male pupils. Teachers were said to use girls to run errands, fetch
water and cook for them.
Lack of female teachers emerged as a key in-school factor affecting girls’
education. In Tharaka, a semi-arid district, female teachers are rare. Girls
expressed the need for female teachers in schools so that they could confide in
them and see them as role models. Most girls refused to discuss their problems
with male teachers in the absence of female teachers. In Muslim communities,
lack of single-sex schools may constitute a barrier to female education.
Late enrolment is another factor affecting girls’ drop-out. Teachers force children
who do not perform well to repeat a year, a practice which takes a higher toll on girls
than boys because it widens the disparity between age and grade. Girls are exposed
to ridicule, early sex, pregnancy, and eventual drop-out before completion.
Lack of guidance and counselling in schools accelerates the rate at which girls
drop out. In interviews with pupils, girls revealed that they had not been
prepared by either parents or teachers to deal with changes in their bodies. Some
reported having been taught about menstruation by their home-science teacher,
but this subject has now been removed from the syllabus.
Some teachers interviewed had a low opinion of girls’ performance. They
believed that science and technical subjects should be left for boys. Student
interviewees reported that such teachers undermined and discouraged girls from
learning.
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In all three areas – Tharaka, Kajiado, and Nairobi – pupils reported having
insufficient learning materials. In Tharaka, each textbook was shared between as
many as five pupils. The situation was similar in Kajiado and Nairobi. In City
Council schools in Nairobi, pupils are required to buy a desk on admission, and
there are up to 115 pupils in each class. The situation was reported to be bad also
in those non-State schools which had no NGO or church sponsorship. On top of
paying 500 Kshs. a month, students have to provide their own books, pencils,
uniform, and bags – despite the existence of the government’s Free Primary
Education programme.
Whereas some schools have adequate sanitary facilities, some are in very poor
condition. In Tharaka, water was lacking in most of the schools. The pit latrines
were almost full and in very poor condition, thus posing a danger to the pupils.
In Kibera, some of the girls’ toilets had no doors. The facilities were dirty and
faced the front of the school. Girls felt embarrassed to use these toilets.
The study found drug and alcohol abuse to be a major problem in urban areas
such as Nairobi. In Kibera both boys and girls were said to be involved in drug
and alcohol abuse, and some girls reportedly assist their mothers in selling beer.
Interventions in girls’ education
Although educational opportunities have indeed expanded for all children in
Kenya, girls in marginal and urban poor areas still face many obstacles to
education. Government and civil-society organisations recognise the need for
gender equality and have responded in a range of different ways. The next section
draws on the research data to present some of the key responses from
government in terms of policy development and new legislation. It goes on to
describe some of the practical responses from NGOs working with small-scale
innovative projects to increase the participation of girls in education in Kenya.
Government strategies
The Ominde report (1964), produced by a commission that was set up
immediately following independence, and all other education reports, such as
Gachathi report (1976), Mackay report (1981), Kamunge report (1988), Master
Plan on Education and Training (1998), and the Koech report (2000), all made
reference to the need to accelerate improvements in the education of girls.2 The
Koech report, which proposed a new structure to the education system but was
later shelved, also recognised the efforts already made by the government to
improve girls’ education, including affirmative action in the expansion of
facilities to enable girls to study science and technical subjects, and a policy of
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The challenge of educating girls in Kenya
allowing girls who drop out due to pregnancy to continue with education. These
and other factors have yielded benefits, demonstrated by the increase of girls’
participation in schooling (Republic of Kenya 2002).
Kenya’s commitment to redressing problems concerning girls’ education is
evidenced through participation in international forums on gender and girls’
education. The country is a signatory to nearly all international conventions on
education and has ratified several international instruments relating to gender
equality, thus joining the global community’s commitment to redressing
imbalances related to gender, learning, and underdevelopment. Progress has
been made towards institutionalisation of the strategies but, as the previous
section illustrates, there are still gaps to be closed and challenges to be met in
terms of translating the policies into good practice.
Local efforts and strategies by the Kenya government to meet the goal of
Education For All (EFA) at the primary level include the following.

Operating multi-shift systems to ease congestion.

Permitting a flexible timetable in areas where school competes with the
economic and social activities of the community.

Establishing a disaggregated system of unit costs for essential
teaching/learning and other activities, as when the government introduced
Free Primary Education (FPE), under which funds were allocated to specific
school activities.

Regularly monitoring and auditing primary-school performance.

Operating re-entry policies for girls who leave school due to pregnancies,
child labour, and other factors.

Enacting (in 2001) the Children’s Act, which recognises that education is the
basic human right of every child. The Act combines into one law several
pieces of legislation affecting children, including the Children and Young
Persons Act, the Guardianship of Infants Act, and the Adoption Act. There is
now a Children’s Court, which is subordinate to the High Court of Kenya,
with a presiding magistrate.
In January 2003 the newly elected government of Kenya introduced Free Primary
Education and appointed the FPE Task Force to assist with the development of
appropriate responses for implementing FPE. Although FPE opened doors to
both boys and girls, regional disparities and cultural factors still affect girls’
access, retention, and outcomes in marginal communities.
At the time when this research was conducted in 2003, the Kenyan government
had a range of policies to promote girls’ education, but they were not brought
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together to form one piece of legislation or plan. They are scattered across policy
documents, such as the reports of different commissions and committees on
education, development plans, and sessional papers. The Ministry of Education
was at that time in the process of developing a Gender Education Policy Paper
with aims that included the elimination of gender disparities in access, transition,
retention, and performance in education. It includes measures designed to
achieve the following.

Address specific problems of access, retention, transition, and performance
of the boy and girl child in the education system.

Promote and support alternative systems of basic education, in
collaboration with other stakeholders.

Improve participation of children with disability, especially the girl child, in
both special and vocational training.

Ensure that literacy and post-literacy materials are gender-responsive and
easily available to all learners (MOEST, draft 2003).
Some of the strategies to achieve these aims have already been put into action.
For example, the government introduced a policy of expanding existing facilities
in order to take care of the needs of disabled children; some of the schools visited
in the course of the research had a unit for children with special needs. Units
catering for children with hearing impairments or physical disabilities greatly
improve the opportunities for girls, as it is mainly the girl child that suffers
neglect. But the piecemeal nature of the changes and lack of a coherent legislative
framework mean that Kenya has missed part of the MDG 3 target (eliminate
gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005).
There is an on-going review of the Education Act to provide an adequate legal
framework to improve management, co-ordination, and quality control in
education and consolidation of the national action plan on EFA which will
identify strategies for improving girls’ education over the next ten years. There
are also budget reviews and cost analysis, including tracking expenditure
patterns in the education sector with a view to making the national budget
gender-fair, and establishing an allocation for girls. However, these actions are
being undertaken at a very slow pace, and at the time of going to press they are
still awaiting finalisation. They are therefore key components of the Elimu Yetu
Campaign for 2005 (see the following section).
NGO initiatives
This section presents some of the activities being undertaken by the NGO sector
to improve education for girls.
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The challenge of educating girls in Kenya
Girls’ re-entry programmes
In the recent past, the government introduced the Re-Entry Programme, which
allows girls who have given birth to be re-admitted into schools. The Lutheran
World Federation (LWF) established a project, funded by UNHCR, to cater for
girls who had dropped out of the mainstream primary-education system and
wished to return to school. The Western Kenya Girl Child Network chapter has
helped teenage mothers to return to formal education after delivery.
Box 3: Re-entering primary school after giving birth
We are about 20 children in my family. My father has four wives, and my mother is the last
wife. I am the fifth born in my mother’s family of seven children. We are three daughters
and four sons. They have all been to school. My elder siblings are educated up to Form 4,
although one of my sisters, the one that I come after, only went up to Class 8.
I joined this school in 1991 in Nursery. Last year when I was in Standard 7, I got pregnant. I
took a break in the month of October 2002 to go and give birth. I delivered a baby girl in
January this year and then resumed school in May. I am currently in Class 8, but I will not
sit for examinations, because I have missed many lessons.
Although it was a young single man who impregnated me, I did not want to get married to
him and so I opted to come back to school. My parents suggested that I come back to
school too, and I agreed. I am happy with my classmates and teachers, who treat me with
respect. My mother takes care of the baby as I come to school. But I go home to
breastfeed during lunchtime and after school. The baby does not affect my schooling at all.
At home I have time to do my homework.
I am interested in learning even up to secondary level and beyond, but my parents cannot
afford school fees for higher learning; that is why one of my sisters is at home. She helps
Mother to take care of the baby.
(Girl, 16 years old, Moipei Primary School, Class 8 )
Financing initiatives to support girls in education
It emerged from the study that poverty was one of the strongest factors affecting
girls’ education. To address the poverty issue, some civil-society organisations –
for instance, the Basic Education Fund (BEF) – have encouraged school-
management committees to be involved in income-generating activities. The
Kenyan chapter of the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWEK),
which partners BEF in Mbeere and Meru districts, provides seed money (initial
financial assistance) to school managers, and the money is used to support
gender-sensitisation clubs. Club members are encouraged to establish income-
generating activities to sustain them. The money generated from the activities is
used for meeting club needs. Club members are engaged in creative arts as a form
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of communicating about the rights of the girl child and the need to educate girls.
They also generate income from such performances.
Another anti-poverty strategy is the financing of small businesses, a process
funded by BEF and Oxfam GB to empower poor parents economically and give
them an economic base from which they can pay for the education of girls.
Oxfam GB works in partnership with Wema Center in Mombasa and Pendekezo
Letu to provide educational and other basic needs for girls retrieved from the
streets. Parents of these girls are given financial support for a period of three years
to start income-generating activities.
In Kajiado, which is predominantly a pastoral area, chiefs try to reduce poverty
by encouraging the community to supplement animal supervision with farming,
thus earning extra money which can then be used for food and school fees for
children. Dupoto E Maa is also working in this district to address the problem of
poverty by encouraging head-teachers to register an association for lobbying the
Ministry of Education. They are encouraged to act collectively to present the
problems facing children in their schools, such as the need for school meals and
lower fees for boarding schools.
ActionAid Kenya (AAK) established school resource bases in which levy-saving
strategies are set up. Before the introduction of FPE, this fund helped poor
households to pay school levies. But since the establishment of the new FPE
programme, the fund is used to supply other school needs not met by the
government. Under this project, AAK and the community each raise half the
necessary funds; schools draw on the overall fund and develop budgets for
purchasing teaching and learning materials and paying watchmen’s salaries. The
aim of the project is to encourage the schooling of girls from poor households.
The project also encourages the spirit of working together.
In-school feeding programmes
A further intervention is the introduction of in-school feeding programmes. The
Arid and Semi-Arid Areas have a particular problem with girls’ access to
schooling, because of the long distances between villages and schools. One of the
primary reasons why girls in this position are not allowed to go to school is that
they cannot afford to go back home for lunch. Special interventions have been
implemented in some of these areas to improve enrolment, including an in-
school feeding scheme in Kajiado, funded by the World Food Programme.
However, at the time of writing this project was due to end in a few months, and
already some of the schools visited under the study were no longer receiving
food. In Kibera slum, Oxfam GB has a feeding programme for girls from poor
backgrounds. In both situations, girls are prioritised because they are most likely
to be withdrawn from school in cases of long distances and poverty.
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The challenge of educating girls in Kenya
Bursaries and sponsorship
Sponsorship is used as another intervention in girls’ education. The GCN (Girl
Child Network – a network bringing together all actors on girls’ education in the
country) and Christian Children Fund (CCF) sponsor girls from poor back-
grounds. With the introduction of FPE, GCN turned its attention to sponsoring
girls in secondary schools, while the CCF now buys uniforms, books, and other
school needs for children from needy backgrounds. In an interview with pupils
from Moipei and Oloosuyan primary schools in Kajiado, it was revealed that
some of the participants were beneficiaries of the CCF.
The Young Muslim Association gives preference to girls in its bursary awards,
while Oxfam GB supports a partner in Wajir which provides uniforms for school
girls and builds separate toilets for girls in schools. Pupils of Mashimoni Squatters
Primary School in Kibera reported that they receive clothes, uniforms, bags, and
food from the Calvary Evangelistic group. This group offers breakfast, lunch, and
supper to orphans. All sponsored children have their meals in the school.
Sinaga Center in Nairobi rescues children employed as domestic workers and
sponsors bright pupils in the ABC (basic literacy) class to benefit from formal
education in boarding schools. The centre has a withdrawal and counselling
programme whereby girls are withdrawn from work as house girls. After
counselling they are taught basic literacy before they are sponsored to join formal
schooling. The Education Officer in Tharaka confirmed that the government has
established bursary funds in the district in order to reduce the rates at which girls
from poor backgrounds drop out of school.
Girls’ clubs
The Girls’ Education Movement (GEM) is an intervention implemented by
Women Educational Researchers of Kenya (WERK) in order to improve the
participation of girls in schooling. It is a movement led by young people, aiming
to transform negative attitudes towards girls’ education in Africa. A participatory
movement, it is designed to give children and young girls maximum opportunity
to develop and express their own ideas without adult interference. GEM emerged
from a meeting of professionals in Kampala in 2000. WERK is working towards
a partnership with UNHCR which will establish GEM clubs in primary schools
and refugee camps. Three young Kenyan girls, who are members of WERK,
participated in the workshop in Uganda. During this workshop they undertook
a training course, and as a result they are training other girls in the country.
Flexible models of schooling
In promoting girls’ education, ActionAid Kenya (AAK) arrived at an alternative
approach to education, known as non-formal education (NFE), in Samburu,
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which is predominantly a pastoralist region. AAK conducts evening and after-
work classes. Initially, the project targeted older children of both sexes, but it
emerged that 65 per cent of the pupils were girls of school-going age who were
left at home to milk and to take care of the weaker animals during times of
drought, while boys took animals far from home in search of pasture.
In collaboration with the government, AAK has assisted in the establishment of
out-of-school centres in Samburu next to the manyattas (the traditional houses
of the Samburu). The Ministry of Education runs these centres, enrolling
disadvantaged girls. Most teachers in these centres are formal professionals,
employed by the government. They are motivated by incentives such as training
courses in multi-grade teaching and exposure visits to other regions of Kenya.
The Mobile School Project in North Eastern province is another example of a
successful intervention. The government has worked jointly with Oxfam GB to
support mobile schools for the children of nomadic pastoralists in the province.
Oxfam GB supports the Nomadic Primary Health Care and Mobile School in
Wajir.
Head-teachers of schools participating in the research concurred that they
engaged in several activities within their schools to promote girls’ education.
They include the following.

Discouraging FGM and early marriage for girls.

Inviting role models into school to address girls.

Holding seminars with parents on girls’ education.

Providing guidance and counselling to girls.

Giving awards to girls who perform well, to promote their morale and to
encourage others.
Involving girls in income-generating clubs, such as the 4K clubs, with the aim of
enabling them to earn money to meet their needs.
Promoting positive images of girls
Using positive role models has also proved an effective intervention to encourage
out-of-school girls to attend school. The Girl Child Network operating in Coast
Province, Kwale district, has introduced a programme similar to one run by the
IIEP (Integrated Islamic Education Programme), whereby mentors act as role
models to girls in schools. However, unlike the Aga Khan Foundation, which uses
government teachers as mentors, GCN identifies role models through the
provincial and district education officers. Formation of gender-sensitisation
clubs in schools has further improved girls’ participation in schooling. The Child
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The challenge of educating girls in Kenya
Welfare Society of Kenya and the Basic Education Fund, together with pupils in
AIC girls’ boarding school in Kajiado, also practise this approach. The clubs play
a key role in creating awareness of the rights of the girl child. Some clubs,
especially those sponsored by the Basic Education Fund in Mbeere, have enabled
orphaned children – both boys and girls – to acquire education, by paying for
their school needs. Through the Mbeere Club, members sensitise parents about
the importance of girls’ education.
Centres of excellence
Four chapters of FAWE (Forum for African Women Educationalists) in Kenya,
Rwanda, Tanzania, and Senegal have been involved in another type of
intervention: the establishment of centres of excellence. These model schools are
designed to provide an environment conducive to high-quality learning and
teaching. The schools demonstrate how accumulated information, knowledge,
and experience can be used to formulate, implement, and monitor policies and
practices that promote girls’ education (FAWE News, April–June 2001).
Several Centres of Excellence have been established in Kajiado District, where
parents, especially fathers, commonly marry off young girls to older men. All the
civil-society organisations, government officials, community members, and
leaders who participated in the Elimu Yetu study confided that they were engaged
in rescuing girls from early marriages. The district has special schools which are
used as ‘rescue’ centres, or centres of excellence. The first school to be used as a
rescue centre has saved many girls from early marriage and at the time of writing
has approximately 60 rescue cases. The schools emphasise holistic, high-quality
education, achieved through use of regular in-service training of teachers. The
teachers are trained in gender sensitivity, with emphasis on the creation of girl-
friendly teaching environments, the use of counselling skills, and the up-dating
of teaching methods. The school committee is trained in management skills, and
the girls are trained to understand their rights. The school provides a girl-
friendly teaching and learning environment, which produces girls who are
empowered and full of confidence in themselves. FAWE has identified a gap
between rescued girls and their parents and has now started reconciling girls with
their parents, through consultations between chiefs and parents. Some girls now
feel able to approach chiefs for assistance. In a focus-group discussion, three
chiefs in Kajiado District commented: ‘On the problem of early/forced marriages,
we have one organisation that helps us: FAWE. When we hear of a girl getting
married off, we retrieve her and enrol her at AIC Girls, a FAWE-sponsored school.’

FAWE-Kenya takes a holistic approach to enhancing girls’ education. Right from
the inception of a project, it involves the community in all activities.
Communities act as agents and are involved throughout the life of the project,
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providing locally available materials. FAWE uses research findings to identify
areas of intervention. This research may be an initiative of its own, or it may be
conducted by other organisations. After identifying the problem, FAWE
researchers study it and propose suitable interventions. For example, the centres
of excellence alluded to above were introduced as a result of the finding that girls
are forced into marriage in exchange for cows. In response, rescue centres for
such girls, such as AIC Girls’ School which is described above, were established.
Teaching methodologies
The Aga Khan Foundation has initiated a programme in public schools that
targets the improvement of teaching methodologies in primary schools. The
programme focuses on re-adjusting methodologies to be gender-sensitive. Each
teacher in these schools is allocated to a mentor. The Foundation has a technical
team of five qualified persons who provide mentoring to the teachers and address
monitoring, evaluation, documentation, and mobilisation. The mobilisation
mentor deals with issues pertaining to school management. The Aga Khan
Foundation has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Teachers’
Service Commission to train their teachers as mentors. The training takes place
at the Shanzu Teachers’ College in Mombasa during school holidays.
Following the introduction of FPE, the Aga Khan Foundation had to refocus its
approach to the school-improvement programme. The numbers of children in
school rose and rose, yet teachers were not trained to deal with the large numbers,
differing levels of ability, and widely varying ages of the pupils admitted during
the introduction of FPE. As a consequence, schools started to lose some enrolled
children: In one school, we lost 60 pupils within a month as the older pupils failed
to cope with ridicule from younger ones. The most affected were big girls’
(interviewee, Aga Khan Foundation, Nairobi).
The Aga Khan Foundation initiates programmes as a response to community
requests. For example, the organisation introduced the IIEP to the Muslim
community in Kwale District, aiming to integrate academic learning with the
values of the community. Prior to this, community members took their children
to the mosque and madrassa classes, where education was limited to reciting the
Quran. Girls in this community often married as young as ten years of age. On
realising this, the Aga Khan Foundation devised an integrated curriculum,
combining both Islamic and secular teachings, as a way of encouraging parents
to delay their daughters’ marriages and send their girls to school, since their
religion was now part of the curriculum. To promote the retention and transition
of girls to secondary level in schools in this area (Kwale), the Aga Khan
Foundation trained most of the girls as teachers after primary or secondary
schooling.
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The challenge of educating girls in Kenya
Advocacy and local sensitisation
Sensitisation on the rights of girls
Both the government and civil-society organisations are engaged in advocacy and
sensitisation work to improve girls’ access and retention. Several advocacy
activities mounted by diverse interest groups can be singled out in this regard. For
example, ActionAid Kenya (AAK) organises training on the Children’s Act and
harmful practices. In Narok District, AAK focuses its training on early marriages,
to counter the cultural practice of marrying off young girls immediately after
circumcision. During these training courses, local chiefs are mandated with
responsibility for safeguarding the interests of the girl child. Surprisingly, most
parents are not aware of children’s rights: The communities were shocked to hear
that they could go to jail for marrying off their daughters’
(interviewee, AAK
Nairobi).
In Kajiado, Dupoto E Maa collaborates with the Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK)
and the provincial administration to fight for the rights of the children. Forums
are organised to address the education of the girl child in the rural areas. Such
forums enlighten girls about their rights. As a result, many girls have rejected
forced marriages and have been enrolled in schools. Box 4 typifies the testimony
of girls saved from early/forced marriages by the provincial administration.
Box 4: Escape from forced marriage
It was in the year 2000 and I was 11 years old when a friend of my grandfather came to him,
wanting to be given a girl. Grandfather notified my father about the request, and my father
did not say a word. Among the Maasai, first-born children belong to the grandparents, and
that is why my father did not object to he request. My grandfather then arranged to ‘give me
away’. My wedding was to be on Saturday, but, two days before, a friend of mine from
school advised me to refuse the marriage. Then on the Thursday before the wedding I
asked for permission to visit my maternal grandmother. I used the chance to come to school
in Kajiado, where I was advised to go to the District Commissioner’s office to report the
case. The DC wrote down my story and took me back to school.
(Girl, 16 years old, AIC Kajiado Primary School)
The Basic Education Fund supports women’s lobby groups, composed of
professionals, throughout Kajiado district. The lobby groups campaign against
retrogressive cultural practices such as FGM and early marriage. Government
officials who are not from the Maasai community support this strategy. They
argue that communities are more likely to listen to their own people. Lobbying has
led to changes in the circumcision calendar. Circumcision used to be conducted at
any time of the year, but after sensitisation the ceremony is now performed during
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the December school holidays, which are long enough for wounds to heal. It is
culturally accepted practice for the female circumcision term to last three months,
but this has been reduced to one month, to enable girls to go back to school.
However, members of the lobby groups revealed that sensitisation in some regions
of the district requires the involvement of men, since they are the decision makers
within society. Professional women are sometimes dismissed as ‘educated or town
women’ who do not uphold traditional culture.
Ntanira Na Mugambo, meaning ‘circumcise with a word of mouth’, is a
community-based organisation (CBO) operating in Tharaka District. It was
started in 1996 by a group of women on realising that FGM was widespread in the
community and was the cause of early marriages and girls’ high rates of school
drop-out. The CBO focused on raising awareness about FGM by means of an
adapted curriculum which covers harmful traditional practices, personal hygiene,
boy/men/girl relationships, self-esteem, drug abuse, decision making, peer
pressure, reproductive health, sexually transmitted infections, and HIV/AIDS.
Through this programme many girls have been saved from FGM.
Organisation of forums at which girls can discuss their experiences has also been
used as a strategy to improve their schooling. ActionAid Kenya organised a series
of meetings in Western Kenya in 2003, at which girls had an opportunity to
express their problems, among which were sexual harassment, rape and
molestation, physical punishment in schools, domestic chores at home, and the
requirement to work for teachers. The girls wrote letters to their Members of
Parliament and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, appealing
for changes to the gender policy. Currently, ActionAid Kenya is planning
appropriate strategies to counter the problems mentioned.
Mainstreaming gender across organisations
Civil-society organisations are working to ensure that their own practices are
gender-sensitive. BEF led the development of a CARE Kenya gender-relations
manual, used by managers, and a manual on gender equality in education for
partners.
Advocacy for the implementation of national legislation
Although legislation exists which recognises the rights and responsibilities of
government and schools, it is quite another issue to have these recognised and
enforced. Many strong cultural and social norms perpetuate the practice of early
marriage, and girls may not know of the legislation – or, even if they do, they may
not be in a position to demand that their rights be recognised. NGOs and CBOs
are working at the local and national levels to raise awareness and break down the
barriers that hinder girls from achieving their right to an education.
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The challenge of educating girls in Kenya
The Women Educational Researchers of Kenya (WERK) work to bridge the gap
between the re-entry policy for girl mothers and the continued stigma of being a
school-age mother and securing child care. ANPPCAN has been involved in
collective lobbying for girls’ education with specific networks like GCN, and has
promoted the importance of education of the girl child in the media. It was also
involved in lobbying for the passing of the Children’s Bill, when members
sensitised parliamentarians on the importance of that legislation.
One of FAWE’s strategic objectives is to influence policy formulation by working
closely with the Ministry of Education. The government has also taken
affirmative action on bursary allocation in response to FAWE’s lobbying. Two
million Kenyan shillings have been allocated for girls in every province, and this
money is channelled through FAWEK. Another affirmative action under
consideration by the government, thanks to FAWE’s lobbying, is the admission of
girls to university education: it is proposed that they should be accepted with
slightly lower qualifications than boys.
The Kibera Slum Education Programme (KISEP), an umbrella group of three
community-based organisations supported by Oxfam GB, has been lobbying
and campaigning for government recognition of the Kibera informal settlement
and the inhabitants’ rights to education.
This section has provided an overview of some of the main initiatives on girls’
education that have been taking place in Kenya. The challenges, however, are
great, and government needs to push forward with its review of the Education
Act and its policy paper for Gender and Education. The NGO sector, under the
umbrella of the Elimu Yetu Coalition, is becoming a well co-ordinated and
effective lobbying force to hold the government accountable to its commitments
to EFA and the MDGs, as the next section illustrates.
Campaigning to influence policies and plans
The Elimu Yetu Coalition (EYC) was formed in 1999 as part of the efforts to make the
Jomtien Declaration real and relevant for Kenyans, and to take part in related global
campaigns for the attainment of good-quality basic education for all. EYC is a
coalition of some 40 civil-society organisations, professional groupings, educa-
tion/research institutions, and other practitioners in the education sector. The
coalition is inspired by a vision of a literate society which values and practises
democratic ideals and promotes cohesion in diversity. Its way of working towards
achieving this vision is through campaigning for an education that is sustainable and
responsive to the developmental and material needs of Kenyans. EYC believes that its
mission is to influence and facilitate policy change and promote best practices that
will ensure quality basic education for all that is free, relevant, and compulsory.
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Box 5: Elimu Yetu’s approach to campaigning and advocacy

Engaging in critical awareness-raising to highlight problems facing the Kenyan
education sector, to convince public opinion of the importance of education.

Lobbying and working closely with the government, policy makers, development
partners, and other educational institutions in various areas of education, to fulfil the
commitment to provide basic education for all by 2015.

Building a strong constituency, by strengthening the advocacy capacities of members
and other key actors in education, with very clear goals and targets, to influence policy
shift towards the attainment of EFA goals.

Campaigning/advocating for, and where possible facilitating access to, education by
special-interest groups such as girls and women, children and people with disabilities,
and young people in difficult circumstances, especially those from
marginal/disadvantaged communities.

Championing the cause of education from a rights-based perspective, and mobilising
resources to ensure its accessibility to all citizens in the most affordable way.

Working with and through established networks and forums to achieve targeted goals
in education.

Conducting research on various aspects of education, with a view to providing
empirical data to inform policy formulation and decision making.
The study on which this chapter is based is an example of the research that EYC
has commissioned for the purpose of advocacy and lobbying. The research
report was launched in 2003 by the Ministry of Education Science and Training
(MOEST) and disseminated broadly to other stakeholders. It has provided
background information to enable EYC to be an active member of the on-going
Gender Education Policy Document review, and its findings are influencing the
content of the policy. EYC is now working to establish key groups in Parliament,
such as the ‘Women Parliamentarians’ Forum’, which will debate and utilise this
and other research to ensure that the Gender Education Policy Document
achieves parliamentary approval and passes into law.
The EYC is also closely networked with key alliances and actors in Africa and
elsewhere who are working for EFA and gender equality. EYC is a key contact and
partner of ANCEFA (the African National Network for EFA) in Kenya, and the
organisations are working jointly on a ‘Global Call For Action Against Poverty’.
EYC is also an active member of the Global Campaign for Education, with which
it works on global issues relating to the attainment of EFA goals. A key cam
paigning opportunity for the EYC is its engagement with the Global Week of
Action, which in 2005 adopted a strong focus on the importance of girls’
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The challenge of educating girls in Kenya
education and campaigned for commitments from the government of Kenya to
work towards gender parity and gender equality. Free Primary Education (FPE)
was a big step forward for Kenya, but it is only a first step and much remains to be
done to make free, good-quality education a reality for all boys and girls. EYC is
one of the key partners of the Commonwealth Education Fund (CEF), a UK
government fund which supports the strengthening of national coalitions, such
as EYC, to build the capacity of its member organisations to engage with
government on policy and practice change, and especially to work with
government to achieve the MDGs, beginning with MDG 3.
Conclusion
The research that the Elimu Yetu Coalition commissioned illustrates how, despite
a range of interventions and policy changes aimed at improving the education of
girls, there are still many obstacles to further progress. It also demonstrates that
these challenges need to be confronted and tackled by a wide range of
stakeholders: government at all levels, civil society and its organisations, and the
private sector. The research illustrates the need for persistent attention not only to
the development of a national gender policy, but also to an action plan for its
implementation. The Kenyan government has not yet submitted the long-awaited
Gender Education Policy to Parliament, which is only a first step towards ensuring
positive changes in girls’ lives and girls’ experience of education. This process
needs to take place within the wider context of the review of the Education Act
and the effective implementation of the provisions of the Children’s Act, so that
gender equality and girls’ education are mainstreamed through these wider
processes. Even though the government introduced Free Primary Education in
early 2003, it is clear that affirmative action is needed to ensure that girls are not
deterred from schooling by hidden costs and opportunity costs, and to ensure that
the implementation of initiatives for girls’ education is adequately budgeted, and
that funding is available to ensure training in management and teaching to
encourage more women into teaching. EYC and civil society have an important
role to play in the development of strong strategies to ensure the implementation
of such important education legislation. In 2004 a joint education survey was
carried out by all actors in education – donors, civil-society organisations such as
EYC, and the Ministry of Education, MOEST – to enrich the sector-wide
approach and status of FPE in 2004. EYC is lobbying hard for the enactment of the
Gender Education Policy.
Alongside these policy measures, the research indicates that government and
civil society have much work to do together to continue to raise the awareness at
community and local levels of the importance of education for girls, and for the
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
imposition of harsher penalties for sexual abuse and harassment. The legislation
on re-entry for girls who have dropped out of school because of pregnancy needs
to be reinforced, and innovative programmes addressing the threat posed by
HIV/AIDS must be supported.
For girls to attend school and achieve well in school, there is a need for adequate
and appropriate physical facilities, and gender-sensitive learning materials and
teaching practices. This chapter has documented some examples of good
practice that are already being implemented by government and civil society.
Good practices need to be documented and replicated in other areas, so that
education is gender-equitable throughout the country and in all aspects of the
system, rather than in patches.
The Elimu Yetu Coalition will continue to work with government at national,
provincial, and local levels and to build a strong network of civil-society
organisations to meet the challenge of educating girls in Kenya. Community
sensitisation on cultural beliefs and practices will be critical in ensuring that
parents send girls to school. There is a pressing need for female role models and
representation at policy-making and managerial levels. Women in power need to
take the bull by the horns and demand a strategy from the government that will
ensure that every girl in Kenya gets a good-quality education.
Elimu Yetu Coalition, formed in 1999, comprises approximately 40 civil-society
organisations, professional groupings, education/research institutions, and other
practitioners in the education sector in Kenya. It is dedicated to the vision of a literate
society that values and practises democratic ideals and promotes cohesion in
diversity. The Coalition proposes to pursue a rights-based campaign towards
achievement of Education For All, with a major emphasis on universal primary
education that is free, relevant, and compulsory.

Notes
1
Elimu Yetu Coalition (2003) ‘Gender and Education: The Challenge of Educating Girls in
Kenya’, Elimu Yetu Coalition and Oxfam GB.
2
www2.unesco.org/wef/countryreports/kenya/rapport_1.html
References
Chege (1995) ‘Strategic gender needs: a challenge to education in Kenya’, Basic Education Forum, 6
Human Rights Watch (2001) ‘In the shadow of death: HIV/AIDS and children’s rights in Kenya’,
Human Rights Watch 13/4(A)
Government of Kenya (1998) Master Plan on Education and Training, 1997–2010
126

The challenge of educating girls in Kenya
Ministry of Education (2000) Report on the Commission of Inquiry into the Education System of
Kenya (Koech Report), Ministry of Education and Training, Kenya
Ministry of Education and Training (2003) Gender Education Policy Paper (draft), Ministry of
Education and Training, Kenya
Republic of Kenya (2002) National Report for the Special Session of the UN General Assembly on
follow up to the World Summit for Children
127

6 Learning to improve education policy
for pastoralists in Kenya

Ian Leggett
In Kenya, as in much of Africa, primary-education provision and participation
expanded dramatically during the 1960s and 1970s. The number of primary
schools doubled from approximately 5000 in 1965 to 10,000 in 1980; enrolment
increased even more dramatically, from just over one million pupils in 1965 to
nearly four million in 1980 (Eshiwani 1993). This expansion reflected policy
changes which collectively represented major advances in Kenya’s educational
development and the strategic use of public expenditure in support of
educational policy goals (Abagi and Olweya 1999; Makau 1995).
But the growth in provision and participation increasingly left behind the
pastoral districts of Northern and Eastern Kenya (Nkinyangi 1982; Narman
1990). For although the policies that underpinned primary education expansion
were responsive to the needs and interests of the majority, they proved to be
inappropriate to the circumstances in Kenya’s pastoral districts, and neglectful of
the rights of children, especially girls, who lived there. The consequences are
chronically low levels of educational participation among pastoralist commu-
nities, and marked disparities in provision and participation between pastoralist
and other communities in Kenya.
This examination1 of education policy focuses on primary-education provision
and participation in Wajir District, North Eastern Province. It is in North Eastern
Province that the lowest primary-school participation rates in Kenya are found.
If education policy is to be an effective instrument of change, it will be in North
Eastern Kenya that it is likely to be most rigorously tested. This study does not
seek to dwell on the deficiencies and inequalities of the past – which are
increasingly being acknowledged (Republic of Kenya/UNICEF 1999). For our
purposes, learning to improve policy means identifying ways, based on a critical
analysis of past policies and a consultative approach to pastoralist communities,
in which education policy can be changed so as to enable Kenya to achieve the
goal of Education For All. This goal is preferred to the more narrowly defined
targets of the Millennium Development Goals.
The factors influencing provision and participation in Wajir are sometimes
rooted directly in government policy and practice. Cost-sharing, for example,
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Learning to improve education policy for pastoralists in Kenya
was the policy that underpinned the financing of primary education for the
entire period of the first decade of Education For All. Although the effects of
cost-sharing were profoundly negative and inequitable (Makau et al. 2000), that
policy may yet prove to have been a relatively transient problem, one that could
be directly overcome by the implementation of a new financing policy. A decisive
step in this direction was taken in January 2003, when the government of Kenya
implemented its pledge to provide free primary education.
Other factors, however, are more durable and complex, because they are rooted in
cultural values, social norms, and economic systems. Unequal gender relations –
reflected in the marked differences in access between girls and boys – illustrate the
power and resilience of obstacles to increasing access to education that are rooted
in beliefs and practice. For in Wajir, as in N.E. Province generally, there is only a
limited acceptance of the notion that girls have an equal right to education, and
this attitude leads to a persistent and widespread reluctance to send girls to school.
The pastoralist context
Pastoralism has long been the dominant feature of the regional economy, and it
will remain so for the foreseeable future. The relationship between pastoralism and
education is widely acknowledged to be problematic (Tahir 1991; Kratli 2000),
leading some commentators (Alkali 1991) to assume that the continued pursuit of
pastoralism is inconsistent with the provision of education. This way of thinking
continues to exert a profound influence on governments and development
agencies; its implication is that the attainment of education for all and gender
equity in education provision is not possible among pastoralist communities. This
line of argument underpins a policy approach which starts from the premise that
pastoralists must settle down and stop being pastoralists. But it is a model that is
fundamentally at odds with the demographic reality of Wajir and the other
districts of N.E. Province, where more than 70 per cent of the population continue
to live on, and move across, the rangelands.A different approach is needed, and this
investigation into the factors that influence participation in education is intended
to inform the policy choices that need to be made if Kenya is to make significant
moves towards achieving education for all. Alternative models exist or can be
developed. This investigation starts from the premise that a way needs to be found
to reconcile the provision of education with the pursuit of pastoralism: an
alternative approach which seeks to be responsive to pastoralists’ needs and
priorities, rather than seeking to transform pastoralism itself.
The World Declaration on Education For All (1990) drew attention to the need
to remove educational disparities within countries. In addition to emphasising
the importance of girls’ education, the needs of particular groups – nomads are
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specifically mentioned – was highlighted (ibid.: Article 3). The World
Declaration also encouraged ‘learning through a variety of delivery systems’ and
the adoption of ‘supplementary alternative programmes’ (ibid.: Article 5). In the
light of the World Declaration, the government of Kenya had the opportunity to
revise its policies and practices to tackle chronic gender-based and geographical
disparities.
My research in Wajir investigated the changes that have occurred in terms of
provision and participation since 1990 and sought to identify the role of public
policy in explaining those changes. If more far-reaching changes are to be
achieved, this study argues that educational policy will need to go beyond the
conventional responses of the past. The challenge is to address in a coherent and
comprehensive way specific issues – poverty, gender bias, and mobility – which
are identified as being the principal influences on participation.
Provision and participation: the national context
Geographical inequalities in school participation
Acting on a pre-Independence pledge to provide every child with a minimum of
seven years’ free education, successive governments harnessed popular support
to expand primary education (Makau 1995). Communities provided labour or
cash to construct or expand schools, and the State accepted responsibility for
most of the recurrent costs. Such a division of responsibilities encouraged
community initiatives to set up primary schools and became the expression of a
public policy that led to significant and sustained growth in provision and
enrolment (Eshiwani 1993).
This expansion, however, soon reflected significant geographical inequalities
(Nkinyangi 1982). By 1977 just six districts in the whole country were enrolling
less than 50 per cent of their estimated school-age population. All of them were
pastoral districts: Marsabit, Samburu, Turkana, and the three districts (Mandera,
Wajir, and Garissa) of North Eastern Province. Twenty years later, in 1998, almost
nothing had changed, and the six lowest-achieving districts were the same, with
the exception of Tana River, which replaced Turkana (Republic of Kenya/FAWE
2000). In Wajir District, 75 per cent of children still do not attend school. The gulf
between enrolment in N.E. Province and the rest of the country (Table 1)
remains enormous. The disparity in provision and participation between the
pastoral areas of Kenya and the rest of the country represents the biggest obstacle
that will need to be overcome if Kenya is to make significant progress towards
achieving Education For All.
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Table 1: Primary-school gross enrolment rates by sex and province, 1998
Coast
Central Eastern Nairobi Rift Western Nyanza North
Kenya
Valley
Eastern
Boys
79.6
96.3
91.7
61.6
87.7
102.6
93.9
32.0
89.4
Girls
66.9
100.1
96.1
52.8
85.6
104.2
91.9
16.8
88.2
Total
73.3
98.2
93.8
56.9
86.7
103.4
92.9
24.8
88.8
Source: Republic of Kenya/Fawe (2000:9)
Gender inequalities in primary-school participation
In 1963 just over 300,000 girls were attending primary school in Kenya. Twenty
years later, in 1983, there were well over two million. Perhaps even more
impressive than the growth in the absolute numbers of girls attending primary
school has been the growth in the proportion attending school. In 1963 girls
represented just 34 per cent of the total number of students enrolled. That
percentage increased steadily throughout the 1970s and 1980s, until by 1998
girls’ participation had reached 49.4 per cent, leading the government to assert in
its report to the World Education Forum (Republic of Kenya 1999) ‘as a result of
the general public awareness created on [sic] the importance of education for
both boys and girls over the years, there has been parity between boys and girls at
primary and secondary levels’.
National data may accurately reflect mainstream trends, but they are open to
criticism when they inadvertently hide significant disparities at the margins.
Contrary to the impression of equality that such figures give, profound levels of
inequality are exposed when the data are disaggregated. In North Eastern
Province, the female gross enrolment rate is half that of boys (see Table 1), and
more than 80 per cent of girls do not attend primary school (Republic of
Kenya/Fawe 2000).
High rates of non-participation may be tolerated, partly because they are more
or less invisible at the national level, and partly because they can be explained by
reference to ‘traditional cultural values’ (rather than shortcomings in policy and
practice). That there is a deep-seated reluctance in many parts of Africa to
provide girls with the opportunity to go to school is not in doubt. But by
describing the problem principally in relation to cultural values, the temptation
is merely to blame pastoralist communities for those disparities, and to absolve
those charged with addressing those disparities from any responsibility for their
perpetuation.Yet if the educational inequality of Kenya’s pastoral districts is to be
reduced, public policy is one tool that can help to transform social norms by
introducing specific and sensitive initiatives (Stromquist 1997).
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Provision and participation: the extent and limits of
change

Provision
The first primary school in Wajir was built in 1948 (Turton 1974). The number
grew only slowly over the next 30 years, and by 1979 Wajir District had just 18
schools with approximately 4000 pupils (Eshiwani 1993). By 1998, however,
there were 62 primary schools in the district, with a total of 14,000 pupils
(Republic of Kenya/FAWE 2000). The rate of growth during the 1990s stands in
marked contrast to that of earlier decades. Between 1993 and 1998 the number of
schools increased by 38 per cent, from 45 to 62. The rate of increase was the
highest in the country over the period (ibid.) and contrasts sharply with trends in
provision before the 1990s.
The unprecedented expansion in primary provision in the 1990s is, on the face of
it, remarkable and prompts the question whether it was a response to policy
changes in the wake of the Jomtien Declaration. Any expansion of provision
clearly needs the support of the government, particularly with regard to the
appointment and payment of staff. But this is not the same as attributing the
expansion to the adoption of new policies. At best, what seems to have happened
is that government responded positively to an increased demand for schools.
There is no evidence to suggest that it re-directed resources to the pastoral
districts in a determined effort to reduce disparities. Nor does the government
appear to have taken any steps to develop new ‘delivery systems’, as encouraged by
the World Declaration (1990), or to have used the opportunity of schools
expansion to increase the number of girls-only schools as a culturally acceptable
and gender-sensitive response. By doing little more than approving the
construction of schools in settlements, the government was content to
perpetuate a decades-old, demand-driven approach that simply expanded the
provision of formal schools. It reflected a view that if pastoralists wanted their
children to go to school, they would have to make the necessary adaptations.
Despite the rhetoric of the Jomtien Declaration, no effort was made to change the
way in which education was made available.
It is notable that almost all of the schools that have been built during the past
decade are day schools. This form of provision marks something of a contrast
with the past, when primary boarding schools were built in a deliberate attempt
to provide opportunities for children – almost always boys, it should be noted –
from nomadic backgrounds. This policy of boarding provision goes back to
colonial times (Turton 1974), but was actively promoted by the government
during the 1970s and early 1980s as a way of catering for the children of nomadic
parents (Abdi 1999). By making a specific effort to provide education for
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children of pastoralist communities, policy was being used to address a key
problem and to promote equitable educational development.
Commendable as such an initiative was in principle, it was a policy that has
proved to be deeply flawed in practice. Drawing on research from other pastoral
districts, Ponsi (1988) questioned whether boarding schools cater for the
children for whom they were nominally set up to serve. More recently Abdi
(2001) has demonstrated that boarding primary schools in North Eastern
Province are severely under-utilised, while Obura (2002) suggests that, on
grounds of cost and social acceptability, boarding schools are unlikely to make
more than a marginal contribution to extending provision. Rather than simply
condemning the policy as a failure (Nkinyangi 1981), one might use the
unpopularity and inefficiencies of the boarding-schools approach to define the
limits of mainstream responses and identify areas where less formal and more
responsive approaches may be both necessary and more acceptable.
Enrolment
Table 1 on page 131 is a presentation of provincial gross enrolment rates for 1998
for the country. The rate for N.E. Province is very low, both absolutely and
comparatively. Fewer than one third of boys attend primary school. Four out of
five girls do not go to school. These statistics are remarkable for a country in
which, since Independence, the demand for education has in general exceeded
the places available, and increases in participation were achieved simply by
increasing provision. Relevant and appropriate as such a strategy may have been
for most parts of Kenya, there is a growing acceptance that it has not been
effective in making basic education accessible to ‘vulnerable groups’ (Republic of
Kenya/ UNICEF 1999). Nor has it been effective in reducing disparities between
the pastoral districts and the rest of the country (Abdi 1999; Obura 2002). To
continue to rely on the same strategy as a way of reducing disparities in the future
is almost certainly doomed to failure. What is needed are policies that go beyond
the boundaries of current practice and complement existing provision by
adopting innovative, targeted, and specific measures to promote participation
and to increase girls’ participation in particular.
Retention
In keeping children at school so that they complete the full cycle of primary
education, Kenya has performed much less effectively than in providing access in
the first place. In a detailed analysis of the period between 1981 and 1998 Makau
(2000: 35) concludes that ‘the completion rate remained below 50% of the intake
in Standard 1’. There is an absence of such longitudinal data for Wajir District,
but Makau’s conclusion is supported by an analysis of the 1991–98 cohort.
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Table 2: Primary-school completion rate for 1991–98 cohort: a comparison of
Wajir District data and national data

Std. 1 enrolment
Std. 8 enrolment
% completing
M
F
Total
M
F
Total
M
F
Total
National
476
447
924
221
215
436
46
48
47
(in 000`s)
Wajir
956
588
1544
518
242
760
54
41
49
Sources: Makau (2000: 35) for national data; Oxfam (1999:10) for district data
While the overall level of completion for both boys and girls is low, it is notable
that retention in Wajir District is slightly higher than nationally. The very wide
gap between Wajir and much of the rest of the country in terms of enrolment is
not repeated, suggesting that those parents in Wajir who send their children to
school are as interested in keeping them there, and able to do so, as parents
elsewhere in the country. There is however one major difference between the
national and district data – and that difference is based on gender. Nationally,
girls are more likely than boys to stay at school; but in Wajir, girls are more likely
to leave school early.
Factors influencing participation
Urbanisation, sedentarisation, and mobility
Wajir is the largest district in N.E. Province and one of the most sparsely populated
in Kenya. In 1979 its population was approximately 140,000, of whom 13,000, less
than 10 per cent, lived in Wajir town (Republic of Kenya/Oxfam 1996). Twenty
years later, the population of the district was estimated to be 325,000 and that of
Wajir town 50,000.2 Other urban centres have developed; their combined
populations are approximately 25,000. With a total urban population of not less
than 75,000, the demography of Wajir District has changed markedly in just 20
years, with at least 25 per cent of the population now being town-dwellers. This
change in population distribution has had a direct impact on the demand for
primary education, and on the potential for access to school. The increase in the
number and size of towns and settlements is closely related to the growth in the
number of schools which has been such a distinctive feature of the 1990s.
Table 3 demonstrates the relationship between participation and urbanisation.
In 2000, two thirds of the children enrolled in primary schools in Wajir district
lived in Central and Habaswein educational divisions.3 Though not exclusively
urban, these divisions include the two largest urban concentrations.
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Learning to improve education policy for pastoralists in Kenya
Table 3: Wajir District primary enrolment by gender and division, 2000
Division
Boys
Girls
Total
% Girls
Bute
1191
530
1721
31
Centra
4582
2683
7265
37
Habaswein
2078
957
3035
32
Griftu
1443
679
2122
32
Tarbaj
895
474
1369
35
Total
10189
5323
15512
34
Source: District Education Office, Wajir
On the question of who goes to school, urbanisation seems to exert a positive
influence on girls’ access, although the evidence here is more equivocal. Within
Central Division, which includes Wajir town, there is a notable narrowing of the
differential between boys’ and girls’ enrolment. On the other hand, Habaswein
has the second-lowest proportion of girls in school, suggesting that there are
tensions between what might be called the ‘pro-school’ influence of urbanisation
and ‘the anti-school’ influence of gender bias.
The relationship between settlements in pastoral areas and the provision of
education has been a contentious policy issue. The crux of the debate is whether
education facilities (and other economic and social facilities, such as water
supplies and health centres) are used to attract pastoralists as part of an overall, if
not explicit, policy of sedentarisation. There is no doubt that such objectives have
informed policy and practice in countries as diverse as Iran and Nigeria. From
this perspective, the provision of education was not so much a right of
citizenship but a way of weakening and transforming pastoralism, part of a
strategy to modernise it and convert pastoralists into farmers, labourers, or
watchmen (Kratli 2000).
An alternative approach seeks to understand pastoralist responses to educational
policy and provision within a broader context of economic and social change
(Dyer and Choksi 1997) and of pastoralists’ adaptation to changing circumstances
(Frantz 1990). From this perspective, education may be adopted as a way to
diversify the pastoralist economy, even if it involves the settlement of some family
members on a temporary or permanent basis.
The place that education occupies within a long-term pastoralist livelihood
strategy will vary between households and from place to place. In Wajir, and in
N.E. Province generally, individual decisions are shaped by a context in which
pastoralism is under pressure because of population growth, insecurity,
limitations on herd movements (RoK/Oxfam 1996), and a market system that is
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
both inadequate and distorted (O’Leary and Wakesa 2000). In these
circumstances the possible benefits of education become more attractive, even to
those still within the pastoral sector. Having an education may not yet be as
prestigious as ‘having herds’ (Dahl and Hjort 1976); but both are increasingly
recognised as being important as it becomes harder to survive by pastoral means
alone (Salzman and Galaty 1990).
In judging how best to strengthen the household economy in the medium-to-
long term, parents increasingly appear to divide the family labour force. Some
children are sent to school, while others are kept at home to look after the animals
and/or to be responsible for looking after the house. ‘The role of the town
employee has become part of the division of labour’ (Kratli 2000: 41), providing
a source of income which is not subject to the same vulnerabilities as herding. In
return, family members who remain on the range will look after the animals of
those in town. In effect, investing in education for some children represents a
livelihoods-diversification strategy (Republic of Kenya/Oxfam 1996) which is
designed to strengthen the household economy within the context of a
continuing engagement – as a family – with pastoralism.
In considering the expansion of primary-school provision in Wajir in the
previous decade, this study suggests that the relationship between formal
education and pastoralism has not been wholly antagonistic, nor has it been part
of a dominant strategy designed to settle and transform pastoralists. There has
been a significant growth in the urban population – but poverty, not public
policy, is widely acknowledged to be the most powerful driving force behind that
growth. Those who move to towns are, by and large, pastoralism’s ‘forgotten
people’ (Broch-Due 1999), driven to the point of destitution and possessing few
alternatives. For such people settlement is not a threat to an otherwise viable
pastoralist existence: it is a refuge to which they have moved in the hope that it
will offer them a better future. And education, many of them believe, may open
the door to employment opportunities that will help to secure that better future.
From this perspective, education is not so much ‘instrumental to sedentarisation’
(Kratli 2000: 9), an inducement with which to attract pastoralists into towns, as
it is a tool by which families can re-build their livelihoods and social networks.4
While education policy may not be primarily responsible for enrolment trends
over the past decade or so, a fundamental policy goal – that attendance at primary
school should be made compulsory – is challenged by these conclusions.
Decisions about the education of pastoralist children, girls and boys, are based on
their parents’ judgement of what is in the best interests of the family. Contrary to
an approach that is based solely on the rights of individuals, these judgements are
made by weighing up the wishes and abilities of individuals on one hand against
the collective interests of the family as a whole on the other. These parental
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Learning to improve education policy for pastoralists in Kenya
decisions inevitably reflect the socio-cultural context in which they are taken –
and in Wajir that means two things. First, it means placing an emphasis on
strengthening the capacity of the family to preserve and build up its herds, social
networks, and other economic safety nets. Second, and specifically in the context
of gender relations, it reflects the importance that is attached to protecting what is
perceived to be the honour and reputation of girls and to preparing them for their
future roles as wives and mothers. The outcome is that some children – usually
boys – will attend school for as long as is practicable. Others – some boys, but most
girls – will remain at home to look after the animals and other members of the
family who need to be cared for, and to do domestic duties.
These observations on parental decisions about access to schooling challenge the
assumption that the population of Wajir can be neatly divided into families who
have access to education and, on the other hand, those who are excluded or
display a ‘negative’ attitude towards school. In reality the situation is more
complex, and within any given family there are likely to be some children who
are, or have been, attending school and others who are not. The extent of this
relative engagement with education is reflected in the fact that only 30 per cent of
the parents interviewed for this study had sent all of their school-aged children to
school for at least part of the primary cycle. The others had decided to keep at
least some of their children at home.
If Education For All is to be made meaningful, it surely requires policy makers to
take steps – as they were encouraged to do by the Jomtien Declaration – to make
available ‘alternative programmes’ and a ‘variety of delivery systems’. When
provision means, in effect, attendance at a school in a settlement, it is inevitable
that many parents who are practising pastoralists may choose not to exercise the
right of their children to education. Expansion of just one form of provision
effectively excludes pastoralist children and is consistent with neither the spirit
nor the letter of the commitments made in Thailand and Senegal.
Abdi (2002) highlights the need for flexibility in the way in which education is
made available. But in Kenya efforts to provide pastoralist children with an
education on terms that are consistent with their lifestyle have been confined to
small-scale, innovative projects that are often run by community groups, funded
by external NGOs. These projects reflect the absence of government policy – not
its expression. In essence, they are recent attempts to fill a policy vacuum.
The Mobile School project in Wajir (Hussein 1999) is an example of a small-scale
initiative to develop practicable alternatives to mainstream education. It is
modelled on the indigenous and widespread Koranic schools, or dugsi, which are
specifically adapted to provide teaching in the context of mobility. The teacher
lives and moves as part of a herding group and provides instruction at times that
are consistent with herding and labour responsibilities. This model is based on a
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fundamentally different premise from that which has informed formal
‘schooling’, in that it accepts the primary responsibility of children, both girls and
boys, to look after the family’s herd. Enrolment figures for the project indicate
both a quick take-up of the programme and an approximate equivalence
between girls and boys. Irrespective of a number of shortcomings in the imple-
mentation of the project (identified by Hussein, op. cit.), it provides evidence to
suggest that there is a latent demand for education among pastoralists. It
suggests, too, that non-formal types of provision may be particularly effective in
addressing deeply rooted gender inequalities, by offering a way to reduce
obstacles to girls’ access.
This possibility is supported by the experiences of the Alternative Basic
Education in Karamoja initiative in Uganda (Odada and Olega 1999). What is
especially notable about this project is that many more girls than boys enrolled in
the learner centres. This fact may be explained by reference to the division of
labour between girls and boys in Karamojong society – where homesteads are
much more fixed, cultivation is more common, and girls spend less time on the
rangelands. But its significance is that it provides compelling evidence that rapid
progress can be made to increase girls’ participation in contexts where female
enrolment has been chronically low. Mobile schools and similar innovative
projects have tended to be justified on the grounds of making education more
accessible to pastoralists as a group, rather than in terms of a gendered analysis of
accessibility. Yet both the Wajir Mobile School project and the Karamoja
programme suggest that ‘supplementary alternative programmes’ can be
especially effective in terms of increasing girls’ participation. To that extent, such
initiatives may not only be of general benefit in terms of increasing enrolment,
but may also be a good example of a gender-sensitive approach with enhanced
benefits for girls.
Gender inequality
Gender inequality, rooted in individual and social bias against girls, operates in
association with other factors. Three were mentioned time and again in this
study in Wajir and are remarkably consistent with analysis based on research in
other pastoral districts of Kenya (Makau et al. 2000). The three factors were
poverty, gender bias, and the mobility of pastoralist families.
Given that attendance at school for almost all of the past 25 years has required
payment of school fees and a variety of other charges and levies, the depth and
extent of poverty means that few households can afford to educate all their
children. Choices have to be made, and dominant values mean that parents are
less likely to send their daughters to school.
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Another explanation that is invariably offered to explain why girls are not in
school is the contribution that they make to the running of the household. In a
social context in which girls have been ascribed the role of providing domestic
labour and child care, the contribution of girls to the household economy is often
deemed to be too valuable to lose. The stage of economic development in Kenya is
such that households depend on children’s labour as a contribution to the
production and consumption needs of the household. Unlike productive labour,
which is a shared responsibility, domestic labour continues to be characterised by
a sharp gender-based division, with men and boys making a minor contribution.
From a very early age, girls are socialised into roles in which they prepare and cook
food, collect water, and look after the young and the sick. The dependency of the
household on girls’ labour thus represents an opportunity cost of their attendance
at school (Colclough et al. 2000). This cost lowers the enrolment of girls in school
or, at the least, contributes to weaker performance and earlier drop-out.
Nevertheless, the argument that domestic labour responsibilities are a critical
obstacle that prevents girls from attending or completing primary school in
Wajir is not entirely persuasive. Girls who live in the district’s towns and
settlements are living within an urban or semi-pastoral context, rather than one
typical of the rangelands, and their domestic duties are likely to be similar to
those of girls in other parts of Kenya. In such circumstances the ‘domestic labour’
argument does not explain the gap between girls’ enrolment in most of the
country, with a national female gross enrolment rate (GER) of 88 per cent, and
that in Wajir and N.E. Province, with a female GER of less than 20 per cent. The
contribution of girls to herding, rather than to domestic labour, is likely to
explain some of the difference, but the implication is that there is something else,
another factor, that is critical.
That factor is summed up by the term ‘status’, a term designed to capture the
ambiguous but powerful nature of gender inequality. It is the subordinate status
of girls and women that explains why, to paraphrase the head-teacher of Wajir
Girls Primary School,‘in all aspects of education, girls are left behind’. The notion
that girls have a right to education, a right that is equal to that of boys, is not
consistent with prevailing values and beliefs in Wajir or more widely among
pastoralist communities in Kenya (Makau 2000) and elsewhere in Africa (Niles
1989; Csapo 1981; Wynd 1999). Schooling is thus either irrelevant or, in a context
in which the separation of girls from boys is desirable as soon as a girl shows signs
of maturity, a risk which leads parents to remove their daughters from school
before she ‘is spoilt’ or ‘develops immoral habits’.
While change will not happen until individuals modify their opinions and
behaviour, public policy has an important role to play in stimulating and
rewarding change. It is patently clear that the policies of the past have failed to
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convince parents, and society at large, of the advantages of educating girls. Unless
public policy is used in a more targeted and effective way to influence attitudes
and norms of behaviour, the extent to which girls are excluded from access to
basic education is unlikely to be significantly reduced in the foreseeable future.
The inescapable conclusion is that initiatives designed to increase the
participation of girls, rather than to increase participation generally, are needed
if Kenya is to achieve gender parity in education provision in pastoralist
communities.
During the 1990s there was a notable absence of such initiatives. The most
significant measure that has been taken in Wajir in recent years goes back to the
1980s, i.e. even before the Jomtien Declaration. It was then that the decision was
taken to build a primary school specifically for girls in Wajir town. It remains the
sole girls-only primary school in the entire district. Opened as a way of reducing
the dangers of road travel for girls, rather than as a deliberate attempt to increase
access, the school has proved to be an outstanding success. The Girls Primary
School increased its enrolment from 122 girls at its inception in 1988 to 469 in
2000. But this success has never been replicated. It is an example that demonstrates
that public policy, by providing the kind of school most likely to be acceptable to
the community at large and enjoyable for the girls who attend, can positively
influence change. That nothing else like it has been provided is a measure of the
failure of public policy that allows a pronounced gender inequality to persist
unchallenged.
Poverty and the financing of education
There has been a long tradition of cost-sharing in education in Kenya,
epitomised by the phenomenon of harambee (or self-help) schools. During the
1970s the nominal commitment to providing free primary education sat
uncomfortably with the practice of harambee collections, but in 1988 this
contradiction was resolved when cost-sharing was formally made the basis of
education financing. If access to education is conditional on the payment of fees
of various kinds, it ceases to be a right, an entitlement of citizenship, but becomes
instead a commodity that is available only to those with the money to buy it. And
in a country as poor as Kenya, a policy that made parents responsible for
maintaining the nation’s primary education infrastructure as well as meeting the
costs of school attendance was bound to lead to ‘falling enrolments and failing
schools’ (Republic of Kenya/UNICEF 1999). Adopted two years before the
Jomtien Declaration, cost-sharing was designed to address problems with the
management of the national economy. It was not adopted as a policy designed to
help Kenya to achieve education for all.
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The vast majority of people interviewed during this study described cost-
sharing, in all its manifestations, as the biggest single problem that limited
children’s participation in education. Teachers and parents alike argued that the
removal of all fees and all charges would be essential if participation were to be
significantly increased. There can be little doubt that the depth and extent of
these feelings was a key factor in persuading the new government that its first
policy initiative in education in 2003 should be the abolition of primary-school
fees. It is important to acknowledge that the abolition of cost-sharing represents
a fundamental policy shift on the part of the government. For the first time since
the Jomtien Declaration was passed, Kenya has put in place a financing policy
that addresses one of the most acute obstacles to the achievement of Education
For All. It is equally important to bear in mind, however, that this policy change
is national in scope and may prove to be of relatively tangential significance to the
broader issues of pastoralists’ participation in education.
Kenya’s educational history shows that the abolition of fees has an immediate
and positive impact on participation. Analysing enrolment data for the 1970s,
when fees were formally abolished for a short while, Sibabi-Nyukuri (1989)
demonstrates that increases in enrolment may be temporary, especially if fees
are, in effect, re-introduced under another name. It is a little early to make
judgements on the impact in pastoralist districts of the abolition of school fees
and other levies in January 2003. Preliminary research (Sifuna 2003:7) concludes
that in pastoralist districts throughout the country ‘the free primary education
programme seems to have (led to) a remarkable increase on overall enrolments’.
There are, however, significant variations between districts, and in Wajir the
increase was much lower than in all other sampled districts.
What is even more striking is the differential impact on the basis of gender. The
enrolment of boys has increased far more dramatically than that of girls. In every
district, without exception, the increase in enrolment of girls is lower than that of
boys; and in Wajir a 19 per cent increase in boys’ enrolment in 2003 should be
compared with a 6 per cent increase for girls. If this trend continues, the outcome
will be to increase the disparity in educational participation on the grounds of
gender. It is a consequence that is directly at odds with the commitment to attain
gender parity. This is not an argument for reversing or diluting the new financing
policy; but it is a compelling argument to complement the policy of providing free
primary education by introducing additional and specific policies which address
the other obstacles to increasing access to education in pastoralist societies.
This study has argued that three factors are the principal cause of low rates of
participation. These are poverty, gender bias, and the mobility of pastoralist
families. The removal of school fees addresses the first of these obstacles and is a
big step in the right direction. But, in isolation, it is an insufficient response. It
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
will not achieve maximum impact unless it is part of a comprehensive and
imaginative set of initiatives. What are needed now are similarly bold policy
initiatives that will address the other two problems. This means re-thinking
provision in order to make education available to boys and girls who live on the
rangelands, far away from any school. And it means recognising the depth and
breadth of gender bias and finding ways to dilute its potency.
Policies for effective change
The principal official reports generated during the first decade of Education For
All (Republic of Kenya 1997; Republic of Kenya 1998; Republic of
Kenya/UNICEF 1999) have little to offer in terms of policy changes specifically
formulated for Kenya’s pastoral communities, let alone to girls in those
communities. The inevitable conclusion is that it is insufficiently recognised that
these areas have distinct and chronic problems, over and above those faced by the
sector as a whole. Treating the pastoral districts of Kenya and its peoples as if they
were the same as the rest of the country is not an effective way of addressing
decades-old disparities. Policy and practice changes are essential – and need to be
targeted and consistent with a vision based on responsiveness, diversity, and
innovation.
The Jomtien Declaration provided an opportunity to reflect on the
shortcomings of previous practice and to support initiatives that are compatible
with pastoral livelihood strategies and priorities. This study found little evidence
to suggest that the opportunity had been grasped. Wajir, and most of the pastoral
districts of Kenya, are as firmly fixed at the bottom of the table of primary
participation as they were before Jomtien and Dakar. Although there has been a
significant growth in provision in Wajir (compared with the past), it is a growth
that reflects changes in population distribution and settlement patterns, not
more imaginative ways of providing access to learning. Doing nothing more than
building schools in settlements represents the continuation of a policy that has
failed to acknowledge the diversity of cultural and physical contexts to which
education has to adapt if it is to be accessible and meaningful.
If the inadequacies of current policies are to be effectively overcome, the
particular needs of the pastoral districts – and of girls within them – will need to
be accorded more visibility and significance. The recent publication of a draft
policy on Gender and Education (Republic of Kenya 2003) suggests that there is
a growing recognition that gender parity in education – in terms of performance
as well as enrolment – will not be attained unless specific objectives are set and
strategies defined. Like the new policy on financing, the production of a gender
policy is a step in the right direction. But given that it is in Kenya’s pastoralist
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districts that the most glaring gender-based educational disparities in the
country are to be found, the failure of this draft policy to highlight the particular
needs of pastoralist girls is more than disappointing. Unless this omission is
corrected, the gender and education policy is in danger of reinforcing their
‘invisibility’ and of being irrelevant to those who suffer the most profound levels
of discrimination.
In addition to the need for a more pastoralist-aware gender strategy, there is an
increasing demand for a national and comprehensive strategy for pastoralist
education. Its substantive elements have begun to be debated (Karani 2002).
A critical element – and one that distinguishes this debate from earlier attempts
to provide education to pastoralists in Kenya – is that new modes of provision
must be designed. For too long ‘strategies have been biased towards supporting
the expansion of conventional schooling, with few results’ (Obura 2002: 6). It
is a form of provision that is neither practicable nor cost-effective for mobile
communities in areas where population density is very low. It needs to be
supplemented by a range of alternatives that are responsive to the lifestyles of
pastoralists. As we have seen, evidence from projects such as Alternative Basic
Education in Karamoja (ABEK) suggests that the development of non-formal
types of provision is not only effective in changing attitudes towards education
but also effective in terms of learning (Hestad and Focas Licht, 2002).
The development of an education system that integrates both formal and non-
formal provision will necessitate not merely expansion of provision – the
underlying concept that has dominated thinking in the past – but a measure of
education reform. Such an approach is consistent with the thinking that informed
the Jomtien Declaration. The outstanding success of the Escuela Nueva in
Colombia (Colbert and Arboleda 1990; Torres 1992) – admittedly conceived in
quite different circumstances – may be a source of inspiration, though not
necessarily a model to be imitated.5
One of the lessons to be learned from the Escuela Nueva programme is the value
of having a dedicated unit within the central ministry. Perhaps reflecting the fact
that the relationship between pastoralism and education has been fraught with
problems for decades, there is currently no institution in Kenya specifically
responsible for addressing those problems or for developing a policy to do so.
A second lesson to be learned is that the use of non-formal methods should not
be undertaken in the expectation that it will provide education ‘on the cheap’.
Given that such an approach would be introducing new ideas and practices in
Kenya, and given that it will be operating in areas of weak infrastructure and low
population densities, there will inevitably be high investment and on-going
costs. Similarly, non-formal education has too often been under-valued, offering
a limited and second-rate service to those who have fallen through the net of
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formal education. If non-formal education is to be established as an essential
element of an integrated education strategy, those perceptions will need to be
challenged. And one way to do so is to ensure that the quality of non-formal
education is not an inferior imitation of ‘the real thing’. At the least this will mean
working to the principle that non-formal education should be expected to
provide good-quality learning outcomes in its own right, and not merely to
function as a gateway to the formal sector. Transition to the formal sector should
be possible as part of an integrated system. But it should not be seen as a failure –
either of the system or of individuals in it – if this does not happen, provided that
other and arguably more relevant learning outcomes are achieved.
Conclusion
The relationship between education and pastoralism has been problematic for a
long time. But this study did not confirm the common belief that pastoralism is
inherently inconsistent with participation in education and is, by extension, an
obstacle to education for all. There is a wide variety of reasons why pastoralists
have not engaged with the education system in the past. Some are economic and
financial; others are culturally defined or the product of historical experience.
But as pastoralism adapts to new pressures, as well as to new opportunities, this
study suggests that that it is untrue that pastoralists have a distrustful and
negative attitude to education.
Instead of being adverse or irrelevant to the production system, education can
have a complementary relationship to pastoralism. This complementarity
reveals itself in the way that the household labour force is increasingly being
divided so that some children are sent to school as a way of improving the well-
being of the family in the short and long terms. It reveals itself too in the way that
poor pastoralists, especially those who have been forced into the peri-urban
quarters of Wajir’s towns, will try to use education as a way of re-building assets
and social capital.
Limited participation in education is a consequence not only of pastoralism but
also of the education system itself. And in contrast to the flexibility of
pastoralism, the education system has shown a marked lack of adaptation. Few
concessions have been made to adapt the form and content, the procedures and
practices of primary education to make it more compatible with the particular
circumstances of pastoral communities. Current policy represents a ‘take-it-or
leave-it’ approach to education, with communities having to adapt to the needs
and demands of the education system, rather than planners working to make the
system responsive to diverse contexts.
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Learning to improve education policy for pastoralists in Kenya
Despite the rhetoric of the Jomtien Declaration, little has changed in terms of
Kenya’s education policy in the past decade or more. The introduction of a new
financing policy for primary education in 2003 may mark the beginning of a
period when policy will be used more constructively. But if significant progress is
to be made in the decade leading up to 2015, the Kenyan government will have to
move decisively to overcome the remaining obstacles to participation. This will
mean devising a policy framework that specifically recognises the extent of the
bias against educating girls in North Eastern Province and other pastoralist
districts, and supporting initiatives designed to increase access by changing
dominant attitudes and behaviour.
But it is not only at the community level that change is needed. Just as important,
policy makers need to listen to the concerns and opinions of pastoralists so as to
develop policies and practices that will make education accessible to nomadic
people. In ways that it has never done before, the education system in Kenya
needs to learn to adapt. For too long the onus has been on pastoralists to adapt
their way of life as the price for gaining access to education. It is a price that most
pastoralists have not been prepared to pay. If pastoralists’ right to education is to
be fully realised, the education system will have to become more responsive and
innovative.
Ian Leggett, formerly Regional Manager of the Oxfam GB East Africa programme,
has a particular interest in development in pastoralist areas. He is currently Director
of People & Planet, a student-led campaigning organisation working on global
poverty, environmental, and human-rights issues.

Notes
1
This paper is based primarily on research conducted in 2001as part of an MA course at the
Institute of Education, University of London, reported in my dissertation ‘Continuity and
Change in Primary Education in the Pastoral Districts of Kenya: a Study of Wajir’. That work was
supplemented in 2002 by a further visit to advise Oxfam GB on the development of its education
programme for pastoralists and by participation in a workshop to stimulate policy debate.
2
Interview with Oxfam staff, Wajir, May 2001.
3
There are five educational divisions in the district, but 13 administrative divisions.
4
Interviews with Hashim Musa and Omar Jibril Hussein.
5
The origins and objectives of the Escuela Nueva programme are rooted in educational
inequalities in Colombia. They reflected a creative tension between quantitative expansion and
qualitative reform. They incorporated a belief that relevance and quality had to be addressed at
the same time as considering how to increase access. This debate was applied to areas, similar to
the rangelands of Kenya, in which population density was low and schooling did not easily fit
with prevailing livelihoods and lifestyles.
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148

7 When access is not enough: educational
exclusion of rural girls in Peru

Patricia Ames
This chapter examines a study conducted in the late1990s to investigate the
causes and dimensions of educational exclusion of rural girls in Andean areas of
Peru. It considers the continuing problem of access to schooling for particular
social groups. With reference to those who do attend school, it considers the ways
in which gender inequities persist, and the multiple factors that work against
girls’ completion of primary education.1
During the 1990s, most Latin American countries achieved almost universal
enrolment, showing an average net primary enrolment ratio of 96.6 per cent.
Although many countries have achieved gender parity, in Brazil, Guatemala,
Antilles, and Saint Lucia fewer girls have access than boys, and 56 per cent of the
children who are out of school in the region are girls (EFA 2004).
Peru follows this regional trend. Statistics for 2000 show a gross enrolment ratio
of 96.9 per cent in primary education and 85.9 per cent in secondary education
(Guadalupe et al. 2002). Gender parity has been achieved in primary education,
but fewer girls than boys are enrolled in secondary education (Gender Parity
Index: 0.932), a feature that contrasts with the general characteristics of the
region (Guadalupe et al. 2002; EFA 2004).
Despite these achievements, the problem of inequity has not been solved. Twelve
per cent of the adult population are illiterate, but this figure comprises 17.6 per
cent of women, in contrast with 6 per cent of men.3 This pattern is amplified
when the differences between urban and rural areas are considered: 36 per cent
of women in rural areas are illiterate,4 and their average number of years of
schooling is 3.7, in contrast with the statistics for rural men (5.1 years), urban
women (8.3), and urban men (9.2).5
These features are partly remnants of a past situation when fewer women had
access to education than men. But among the younger population (15–24 years
old), 56 per cent of those without schooling or incomplete primary education are
women,6 and 13.5 per cent of rural girls between 5 and 17 years old do not have
access to school (Montero and Tovar 1999). Thus, despite relatively high levels of
enrolment, some segments of the female population still suffer from educational
exclusion.
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This chapter takes a close look at four Andean villages where more boys than girls
attend school, and where more girls than boys have dropped out. For those
attending, more boys than girls were promoted beyond Grade 6 exams, which are
the final exams of primary school. The results of this study in rural Andean areas
showed that there were multiple factors influencing girls’ schooling, but that
overall there was a fragile relationship between students and the school, due to the
precarious economic conditions in which the students live. Differential social and
cultural expectations of girls and boys had a bearing on their school attendance,
and certain school practices strengthened rather than counteracted drop-out and
school failure among girls.
Research sites and methodology
The study was conducted in four Andean villages over one school year, with a
follow-up visit in the subsequent academic year. Two villages (Las Chulpas and
Abracancha) are in the Department of Cusco in the Southern Andes, where the
population is mostly Quechua-speaking; and two villages (Las Lomas and San
Juan7) are in the Department of Cajamarca in the northern Andes, with a
Spanish-speaking population.8 The selection of villages reflected different
situations which might affect girls’ schooling. These included not only language
but also productive activities, ecological location, and pattern of settlement, as
well as size, location, and type of school.
Abracancha is a small village at 4000 metres above sea level, with a single-teacher
school offering the first three grades (of a total of six) of primary schooling. This
Quechua-speaking population subsists through the cultivation of potatoes and
some cereals, and the raising of llamas and alpacas. There is no electricity or water
supply to the households, which follow a semi-dispersed pattern of settlement.
Las Chulpas, located in another province of the Department of Cusco, also lacks
electricity and running water; but the pattern of settlement is more concentrated.
However, the settlement has two sectors, one closer to the school than the other.
This village is slightly bigger than Abracancha and has a bigger school, which has
two teachers covering the complete six grades of primary education, plus a pre-
school run by another teacher. The villagers raise sheep and cultivate cereals.
San Juan is the smallest community in the sample, with only 22 families and a
single-teacher school, covering primary grades 1–4. Las Lomas, by contrast, is a
bigger village, with 132 households and a primary school with five teachers. Only
one teacher has two grades in the same classroom, and the others work in mono-
grade classrooms (that is, one teacher to each grade). Las Lomas is not located far
from San Juan – some two hours by foot – but it is not so high, and so the
agricultural production is more varied. Neither community has electricity, but
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When access is not enough: educational exclusion of rural girls in Peru
clean water is available at outdoor stand-pipes and, unlike Abracancha and Las
Chulpas, each household has a latrine. The four villages have a very restricted
public transport service, but San Juan is the most isolated, since no cars reach the
village. A summary of the main features of each village is presented in Table 1.
Table 1: General information about selected villages
Las Chulpas
Abracancha
Las Lomas
San Juan
The school
# Teachers
2
1
5
1
# Students
70
40
132
22
# Grades
1 to 6
1 to 3
1 to 6
1 to 4
The village
Location
Cuzco
Cuzco
Cajamarca
Cajamarca
Altitude
3700
4000
2350
3800
(m. above sea
level)
# Families
57
68
265
68
Pattern of
Semi-
Dispersed
Dispersed
Concentrated
settlement
concentrated
Language
Quechua
Quechua
Spanish
Spanish
Main Agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture
productive
(cereals and
(potatoes and
(corn)
(potatoes and
activities sheep)
sheep)
cereals)
Water supply
From a stream
From the river
In the house
In the house
yard
yard
Electricity
No
No
No
No
Toilets No
No
Yes
Yes
The research team consisted of a general co-ordinator (Carmen Montero), a
research co-ordinator (Patricia Oliart), and a fieldwork co-ordinator (Patricia
Ames). There were also three regional research assistants (Fritz Villasante, Willy
Lezama, and José Luis Arteaga).
The regional research assistants made four visits during the school year to each of
the villages.As a fieldwork co-ordinator,I visited the four villages on at least three of
the four visits to carry out the research activities. The same set of research
instruments was applied in all schools. On the first visit, we carried out a census of
the whole population, noting whether school-age children were attending school
or not.We also registered all children enrolled at school at the beginning of the year
and investigated the reasons why some children did not attend school. We asked
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
teachers about patterns of attendance among girls, and we identified those with
poor attendance rates. During the second visit, we approached those girls not
attending school and those attending infrequently and conducted interviews with
them and their families. We also carried out classroom observation at schools,
focusing on trying to determine whether the school could be possibly promoting
exclusion. We conducted interviews with teachers and observed their interactions
with the children and their families in and out of school. The third visit, after the
main school holiday and the harvest, aimed to evaluate the impact of agricultural
work on children’s attendance. We continued classroom observations and
conducted interviews with students and with young women who had dropped out
of school in second or third grade. We also continued monitoring girls with good
attendance and their families. The fourth visit, at the end of school year, allowed
another look at the school register to check promotion, repetition, and drop-out of
students attending that year.At the beginning of the following school year we did a
finalvisitandcheckedenrolmentandattendanceagain.Throughthesedetailedsets
of observation and data collection, we identified those students who attended
regularly, those who attended irregularly, those who dropped out, and those who
did not graduate to the next grade at the end of the school year, and we inquired
about the reasons for this behaviour.
Daily life, work, and poverty: the fragile relation with
the school

The poverty that affects rural areas in Peru is widely documented. Extreme
poverty9 is concentrated in rural areas: 76 of every 100 people in extreme poverty
in Peru live in rural areas, and 49 live in Andean rural areas (Montero et al. 2001).
Conditions of poverty in rural villages require that all members of the household
contribute to economic survival, assuming tasks and duties that sometimes
compete with the time demanded by the school. Looking at national features (see
Table 2), it seems that this competition does not have such a strong influence on
the attendance of the age group between 6 and 11, but it does in the age group of
12 to 16, particularly among girls in rural areas.
Table 2: School attendance ratios – percentage of age groups in school
Age group
Total
Male
Female
Urban
Rural
3–5
68 67 69 74.3
59.6

6–11
97.6
97.8
97.4
98.6
96.2
12–16 83.4
85.9
80.9
86.5
78.3

Source: ENAHO 2001-IV
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When access is not enough: educational exclusion of rural girls in Peru
During the studies in the Andean villages, we observed in detail the daily routine
of girls at different ages. Children were usually involved progressively in domestic
and productive work from an early age (5 or 6 years old). Between the ages of 6
and 11, girls were mostly involved in domestic activities such as fetching water,
collecting firewood for cooking, cutting grass to feed domestic animals, cleaning
the house and the dishes, washing clothes, shopping, taking care of animals and
grazing them, taking care of younger siblings, and helping to cook. However, they
also helped in agricultural activities away from the house, such as hoeing,
planting seeds, distributing fertiliser, and harvesting, collecting, selecting, and
storing agricultural products.
Although at a young age the tasks assigned to boys and girls were very similar,
they were differentiated according to gender as they grew older, until they
resembled the expected roles assigned to men and women in their society. Girls
tended to assume most of the domestic work, with some agricultural work, while
boys increased their participation in agricultural activities. Between the ages of
11 and 15 years, in addition to their domestic tasks girls also engaged in spinning
and knitting and sewing – making not only their own clothes but those of other
family members. They also cooked for the family, helped in sowing and
harvesting, and took major responsibility for grazing the animals. As their tasks
grew in complexity and intensity, they demanded more time (see Box 1). In the
light of these responsibilities, the fall in the school-attendance ratio for this age
group is understandable (see Table 2 opposite).
Box 1: Life in Las Chulpas
Winter mornings are cold in Las Chulpas, situated at 3700 metres above sea level.
Teachers usually start the lessons one hour late because of the cold. However, boys and
girls such as ten-year-old Anita wake up every morning at 5 a.m. She helps around the
home, carrying water, feeding animals, taking care of her younger sister, Luzmila, who is
six, or the baby Marlith, who is one, and doing some cooking with her mother. Her parents
have to leave early for the fields, or chacras. They have no sheep, but in families that do
own sheep, the mother or an older sister leads the flock to the grazing area. They can be
seen each day, winding through the paths crossing the wheat fields surrounding the
community. School children such as Anita and her sister will stay behind in the village to
attend school, while the youngest children go with their mothers. In the afternoon, after
school, the children go to the chacras to help their parents, bringing them some lunch and
gathering some natural fuel on their way back home. Girls also wash clothes, clean the
house, or take care of younger siblings. Around 5 p.m. the flock is herded back to the
village, and the women and girls cook the dinner. Everyone goes to bed early, because
there is no electricity in Las Chulpas; with the sunset everything becomes quiet and calm.
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As every family member has to contribute to family survival, we found that
having one parent out of work due to illness or even death was one of the causes
of drop-out for girls. In such cases, girls assume more duties in their families and
cannot continue attending school. The situation might be temporary or
permanent, but even when temporary it constitutes an interruption in regular
schooling, and some girls do not return to school after dropping out for a year or
two. In Las Chulpas, for example, 14-year-old Santusa took responsibility for
domestic duties when her mother was sick, and she thereby lost one school year.
But Bernardina (16 years) and her brother Pablo (17 years) in Abracancha, who
lost their father, abandoned primary school before completing grade 6 and
became totally absorbed into adult activities in their household.
We found also that the poorer families (with infertile lands or few resources) in
each community could not afford to send their children to school, because they
were needed for work. That was the case of 18-year-old Leocadia, who, along with
her siblings, did not attend school because of her family’s poverty. Families with
only one parent found schooling difficult to afford, because the remaining parent
needed more help with work to provide enough food to maintain the family.
Furthermore, the hidden costs of schooling (such as uniforms, notebooks, and
educational materials) also influenced the prospects of children in poorer
families. The age of a girl, her position in the family, and the number of siblings
available to help with domestic and agricultural tasks also influenced the school
attendance. A girl is less likely to attend school if she is the oldest sibling, or if she
is approaching adolescence and her siblings are too young to help with the work
demanded by the family.
Another study in the southern Andes (Uccelli 1999) found that some families with
scarce resources will focus on the schooling of one selected child. Usually, a child
is chosen because of his or her ability at school, rather than a simple preference for
sending boys. Nevertheless, Uccelli found that school failure – that is, failing end-
of-year exams and having to repeat the whole year again – was less tolerated by
parents for their daughters than for their sons. School registers indicated that
more boys than girls had repeated grades several times. Girls who repeat therefore
are more likely to be withdrawn. We also noted that the ability to read and write
and to speak Spanish, although valued for both girls and boys, was considered as
especially important for boys, who will become the head of their family in the
future and will require the skill. For example, as heads of families men participate
in the communal assembly and may have a position on the Assembly Board,
where they will need to read and write and manage a range of legal papers, as well
as speak Spanish to the extent of being able to negotiate with local and regional
authorities. Men also take charge of managing official documents and papers
concerning their families’ land, acquiring identity papers, and so on. In addition,
men are more likely to migrate temporarily to the city for seasonal work, where
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When access is not enough: educational exclusion of rural girls in Peru
they will need Spanish language and literacy skills. This gives boys an advantage
over girls – although opportunities are more equal today than they have been
historically.
In general there is a correlation between the structure of the family, its resources,
and the nature of children’s attendance at school. However, in Las Chulpas, a
group of out-of-school girls belonged to wealthier families who owned large
flocks of sheep. The girls attending school were from poorer families who had no
animals. One girl from a poorer family said: ‘If I had sheep, I would not attend
school’
, thus indicating the restrictions that one kind of family asset place on girls’
attendance at school.
Rural Andean children work not only because of economic need, but also because
of cultural and social needs. Indeed, it is through participation in agricultural and
domestic activities that children learn the skills and abilities to become
economically active adults. Participation in these activities gives children a sense
of achievement and learning that is often more elusive at school, as the next
section discusses. Some of the girls interviewed had themselves chosen to drop
out of school so that they could find employment or take a greater part in
domestic activities, albeit against the will of their parents. They did so because
they felt that they were learning more at home than at school, and they believed
that this learning would be more useful for their future lives. Opting out was
particularly evident among girls in the 12–16 age group who, as adolescents, were
developing new interests. In many cases girls decided to leave school without
consulting their parents, although in a number of cases it was the parents who
took this decision.
Beginning secondary education was a considerable challenge for girls.
Secondary education is not available in the villages, and so the children had to
walk for several hours or live in the town where the school is located. Most girls
therefore do not attend secondary education, because of the costs of
accommodation, transport, and food that most families cannot afford. Besides,
it was not considered appropriate for girls to live far from home or to walk alone
on the long journey to school. These issues are also pertinent to primary-school
attendance in cases where the school is not close to girls’ homes (see Box 2). In
two of the study villages, their dispersed pattern of settlement meant that many
of the children had a long walk to school. The young children were most
affected. (Table 2 shows lower attendance in this age group, in part because of
this factor.10) In two villages, schools offered primary education for the first
four years only. To complete primary schooling, students have to walk to a
neighbouring village, but girls are less likely to do this, so their primary
education is incomplete.
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Box 2: Distance and availability as barriers to girls’ education
Abracancha is high in the mountains, and snow peaks are clearly seen from almost every
angle in the village. The weather is cold and dry, and only potatoes can be cultivated at this
altitude. This used to be a very dispersed settlement, because of each family’s need for
pastures for their flocks of llamas and alpacas. Nowadays some families have moved
closer to the small, single-teacher school, but for other families their children from the age
of four and five years have a walk of 30, 40, or even 75 minutes to reach the school.
Attendance at the pre-school dwindles each day as the term progresses.
Distance is one reason why some children start their schooling late, because parents
prefer to wait until they consider that a child is strong enough to do the walking. But for the
children who do attend school, many do not complete their primary education. The one-
teacher school in Abracancha offers only the first three grades, and to continue schooling
children must go to Lares, the district capital, one hour by car from the village. But there is
only one bus per day to Lares, so children must stay there the whole week to study. Only a
few children do this – and of these few are girls.
The situation is similar in San Juan in the northern Andes. There is no pre-school, because
there is no teacher, and the primary school offers only grades 1–4. To study further,
children have to walk some two hours to the school in Las Lomas. Secondary education is
not available at Las Lomas and is thus an even more remote possibility for the girls of San
Juan – even for those of Las Lomas.
Marleni, a young girl from San Juan, was studying fourth grade for the second time in 1997
because there was no opportunity for her to attend the fifth grade in Las Lomas school,
due to the distance involved.
When access is not enough: the school experience
At the four schools studied there were many obstacles to girls’ attendance; but for
those who overcame these obstacles and succeeded in attending school, the
quality of education offered in rural schools was very low. Over the course of the
school day little time was dedicated to learning; indeed, on average the time spent
on learning hardly surpassed two hours (see Box 3). Instead, the school hours
were swallowed up in late starting, early closing, long breaks, and activities
focused on maintaining order in the classroom and administrative tasks. Added
to this were national and local holidays and teachers’ absence to collect their
salaries and for administrative purposes.11
In all four schools, most lessons are dedicated to ‘the basics’, that is mathematics
and Spanish language, with a very small amount of time allocated to social and
natural sciences. Although a national training programme began in 1996 to train
teachers in new methods and active pedagogy, its impact was still very limited
during the research period. Teaching and learning approaches were characterised
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When access is not enough: educational exclusion of rural girls in Peru
Box 3: The school day
The school day in Las Chulpas starts late – around 9 a.m. – with an opening ceremony
which can take between 10 and 45 minutes. Students stand in rows while the teacher
makes announcements, asks or designates ‘volunteers’ to come to the front to sing, tell a
tale, or share an event. There are two primary-school teachers in Las Chulpas; one who
teaches grades 1 and 2 in one classroom, and one who teaches grades 3–6 in another
classroom. There is also a pre-school teacher. When the school is ‘in’, there are clusters of
sandals (ojotas – made from old car tyres) in front of each classroom door, because
children are asked to remove them before they enter the buildings, to keep them clean.
(The son of the pre-school teacher, however, is allowed to keep his on, and they are not
ojotas but trainers.) There is a break at around 10 a.m. that lasts one hour, when the
children play and have breakfast, cooked by mothers and/or older girls. In Abracancha,
where there is no school breakfast, children bring some food (toasted corn, potatoes,
cheese) and sit in small groups, sharing what they have brought. After the break children
return to classrooms and stay until 1 p.m., after which they return home.12
by drill, memorising by rote, and repetition, making learning a rather boring and
mechanical task. This is a feature that characterises teaching in the vast majority
of rural schools (Ames 2001; 2004).
Teachers’ approaches to teaching and learning were limited, not only because of
low levels of training but also because they had few educational resources or
teaching aids. When we started our research, educational materials for teaching
and learning were few and outdated. One year later, textbooks, workbooks, and
materials for mathematics started to arrive at the schools as part of a national
programme to provide schools with libraries in an attempt to improve this
situation. But in some schools these materials remained unused. Teachers were
afraid that materials would become damaged or lost if children used them, or that
they were too difficult for them to understand. In Las Chulpas, for example, the
teachers stored the textbooks and used them occasionally to prepare a lesson; but
they did not allow their regular use by children. This reluctance on the part of
teachers was related to their lack of familiarity with these materials and their lack of
training in how to use them (see also Ames 2001).
The language used at school in the two Quechua communities was Spanish,
although few children started school with any command of it. Teachers used
Quechua to communicate with their students, but most of the lessons were given in
Spanish. However, not all the teachers were Quechua-speaking, and at least one had
to learn Quechua from her students in order to communicate with them. In any
case, the methodology of second-language acquisition had not been part of these
teachers’ training, and they used both languages without a clear strategy to enhance
the learning of Spanish, while insisting that children speak in this language.
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
In general, the professional training of teachers seemed inadequate for successful
teaching and learning. The quality of their own learning was poor. Their training
had not equipped them for working in multi-grade classrooms: on the contrary,
teacher training and in-service initial training for untrained teachers
(‘professionalisation’) is based on the assumption that teachers work in ‘complete’
schools, that is schools with one teacher for each of the six grades, and, moreover,
that they work in ‘ideal’ contexts where access and resources are not a key
challenge. It is not surprising, then, that teachers approached their multi-grade
classes as if they were two or three distinct mono-grade classes with invisible walls
between the clusters of children and desks. They set different lessons for each
grade group, or at best grouped two grades together for the same lesson.
This lack of training for the conditions in which they had to work produced
constant dissatisfaction and frustration. In interviews the teachers, who do not
originate from the villages where they teach, complained that the poverty of the
schools and the village environments made their jobs difficult. They had no
professional support, and moreover were separated from their families, who
remained in the towns while they stayed in the village during the school week.
Their sense of dissatisfaction, their alienation from the students and villagers, and
the material poverty of their environments negatively affected their motivation.
This situation is not unique to the cases studied, but has been reported in national
surveys and other studies among rural teachers (Montero et al. 2001, Tovar 1989).
The head teacher of the school in Las Chulpas commented:
I would like to work in an urban area, because I have been trained to work with
children, to teach. Sometimes I feel bad, because, at the beginning, for example, I
came with desires to work because I was practising with Spanish-speaking
students; thus everything I planned I achieved, but here it is not so, sometimes the
very fact you have to speak to them in Quechua means they fail in literacy.
Therefore I don’t feel satisfied with it. I would like that my students learn quickly,
wouldn’t I? And see the product of my work also in them. But you don’t see it, and
this is not the only place, I mean, I am not the only one that feels that way. There
are many teachers in rural areas that want to work, but with these children they
disappoint us… I don’t feel well working here, it is different, it is another reality.

This teacher expresses not only her dissatisfaction working in a rural area, but her
low expectations of her students. She perceives rural, indigenous children as less
capable than their urban, Spanish-speaking peers. Teachers’ low expectations are
also common in other rural schools and they extend to rural parents, who are
seen as less able to support their children’s education (see for example Ames,
1999a, 2004).
Another feature of school practices that adversely affected students’ participation
was physical punishment. In Las Lomas, corporal punishment by the male teacher
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When access is not enough: educational exclusion of rural girls in Peru
at the school was reported as one of the main causes for the drop-out of a group
of students in grade 5. In Abracancha, a small whip hung on the wall next to
teacher’s desk as a visual reminder that misbehaviour would be punished; it was
used sometimes during our observations. Order and obedience are highly prized
by teachers, and a silent classroom is regarded as a sign of good control on the part
of the teacher. This order and control were also enforced through threats, and
mockery and humiliation of children (see also Ames 1999a; Aikman 2003).
Children’s self-esteem becomes damaged by such techniques, as Vasquez and
Martinez (1996:74) point out:
… expressions of inconvenience, gestures indicating that one is losing too much
time with a child, telling him he [sic] is saying silly things or does not
understood, contribute to inhibit him and lead him to build a self image
centred on his inabilities.
13
Indeed, children often lose faith in their own capacity to learn, in response to the
continuous criticism of their mistakes and lack of feedback on their
achievements. This is expressed in a common phrase among children to explain
their failure: ‘mi cabeza no da’ (my head is not good enough).
These characteristics of schooling and teaching and learning in the study villages
appeared to affect girls and boys equally, but there are other aspects of school life
that affected girls particularly. Teachers’ expectations of their students’ ability are
low for rural children in general, and even lower for rural girls. Although in
formal interviews teachers recognised the importance of education for both girls
and boys, in informal discussion they expressed the strong opinion that rural
girls will not complete their basic education because of the constraints of poverty
and their families’ ignorance of the value of education. At best the teachers hoped
that they might complete primary schooling before marrying and becoming
overwhelmed in caring for a family. Therefore teachers did not see the value of
investing their energies in stimulating girls’ learning or helping them to achieve
their full potential.
Teachers emphasise, reproduce, and naturalise the domestic role of women among
their students. Some teachers ask girls to perform domestic duties for them, such as
washing their clothes or cleaning their dishes (in Abracancha and Las Chulpas
respectively). A teacher in Las Chulpas brought her baby to the school and
sometimes asked one girl to care for the baby while she was teaching: thus the girl
missed part of the lesson. Girls are sometimes in charge of preparing the food for
breakfast, bringing the firewood and the water, and then doing the cooking, which
represents time away from the classroom. (In some schools, mothers do this job.)
Teachers did not often interfere in conflicts between children – even inside the
classroom and the playground – and thus left unprotected those more vulnerable
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
to abuse, such as younger children and girls. Indeed, it was observed that boys
usually tease girls, for instance by stealing their bags for fun, occupying most of the
playground space, and laughing about girls’ mistakes in the classroom, thus
creating an embarrassing situation for girls. Although some teasing is seen as play,
some entails real aggression towards girls, and they feel humiliated, embarrassed,
and uncomfortable.
However, the schools were not a wholly negative place for girls. Girls commented
that they liked many aspects of their school, such as the opportunities to meet
other girls, and the chance to play together and have fun, especially when their
domestic tasks did not allow them other space and time to do this. They enjoyed
learning to read and write, to draw, and to speak Spanish if they did not already
do so, and learning mathematics in order to calculate and engage in the town
market with their families. They reported that they enjoyed being in the
company of others and learning things to improve their lives. They also created
their own strategies to minimise uncomfortable situations. For example, a group
of girls who regularly attended Las Chulpas school sat together in the front of the
classroom, as far from the boys as possible, thus constituting a cohesive group to
defend themselves against the boys’ teasing. When two new girls later joined this
multi-grade class, they were not initially part of the group and they became the
butt of teasing from the boys. Girls kept a low profile and were quiet as part of a
strategy for reducing the risk of being punished by the teacher.
The picture that the study revealed of girls’ schooling experience from the four
communities was not therefore all negative, and girls were not passive victims of
the system. However, girls may feel that the cost of schooling is too high, and that
drop-out is a logical choice. This may be because of violence, aggression, or
physical punishment, and/or because the education on offer – meaningless
exercises and a focus on knowledge and realities far removed from their lives,
concerns, and interests – has little to offer of value for them. Girls drop out when
they have other, more valued, spaces for learning and work in the context of their
own households.
Reflections
As Oliart (2004) points out, many actions can be taken to counteract rural girls’
problems of access and attendance at school. For example, an adult from the
community might accompany girls if they have a long walk to school. This may
reassure parents and girls, and improve attendance. Economic aid in the form of
bursaries for poorer families to enable them to send their girls to school has been
tried in countries such as Mexico (Oportunidades programme) and Brazil (Bolsa
Escola
programme). These programmes provide monetary compensation to
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When access is not enough: educational exclusion of rural girls in Peru
families (and in the case of Bolsa Escola usually to mothers) for the economic
value of the girls’ work lost through school attendance.14 The provision of school
breakfasts in rural schools is an incentive for poorer families to send their
children to school on a more regular basis. Recently, some initiatives in Peru such
as the projects Nuevos Horizontes (New Horizons/ CARE–USAID) and Abriendo
puertas para la educación de las niñas rurales
(Opening Doors for the Education
of Rural Girls/UNICEF–USAID) have achieved agreements with parents and
communities to guarantee the enrolment of all girls of school age, in an attempt
to avoid children enrolling late and then dropping out because they feel too old
to be at primary school. These projects have also worked intensively, not only at
local level but also at regional and national levels, to raise awareness of the
problems and disadvantages faced by rural girls.
Although not specifically directed at girls, a general effort to improve the quality
of education in recent years may help to make the school more attractive and
effective for girls. In the past, some NGO-supported bilingual projects in the
Andes, particularly the Bilingual Project in Puno (PEBI–Puno), have reported
that the overall interventions have helped to improve learning among girls in
general and among boys who have less exposure to Spanish (see Ames 1999a;
Rockwell et al. 1989). In the past decade, some efforts at the national level to
introduce active pedagogy and acknowledge diversity in the curriculum have also
helped to meet the educational needs of rural girls. Nevertheless, as many of these
projects and efforts have not paid particular attention to the situations of rural
girls, many indicators such as drop-out, promotion, and completion rates still
show a gap between girls and boys (see Ames 1999b). Therefore, although the
improvement in the quality of the education at rural schools will benefit both girls
and boys, particular actions are still required to meet rural girls’ specific problems.
Indeed, as this study of four Andean villages shows, there are issues over and above
the quality of schooling that affect girls’ exclusion. Neither the school nor the
community is a gender-neutral institution or agent. They both produce and
reproduce through their practice a structure of opportunities marked by gender
inequalities. Consciously or unconsciously, and reinforced by economic
constraints, girls’ exclusion and drop-out from school have reinforced rural
women’s subordinate status. In rural communities and at home, literacy,
schooling, and the ability to use the Spanish language are socially valued forms of
knowledge which determine the place of the person in the group, his or her status,
and the social recognition that can be obtained from them (Ames 2004, 2002).
Women who lack this knowledge and the ability to use it are often relegated to
subordinate positions in relation to the men from their own families and social
group. In our interviews with adult women who had little or no schooling, we
found that their lack of qualifications had a negative impact on their status inside
and outside their families and communities. This resulted in making them
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
dependent on male decisions and men’s ability to act on a range of issues. Most of
these women belong to a generation for whom girls’ education was not considered
necessary. In most of the homes that we visited, the expansion of the school system
and the discourse of Education For All have strengthened the demand for
schooling for both girls and boys, and have changed the perception that education
for girls is unnecessary. However, we also found that despite a more equal
discourse among parents, in practice girls’ schooling is more fragile and
fragmented than schooling for boys. This is reflected not only in the situations
described and analysed in this study, but also in the features of drop-out,
promotion, and attendance that each community presents.
Although our research did not pay particular attention to textbooks (since they
were rarely used), research has shown that textbooks and school lessons suffer
from gender bias. Through examples that attribute domestic roles to women and
girls, and productive roles to men and boys, or through the absence of female
characters in history, science, and the arts, school textbooks and lessons continue
to reinforce gender prejudices concerning female and male roles (Anderson
1986; Espinoza 2004).
Another point of concern relates to changes in marital preferences. In a study in
the southern Andes, Oliart (2003) found that a growing proportion of young
men with education migrate temporarily out of the community. When they
return to the community, they tend to prefer more educated women for wives,
and girls with less education are at risk of single motherhood.
The schools included in this study face many challenges ahead if they are going to
offer gender equity in education. It is true that many teachers have started to
change the practices that have a negative impact on girls’ attendance. In Las
Lomas, for example, as a result of a local teacher-training programme led by
UNICEF, female teachers stopped using physical punishment when they became
aware of its possible effects on drop-out rates. In Las Chulpas, the head teacher
attended the national training programme (PLANCAD) aimed at promoting
active pedagogy. In a visit to the village two years after the end of the study, we
found that she had started to try out new methodological strategies, such as
group work and written tasks to produce more attractive and significant learning
situations for her students, with positive results. In both cases, in-service training
helped teachers to identify problems and solutions to improve their classroom
practice. This illustrates that teachers are willing to change and improve when
they are helped to recognise their prejudicial gendered practices, and when they
receive support, training, and resources to enable them to overcome the
problems that they face and the isolation that they have felt. However, there is still
a need not only to provide such support and training on a more regular basis, but
also to tackle more subtle problems, such as low expectations and prejudices
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When access is not enough: educational exclusion of rural girls in Peru
about rural children and girls in particular. Some small-scale projects have been
started which propose educational interventions with the aim of improving the
quality of schooling, but with the specific target also of improving the situations
of rural girls in particular, thus working with parents, teachers, and communities
to sustain girls’ schooling (see for example the projects Warmi Warmakunapa
Yachaynin
– Girls’ Knowledge – and Musuq Yachay – New Learning, and
methodological innovations for pre-school and primary school with an
emphasis on girls, initiated by CARE/USAID, and the Project for Gender Equity
in the Education of Rural Girls in Quispicanchis, by Fe y Alegría 44/ IPEDEPH).
Thus, a range of factors must be taken into account to improve girls’ education:
from the school teachers in the classrooms to the educational system that trains
and supports their teaching, to the design and distribution of textbooks, pedagogic
strategies, and other resources. The economic condition of rural societies also
needs attention. A deeper reflection on the gender-biased preconceptions of all
agents involved in the education effort is needed by educators, parents, and policy
makers. A closer examination of how these preconceptions reinforce male
domination and exclude girls and women is urgently required if the goal of
equality is going to be truly achieved.
Patricia Ames, PhD in Anthropology of Education, University of London, is a
researcher and lecturer at the Faculty of Education at the Universidad Peruana
Cayetano Heredia, and a member of the Institute of Peruvian Studies. Her writings
have examined various issues in rural education such as gender equity, multi-grade
schooling, literacy, use of textbooks, and political socialisation of children.

Notes
1
The project on which this article is based was funded by the Royal Embassy of the Netherlands.
It was carried out at the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos IEP under the general co-ordination of
Carmen Montero and the research co-ordination of Patricia Oliart. I owe a debt to them for
their guidance, and to all the girls of the ‘rural girls’ educational exclusion project’, for allowing
me to be part of their lives.
2
This measure is used by UNESCO in its annual Education For All Global Monitoring Reports.
It is the ratio of female-to-male value of a given indicator. A GPI of 1 indicates parity between
sexes; a GPI that varies between 0 and 1 means a disparity in favour of boys; a GPI greater than
1 indicates a disparity in favour of girls. However, a country can have a GPI of 1, indicating
complete equality between boys and girls, but still have low rates of access, retention, and
achievement for girls and boys.
3
ENAHO Encuesta Nacional de Hogares/National Home Survey, 2001.
4
ENAHO Encuesta Nacional de Hogares/National Home Survey, 1996.
5
ENAHO Encuesta Nacional de Hogares/National Home Survey, 1997.
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
6
ENNIV: Encuesta Nacional de Niveles de Vida /National Survey on standards of living, 1997.
7
The names of the villages have been changed to preserve confidentiality.
8
I continued to visit Las Chulpas for two subsequent years, doing research into other aspects of
school life. When appropriate, I draw on information from these visits.
9
Defined as below the minimum of nutritional intake required to ensure human survival.
10 Another factor affecting low attendance in this age group is the availability of pre-school
education in many rural villages.
11 Some time after our research indicated these features, the Ministry of Education published the
fact that rural schools get an average of 250 school hours per year, in contrast with the 600
hours that urban schools get, and far less than the 1000 hours stated by official norms
(Ministerio de Educación 2002).
12 In Las Lomas and San Juan the school day is different, because children attend in the mornings
from 9 to 12, and in the afternoons from 2 to 4. They also get school breakfast at mid-morning.
13 My translation.
14 See www.oportunidades.gob.mx/ and www.mec.gov.br/secrie/default.asp.These programmes
are aimed at children in poverty, including girls. In the case of Mexico, the programme tries to
focus on girls, especially in the first year of secondary education, when they are more likely to
drop out or avoid enrolment.
References
Aikman, Sheila (2003) La educación indígena en Sudamérica: Interculturalidad y bilinguismo en
Madre de Dios, Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos
Ames, P. (1999a) ‘El poder en el aula: un estudio en escuelas rurales andinas’ in M. Tanaka (comp)
El poder visto desde abajo: educación, democracia y ciudadanía en espacios locales, Lima: Instituto
de Estudios Peruanos
Ames, P. (1999b) Mejorando la escuela rural, tres décadas de experiencias educativas en el campo,
Documento de trabajo No. 96, Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos
Ames, P. (2001) ¿Libros para todos? Maestros y textos escolares en el Perú rural, Consorcio de
Investigaciones Económicas y Sociales, Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos
Ames, P. (2002) Para ser iguales, para ser distintos. Educación, escritura y poder en el Perú, Lima:
Instituto de Estudios Peruanos
Ames, P. (2004) ‘Multigrade Schools in Context: Literacy in the Community, the Home and the
School in the Peruvian Amazon’, PhD dissertation, University of London
Anderson, J. (1986) ‘Imágenes de la familia en los textos y vida escolares’, Revista Peruana de
Ciencias Sociales, Vol. 1, No. 1, Lima: FOMCIENCIAS
EFA (2004) ‘Regional overview: Latin America and the Caribbean’, in EFA Global Monitoring
Report 2003/4 (www.efa.unesco.cl/ept_esp/todo.htm)
Espinoza, G. (2004) ‘Género y curriculum: Resultados preliminares de investigación’, presentation
at GRADE Research seminar series, Lima, April
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When access is not enough: educational exclusion of rural girls in Peru
Guadalupe, C. et al. (2002) La educación peruana a inicios del nuevo siglo, Documento de trabajo
No. 12, Lima: Ministerio de Educación
Ministerio de Educación (2002) Educación para al democracia. Lineamientos de política educativa
2001-2006, Lima: Ministerio de Educación
Montero, C. and T. Tovar (1999) Agenda abierta para la educación de las niñas rurales, Lima: CARE-
Perú, IEP, Foro educativo
Montero, C., P. Oliart, P. Ames, Z. Cabrera, and F. Uccelli (2001) La escuela rural: estudio para
identificar modalidades y prioridades de intervención, Documento de trabajo No. 2, Lima:
MECEP – Ministerio de Educación
Oliart, P. (2003) ‘Género, sexualidad y adolescencia en la provincia de Quispicanchis’, Informe de
consultoría (unpublished)
Oliart, P. (2004) ‘¿Para qué estudiar?: La problemática educativa de niñas y mujeres en áreas rurales
del Perú’ in I. Schicra (ed.) Género, etnicidad y educación en América Latina, Madrid: Ediciones
Morata
Rockwell, E. et al. (1989) Educación bilingüe y realidad escolar: un estudio en escuelas primarias
andinas, Lima: Programa de Educación Bilingüe de Puno
Tovar, T. (1989) ‘Ser maestro. Condiciones de trabajo docente en el Perú’, Lima: DESCO, UNESCO
(OREALC)
Uccelli, F. (1999) ‘Democracia en el sur andino: posibilidades y esfuerzos de las familias campesinas
para educar a sus hijos’, en Tanaka (comp) El poder visto desde abajo, Lima: Instituto de
Estudios Peruanos
Vasquez B., A. Martínez, and I. Martínez (1996) La socialización en la escuela: una perspectiva
etnográfica, Barcelona: Paidós
165

8 Crossing boundaries and stepping out of
purdah in India

Mora Oommen
This chapter describes and begins to analyse how the nation-wide Total Literacy
Campaign (TLC) in India set in motion a process of empowerment that opened
up space for women to cross social and geographical boundaries. I have based
this chapter on research conducted for a larger study which sought to examine
the link between literacy skills and empowerment in the lives of the women
participants in the TLC. During fieldwork for this study, in response to my
inquiries about how empowerment had manifested itself in the lives of women, I
frequently heard the phrase ‘Women are now stepping out of purdah.’ This chapter
explores the meaning of this response. I came to understand that to speak of
women’s empowerment required an understanding of the roles played by
women, and the challenges that they had to overcome.
In May 1988, the government of India launched the Total Literacy Campaign
(TLC) under the National Literacy Mission (NLM), with the aim of imparting
functional literacy to people in the age group of 15–35 years (GoI 1988). The TLC
model was extraordinary, in that it took responsibility for increasing national
literacy out of the central government’s hands and made local government
administrators responsible for its implementation, with the involvement of
community organisations. This partnership allowed for local ownership and
unprecedented voluntary participation.
Literacy was imparted through innovative approaches, involving entire
populations in a process that was area-specific and time-bound. The TLC
mobilised and trained 10 million people throughout India as voluntary trainers
to impart literacy skills in basic reading, writing, and numeracy to approximately
68 million individuals (BGVS nd). Volunteers were trained in a pedagogy known
as Improved Pace and Content of Learning (IPCL) to achieve the objective of
imparting these skills in 200 hours (BGVS 1993). Three multi-grade primers
containing exercises and tests were supplemented with locally developed
material (such as short stories, plays, and songs) to increase the appeal to the
participants. In addition, topics in the primers included functional information
on agriculture, economics, livelihood, health, and local history. Separate classes
in groups of 10–15 men and women were held close to the homes of the
participants. Particular emphasis was given to increasing the involvement of
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Crossing boundaries and stepping out of purdah in India
women. This resulted in many evaluation studies highlighting the very high
levels of women’s participation in these adult education programmes (Singh
2000; Sundararaman 1996).
In July 2002, ten years after the official end of the TLC, I conducted an
ethnographic study in a cluster of villages (identified as a gram panchayat)
located in Begusarai District in Bihar. The civil-society partner that conducted
the literacy campaign, and my host and guide in this district, was the Bharat Gyan
Vigyan Samiti (BGVS).1 The study is based on data gathered through interviews
and participant observations conducted in July 2002 in Shantipur2 gram
panchayat
. The ethnographic style of the study was facilitated by my fluency in
Hindi, but the insights of the study draw as much on my perspective gained from
growing up in urban India as on my observations in Begusarai.
Of the people who were involved in the literacy campaign in Begusarai, 80 per cent
were women (BGVS–Begusarai official records). In a State that has strong cultural
norms limiting women’s independence and rights, the work of the BGVS was
unprecedented: it set in motion a dynamic process of redefining women’s role in
society. As became apparent to me during my research, women played three main
roles in the campaign: as organisers (recruited as co-ordinators and leaders to
encourage other women to participate); as volunteers (trained to teach or carry
out other tasks in the organisation); and as learners (the recipients of the literacy
training). This study examines what ‘stepping out of purdah’ meant to the women
in each of these groups.
After spending time in the community, I understood that the literacy campaign,
although seeking to impart literacy skills, had a much richer story to tell about the
changes in women’s lives. Understanding the empowerment of women went
beyond merely determining how formerly non-literate women were using their
newly acquired reading and writing skills in their daily lives. Reviewing the changes
in the lives of women who participated in the TLC as organisers and volunteers
indicated that although they came from different starting points and had different
levels of access to material, social, and human resources, the campaign opened
important spaces for all of to make the most of these resources.
For more than ten years, women’s literacy has been an important proxy indicator
for measuring women’s empowerment (King and Hill 1993; Patel S 1996; Rockhill
1993; Robinson-Pant 2000; Rowlands 1997, 1999; Athreya and Chunkath 1996).
The concept of women’s empowerment first began to take shape in 1985, at the
United Nations Women’s Conference in Nairobi, through the Development
Alternative for Women in the New Era (DAWN). This resulted in an examination
of women’s empowerment in a patriarchal system that instituted sexual division
of labour and controlled women’s sexuality (Sen and Grown 1987). However, to
quote Batliwala (1993), the means of measuring empowerment remains ‘fuzzy’. By
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
the end of the 1990s, a number of writers had agreed that empowerment is a
process (Stromquist 1997; Kabeer 1999; Ramachandran 1999; Rowlands 1997,
1999; Oxaal and Baden 1997), although there remain differences about how to
identify and measure tangible changes that result in empowerment.
Stromquist looked at the process of gaining literacy and concluded that it is more
important than the eventual use or knowledge of coding and decoding letters and
numbers. She stressed the ‘unintended outcome’ of empowerment from literacy
(Stromquist 1997:29). Writers such as Boserup (1970), Kabeer (1994), and Park
(1996) argue that literacy should not be an end in itself, but should be linked to the
functional part of development projects, especially those affecting income
generation, so that women can have access to financial resources. The link
between the process of acquiring literacy skills and gaining empowerment since
the 1990s has clearly remained an important issue for scholars and practitioners.
However, in this literature I did not find any analysis of the literacy process which
takes into account not only the move from illiteracy to literacy for the women
learners, but also the changes for women who were organisers and volunteers. In
the context of such programmes as the TLC, developed on a mass basis, I have
found it critical to assess the campaign process, which suggests a process of
empowerment for women participating in different roles. An attempt to
understand the roles that different women played, the types of struggle that they
faced, and the measures employed by them to overcome barriers is an important
part of understanding the process of empowerment that can result from a literacy
campaign. Begusarai’s experience is significant because it can provide insight into
the process that enabled women to cross boundaries which previously had limited
their participation in the public realm.
Total Literacy Campaign in Begusarai District
In Begusarai District, Bihar, the TLC was organised and administered from 1994
to 1996 by the Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samithi (BGVS) in partnership with the
government. Begusarai was the first district in the State of Bihar where the BGVS
completed the TLC phase. Begusarai has remained actively involved in activities
related to the Post-Literacy Phase (with activities that include publishing a local
newspaper for neo-literates, and setting up libraries, women’s self-help groups,
and supplementary classes to increase school enrolment). During the time of my
visiting, BGVS had begun the Continuing Education phase, intended to sustain
the gains of the campaigns by re-introducing literacy classes and supporting
women’s participation in local government.
Covering an area of 1918 square kilometres, Begusarai is one of the 37
administrative districts in the northern Indian State of Bihar. It is divided into 17
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Crossing boundaries and stepping out of purdah in India
blocks, 247 gram panchayats, and 1100 inhabited villages (CMS 1999). BGVS–
Begusarai works in all 17 blocks of this district. According to the 2001 census, the
population of Begusarai is 1.2 million men and 1.1 million women, of whom 87.6
per cent profess Hinduism and 12.3 per cent Islam. The predominant language is
Hindi, spoken by 89.6 per cent (GoB 1991a). Statistics on transportation,
education, and health-care facilities show that Begusarai is quite well provided,
but a more detailed study shows that there are wide economic and social
disparities between the urban and rural populations. For example, while 14.5 per
cent of the total population is from the Scheduled [low] Caste (SC), 94 per cent of
the rural population belongs to the SC (GoB 1991b). Most public amenities, such
as running water, schools, electricity supplies, and health centres are concentrated
in the urban areas.
Literacy levels in Begusarai district in 1991 were 49 per cent for men and 24 per
cent for women; in 2001, these figures increased to 60 per cent and 36 per cent
respectively (GoB 1991a, GoB 2002). These figures are still much lower than the
2001 national average of 75.9 per cent and 65.4 per cent. Analysis of the literacy
rate among SC women in rural areas reveals that in 1991 only 5.54 per cent of this
population was literate. As Figure 1 shows, in rural settings, where the poor,
landless, SC women are the most marginalised social group, the opportunity to
gain skills such as literacy has been denied to them. Thus, we see that the national
literacy level of 65.4 per cent masks the much lower rate for rural, SC women,
who suffer discrimination because of location, caste, and gender. Hence, the
literacy campaign clearly needed to focus on the women in rural areas.
According to the 1991 census, there were more than 400,000 illiterate people in
1100 villages in Begusarai district. The BGVS estimated that it would require more
than 40,000 volunteers to carry out the literacy campaign. On 20 November 1994,
BGVS conducted an extensive survey throughout the district, involving an
innovative mass-based mobilising methodology called kalajatha (cultural
carnivals). The survey was well co-ordinated throughout the district and created
energy and motivation to catalyse the campaign. Through this survey, 246,000
women and 188,000 men were registered for classes. As classes for women and men
had to be organised separately at the local level, an estimated 16,400 women (one
teacher: 15 learners) needed to be recruited as volunteers and trained to teach.
Classes began in the district in January 1995 and were followed by intensive
teaching, monitoring, re-training, and re-motivating sessions.A communications
structure was set up to connect volunteer trainers (VTs) with master trainers
(MTs) and key resource persons (KRPs). The MTs and KRPs were hired to be full-
time co-ordinating organisers, working across the district.Volunteer trainers were
predominantly high-school students trained to organise and hold literacy classes
in their villages. In June 1996, a Mahapariksha Abhiyan (final exam campaign)
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Figure 1: Literacy rates among Schedule Caste women in Begusari District in
1991

Source: GOB, 1991.
completed the teaching phase of the TLC. The results of the test showed that of the
330,000 enrolled learners who took the exam, 88 per cent completed Primer I; 61
per cent, Primer II, and 56.1 per cent, Primer III. This translated into 52 per cent
of the learners becoming literate according to NLM norms (Rampal and
Manimala 2002:100). Even after this intensive, large-scale literacy campaign
ended, BGVS continued to engage the participants in programmes related to
education, health, and livelihood issues.
Women’s role as campaign organisers
Women participated in the campaign as organisers, volunteers, and learners.
Organisers were women in leadership positions in BGVS at the block and district
level. On the whole, men dominated the leadership of the organisation, and few
women were present at this leadership level. Most women organisers joined the
campaign as Master Trainers (MTs), then moved up to senior co-ordinating
positions and membership of the District Task Force (an executive team which co-
ordinated all the activities in the district). Organisers, who were given the
responsibility to arrange and manage events and activities for women, were
generally 25–35 years of age when they joined BGVS. Almost all had college
degrees (Bachelor’s level) and some had a graduate degree (Master’s level). They
came from upper-caste, land-owning families which had high social standing.
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Crossing boundaries and stepping out of purdah in India
Many were married and had had children while they were still teenagers. Typically
such a woman lived in her husband’s village with other members of his family (the
Hindi term for this is sasural). In field work for this study, meetings and interviews
were held with four of the twenty organisers in the district.
Women as campaign volunteers
Volunteers were young women who had completed at least eight years of formal
schooling, although some had high-school or college-level qualifications. They
joined the campaign in two waves. More than 15,000 women were active
volunteers during the TLC period (1994–1996) when they were 12–18 years old.
Volunteers generally joined the organisation as kalajatha performers, Volunteer
Trainers, and Master Trainers. The second wave of volunteers joined after the TLC
phase (1998 onwards). The second-wave volunteers were very young when the
literacy classes started, and they watched TLC activities in the district as they grew
up. Volunteers from both waves took up positions in the Post-Literacy
programmes run by BGVS. Some were given specific responsibilities; for example,
running the children’s supplementary schools called Vikalp Shiksha Kendra
Centres, the Panchayat Libraries, and women’s self-help savings groups, called
Sambals. The organisation also supported the candidacy of many volunteers for
roles in government programmes: nomination to serve on the Village Education
Committees, responsibility for running the Anganwadi Centres (day-care centres
for very young children), and election to positions such as Ward Commissioners
and Mukhiya (village representative) in the July 2001 Panchayat elections. When
the BGVS initiated or expanded a project, the volunteers were usually the group
that was mobilised, given training, and eventually assigned to carry out the task.
Volunteers were diverse in age and economic and caste backgrounds, but very few
belonged to the Scheduled Caste.Volunteers received little or no remuneration for
their work. Most were unmarried when the campaign started, and they lived with
their parents in their natal village (termed maikai in Hindi). But, in time, many
came under family pressure to get married, which reduced their participation in
BGVS activities. During the field study, meetings were held with 80 volunteers,
and in-depth interviews were conducted with ten.
Women learners
A majority of women learners were from the lower castes. They were landless or
had small land-holdings and limited financial resources. Many had never had
access to formal schooling, and contact with the TLC was their first opportunity
to learn to read and write. The TLC targeted a diverse age group, between 15 and
35 years of age. The external evaluation of the Begusarai TLC, conducted in 1999,
pointed out that the majority of learners who achieved literacy were in the 15–24
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
age group (CMS 1999). I interviewed many of the learners who had acquired
literacy skills during the campaign and had remained in touch with the BGVS,
through initiatives like the savings groups. But unlike the organisers and
volunteers, learners did not occupy formal positions in the organisational
structure. They were encouraged to participate in BGVS programmes like the
libraries and Sambals. Most of the learners were married and lived with their in-
laws. During the field work, I met with approximately thirty learners and held in-
depth interviews with eight.
Crossing boundaries: stepping out of purdah
Before the literacy campaign in Shantipur, tradition limited the extent of women’s
interaction outside their homes. The Hindi term used by most people for this
physical, social, political, and economic seclusion is purdah pratha. This practice
most commonly manifests itself with women covering their heads with the edge
of their traditional garment: a sari. The purdah acts as a physical restriction on
women’s mobility by defining their proper space as being within the boundaries
of the home, where they are protected from contact with men who are not
members of their family (Parker 1995). It creates a sexually segregated world,
which identifies men with the public/social sphere and women with the
private/domestic sphere (Kabeer 1985). The power of the purdah lies in the way in
which it defines the interaction that women can have with the outside world.
Patricia Jeffery, in her book on women living in purdah in India, defines this
practice as follows:
For Muslims, purdah in the sense of complete veiling seems to operate after
puberty in relation to all men, except very close kin. In north India, for Hindus,
purdah in this sense is largely a question of veiling only after marriage and in
relation to the husband’s older male kin. Hindu women do not veil themselves
in the place where they were born and where their own kin live, unless their
husband or one of his male relatives is present.
(Jeffery 1979:3)
In this chapter I have used the term purdah as a demonstration of boundaries that
limit women’s participation in the public realm. Stepping out of purdah is not
limited to women who question this tradition, but reflects changes in more subtle,
tacit forms of boundaries formed around women. When the literacy campaign
began, the BGVS women had to overcome the obstacle of purdah so that women
could be recruited locally to teach and motivate others. The BGVS considered it
essential that the literacy programme should reach out to both men and women
so it made a concerted effort to provide women with space outside their homes in
which to participate in the scheme. As some studies have already acknowledged:
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Crossing boundaries and stepping out of purdah in India
Large-scale social mobilisation that is elicited by literacy campaigns obtains a
‘social sanction’ for women’s participation in literacy programmes. Various
patriarchal considerations that hinder their participation become at least
temporarily inoperative as women come out of their homes and take part in the
literacy campaign with great enthusiasm.
(Patel and Dighe, 1997:5)
The experience of the organisers
This form of suspension of purdah was evident in Shantipur, but was
experienced differently by organisers, volunteers, and learners. The organisers
spoke of purdah as a constraint on their mobility and on their ability to choose
the kind of life that they would like to lead. Being educated, economically well-
off, and enjoying a respectable standing in society, they had access to resources
(material, social, and human), but strictly defined gender roles limited the extent
to which they could exercise these resources. The BGVS, through the literacy
campaign, opened spaces for those upper-caste women to begin a process of
change. They achieved tangible benefits in terms of social recognition, rather
than monetary gains. Deepa, one of the first women to join the organisation,
recalls her initial interaction:
I was the only woman in my area who had completed my BA. So people were
informed that my father-in-law has a daughter-in-law who is educated and he
is the person to talk to. So people came to speak to my father-in-law and said
that a meeting will be taking place in the village and if he would allow me to
come for the meeting because I was educated … My father-in-law is interested
in such matters. He said, ‘Okay, she will do this work’. So I went to the meeting
(and) in the meeting I didn’t even know how to stand up and speak my name!
… I covered my head and stood there. Then they told me about the kind of
work that has to be done, that there is a huge offence against women, women
are being burnt because they have not brought in enough dowry … All this
began to touch my heart slowly. What they are saying is completely right, but in
our village there is so much purdah …If I say yes to them maybe I will be able
to do some work to solve their problems.
(Deepa, interviewed on 25 July 2002)
In this account, Deepa points out how she both possessed and was aware of the
resources that she had: her BA qualification and her family’s high standing in the
village. She also was aware of current limitations on her life: her family had
control over her interactions in the public realm. There were certain social
practices that she was required to adhere to, and these were defined by her
family’s social standing. She acknowledged that ‘they are saying things that are
completely right’
, but she also knew that she possessed the potential to make a
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change (‘if I say yes’). The process of emerging from the constraints imposed by
her family for the sake of other women was a process of empowerment. For her,
BGVS provided the platform from which she was able to step out, with the
resources that she already possessed.
Other organisers, like Deepa, often stressed the geographical boundaries that
they had to cross, which in turn motivated other women to step out of their
houses. Shakti said:
… Then I joined the BGVS. Until I was working at the Panchayat level there
was no problem. I used to work all day and then in the evening I used to come
home. As I started to work at higher levels in the organisation, it became more
difficult. For example, I returned yesterday after an eight-day trip. When I
started to stay out of the house for more days, two days, four days, obviously the
problems increased. Nobody’s husband would like his wife to stay outside the
house for so many days. But then I would sit down and try to explain to him,
what kind of work I was doing. If I did not do this work, then what would
happen to all the other women?
(Shakti, interviewed on 17 July 2002)
She broke out of the purdah by stepping out of the house and extending her work
beyond the borders of her village, block, district, and State. Shakti’s view was that
she needed to push the social and geographical boundaries for all women. She
needed to create the opportunities for other women by being the first to come
out.
Stepping out of purdah for organisers like Deepa and Shakti meant that they
drew on resources such as their education and high socio-economic status in a
new space opened up by the literacy campaign. So for the organisers, overcoming
geographical boundaries and travelling independently was a key form of
empowerment.
The experience of the volunteers
When I spoke to the volunteers, a majority of them stated that the significant
change in the lives of women was that they were out of purdah. Interestingly, they
did not necessarily identify purdah as a barrier that they needed to overcome.
Volunteering as teachers/trainers in the campaign was accepted as an extension
of their schoolwork. Volunteers talked about the Literacy Campaign with a
feeling of excitement. They clearly had fond memories of activities that gave
them recognition and responsibility in the public sphere. As long as the work was
confined to the local level of the village, it was seen as acceptable for young
women to participate. As Savita, a volunteer, said:
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I was told, any women living near you between the ages of 14 and 40 you
should bring them to your centre and teach them. In the training we were told
that it is likely that they will ask for things like oil, or say that we do not have
time. So how will you explain things to them, we were given such training.
(Savita, interviewed on 17 July 2002)
The skills that they learned in school were relevant and useful in the campaign,
and the volunteers were seen as vital participants in the programme by the BGVS
leadership. Most volunteers referred to the fun and excitement of being included
as part of a social change. They saw imparting literacy skills as a simple task, as an
extension of their schoolwork:
We did not find teaching difficult at all. We held their hands and showed them
how to write letters, patiently. Like this: ma, ka, na …
(Participant in focus-group discussion on 22 July 2002)
Many volunteers were not married at the time of the campaign. As they were
living in their natal homes, they had fewer constraints on their mobility. In this
society there were fewer restrictions on the lives of women at home than on the
lives of married women living in their sasural.
During my stay in Shantipur, one of the young women who had been an active
volunteer for the past five years got married and, as is customary, had returned to
stay with her family for a few months. This practice signified her last few days at
home before her final move to her sasural, after which she could no longer make
claims on her natal family. As we began to talk, other BGVS volunteers teased her,
saying that now she was married she had become quiet and demure, unlike her
previous assertive, activist self. I asked her once if she thought she would continue
her work when she went to live with her in-laws. Her eyes immediately looked
down, and she said quietly that this would depend on her husband’s family.
Although she had asked her parents to find her a husband who would be open to
her working outside the house, she did not think that his family would allow her
to do this.
My interactions with the volunteers suggested that purdah was not a barrier that
they had to confront directly. This result may perhaps be attributed to the
successful struggles of the older women in the community, who created protected
environments in which the younger women could step out. Another reason
presented was that many of their activities were limited to areas close to their
homes and did not require too much interaction beyond the protective circle of
the community. But it suggests that the real test of volunteers’ scope to move
beyond purdah will not come until each one of them begins to leave her village, or
starts to question social norms.
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The experience of the learners
‘Coming out of purdah’ had a more direct, literal meaning for the learners. The
social and physical limitations placed on them by gender and caste were very
overt. Strict geographical boundaries in villages physically separated the areas
inhabited by members of the lower caste from those of higher-caste women (or
men). For women of a lower caste to step out of their homes and go to upper-
caste areas to learn or participate in BGVS activities was itself a crossing of a
major social and geographical boundary. As observed by other researchers who
have studied literacy classes in north India, Patkar (1995) notes: ‘There are
striking disparities between scheduled and non-scheduled caste female
participation rates in the North, where the caste barriers on women’s entry into
the public sphere appear to be rigidly enforced’ (Patkar 1995: 403).
Such behaviour was emphasised when I spoke to many learners. Cheshta said:
One day my mother-in-law asked where I was going and when I told her I was
going to study, I got a huge beating from her. She asked me how I could step
outside the house and go to someone else’s place. So we used to secretly go for the
classes at 12 noon when my parents-in-law would go to work in the fields. We
would hide the slate in our box and never let them see it.
(Chesta, interviewed on 20 July 2002)
Chesta revealed how she was prevented from going to ‘someone else’s place’. Her
mother-in-law was stopping her from leaving her side of the village to go to the
other side; in this way she was reminding her not only of the step that she was
taking into an unknown person’s house, but also of the boundaries that she was
crossing by stepping out of her community into the space of upper-class families.
Even though literacy classes were being conducted throughout the district,
making it seem like an accepted community activity, the limitations on individual
women’s scope to make the very public step of coming out of their homes to
acquire a skill carried grave risks. Although the physical distance covered by them
may have been small, the social distance that they bridged was significant.
Participating in the literacy classes was not a simple matter for learners. They
would often have to brave repeated hecklings on their way to classes. Vidya
described this:
People used to say a lot. They said, ‘From your childhood you have not learned
anything and now at this age you are going to learn? How do you think you will
learn?’ … Even listening to them, we used to go.
(Vidya, interviewed on 21 July 2002)
Thus coming out of purdah for her meant publicly admitting her lack of
literacy skills and participating in a group to learn them. In one of the group
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conversations, Kalpana referred to herself bitterly as a fool (moork in Hindi)
prior to the literacy campaign:
I was a fool … Then one of the VTs, she came to my house and said that such
an activity has started where we teach people to read and write. If you remain a
moork then how will you know what is happening? It is better if you learn to
read and write. It was on her insistence that I went.
(Kalpana, interviewed on 21 July 2002)
Kalpana equates her illiteracy to being foolish, and associates being literate with
gaining skills that would maker her a better person. The VT reinforced this self-
impression. The boundaries that the learners had to cross were more rigid and
overt than those crossed by organisers and volunteers. As my research revealed, the
learners were the most marginalised of the women in Shantipur. Participating in
the literacy campaign required stepping out of their homes, which required
crossing socio-geographic boundaries of caste, class, and gender. In addition, it also
meant publicly coming out and admitting the lack of literacy skills, and facing the
risk of humiliation. Therefore, coming out of purdah for the learners was a risky
endeavour, leaving them most susceptible to criticism.
Conclusion
This chapter has described the context of an unprecedented effort to increase
literacy levels in a region that had one of the lowest literacy rates in India. The
process of involving large numbers of people locally to administer and conduct the
literacy classes required a high level of women’s participation. The TLC in
Begusarai offered women unprecedented space to ‘come out of purdah’. But
different women played different roles in the campaign, and coming out of purdah
had different starting points and implications for each of the groups of women.
The organisers in some ways took the first step out of purdah as the vanguard for
other women in the society, by breaking traditional limits on their participation in
the public sphere. It is important to note that the high social standing of their
families, and their high levels of education, made things easier for them. The
volunteers perhaps will be the measure of how far the purdah tradition has been
overcome. As they develop from adolescence to womanhood and move away from
their native region to participate in social change and progress, the extent to which
the volunteers will be able to maintain the momentum built up during the TLC will
need to be assessed. The learners perhaps took the largest personal risk, because
they were most vulnerable when stepping out to a space created by upper-caste,
educated women. Their own commitment to learning to read and write had to
overcome societal restrictions on their physical, social, and economic activities.
The process used in the TLC in Begusarai went beyond simply imparting literacy.
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It clearly questioned a number of social norms constraining women’s participating
in public life. This glimpse into a decade of development in the lives of a group of
women indicates the sensitivity required to understand an overarching term like
‘women’s empowerment’ in all its complexity, rejoicing in the crossing of
boundaries imposed by caste, gender, age, economy, and geography, but also
cautioning the reader about the fragility of these efforts.
Mora Oommen worked with Indian education NGOs in the late 1990s. Most recently
she has worked as a consultant on programme and resource development with
innovative social initiatives, such as the Youth Employment Summit (YES) Campaign
and World Computer Exchange, Inc. The research for this chapter was conducted as
part of her work for her MA at the Institute of Education, London University.

Notes
1
BGVS is a nationwide non-government organisation, with chapters formed at the District
Level. During the TLC, they worked across India in partnership with the government to shape,
develop, and implement the campaign. The organisation remains in existence to this day,
working on a variety of social issues related to basic literacy, children’s education, health
education, women’s empowerment, and other livelihood issues.
2
The names of this Panchayat and the participants have been changed, to preserve confidentiality.
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180

9 Pastoralist schools in Mali: gendered
roles and curriculum realities

Salina Sanou and Sheila Aikman
This chapter is based on on-going work with pastoralist schools in the Gao
region of north-east Mali, funded by Oxfam GB. It examines strategies for
improving gender equality in education through the work of animatrices
female community mobilisers – who support girls’ access to education and foster
their participation through complementary developments designed to make the
curriculum more gender-equitable.
We argue that the work of the animatrices has been successful in increasing the
access and retention of children, and especially of girls, in school. However,
recent evaluations suggest that the animatrices do not challenge conventional
assumptions about roles for women and girls and may even have increased
women’s workload. We consider ways in which the animatrice model can be
supported to become more challenging and transformative, as part of a wider
strategy for gender equality involving, among other things, curriculum change.
In the wider context of decentralisation and education reform, animatrices can
work simultaneously with other initiatives for opening up democratic spaces and
gender equality. As this is work in progress, the chapter draws primarily on
unpublished reviews and evaluations and interviews with key NGO staff.
Background
Mali is one of five West African countries where Oxfam GB has been implementing
a pilot programme entitled ‘Promoting Gender-Equitable Basic Education in West
Africa’.Although Mali has had some of the worst figures in the world for education,
current statistics demonstrate encouraging results as far as access is concerned,
with a rise in the Gross Enrolment Rate (GER) in the first cycle of basic education
from 32 per cent in 1992 to 67 per cent in 2003 (Ministry of Education 2003), and
recent statistics indicating 70.5 per cent for 2003–4 (Ministry of Education 2005).
However, the gender gap is still very wide, with girls’ primary enrolment estimated
at 59.9 per cent and boys’ at 81.3 per cent (ibid.).
The Gao region is an area of semi-desert, inhabited by nomadic and semi-
nomadic pastoralists (including Touareg, Songhai, Bella, and Arab peoples). The
communities move with their herds of sheep and camels in search of pasture in
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the region, which is beset by drought. At the time of writing (mid-2005), they are
experiencing severe food shortages in the aftermath of the widespread
destruction of crops and pasture by locusts in 2004. The region is disadvantaged
in terms of communications, infrastructure, and basic services. Its political
marginalisation was one of the factors that prompted the Touareg rebellion of the
early 1990s. Since Mali’s independence in 1960, there have been attempts to
provide some education for pastoralist children, starting with a policy whereby
government officers forcibly took one child (usually a boy) from each family to
attend boarding school. More recently some children received primary education
at mobile schools, but the government found this initiative too costly and difficult
to sustain. The current Oxfam programme is supporting government schools in
communities where there has been no prior provision, and in contexts where
parents face very real problems in sending their sons and daughters to school.
In the pastoral communities of Gao in northern Mali, girls’ school attendance is as
low as 30 per cent, and non-completion rates for primary education are very high.
A range of factors hinder girls’ attendance, including practices such as early
marriage; girls’ excessive work load; an assumption that girls and women are
inferior to men in intellect; and widespread economic poverty. A review
conducted in 2002 (Terry 2002), and subsequent interviews with teachers,
students, and parents have identified two sets of barriers to girls’ education in the
pastoralist communities of northern Mali (and northern Niger). The first set
applies to both boys and girls, while the second applies to girls (see Table 1).
Terry notes that where demand for girls’ education is already low, poor provision
tends to have a more negative impact on girls than on boys. Members of Parents’
Associations and mothers often expressed the view that girls are weaker and
more vulnerable than boys and are thus in need of protection. Girls and boys
often have to walk 4–8 kilometres to and from school, which may militate against
girls’ attendance. Moreover, where feeding arrangements at school are
inadequate or non-existent, parents who think that girls need to be especially
well fed in order to mature may be deterred from sending their daughters to
school (Terry 2002: 10). When girls and boys have to walk long distances, and the
school day is itself long – from 7.30 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a break during the hottest
part of the day, when temperatures can reach 45 degrees Celsius – attending
school is onerous, and girls have limited time left to assist their mothers in
domestic tasks.
It was within this context that Oxfam GB, together with its three local NGO
partners,1 initiated an education programme in 2000 with the aim of promoting
gender-equitable basic education for pastoralists in remote and marginalised
areas of Gao (Sanou 2001). The nomadic and semi-nomadic lifestyle of the
peoples of the north makes providing education and health services and ensuring
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Pastoralist schools in Mali: gendered roles and curriculum realities
Table 1: Barriers to education in Mali
Factors applying to both boys and girls
Factors applying to girls
Distance from home to school.
Vulnerability during long walks to school.
Pastoralists’ need to move with their herds in
Parents’ wishes for daughters to marry early
search of water and pasture, which
(as young as eight years old).
compounds the problem of distance.
Fear that girls will become pregnant if they go to
school: a dishonour that may reduce their
Lack of clean water at schools: a major
chances of getting married.
problem in many schools.
The higher a girl’s level of education, the higher
Difficulty in feeding children at school,
the dowry that the husband’s family have to pay.
compounded by general food insecurity in
these communities.
The belief that keeping girls at home and
feeding them up will lead to earlier maturity and
Communities’ pessimism, based on past
marriageability.
experience, about their children’s chances of
attaining primary-school certificates.
The gendered division of labour, which makes
girls and women responsible for tasks such as
Traditional religious beliefs that children who
collecting water and pounding millet, in an area
go to school will grow up to be ‘heathens’.
where water is in short supply.
High poverty levels among pastoralist
The idea that girls are vulnerable and
communities in the Sahel, due to factors such
intellectually inferior and need to be sheltered at
as drought, desertification, and the legacy of
home.
conflict.
Resistance to girls’ education on the part of
The political marginalisation of pastoralist
some local religious leaders.
communities, compared with the sedentary
population.
the quality and relevance of such services a big challenge, because schooling is
developed according to a model designed for permanent, static communities.
Gender equity in education is an issue much broader than the question of
opportunities for girls in pastoral communities, as a recent case study of
education services in Mali indicates (Public World 2004). This study notes that,
with the exception of some women’s NGOs, no one working to achieve greater
access to school for girls was challenging existing gender inequalities in the
school system or wider society – or, indeed, questioning whether increased access
to schooling for girls could or should have any impact on the traditional role of
Malian women as first and foremost good wives and mothers. The Oxfam GB
programme has responded to the challenge of achieving gender equality and
quality education for girls (and boys) by developing a flexible innovative
approach which aims to increase significantly the number of girls who go to
school and stay in school, and to ensure that they acquire relevant and
sustainable basic skills in mathematics, literacy, and key aspects of health and
nutrition. Through some basic training in health and hygiene and HIV/AIDS
awareness for members of Women’s Associations and Parents’ Associations, it
also aims to improve child mortality rates and family health in the communities.
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By encouraging positive attitudes to school attendance for girls, while
discouraging practices that infringe the rights of girls and jeopardise their well-
being, the programme aims to change beliefs and ideas about schooling for girls,
using a rights-based approach. Oxfam’s strategic aim is to ensure that all children
living in poverty will achieve their right to a good-quality basic education which
is gender-equitable (Roche and Roseveare 2001, Oxfam GB 2004).
Before presenting a detailed examination of this programme and its work with
animatrices and national curriculum reform, we tell the real story of a young
Touareg girl, Fatimata, which illustrates some of issues that constrain girls’
participation in schooling – constraints that Oxfam and its partners are attempting
to address.
The story of Fatimata
Fatimata lives in Bourem town, in Bourem district in the Gao Region.2 Bourem is
about 96 km from Gao town, in an area inhabited by nomadic and semi-nomadic
Touareg, Songhoi, and Arabs. It is a poor district, with very little rainfall, hence
long droughts and poor harvests. The people eke out a living from keeping
livestock (cattle, camels, goats, and sheep) and subsistence farming, mainly rice
cultivation with traditional and vulnerable irrigation systems. The district was
severely affected by the Touareg rebellion of the early 1990s, which forced many
young men to become migrant labourers in neighbouring Libya, Gabon, Ghana,
and Côte d’Ivoire. Consequently, migrant labour is an important source of
income in the district, and the larger the remittances the more successful is each
household/family.
The population of Bourem is conservative and predominantly non-literate.
Women occupy a subordinate place in society, with little or no autonomy in
decisions regarding certain aspects of their lives, such as choice of partner or age
of marriage.
Sidiki, a 30-year-old Touareg and migrant labourer working in Ghana, decided
that it was time to get married. He returned to his home town of Bourem to marry
his first cousin Aisseta, who was 15 years old and attending secondary school in
the town of Gao. He paid a handsome dowry and gave lavish gifts to Titi, Aisseta’s
mother. Realising what was planned for her, and not wanting to marry,Aisseta fled
from her home in the middle of the marriage preparations. Afraid of the scandal
that Aisseta’s flight might cause her family, the elderly Titi decided instead to give
Fatimata, her 11-year-old daughter, to Sidiki. Fatimata, a jovial, bright pupil in
Standard 2 in Bourem Primary School, was not happy about this, but she was
accustomed to doing her mother’s bidding.
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Pastoralist schools in Mali: gendered roles and curriculum realities
Fatimata had an aunt, Djeneba, who lived some distance from the family and
worked as an animatrice in one of the Oxfam-supported schools. Djeneba came
to visit Titi, and her visit coincided with Fatimata’s marriage preparations. On
hearing of the intention to marry off the 11-year-old, Djeneba threatened to have
Sidiki and Fatimata’s father imprisoned. She quickly mobilised members of the
local women’s association, and together they went to see the headmaster of
Fatimata’s school and the school inspector to try to prevent this marriage.
Djeneba had herself been a victim of an early forced marriage 20 years previously
and she did not want the same fate to befall her niece.
Sidiki, seeing the trouble that this marriage was going to cause, and seized by
fear, announced to the family that he would allow Fatimata to continue her
education. But he did not renounce the marriage altogether. Titi reluctantly
accepted this turn of events, but complained that ‘the best school for a woman is
getting married and having children’
. Fatimata was able to continue her studies
in Bourem Primary School, and her aunt Djeneba continues to keep a close
watch over her.
Fatimata’s story3 is typical of the situation in which many schoolgirls find
themselves, although not all are able to continue their education. It is not known
how many girls have been forced into early marriage, nor how many have been
able to escape. How long will Sidiki wait for Fatimata while she continues her
education – or will he try to prise her away? Experiences like that of Fatimata
provided the motivation for Oxfam and its partners to work with parents and the
wider community to promote acceptance of girls’ right to education, and to raise
issues of gender equality. This led to the development of theanimatrice model’
of working, an approach based on understanding the reasons why girls do not
participate in formal schooling, and the expectations of the parents and the girl
themselves. From this understanding, animatrices talk with and listen to parents
and students and work together to find ways of encouraging parents to send their
daughters to school.
This approach aims to link pastoralist women and girls and their schools with
wider concerns and demands for girls’ education. For example, the schools and
animatrices were involved in activities during the Global Week of Action in April
2003, which provided the opportunity for developing broader understandings of
the importance of girls’ education. The activities of the Global Week of Action
also brought an awareness that other communities in Mali were asking for better
access and quality of education for their daughters. And not only in Mali but
across West Africa and around the globe: parents, communities, and NGOs were
demanding that their governments provide basic education for girls. This
involvement raised many questions about why girls were not attending school,
and eventually it led to the annulment of the marriages of three schoolgirls by
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their parents in Menaka district. The three girls were re-integrated into the
school system and were allowed to continue their education.
The animatrice model
In order to develop models of schooling which meet the lifestyle needs of nomadic
and semi-nomadic pastoralist peoples, Oxfam and its partners decided to work
with animatrices (female community mobilisers). An animatrice is appointed to
each school to work with parents, telling them about the importance and value of
schooling for both girls and boys. They monitor girls’ attendance, and they work
with the teacher to ensure safe and girl-friendly school environments, so parents
are more likely to allow their daughters to make the long daily walk to school or stay
in the school itself during their families’ long treks in search of pasture. When girls
drop out of school, the animatrices follow up with families to find out the reasons
and try to encourage the girls to return.
The animatrices are local women, most of whom, but not all, have completed Grade
6 of primary education. Most of them have previously been social workers or
community mobilisers for health projects, cereal banks, micro-credit schemes, or
other projects. The programme has given them some training in community
mobilisation and, most recently, in gender awareness. One of the first successes of the
programme was to find and contract animatrices for the schools in a region where
women’s education rates are very low, and few have the skills or capacity to perform
this role. This success was in large part due to the commitment and expertise of the
local partner organisations, which have been working with these communities for
many years, themselves pastoralists and engaged with the communities in a range of
interrelated activities and programmes, including livelihood support, food-security
planning, and conflict reduction.4 With a minimum of training, the animatrices
have quickly created strong links between school and parents and communities.
The animatrices lobby for changes in attitudes towards girls’abilities and their right
to attend school, both in the community, with parents and community members,
and in the school, with teachers and head teachers. As relatively well-educated
women in paid employment, promoting schooling, the animatrices serve as
positive role models for local girls (Sanou 2003). Another important dimension of
their work is with the Parents’ Associations. In the recently decentralised Malian
education system, Parents’ Associations provide a great deal of support to the
School Management Committees which run the schools. The animatrices carry out
training with members of the Parents’Associations to develop their capacity to take
on this role. Their work includes supporting literacy and numeracy classes,
organised for parents and for the women’s associations which are engaged in small-
scale income-generation activities.
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Challenges
A peer review of the Mali Education Programme, conducted in 2003 by Plan
International, confirmed that there have been important changes in the
communities’ attitudes to girls’ education, and the changes can be attributed to
the work of the animatrices. The review drew attention to a greater awareness of
girls’ right to attend school and the fact that, contrary to widely held beliefs, girls
and women are not less intellectually able than boys and men (Alainchar 2003).
Recent discussions with mothers and young women indicated that they highly
value the literacy and numeracy training, and the opportunity to socialise and
discuss issues important to them. They also stressed that their daughters were
learning valuable skills at school which they could later put to use for generating
their own sources of income.
Constant dialogue between the animatrices and the members of the
communities has also influenced attitudes and had an impact on early marriage
practices. One animatrice told of how an old man and 20 young girls walked for
miles, determined to find a school which they could attend. She reported also
that in the district of Menaka three girls have completed primary school. They
are the first girls in their community to do so, encouraged not to drop out by the
sensitisation work of the animatrice. Animatrices have also managed to
reintegrate five girls into the school system after they were forced into marriage
by their parents (Oxfam GB 2003). Anecdotal evidence suggests that the average
age of marriage is rising from 10–12 years old to 14–16 years of age.
Despite their obvious successes, animatrices are also confronted with challenges,
including tensions with school directors (all men), who feel that the animatrices
are encroaching on their own rightful responsibilities, such as the supervision of
supplies for the school canteen (Terry 2002: 13). Similarly, parent–teacher
associations are predominantly male, and some animatrices have reported
difficulties in working with them; even where women are members, they do not
participate to the same degree as the men (ibid.: 16). Animatrices often have to
travel very long distances to reach parents and girls, especially in the season when
pastoralists move with their herds. One animatrice in Gao had to walk for 16 km
with a baby on her back to catch up with a moving community (ibid.: 14).
Animatrices work closely with communities and have had great success in
increasing the numbers of girls attending school. Within the first two years of the
pilot phase, the number of girls in schools in the Gao programme had increased
from 749 in 1999–2001 to 1260 in 2001–02, and 1423 in 2002–03. However, the
programme has not been long established, and the sustainability of these gains is
still to be tested. In addition, animatrices have had limited training in gender
issues and analysis. Some held attitudes which actually compounded gender
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inequalities, and their promotion of girl-friendly classrooms in some cases led to
increased work loads for women, such as keeping the school clean; targeting only
women and girls with messages about hygiene and sanitation, the animatrices
have reinforced the traditional gendered division of labour. In schools, girls carry
out more of the tasks such as cleaning, fetching water, and washing dishes that are
traditionally seen as ‘women’s work’ (Terry 2002).
More research is needed to improve understanding of the messages used by
animatrices in their sensitisation work, and to ensure that these communicate the
need for equity and the right to education, rather than emphasising purely
instrumental arguments that may be unsustainable and inequitable in the long
term. Training conducted with local government officials in Mali indicated a
familiarity with the ‘instrumental’ arguments for girls’ education, where it is seen
as a contribution to the well-being of the girls’ future family and children.
However, Terry (2002) found that the ‘equity/rights’ rationale was less likely to be
accepted, and that, moreover, animatrices did not mention gender-equity
arguments during the review interviews.
Earlier initiatives in the region to promote schooling for pastoralists have
included the provision of mobile schools. These were short-lived, however,
because few teachers came from nomadic backgrounds, owing to the lack of
formal education requirements among pastoralists. The teachers, finding the
challenge of moving with pastoralist communities difficult, dropped out in order
to work in towns and in settled, permanent schools. The government
discontinued the mobile schools programme, because it was too expensive:
teachers had to be paid incentives over and above their salaries.5 In-school
feeding programmes have been implemented and have proved successful in
attracting pastoralist children to schools. However, they are often short-lived and
dependent on external funding, so that when a donor withdraws its support, the
supply of foodstuffs – and the programme – comes to an end.
These experiences suggest that, rather than the government imposing one model
of schooling for the whole country, there is a need for flexibility and a diversity of
approaches to cater for and support the fragile demand for schooling in different
contexts (see also Leggett’s chapter in this volume). The animatrice model is one
approach which appears to be achieving success with Touareg communities in
the Gao region. But it is not a panacea for all the problems involved in providing
a good-quality basic education for girls. There are other models, other initiatives,
that should complement the work of the animatrices in order to ensure that, for
the increasing numbers of girls attending school, their experience of schooling
and their learning is of value for them.
Animatrices are lobbyists within the local communities and schools in which they
work. The Oxfam project is concerned to make an impact at several levels, so that
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change can be sustainable. Therefore the programme needs to be working and
lobbying for change at other levels simultaneously. For the animatrices to succeed
in making schools ‘girl-friendly’, there need to be changes in other areas of
education, including the curriculum. Curriculum reform is strongly influenced
by processes at the national level. A new curriculum is being trialled by the Centre
for National Education in some select schools throughout the country, though
not yet in the Gao area. The Oxfam programme has been working to influence the
national curriculum-reform process. The next section of this chapter examines
the complementary and parallel work being carried out to influence gender
equity and quality in the design of curriculum materials.
Curriculum reform in Mali
Mali is one of the countries in the sub-region to have embarked on a process to
reform the ‘classical’ French-derived curriculum. (Niger is another, more recent,
example.) This reform challenges the current status quo whereby all children
throughout the country are taught in French as the exclusive medium of
instruction. The fact is that only 10 per cent of Malians speak French (Public
World 2004). As a Malian NGO commented:‘Children go to school and are taught
in a language that they do not think in’.6 There are two reform processes currently
taking place: bilingual education (pedagogique convergente) and curriculum
reform. A new competency-based curriculum has been developed, based on the
principle that children need a less theoretical way of learning and a more practical
curriculum, and that they should develop skills to equip them to live and work in
their communities and in Malian society. The curriculum recognises the cultural,
geographical, and linguistic diversity of the country.
The curriculum-development process started in 2000 with a series of consul-
tations throughout the country. The government then opted for a competency-
based and skills-based curriculum, aiming to cater for academically inclined
students whose aim is to pursue higher studies and, at the same time, offer
relevant skills to children who wish to or are obliged to terminate their education
at the end of the primary-school cycle and find work. Hence the result is a
curriculum which offers a ‘common core’ of subjects for all students – including
academic subjects – as well as practical subjects which are designed to cater for
people living in different contexts and with different needs. These practical
subjects are intended to be flexible, so that teachers themselves can design lessons
in their own schools to suit the cultural and geographical realities.7
A practical module known as ‘familial economy’ (home economics) includes topics
related to environment, health, and sewing, which are taught to all pupils and are
intended to be ‘gender-sensitive’. But the Forum for African Women’s Education
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Mali (FAWE/Mali) challenges the extent to which the module and curriculum
materials are indeed gender-sensitive. FAWE insists that both the module and the
representation of women in textbooks ‘fail[s] to empower girls and will in the long
run contribute to gender inequalities’ (quoted in Public World 2004). The Public
World research also indicates that the quality or quantity of gender training for
teachers is not sufficient to challenge conventional assumptions, and teachers are
unable to apply the principles of gender equality to their teaching to create an
environment more conducive to girls’ participation (ibid.).
Women’s and girls’ roles
In order to address these weaknesses and the gender-blindness of the new
curriculum, Oxfam and the Institute for Popular Education (IEP: Institut pour
l’Education Populaire) launched a study in 2002 to analyse community attitudes
towards change, and the images (visibility and roles) of women and girls, and
boys and men, contained in school textbooks. The study examined 18 textbooks
used in Malian schools, and draft learning units being produced by the National
Centre for Education. The project also collected data on attitudes towards
change and gender equity among Oxfam GB programme personnel, community
groups, community stakeholders, and NGOs in the Gao Region and Menaka
District. The research was carried out to survey the extent to which the
curriculum reform was contributing to a larger project of social change, moving
Malian society from dictatorship to democracy. Because gender equity is a
fundamental dimension of a democratic society, Malian schools and curriculum
have a role to play in orienting young people towards a democratic, gender-
equitable society, built on respect for human rights (IEP 2002).
Data were collected by means of a range of survey tools and questions, and
structured and semi-structured interviews with parents, NGOs fieldworkers,
educators, and local government officials. A survey based on attitudes to the roles
and relationships of women and men and girls and boys was used to form a
picture of the kind of world that participants would like to live in. Participants
fell into one of three categories:

those who maintain present realities (the current role and status quo and
parameters of possibility for women and girls)

those who seek to reform present realities (institute modest changes which
would make current realities more ‘liveable’, or would change individuals
without changing the system that keeps the present realities in place)

those who seek to transform present realities (make systematic change that
reconfigures the roles, status, and parameters of possibility for women and
girls) (IEP 2002: 12).
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Pastoralist schools in Mali: gendered roles and curriculum realities
One such survey question presented three representational drawings, and
participants were asked to choose the world that they would like to live in. One
drawing showed a man standing on two women, the second showed a woman
standing on two men, and a third a man and woman standing side by side. In a
society where many men have several wives, the majority of respondents chose
the first picture, which most closely represented the status quo. The few who
chose the second picture were interpreted as indicating a willingness for reform
of a situation where men dominated women. However, this choice – a woman
standing on two men – was not an elimination of domination, but a transfer of
domination from the man to the woman. Only one participant (a local
government official) out of 75 participants chose the man and women standing
side by side, a ‘transformist’ position, where domination was not present (IEP
2002: 21).
The overall analysis of attitudes towards change concluded that most
participants had firmly held views that did not challenge existing conditions. The
women field workers (animatrices) were not concerned with transformation, a
fact which raised important questions about the extent to which they are able to
change attitudes and beliefs about girls’ education and girls’ and women’s roles.
It was reasoned that if the animatrices promote girls’ access to education but do
not fundamentally challenge the status quo – when their role is intended to be
that of ‘change agent’ – then it is unlikely that parents, teachers, and school head
teachers would support reform (IEP 2002: 6-7). However, the study notes: ‘The
very presence of the animatrices is motivating to parents who see that these
women who have not even completed high school have jobs and are receiving
training. Parents look to them and think that possibly their daughters could have
such a chance with schooling’ (ibid. 18).
Women’s and girls’ representation in the school curriculum
The analysis of education materials indicated that while women and girls are
visible in school textbooks, the images offered overwhelmingly portray current
gender realities. That is, women are visible when they appear in traditional roles,
but the teaching materials do not offer images of behaviour or attitudes which
could break the routine patterns of gender inequality that characterise these roles
and activities (such as cleaning, cooking, and maintenance tasks). An example in
the textbook Flamboyant depicts a sick mother with her daughter, pounding
millet while her brother stands by, looking on with his hands in his pockets (IEP
2002: 21). The study concluded that the materials are at best gender-blind,
reflecting images which keep Mali women locked into inequalities.
In addition, the visibility of women and girls in text and illustrations varies. In
several instances, women are visible in the illustrations but absent from the text
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that accompanies the illustrations. Similarly, any egalitarian messages are
submerged in structurally sexist language.8 Pastoralist women are always
pictured ‘behind’ their men, and their destiny as wives and mothers appears
unalterable.
In conclusion, the study showed that the attitudes of teachers, parents, and policy
makers and the textbooks currently available for schools in Mali reinforce the
gender inequalities present in Malian society today. The challenge for those
seeking change in both school and society is to use the environment created by
Mali’s Ten-Year Plan for Transforming Education and the curriculum-reform
process as an opportunity to enable children – girls and boys – to begin to
experience a different reality (in terms of gender relations) from the day they
enter school. The IEP study concludes that legally mandated processes –
particularly government decentralisation and the education reform – are causing
significant social change in all sectors of Malian society. ‘In the same way that
decentralisation is taking over traditional structures of governance, public
discourse and community control, education reform is threatening to replace
classic colonial-model schooling with the classroom as a more democratic and
relevant to life space’ (IEP 2002: 19). However, it remains to be seen whether the
national plans and reforms will be implemented on a scale that will ensure
impact, and with a strong enough commitment to gender equality, which will
not only promote reform of present education inequalities but transform both
educational and societal realities. The work of NGOs and animatrices at the
grassroots level needs to take place within a broader context of dialogue,
discussion, and debate about gender equality in relation to citizenship,
democracy, and cultural and geographical diversity. For this to begin to happen,
there needs to be a greater level of awareness of gender inequalities and ways of
addressing them through training for teachers and education officials, with
sufficient resources committed to ensure that transformative change happens.
Conclusion: a joined-up sustainable approach
The overall conclusion from the work of Oxfam’s programme for Gender
Equitable Education in West Africa is that more girls are attending school – a fact
which suggests improvements in terms of gender parity in basic education.
However, this chapter has raised questions about the need for more fundamental
change in terms of the nature of education that girls are offered, their experience
of education, and their academic achievements. It also raises the question of
what girls can do with their learning and skills in the wider social environment in
which they live.
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Pastoralist schools in Mali: gendered roles and curriculum realities
Animatrices have a strong focus on increasing access and retention in schools, but
they are not sufficiently engaged with questions about the quality of the
education that girls are receiving. This is also true of teachers. The IEP study
demonstrated that teachers prioritise access/retention without questioning their
own practices within the classroom. Any changes introduced into the school
system that may affect relevance or quality (for example, replacing French with
mother tongue as the medium of instruction in classrooms) were resisted by
schoolteachers for both boys and girls (IEP 2002:11). It would seem, therefore,
that a recurring effect of the decade-old movement in Mali for girls’ education is
little more than an appropriation of slogans – Education For All and Girls’
Education. Education for girls is still about gender parity – equal numbers of
girls and boys – and falls short of being about equality and quality education for
all. It does not ask what this means in terms of classroom relations, learning and
teaching practices, and curriculum content. To move beyond access, the
animatrices need to promote understanding and commitment to girls’ rights to a
good-quality education which challenges pastoralists’ patriarchal gender
relations and those of the wider Malian society.
Great steps have been taken in Mali at the national level to develop a skills-based
curriculum, but the reformers do not propose specific measures that target girls’
needs. Moreover, the locally developed practical subjects do not question
gender inequalities in the pastoralist context. For pastoralist girls in the Gao
region, the teaching continues in French under the ‘classic’ system, which is
gender-blind and instrumental, reinforcing rather than challenging gender
inequalities.
The Oxfam programme, with its partners, Adessah, Tassaght, and GARI, is
nevertheless attempting to unravel the web of inequalities and discrimination
that girls experience, by working through animatrices to achieve increased
enrolment, through working with teachers, parents, and policy makers to
provide more girl-friendly schools, and through influencing change in the
education system through curriculum reform. This analysis of the animatrice
model illustrates that gender inequalities need to be tackled through several
different interventions and a diversity of approaches simultaneously: inside and
outside the school, at both the local and national levels. It illustrates that change
can and does take place, and that girls are now attending school in greater
numbers than before. However, we need to understand why this is so, in order to
sustain the trend. It illustrates furthermore that the changes in national legal
frameworks and institutional organisation – such as decentralisation and
education reforms – also need to be part of gendered processes. The active
engagement of girls and women in their own schooling, promoted by the
animatrices, is an important starting point.
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Salina Sanou is the Education and Gender Specialist for the UN Millennium
Project, based at The MDG Centre in Nairobi. Previously she was Regional
Education Co-ordinator for Oxfam GB in West Africa. She is currently studying for
a doctorate in Comparative Education at McGill University (Canada).

Sheila Aikman is the Global Education Policy Adviser with Oxfam GB, and co-
ordinator of the DFID-funded ‘Beyond Access: Gender, Education and Development’
Project.

Notes
1
In the Gao Region, Oxfam supports partner schools in three districts: Bourem, Gao Central,
and Menaka. The NGO partners in these districts are Adessah, Tassaght and GARI respectively.
2
Fatimata’s story is part of a series of stories documented by Adessah, Oxfam’s partner in
Bourem.
3
Story documented in Oxfam’s impact report, 2003. All names have been changed to preserve
confidentiality.
4
The Gao programme has a total number of 20 schools. Each school is supposed to have an
animatrice; but, given these difficult conditions, partners were able to recruit only 18
animatrices and two animators.
5
Interview with Abou Diarra, the Director of the National Center for Education, Ministry of
Education. For discussion of mobility and pastoralist schooling see for example, Aikman and El
Haj forthcoming; Carr-Hill and Peart 2002.
6
Interview with Debra Fredo, IEP, Kati.
7
Interview with Abou Diarra, the Director of the National Center for Education, Ministry of
Education.
8
The school textbooks analysed in the IEP study include Flamboyant, Mamadou and Bineta,
Horizons d’Afrique, Djoliba Collection,
and La Pedagogie Convergente Rencontre 4&5. All these
texts illustrate the point that women are less visible in textbooks than men, but the visibility
that they are given reinforces roles that conform to current gender realities.
References
Aikman, S. and H. El Haj (forthcoming) ‘EFA for pastoralists in North Sudan: a mobile multigrade
model of schooling’ in A. Little (ed.) Education For All: The Challenges of Multigrade Teaching,
Kluwer Academic Publishing
Alainchar, F. (2003) ‘Peer Review of Oxfam GB Education Programme in Mali’, Oxfam GB Peer
Review of Gender Equitable Education Programme in West Africa, unpublished
Carr-Hill, R. and E. Peart (2002) ‘Study on Education for Nomads and Pastoralists of Eastern
Africa: review of the literature’, IIEP, UNESCO/IICBA, UNICEF/ESARO
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Pastoralist schools in Mali: gendered roles and curriculum realities
Institut pour l’Education Populaire (IEP) (2002) ‘Working Through Change in Education to
Change Gender Realities in Mali: Recommendations for Action by Oxfam GB’, Oxfam GB
unpublished research report
Ministry of Education (2003) Mali National Statistics for Primary Education (First Cycle)
Ministry of Education (2005) Mali National Statistics for Primary Education (First Cycle)
Oxfam GB (2003) ‘West Africa Impact Report’, Oxfam GB, unpublished
Oxfam GB (2004) Oxfam GB Strategic Plan 2004/2005 – 2006/2007, Oxfam GB unpublished
Public World (2004) ‘Mali Case Study: Education Services in Mali’, unpublished draft report,
Oxfam GB
Roche, C. and C. Roseveare (2001) ‘Social and Economic Rights’, unpublished paper, Oxfam GB
Sanou, S. (2001) ‘Breaking the chains: girls’ education in Mali’ in Links, Oxfam Newsletter on
Gender, June 2001
Sanou, S. (2003) ‘Pastoralist education in Mali and Niger’, in Links, Oxfam Newsletter on Gender,
October 2003
Terry, G. (2002) ‘Gender Review of Oxfam GB Gender Equitable Education Programme in Niger
and Mali’, unpublished report, Oxfam GB
195

Part Three
The Challenge of Local Practices – Doing
Policy Differently?
197

10 Learning about HIV/AIDS in schools:
does a gender-equality approach make a
difference?

Mark Thorpe
Is HIV education based on the principles of gender equality possible in practice?
If so, can it make a difference to gender relations in a society? This chapter
considers these questions through reflection on two gender-based HIV-
education interventions in South Africa and Mozambique, which took place
between 2001 and 2003.
In my recent experience of working in Africa for five years, I have spoken to many
teachers about HIV messages in school. Teachers are concerned with HIV
education both as part of a formal curriculum and as a topic brought to the
students through the actions of an external body. The question of how to
mobilise teachers in the fight against HIV with their own students is one of the
greatest challenges to HIV education in the developing world. But HIV
education should also be a professional activity in which those who have proven
skills and adequate training in this area work side by side with class teachers and
are supported, rewarded, and mobilised to help young people to face the
enormous challenges ahead of them in the wake of the HIV pandemic. If
teaching about HIV in school were the responsibility of trained staff who were
fully aware of the gendered elements of HIV education, we could ensure that
young people in school were given the space to explore, reflect, debate, and ask
questions. Offering such an opportunity to young people is just as important as
verifying that everyone knows the facts about HIV transmission and how to
prevent it.
There is a need for HIV to be mainstreamed into school subjects such as
Geography, History, Religious Studies, and Science. This would help to address
the problems created by a state of denial or the provision of misinformation. But
mainstreaming does not necessarily address the issue of gender equity, which
requires facilitative approaches that go beyond the training generally given to
teachers. The widespread application of a process approach which focuses on the
identity of individual teachers and learners, and develops their motivation and
skills with regard to HIV prevention and gender dynamics, may be difficult but is
not impossible, as the work done in South Africa and Mozambique, and
discussed in this chapter, indicates.
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I worked with gender-focused HIV workshops in Southern Africa for three years.
Firstly, I took the dual role of participant and evaluator in a one-month
intervention in 2001 in two former township secondary schools in greater
Durban. I assisted an intervention by Dramaide, a South African NGO
specialising in life skills and HIV education, using drama and participation. The
workshops were adapted from a pilot programme called ‘Mobilizing Young Men
to Care’, which was based on an understanding of the importance of engaging
men and boys in the fight against HIV. The project with the Durban schools took
a gender-focused approach, using participatory methods to challenge and work
towards gender equity with students and staff. The Dramaide facilitator and I led
the same sequence of 12 workshops, spread over one month, in two different
schools, with a group of 30 girls and boys aged 13–15 in each.
At the time, South Africa had initiated a response to HIV in schools through a
life-orientation syllabus as part of the new curriculum, and interventions such as
this one were part of a multi-sector prevention response. Critiques of some of
these initiatives identified problems in assumptions about behaviour change,
dissonance between policy at national level and educational materials available
locally, and an underestimation of the cultural strength of unsafe practices.
Nevertheless, large sums of money were invested in HIV prevention from the late
1990s (Campbell 2004; Unterhalter 2002). Dramaide advocated the use of
interactive approaches to HIV and life skills regarded as relevant for young
people. In the Durban schools, children were not merely given information and
told what to do. They were given opportunities to explore the issues raised by the
HIV epidemic for themselves in order to develop an understanding that would
be deep enough to affect their behaviour (Moletsane et al. 2002).
The second intervention was the training of a university-based HIV-education
group,‘Juventude Alerta’ (Youth Alert), in Beira, Mozambique, between 2001 and
2003 as part of my placement with VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas). Building
on my experiences in South Africa in 2001, I invited university students to form an
HIV-education group at the University of Beira. In the teacher-training college,
there was an opportunity to carry out this training alongside core courses. It was
even possible to do this on a very low budget. Over ten weeks I trained facilitators
to use participatory techniques and activities to engage teenage students in
discussion on HIV-related issues, including complex issues of gender relations.
In the next term we undertook interventions in five secondary schools in rural
areas of Sofala province. These usually lasted half a day. We had a general format
for school interventions: six workshops running concurrently in different parts
of a given premises, using three facilitators in each group. Sometimes sessions
took place within the time periods allotted for the main curriculum; at other
times sessions were an extra-curricular event. Classes (usually consisting of 60 or
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Learning about HIV/AIDS in schools: does a gender-equality approach make a difference?
more students) were generally split into two. In 2003, the first group of
facilitators trained a second group of facilitators and undertook more workshops
in schools in the urban setting of Beira.
Although the objectives and general approach of the workshops were consistent,
there were many variations, because we did not necessarily know in advance
what we would encounter. Sessions took place in classrooms or outdoors;
teachers were sometimes absent and sometimes present; equipment such as a
flipchart was sometimes available; students were of similar or varied ages. Some
of these factors had an impact on the workshops themselves, including gendered
aspects; for example, girls would often sit at the back or not sit on the chairs
unless encouraged to do so; or groups, particularly those with higher numbers of
boys, were sometimes dominated by older boys, and girls were consequently not
able to speak. All these aspects had to be monitored by facilitators.
Gender in HIV education
The work with Dramaide and Juventude Alerta raised some key issues about
gender equality and work on HIV/AIDS. In both contexts, issues about gender
identities arose as a common concern, often centred on adolescent assumptions
about femininity and masculinity, including the attitude among boys that it was
desirable to have several sexual partners. Young men expected to be told in detail
about their girlfriends’ movements, but were very secretive about their own
affairs. They regarded violence as an appropriate ‘punishment’ for the ‘bad
behaviour’ of their girlfriends, and this attitude had been internalised by many
girls too. There was a sense of risk inherent in male lifestyles, and an expectation
that women could and should accept or tolerate this kind of behaviour.
An internalised sense of conflict between the boys’ and the girls’ interests was
thus displayed. One consequence of this was the ‘trading’ of sexual intercourse
(often seen as conquest) for goods or lifestyle benefits, and an unspoken contract
which defined what each partner expected from the other. This conflict was
played out many times in heated discussion during workshops. HIV-education
sessions gave space for this conflict to be expressed, and for approaches to dealing
with these views to be developed. For example, the trainers encouraged the
students to develop mutual respect for each other’s views, and they asserted
ground rules such as the avoidance of personalising opposing views, and
ensuring that everyone’s views were heard.
As in the Durban workshops, very strong expectations of appropriate
masculinity and femininity were expressed in sessions organised by the Youth
Alert project in Mozambique. In one discussion, concerning the use of condoms,
gendered reasons dominated the list of reasons expressed for not using one:
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To be a man it must be ‘flesh to flesh’ [a reference to unprotected sex]
He will say I am a prostitute.
She will not accept them.
He will not let me.
We cannot talk about it.
The first and second statements listed above imply that the masculine or
feminine identity is threatened by condom use. In the third and fourth
statements, participants’ views reflect power dynamics at play. The use of ‘not let’
vs ‘not accept’ is evidence of the imbalance of that dynamic. In the fifth statement,
the problem of communication about condom use within a relationship is
evident, and the notion of trust becomes central. These very firm assumptions
about masculinity and femininity in connection with the crucial issue of
condom use indicate that gender cannot be left out of the equation when
designing or implementing HIV education. In fact, gender relations are often at
the heart of the problems that a project in this area tries to confront.
In both South Africa and Mozambique, we believed that if a gender-equity
approach was having any effect, it would not be surprising to find that there was
tension or resistance to the ideas being explored. In Mozambique, a fellow
volunteer set up a group for the older girls in her classes for the discussion of
issues important to them as young women. The idea was well received by the
girls, and the volunteer provided a good model of an independent, thinking
woman, able to encourage the girls to assert their sexual rights. After three weeks,
the Principal said to the volunteer teacher: ‘We like what you are doing,
encouraging these girls to work harder and be good, but please be careful, we don’t
want them having these ideas that they are not to be cooks and cleaners of the
house…they must still know their place.’
It is obviously unrealistic to expect that
an approach that actively seeks to challenge male power in heterosexual
relationships will always be popular.
In a school in Beira, we sat down for our customary Coke and cake after finishing
the workshops. The group looked pleased with the morning’s sessions, a little tired
in the growing summer heat, but satisfied – except that in one corner sat a
seemingly deflated member of the team. When I asked him what was wrong, he
replied: ‘We start getting the kids all enthusiastic and they take what we’re
saying…but he just undoes everything we say.’ ‘Who?’
I asked, aware that sometimes
students get a bit ‘showy’ and start trying to be controversial. The teacher!’ he
continued. ‘He just contradicted everything…he didn’t want them to learn about
this stuff at all, just made out it was all rubbish.’
On further discussion, it emerged
that this male teacher had been expounding a common male response to HIV: not
taking it seriously, and using the debates as a chance to reaffirm male dominance.
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This was a moment of realisation for me. I had had the notion that if a teacher
was willing to stay in the classroom and join in the interaction, then at least he or
she would tacitly support the aims of the workshop, and we welcomed this as a
way of encouraging more ‘ownership’ of HIV education among teachers. There
was always room within our workshops for debate, but for a teacher to contradict
the aims at each stage of the workshop made me realise that HIV/AIDS as a topic
was still contested ground. Some teachers wanted to deny its importance; others
opposed the teaching of the topic, or preferred to make light of it.
In a Durban staffroom I watched a female teacher attempt to chastise a male
colleague. He had passed her class – whose students he knew on fairly familiar
terms – and commented: ‘Oh, I am sorry for you all…you will not know the
pleasures of “flesh to flesh” like our generation!’
He intended it as a humorous
comment, but the female teacher tried to point out that his remark undermined
HIV education and set a very bad model for youth. Both examples illustrate the
fact that adult teachers can reverse the effects of important HIV-awareness work.
Many of these examples raise questions about whether school is an appropriate
place to teach about HIV. Alex Kent’s study of a Durban school (where Dramaide
had worked) described it as a place ‘where sexualities were schooled and also
performed’ (Kent 2004). She drew on ideas of Epstein and Johnson (1998), who
looked at the way in which the informal curriculum has a far-reaching influence
on the sexualities developed through schooling. She also drew on the writing of
Karlsson (2002), who has illustrated how school space – that is, the organisation
of spatial practices in South African schools, linked to racial inequalities – has
changed much more slowly than the enrolment statistics. Kent draws attention
to several ways in which masculinities and femininities are reinforced,
maintained, and policed, reproducing gender inequalities in school. Male groups
or female groups congregate in different places, with different meanings of
power. Women teachers are generally given nurturing responsibilities within the
school, while power in the hierarchical school structure is given to men. Men
(and some women) believe that it is a girl’s responsibility to avoid pregnancy, and
they see risk as a normalised part of male behaviour (Kent 2002). At the extreme
end of the gender–power dynamic, teachers regularly have sexual relations with
young girls (according to some female students), thus adding to the risk
associated with girls’ attendance at school. All of these elements combine to make
the school a problematic place to be talking of gender equity in the course of
work on HIV.
Nonetheless, although a school may be a problematic domain for a form of HIV
education that engages with gender-equity issues, schools can be enormously
important places for the development of young people’s perspectives on HIV.
Boler, in a study of HIV education in schools in India and Kenya, found that
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school was the place that most students, parents, and teachers believed was
appropriate for young people to learn about HIV (Boler 2003). A national study
in South Africa revealed that ‘some 85.9% of children (aged 12 to 14) and 75.7%
of youth (aged 15 to 24) reported that their main source of HIV/AIDS education
was their school’ (Shisana 2002).
Unterhalter, while acknowledging the dangers of school as a space for gender
inequality, also acknowledges its transformative power (Unterhalter 2002).
Mannah, noting that, despite its problems, the school is a crucial setting in the
fight against HIV/AIDS, presents six concrete reasons for this in the South African
context: learners’ daily contact with the school; the availability of skilled staff and
personnel; the extreme vulnerability of young people in an area of high HIV-
infection rates; the fact that schools are best located to establish good practice; and
the influential position of a teacher in the community (Mannah 2002: 14). School
is thus seen to be a place of importance in learning about HIV and related issues,
and is highly influential in the orientation of young people towards the problem
(Boler 2003: 5). Young people’s schooling does have an impact (and will continue
to do so) on their emerging beliefs and practices in relation to HIV: hence the
importance of ensuring that the HIV education that is offered in schools, in both
the formal and informal curricula, is positive and helpful in the fight against HIV
and gender inequality.
Working for change
Given the significant barriers imposed by the attitudes of learners and teachers,
and the problems of introducing a gender-equitable approach to HIV education
in schools, what lessons were learned through the work in South Africa and
Mozambique?
Using drama
One successful approach was to use drama and role-play, inspired by the work of
the Brazilian drama practitioner, Augusto Boal. Boal used drama as a tool for
empowerment in the 1960 and 1970s in poor Brazilian communities (Boal 1979).
In his form of community theatre, ‘Forum Theatre’, roles could be played by any
member of the audience, stopping the scene with a clap at any point where he or
she thought that a ‘turning point’ in a sequence of events had been reached, and
substituting himself or herself in a role within the drama, to play the part again –
differently. This method offers the chance to see scenarios unfold differently and
to ‘rehearse for life’. ‘The joker’ is the name that Boal gave to the facilitator who
helps the group to draw out conclusions from what they see and experience.
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The Mozambique project, which lasted longer than the South Africa project, gave
us time to develop this technique. The facilitators became accustomed to using
Boal’s techniques as a tool. In the workshops in schools, as students saw alternatives
in each scene, discussion grew. When gender stereotypes emerged, they could be
challenged. The ‘sugar daddy’ arriving at a school gate in a new car could be
ignored, or different attempts at effective responses could be offered by girls. A
school teacher, after flirting with a female student, could affirm clearly his duties as
a teacher, rather than just later plead later on that it had not been ‘his fault’.
Team work
The ‘Youth Alert’ project drew on a wide range of people. A local dramatist from
the cultural centre in the city helped to develop the dramatic skills of the group.
An HIV trainer gave key insights into the issues and their context. A few women
had worked in HIV education before, and we were able to incorporate their
knowledge into the training sessions. One member of the group, who was
particularly gifted in public speaking, began to give the short introductory speech
that many schools requested.Another member had experience in theatre and took
on the role of drama director.Yet another was effective at translating from English
(a language in which there tends to be more material) into Portuguese. One of the
young women, recently out of school, led workshops with a large number of girls.
She encouraged them to express their resentment of the fact that if they showed
knowledge about sex they were immediately seen as morally inferior to boys (who
were speaking about the same issues).
We took part in HIV festivals and marches and made strong links with students
at the university. After a year, the group was represented by a woman member on
the provincial government’s HIV body. By making this a project with the support
and involvement of others, we were able to strengthen its capacity to work on
gender issues in a multi-faceted way with schools, the university, and civil society.
The workshop approach
A ‘workshop approach’ was very useful. As gender relations need to be raised,
considered, challenged, discussed, and analysed, the subject does not lend itself
to examination through didactic teaching methods. Participants had to be
encouraged to think for themselves and to respond to each other and the
facilitator’s prompts. The skill of the facilitator lay in moving from awareness of
the gender dynamics within the group to challenging them. In South Africa an
example of this occurred when the facilitator asked a boy who was advocating an
oppressive form of masculinity: ‘What would you say if your own sister was in this
kind of situation?’

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Our approach was to weave a gender-equality theme through all sessions. To keep
moving forward on the theme of gender relations meant considering a wide range
of issues. In South Africa, for example, there were sessions on ‘risk’ and on ‘social
assumptions’. A game was played to illustrate the ease with which HIV can be
spread through unprotected sexual intercourse. The activity concluded that if one
is not aware of the dangers or does not heed them and carries on without any
change to behaviour, then one is at high risk. The facilitator, however, did not stop
here, but continued with questions such as ‘Do boys take risks less seriously than
girls? Who is responsible in a relationship for making sure you don’t take risks: a boy
or a girl?’
The gender-related dimensions of risk were thus highlighted. Similarly,
in the session on ‘Messages of society’, participants explored conflicting messages
offered by different members of their community – doctors, teachers, brothers,
and the media. The facilitator questioned what different community members say
about the roles of boys and girls, whether there are positive images and
expectations of boys and girls, and where these come from. The theme of gender
equality was brought out in sessions that were not overtly about gender.
Involvement in the sessions varied, but most girls were initially reluctant to expose
themselves by offering detailed responses, challenging boys, or being the first to
improvise in dramas or respond to questions. As a result, when sessions took place
in short ‘school periods’ it was sometimes difficult for facilitators to encourage
equal engagement when working with mixed-sex groups. However, when an
intervention lasted several weeks, as was the case in South Africa, there was time
for relationships to be formed. By the mid-point of the series of sessions in South
Africa, the girls were able to voice their concerns with equal conviction and greater
clarity of argument than the boys. This illustrates the importance of structuring
interventions over periods of at least a month, to allow those who may have been
silent initially to develop confidence and take the opportunity to speak about
issues like sexuality and gender equality.
Our pedagogic approach was concerned with developing a climate of gender
equality. As facilitators we encouraged girls and asked mixed groups to allow them
to finish off the points they were making if boys tried to block them. We asked boys
to answer with their own argued responses, rather than merely expressing shock or
disdain. For example, boys often assumed that they were justified in being angry if
a girl in any way ‘showed them up’, but at the same time they did not hesitate to
humiliate their girlfriends by their own sexually promiscuous behaviour. They
found this contradiction hard to ‘argue for’. A workshop approach created spaces
for important debate and discussion about gendered power dynamics, which in
turn allowed boys to be challenged, and created opportunities where girls could
speak directly to boys about their attitudes and behaviour, an outcome that could
not have been achieved through a didactic approach.
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In mixed-sex groups, girls were often more articulate than boys when given the
opportunity. They were able to challenge some of the boys to think again about
the way they perceived and treated girls. ‘We listened to her in the end…her
arguments were good, even if we don’t always agree’
, commented one boy at the
end of a workshop in South Africa, as participants were evaluating what they had
learned. The workshop format had allowed stereotypes to be examined.
Attention to the space created within a group was important. Sometimes,
particularly in Mozambique, an outdoor group would increase in size, and there
would be some on the outside (often girls) who could not see or be seen very well.
When this happened, the outsiders were asked to come forward, and girls were
sometimes asked individually for their offerings in the dramas, if they seemed to
be inhibited by the gender dynamics.
Gender and power
Issues of gender and power were evident not only among the students, but within
our own group also. In time the members became more aware of gender issues
within the group, in the workshops that they ran, and in schools more generally.
We tried to address those dynamics and explore them as a group, so as to be more
aware of them and incorporate them into the work. We aimed to integrate the
issue of gender relations into our approach to HIV education, and this aim was
enhanced by relating gender issues to ourselves. Through discussion, activities,
and role-play among ourselves, we examined stereotypical images of men and
women, and the power dynamics present in everyday situations. In one
improvised scene, a young woman was allowed to travel in a minibus taxi
although she could not pay the fare; this was followed by scene in which a man
who couldn’t pay was thrown off. Rather than dismiss this as a scene showing
gender issues the ‘wrong way round’, we considered who was exploiting the
situation and ultimately benefiting from it, and we were able to frame that within
other aspects of gender in wider society. We contrasted it with other scenarios,
such as a man talking to a woman in a bar and expecting sex at the end of an
evening.
To provoke thought about power within society, we used ‘The great game of
power’, devised by Augusto Boal, which illustrated the gender dynamics that
influence men’s and women’s perceptions of power. In this activity, we asked
participants to arrange five chairs, a bottle, and a table so that one item held
power. Participants then entered the frame set by this furniture, each acting as a
‘more powerful’ character than the previous person. The group thus created a
collective frozen image of many elements expressing ‘power’. Through discussion
this tableau can be used to illuminate various types of power, such as
economic/resource power, oppressive power, responsible power, physical power,
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personal power, and sexualised power. Male participants often adopted the most
overtly dominating stances, such as a man looking over a woman, or they
expressed physical power, for example by miming violent gestures. Women, on
the other hand, expressed themselves through facial expressions of defiance or
postures of independence. The facilitator aimed not to identify particular forms
of power as gender-specific, but to encourage discussion of the term
‘empowerment’. This entailed finding ways to overcome, resist, or challenge the
dominating or oppressive power. For example, a woman stepping in after a man
had assumed a ‘mighty’ position of total control over other members stood aside,
laughing at him, thus demonstrating the man’s position as ridiculous.
For equal representation and facilitation, we aimed to assemble a group with
equal numbers of men and women; but as women constituted barely 15 per cent
of the students at the university, this posed considerable problems for us. This
obstacle could thus never completely be overcome in a voluntary project, but in
public appeals for volunteers we emphasised the need for women. There were
always more men than women, but we ensured that no workshop was facilitated
without a woman being present.
Much of the material that we used was adapted from resources previously used in
similar contexts. Some of the material used in South Africa in the Dramaide
intervention was adapted, through discussion with group members, for the
Mozambique context. In South Africa, the manual that the facilitator used was
entitled ‘Mobilizing Young Men to Care’. It challenged certain assumptions
common among South African men, such as their assertion of a need for several
partners, and beliefs about the rightness of ‘following in a father’s footsteps’.
The activities in the workshops, however, developed a concern for gender
equality, rather than simply aiming to provoke thought about male identities. In
Mozambique, this focus developed to include relationships between boys’ and
girls’ identities. Although a handbook was used, we quickly learned the advantages
of knowing the material and being able to adapt it to different situations.
Helping adolescents to make sense of their culture
‘Culture’ relates to personal identity and thus one’s sense of well-being, and it is a
crucial determinant of views about gender and equity. Mozambican culture has
been undergoing change in the past 15 years, after a communist government
which sought to resist alien Western cultural influences was replaced by one that
embraced the Western economy, and the cultural elements that are linked to it.
The changes create new frictions in daily life, expressed in forums of debate from
bus-stop queues to television talk shows. The ways in which ideas about ‘culture’
are contested often relate directly to issues of gender and sexuality. Topics such as
‘bride price’, responsibility for safe sex, the role of the extended family in teaching
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and initiating sexual activity, the desire for multiple partners as a biological need
or cultural right, and the role of women in modern Mozambican society all
provoke much debate and make gender equality a topical issue, even when such
a term itself is not often used.
Students trying to make sense of their cultural worlds need a forum in which to
work through such issues, with the help of the skilled facilitation of older people
who have had the chance to consider these issues for themselves in the light of the
HIV epidemic. In Mozambique one member of our group had encountered
negative family responses to her commitment to higher education, and she
feared that studying at this level would make her less desirable as a marriage
partner for Mozambican men. However, she was adamant that she wanted this
level of education and she assured girls in groups that this was their right too.
One of the male members of the group, who was seen as a stylish and ‘cool’ kind
of personality, was enabled in workshops to reconcile this image of himself with
the concept of ‘being safe’ and using condoms.
University students are generally highly respected as having succeeded in society,
and they already have a voice that is likely to be taken seriously. Girl pupils heard
strong testimony from a woman who had been able to make her own decisions
about sexual activity and use condoms without losing her attractiveness. Teenage
boys welcomed accounts of someone able to assert himself as an ‘African man’
without the need for ‘flesh to flesh’ or multiple partners. These are key issues for
many young people in trying to move beyond the theory that safe sex is in their
long-term interests. The confusing impulses and half-made resolutions that are
often the realities of youth, and the need to work through their identity and
lifestyle choices, mean that issues of sexuality and gender are sometimes complex
or confusing for teenagers. We wanted them to be discussed by young people in
ways that emphasised the development of critical thinking that is often lacking in
those who completely neglect the threat of HIV. University-level students had
this capacity.
The need for training
Training of facilitators for this type of work is no easy task, but is perhaps the
most crucial aspect of attempts to implement HIV education in Southern Africa.
Techniques and methodology used in projects such as Reflect, Stepping Stones,
and ‘My Future is My Choice’ all emphasise the importance of providing
appropriate training in order to facilitate the participation of young people.
Training must highlight the importance of helping young people to move from
awareness to behaviour change, and to challenge the gender relations in society
that exacerbate the spread of the virus. Such work needs an approach that is
skills-based rather than content-oriented; the training should focus on the
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process and not only the product, so that trainee facilitators reflect on their own
changes of perspective and on difficult questions relating to identity, culture, and
sexuality, and learn to develop through critical self-analysis. Appropriate
selection techniques are essential. Good training is a long-term, on-going process
which needs to be adequately planned and managed, because there are no short
cuts to high-quality outcomes.
Conclusion
In this chapter I have used my experiences in two HIV-education interventions
to demonstrate the gendered nature of HIV education and the sexuality issues
embedded within it. These gender relations are often unequal and can be
reinforced during HIV education if they are not challenged in an adequate way.
A gender-equity approach, as attempted in both interventions described, seeks to
do this through its focus on gender in the various different aspects of the
intervention, such as training, workshop methodology, and the development of
a gender-equity ‘culture’ within the group. Thus, despite many difficulties
encountered in attempting such an approach in schools, the projects were able to
make a difference to the participants, and they formed part of a response to HIV
that regarded the gendered nature of the HIV/AIDS pandemic as central.
Mark Thorpe has been working for several years on HIV, education, youth, and
participation. Most recently he has worked with the International HIV/AIDS
Alliance on participatory assessment; for Save the Children on stigma, HIV, and
child participation in OVC (Orphans and Vulnerable Children) projects; and in
2005 on a participatory study of adolescents and youth in Mozambique for UNICEF
to inform programming there.

References
Boal, A. (1979) Theatre of the Oppressed, London: Pluto
Boler, T. et al. (2003) ‘The Sound of Silence: Difficulties in Communicating on HIV/AIDS in
Schools’, London: ActionAid
Campbell, C. (2004) ‘The role of collective action in the prevention of HIV/AIDS in South Africa’ in
D. Hook, N. Mkhize, P. Kiguwa and A. Collins (eds.) Critical Psychology in South Africa, Cape
Town: Juta/ University of Cape Town Press
Epstein, D. and R. Johnson (1998) Schooling Sexualities, Buckingham: Open University Press
Karlsson, J. (2002) ‘Redesigning schools and the problem of school space in South Africa’, in S.
Marks (ed.) Education In South Africa – 1994 and Beyond, Siyafunda Education Conference
Report, Canon Collins Educational Trust Southern Africa
(www.canoncollins.org.uk/publications/publicationsMain.shtml)
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Kent, A. (2002) ‘Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby! Negotiating Space, Performance and Sexualities within
a Compulsory Heterosexual School Regime in South Africa, in the Context of the HIV/AIDS
Epidemic’, unpublished dissertation, MA in Education and International Development,
Institute of Education, University of London
Kent, A. (2004) ‘Living life on the edge: Examining space and sexualities within a township high
school in greater Durban, in the context of the HIV epidemic’, Transformation: Critical
Perspectives on Southern Africa
, 54: 59–75
Mannah, S. (2002) ‘South Africa: the complex role of teaching about HIV/AIDS in schools’, Prospect
32/2, June 2002
Moletsane, R., R. Morrell, E. Unterhalter, and D. Epstein (2002) ‘Instituting gender equality in
schools: working in a HIV environment’, Perspectives in Education 20/2: 37–53
Shisana, O. (2002) ‘Nelson Mandela/HSRC Study on HIV/ AIDS in South Africa’, commissioned by
the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, conducted by the
Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in collaboration with the Medical Research
Council (MRC) and the Centre for AIDS Development, Research and Evaluation (CADRE)
Unterhalter, E. (2002) ‘Gender, schooling, HIV and violence in Kwazulu Natal, South Africa’, EID
Review 6 (7–8), Institute of Education, University of London
Unterhalter, E. (2003)‘The capabilities approach and gendered education. An examination of South
African complexities’, Theory and Research in Education 1/1:7–22.
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11 Gender, education, and Pentecostalism:
the women’s movement within the
Assemblies of God in Burkina Faso

Alicia Zents
Among the technological advances, intellectual and economic trends, and social
movements of the twentieth century, few would have predicted the emergence and
subsequent growth of Pentecostalism. From its small beginnings in the early 1900s,
the movement has grown enormously. Accounting for a quarter of all the world’s
nearly two billion Christians, comprising 14,000 denominations, spanning 8,000
ethno-linguistic cultures and some 7,000 languages, and growing at a rate of 54,000
new members per day, or 19 million per year, the Pentecostals now represent a
significant social and religious force (Barrett in McClung 1993: 35). Whether it is
because of their emphasis on personal redemption through the ‘born-again’
experience, their reliance on faith healing, their dynamic communities, their well-
oiled organisational machinery, or the fact that Pentecostals offer a comprehensive
system of coping with life, given the enormous burdens of poverty, their culturally
adaptable message is having its effect. People, especially in developing countries,
are flocking to Pentecostal churches. And women are doing so in greater numbers
than men.
From the beginning, Pentecostalism was marked by a high degree of
participation by women, and still today women are generally acknowledged as its
most dedicated and committed adherents. However, in terms of confronting
gender hierarchies and transforming gender roles, the movement is noted for
reinforcing the subordinate position of women and confining them to
traditional gender roles in the household. What, then, accounts for this large,
voluntary movement of women in developing countries within these rapidly
expanding, conservative, evangelical churches?
To seek answers to this question, I travelled to Burkina Faso, to hear how women
defined themselves and their church involvement, and to try to understand the
space in which their lives, work, and faith merge. During the field research in
Burkina, I met with the leadership, conducted individual interviews with women
involved in the movement, held focus-group discussions, and attended a variety
of meetings and seminars in different parts of the country in an effort to gain a
contextual perspective on their organisation, l’Association des Servantes de Christ.
Specifically, I wondered if, in context of the women’s movement, education,
literacy, and training were encouraged and, if so, what was the impact on women.
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And more broadly I asked: is the Pentecostal movement reinforcing traditional
gender roles, or transforming them? In the context of women in the church in
Burkina Faso, are women acting as agents of social change?1 In other words, does
this movement have anything to offer those in the development community who
are committed to improving the lives of women by increasing their access to
education and redressing vast gender disparities?
This chapter, then, examines the role and activity of African women in an
emerging branch of Christianity. At the intersection of gender and religion, it
investigates how women experience their Pentecostal faith, and explores the
impact of their activities and organisation in the context of education, gender
relations, and development of women. I begin by providing an overview of my
research motivations and limitations, considering some aspects of faith in the
African context, educational trends in Burkina Faso, and the Pentecostal church’s
presence there. Following this introductory sequence, I discuss the promotion of
education and learning in the Pentecostal context; the Church’s encouragement
of women’s self-development (within certain parameters); and the extent to
which gender relations can change.
Background information
A personal perspective
My interest in exploring Pentecostalism arises out of my own history. I am the
daughter and granddaughter of former Assemblies of God missionaries to
Burkina Faso. The memory of six childhood years spent living in Burkina can still
evoke the smell of the early mango rains in my nose, the taste of sorghum porridge
in my mouth, the sound of its language on my lips, and the lingering impression
in my heart of a rich culture that I only vaguely comprehended. In the course of
researching the life of my grandmother, who worked for 36 years as a missionary
in Burkina, I encountered the literature that documents the Pentecostal
movement and its emergence in its African context. When I realised how little was
written about women’s experience within the movement, it proved to be too
tempting an area for me not to explore further. Thus I returned to Burkina as an
outsider, wishing to critically assess the impact of work in which her family played
a role. But I was welcomed as a daughter. My status afforded me access to the local
church and its leadership, as well as the international missionary community.
Everywhere I travelled, I met Christians who had worked with or been affected by
the ministry of my parents and my grandparents. My reception by the women was
warm, and my quest for information was energetically accommodated. I was
being honoured for the work of my family—a fact that I found both disconcerting
and humbling. Grateful though I was for the access provided, underlying my open
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reception and the women’s willingness to divulge information was a tacit
assumption that this trust would not be abused. I am unsure what exactly an abuse
might entail, but the pressure that it brought to bear on the interpretation and
analysis of my data must be acknowledged. Although I had considerable access to
women in the Assemblies of God during my time in Burkina, the limitations of the
study must be acknowledged. These include a relatively short field-work period
and no discussion with development workers outside the Church.
Faith and gender in Africa
The inter-relationships of gender, spirituality, and development in the African
context represent a fascinating and intriguing area of research, for several reasons.
Too often, scant attention is paid by the development community to the way in
which faith and spirituality affect the development process and the people in it.
Faith is an all-pervasive force in societies around the world and it can serve as a
significant factor in promoting change, and a filter for individual decisions about
whether or not to engage in risky social action (see Ver Beek 2000). Only recently
have international development institutions come to acknowledge this fact. One
illustration is the publication of Faith in Development: Partnership between the
World Bank and the Churches of Africa
(Belshaw and Calderisi 2002). The reality in
Africa is that Christianity continues to play a crucial and dynamic role. Africa
registers around 4000 new converts daily, and out of a total population of 450
million roughly 200 million are recognised as Christian (Barrett in Niringiye
1996:115). This has led historian Adrian Hastings to comment that ‘[b]lack Africa
today is totally inconceivable apart from the presence of Christianity’ (1990: 208).
If Christianity has become a permanent feature of the African landscape, then so
too has Pentecostalism, a term used to define those Christian churches or groups
who hold ‘the distinctive teaching that all Christians should seek a post-
conversion religious experience called the Baptism in the Holy Spirit’ (Barrett
1982: 838). Pentecostalism, in Africa and elsewhere, focuses on encouraging what
is described as an individual and direct experience of God, a spiritual rebirth, and
the expression of that experience of being ‘born again’ in oral testimony. For
Pentecostals, their ultimate authority on life is the Bible, and they are noted for
their evangelistic zeal and missionary fervour. They practise what has been
termed a ‘seven-days-a-week’ form of Christianity, and their church services are
marked by expressive and exuberant forms of worship, energetic singing, hand-
clapping, raising of hands, and the practice of what are termed ‘the gifts of the
Holy Spirit’, such as speaking in tongues and prophecy. Their growth in Africa is
attributed to a willingness to acknowledge the force of the supernatural and to
confront the world in terms of demons and spirits; to their strong organisational
structures; and to a social and economic network that has flourished in conditions
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of poverty, breaks down boundaries of class and ethnicity, and helps in the
creation of a modern identity (Gifford 1998; Meyer 1998; Marshall 1991; Laurent
1994; Marshall-Fratani 1998). Today the topic of Christianity in Africa can hardly
be addressed without discussing the changes brought about by the growth of the
Pentecostal churches (Gifford 1998: 33).
Commentators remark on the importance of women in maintaining church
vitality and growth. Women’s prayer groups and efficient and energetic lay
organisations have furnished the church with a powerful vehicle for expansion and
provided its most dynamic core (Hastings 1979; Gaitskell 1990, 1997; Oduyoye
1995). Unfortunately, the impact of spirituality and faith on the lives of women is
too often defined by others, and rarely articulated by women themselves (King
1991). This is particularly true of women’s involvement in African Pentecostal
churches. Very little has been published about the gender implications of the
Pentecostal faith in Africa, although one author, on the basis of small-scale
qualitative research, maintains that women in the Nigerian Pentecostal church are
provided with a role that is both attractive and transformative, and this in spite of
the Pentecostal Biblical teaching on the subordination of women to men (Marshall
1991). Before considering the relevance of this possibility to the women’s
Pentecostalist movement in Burkina Faso, let us first place it in the context of
development trends in Burkina and the growth of the Pentecostal church there.
Education and Pentecostalism in Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso poses a severe challenge to the development community’s
commitment to improving the lives of women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa and
increasing their access to good-quality education. Although gains have been made
recently, one need glance only briefly at the statistics to note the improbability of
Burkina Faso reaching the education goals outlined in 2000 in the Dakar
Framework and the Millennium Development Declaration. UNESCO’s
Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2003/4 shows that the net enrolment
ratio for primary school is 36 per cent, and the gross enrolment ratio for
secondary school is only 10 per cent. The figure for tertiary education, at 3.6 per
cent, is even more revealing. The same report notes that there is still no legal
guarantee of free primary education in Burkina, and that adult literacy stands at
only 24 per cent. If the education prospects for Burkinabé children in general look
uncertain, the same report also indicates that for girls the prospects appear even
more discouraging: the female literacy rate is only half that of the men, and the
ratio of girls to boys at both primary and secondary levels is still well below 1 (.71
and .64 respectively). This serves to highlight the fact that Burkina’s chances of
achieving gender parity by the international target date of 2015 remain tentative
at best. According to the Human Development Report for 2003 (UNDP 2003),
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poverty continues to affect more than half the nation, with 61 per cent of the
people living on one dollar or less a day. In addition, women are generally under-
represented at the political level and with some notable exceptions are largely
absent from positions of leadership and management. Although the country has
laws in place to ensure equal treatment of women in civil affairs, women’s civil
rights in matters of marriage, divorce, and inheritance are generally not respected
(Ouedraogo and Dakoure 1998: 38). Women must therefore find alternative ways
to cope with the extreme demands that poverty and culture place on them. Thus,
in spite of these difficulties (or perhaps because of them) the Burkinabé woman,
although poorly represented in official contexts, has more than 100 organisations,
NGOs, and societies established exclusively to promote her political, social, and
economic rights and interests (ibid. 43). It is not surprising, then, that Burkina’s
Pentecostal church has a thriving women’s organisation.
On 1 January 1921, six Assemblies of God (AG) Pentecostal American
missionaries arrived in Ouagadougou, now the capital city of Burkina (AHPAC
1996). By the 1950s, the AG in Burkina had ‘acquired real local roots’ (Hastings
1979: 109), with their largely Africanised liturgies, ceremonies, and music (see
also Skinner 1974). Today, the Assemblées de Dieu, or AD, of Burkina number
around 550,000 members and adherents (DFM 1998). They also contribute to
educational opportunities in the nation by running and/or maintaining a total of
seven Bible schools, a distance-learning extension programme that serves 580
students, 41 primary schools, and eight collèges and lycées (middle and high
schools) (Lagengo 1999). The church experienced phenomenal growth between
1971, when it registered some 25,000 believers (Zents et al. 1971: 40), and 1996,
where it grew on the average by 20,000 new converts a year.2 Although it occupies
a minority status in the country, the Protestant community is a dynamic one,
exerting an influence that far exceeds its size in proportion to the other religious
communities and the population in general (Laurent 1994; Otayek and Dialo
1998). Laurent (1994: 155-77), in the course of fieldwork conducted in one
Burkina province, found the AD to be forging itself into a powerful and cohesive
community—a trend, he claims, that rests on a willingness to embrace change
and on a capacity for organisation. In general, he noted that the Protestant AD
communities in the village had higher literacy rates than the community as a
whole, were economically better off, due to a strong commitment and
engagement with good agricultural practice/techniques, and were frequently to
be found in positions of responsibility or leadership in the community.
The women’s movement within the church represents a significant part of the
church’s growth. Founded in 1979, the Association des Servantes de Christ (ASC) is
led by a national bureau with nine executive members, and by offices at the regional
and local levels (Assemblées de Dieu 1996). The ASC’s primary objectives,
according to its statutes, are as follows: to bring souls to Christ, to participate in the
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spiritual and material development of the church, to sustain and encourage each
other with good works, and to work towards helping the Burkinabé woman reach
her full potential3 (Statuts de L’ASC 1997). There are some 200,0004 women active
in the movement, and for several years the ASC was able to mobilise 80,000 women
across the country who met weekly for prayer and fasting for the growth of the
church in their country (Blumhoffer 1996:54). Although the women did not
officially organise themselves until 1979, the foundation had been laid many years
before. There are records from the 1930s of missionaries meeting with women for
prayer and Bible study, and early on women began planning their own efforts to
contribute to the church by planting peanut crops and selling the harvest from
pieces of land that they called ‘God’s Peanut Patch’ (AHPAC 1996: 4). The results of
these early roots in terms of the nature of women’s involvement and activity in the
movement today will now be examined in more detail.
Learning in faith, faith in learning
To determine how the Pentecostal faith culture affected women and how this in
turn shaped their engagement with education, learning, and development, I
conducted research with ASC throughout Burkina Faso. Although my base was
the capital, Ouagadougou, I also travelled to the city of Bobo-Dioulasso in the
south-west and the rural towns of Po in the south and Kaya in the north. I held
open-ended focus-group discussions in both Po and Kaya, with women who
represented some twenty different churches. I interviewed members of the
church and ASC leadership. I also had opportunities to make observations and
speak formally and informally with men and women in the church in such diverse
settings as choir practice, the ASC’s national bi-annual council meeting, teaching
sessions for women leaders, and the national church’s tri-annual administrative
session. In addition, I conducted in-depth interviews with twelve ASC members,
who gave me an oral history of their lives and involvement with the ASC. The
women, whose ages ranged from 23 to 69, were originally from different religious
backgrounds (Muslim, traditional African, and Christian), lived in rural
communities (with the exception of two), were all married, and together had a
total of 65 children. What emerged from the discussions during my field study is
that learning and education play a prominent role in the Pentecostal experience.
A culture of learning, or an atmosphere in which learning is encouraged and
reinforced, seems to be fostered by the ASC by a range of means. First and
foremost, informants identified the emphasis placed by the church on reading the
Bible and reflecting on its principles, instructions, and stories as a key factor in
encouraging women to learn to read. Several of the women whom I interviewed
had become literate in the local language of Mooré because they were taught by
someone in the church. Informants described how literacy skills are maintained
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and reinforced through regular practice, with an immediate, relevant application.
The women read their Bibles independently, the scriptures are read aloud and
reflected on in church, and in their own sessions women read passages aloud and
discuss them. One 41-year-old pastor’s wife teaches literacy in her church and said
it was important because it enabled a woman to read the Bible and ‘encourage her
family’ through the sharing of Bible verses. It also encouraged an independence of
spirit, in that a woman who reads, she told me, can see for herself what the Bible
says; otherwise, she is dependent on what others say and what she hears. One of
the members of the national bureau said that her impression of a literate woman
was one who can better understand ideas, think at a higher and more effective
level in her life and work, and more consistently accomplish for herself what she
needed to do. There were no statistics available regarding the literacy rate among
women in the church, but I speculate that it could very well be higher than the
national average of 15 per cent (UNDP 2003: 313).
Secondly, informants reported that learning is encouraged and literacy reinforced
through the teaching sessions, seminars, and Bible Camps arranged at local,
regional, and national levels. In one leadership seminar that I attended, the
women took copious notes during the sessions, because many would take the
ideas back to their churches and share them with those who could not attend, thus
becoming in the process both learners and teachers. They said they enjoyed these
teaching sessions because they learned new things and were given something to
think about. They claimed to be spiritually refreshed by these gatherings:
sometimes by the teaching itself, which they found encouraging and personally
applicable, and sometimes by the group community and the chance to meet with
other women, talk to their friends, and hear reports and testimonies of what was
happening in other churches and areas.
In addition to this, I was told that, although being literate is not a requirement for
joining the ASC, the women are strongly encouraged to learn to read and write,
particularly those who wish to be a member of a local bureau. For presidents,
secretaries, and treasurers, literacy is virtually obligatory. Two of the women were
secretaries of their local ASC chapters, and they both told me how much they
enjoyed the job because, as one put it, ‘it raises my level of intelligence’. She said that
it forced her to think, and she could see the progress that she made in organising
her local chapter’s plans and goals. The other mentioned that she liked to write
down all the activities and plans that the women intended to accomplish, and then
at the end of the year she would take note of the progress they had made.
Thirdly, informants commented that the ASC community functions as an
information-exchange network where women can share new ideas and learn from
each other. One Burkinabé woman, who worked for a local NGO, described her
culture as one that does not actively seek out information. Instead, she claimed,
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people wait for information to come to them – women even more so than men.
Within the ASC, with its local, regional, and national offices, conferences, seminars,
and teaching sessions on various topics related to health, small credit loans, and
small business practices, information passes from one woman to the next and new
ideas are encouraged. In addition, the ASC is a member of both national and
international organisations, with strong ties to sister churches in neighbouring
countries. Often delegations are sent to attend conventions in Côte d’Ivoire, or
Mali, or Togo in an effort to expand and strengthen these links.
Finally, there is evidence that education and skills acquisition are seen by the ASC
as a key tool in promoting and encouraging some forms of women’s personal and
economic independence. To that end, the ASC runs a Centre de Formation, or
training centre, just outside of Ouagadougou. There, 140 women and girls of
various religious and ethnic backgrounds receive training in sewing, embroidery,
weaving, and knitting as well as classes on health-related issues (AIDS, family
planning) and literacy and numeracy. The teacher, an energetic and lively
woman, described her satisfaction when she saw former pupils established and
earning money. For her, financial independence was the means for the girls to
improve their lives and shape their own destinies. She said that the classes at the
Centre place emphasis on the girls taking control of their own sexuality, and in
the context of her faith she encouraged the girls to recognise their value as human
beings created by God.
These opportunities to study and learn indicate a number of ways in which
women might be able to change existing gender relations. First of all, it appeared
to me that studying raised women’s level of confidence and bolstered their sense
of self-worth. Secondly, possibly as a result of an increased feeling of pride and
personal accomplishment, women feel able to assert themselves in public. In the
group discussion, the women from one rural community told me that many of
them felt intimidated when they had to speak in front of people in the church.
They acknowledged that it was still a problem for them, but could also proudly
recount how they had organised two Journées de l’ASC. The ‘Day of the ASC’
occurs on the first Sunday of May each year, when the women plan and conduct
the entire service, including the preaching. This is an important event for the
women, since it raises their visibility in the church community, increases
awareness of their activities, and pushes them into more public roles. Finally, the
emphasis on learning and thinking for oneself also, I believe, encourages the
women to be more openly critical. I saw evidence of this in one teaching session,
where women openly discussed and criticised comments made by the (male)
pastor who was teaching their session. In another group discussion, women
commented critically on the church’s (and ASC’s) micro-credit programme,
listing its benefits but also pointing out areas where the programme had failed.
All of this self-development is linked to their concerns with spirituality.
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Pentecostalism and women
The reason given to me to explain the women’s motivation for learning to read
and write and train is linked with what lies at the heart of the Pentecostal
movement: the conversion experience. In Pentecostalism the spontaneous and
creative outpouring in prayer and oral testimony that the ‘born-again’ experience
elicits becomes a vehicle for self-expression and affirmation. According to
Pentecostalists, it is the learning in faith that makes faith in learning possible.
The journey of learning begins from the moment when conversion takes place.
Joining the church calls for no less than a redefinition of one’s sense of self, for it
is in the born-again Pentecostal community of the AD of Burkina Faso that the
women could be seen to place their identity. Every woman to whom I spoke could
point to the year, the day, and the hour when she got ‘saved’. It was within this
space that they had located a power that they found life-changing. When asked
what they enjoyed most about their involvement in the ASC, the women
overwhelmingly gave answers that pointed to this fact. They described
themselves as ‘women of God engaged in God’s work’. They explained their
commitment to the ASC as a ‘calling of the Holy Spirit’, not on behalf of the
women but for God. Their deliberate choice to convert was made clear to me
when I asked the women who came from Christian backgrounds if they felt that
it had given them an advantage. In admonishing tones I was informed that one is
not born a Christian, no matter what the background, but one makes a choice to
become one – a choice that still carries a certain risk: six out of the twelve women
were banished from their families following conversion, some for several years,
others for months.
The tangible aspect of this new status is evidenced through a dialogue of prayer
and testimony, first with God and then with others. When asked what they
enjoyed most about the ASC and which activities were most important to them,
they answered ‘prayer’. Seven out of the twelve women specifically named prayer
as their favorite activity, and every other woman mentioned it at some point in
our conversations. Prayer, they said, helped them to cope with the demands
placed on them as mothers and wives, encouraged them in sickness, offered
refreshment from fatigue, and guidance in the making of decisions. ASC, they
said, was also about establishing a network of support and a safe environment in
which to discuss problems and needs. Women described communal prayer times
at Bible Camps as their ‘best times together’. Additionally, many women spoke of
being encouraged by the testimony of others. Every time they meet together,
whether for prayer, Bible study, or choir practice, time is taken for testimonies. For
them, the testimonies affirmed each individual’s experience as special and unique;
her testimony becomes a narrative, a story, told and retold, and the fact that it
inspires others becomes in itself an affirmation for the woman telling the story.
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The conversion experience and its evidence in prayer and testimony appeared to
be translated in social action. In the group discussions, the women described a
myriad of activities through which they support each other and the church
community in general, in times of marriage, death, sickness, childbirth, general
hardship, the building of churches, teaching of Bible studies and Sunday school,
and installing new pastors. That these social activities were meaningful to the
women was clear from their own comments. Second only to prayer, these were the
activities that the women enjoyed the most. They told how they liked to visit the
sick, sing together, meet together for singing, prayer, or just talking and
encouraging each other. They told the story of a believing woman who had been
expelled from her home, for one reason or another, by an unbelieving husband,
and told how she was provided with immediate support. In one town, I was told
of how a woman involved in a small prayer cell was evicted from her home with
her small children by her husband. Within a day, her cell group had collected
money, found housing for her, hired a taxi to transport her and her few belongings
to her new home, and provided a small donation to set her up in a small business
selling food. When I asked the women how they found the time to engage in all
these activities in addition to their demanding roles as mothers, housewives, and
family providers, they insisted that although it was difficult they were happy to do
all these things for each other, and would get up even earlier than usual to do their
household chores, in order to have time to meet at the church. It is here within this
sisterhood that the women focus on their concerns and their needs.
There appeared to be other aspects of this social action, however, than mere
sisterly support. In a sense, the ASC is building the capacity of its members to take
part in development initiatives to help others. The President of the ASC
specifically reported that the ASC encouraged every woman who did not already
have a salaried job to undertake some form of economic activity, to enable her to
provide for herself and the needs of her family, and to establish some measure of
independence. With one exception, each woman whom I interviewed was thus
engaged. Some women shared with me how the money that they earned in their
business enabled them to take financial decisions on their own, such as buying
clothes for a woman in the church who was particularly disadvantaged, or
deciding to give financial assistance to a pastor. The ASC also runs a micro-credit
programme specifically for widows in the churches, and provides small loans to
help them to establish some form of economic independence. Every ASC
member was encouraged to pay dues, called cotisation. The amount did not
matter; what counted was the effort. With their funds, the women engaged in a
wide range of communal activities, including purchasing roofs for churches,
building doors and windows in the churches, supporting Bible School students,
preparing cereal banks in order to have produce to sell in time of need, and
financing special trips to conventions or seminars for members of their groups.
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It is this emphasis on economic independence that sets the ASC apart from the
other women in Pentecostal churches described in the literature and provides a
particular dynamic to the way in which the ASC addresses the needs of women.
Of course, economic activity in the areas of agriculture and animal husbandry is
key to women’s roles in agricultural production in West Africa in general; but the
ASC specifically emphasises the importance of income generation for individual
independence and community contribution.
Impact on gender roles
What is the outcome of the learning opportunities and the activities of the ASC:
do they transform gender roles, or reinforce the traditional gender hierarchy? I
believe that the examples provided thus far have illustrated how the ASC is
meeting women’s ‘practical interests’, through satisfying basic needs, and also is
addressing their ‘strategic interests’, those that play a role in transforming social
relations and improving the condition of women’s lives (Molyneux 1998: 75).
More specifically, I would argue that although tensions are evident in several
areas, the women are pushing against gender hierarchies and expanding their
traditional roles, if not dramatically transforming them.
At first glance, however, this does not appear to be true. The AD church teaches the
submission of women to men and is, in this sense, no different from Pentecostal
churches around the world. The women themselves informed me several times of
the Bible’s teaching on the need for the wife to submit to her husband. Secondly,
there is the striking absence of women in leadership positions of the national
church. The day after I arrived in Ouagadougou, the national church met for one
of its tri-annual business/administrative meetings, and the only woman present
was the President of the ASC, who came to represent the organisation and give a
report on its activities. Woman are denied ordination and cannot serve as pastors
(and therefore in leadership roles, since all leaders are pastors), although they can
within limited contexts preach and evangelise. Thirdly, most of the activities in
which the women engage reinforce their traditional roles as care givers and
housewives, and as agricultural providers for the family. Even the name of the
organisation, the Servants of Christ, does not in itself seem to make a challenging
statement, but serves to reinforce women’s subservient role.
However, in spite of the above, I believe there is evidence of tension within the
church setting that points to the subtle, if not dramatic, ways in which women are
pushing against traditional boundaries and slowly expanding their roles. In the
first place, the fact that the ASC is encouraging women to be more independent,
take on some limited leadership responsibilities, even learn to speak confidently in
public (whether in women’s groups, or up in front of the whole church, as they do
on the Day of the ASC), is significant in a society (and to some extent a church as
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Gender, education, and Pentecostalism
well) where, as one church woman told me, ‘women are encouraged to be silent’. In
a supportive environment, women are learning to read and write, to think and
plan and set goals for the future, and learn the leadership and management skills
necessary to enter the public, modern sphere. Secondly, some of the activities in
which the women engage bring them into conflict with traditional views of the
place that women should occupy. At one teaching seminar that I attended, a
heated discussion took place on the question of which should come first, duties or
family. One of the leaders of the ASC described how one pastor was quite upset
about the amount of time his wife spent engaged in activities in the group,
insisting that she had a responsibility first to her husband and then to her duties.
Because women see themselves as part of ‘God’s work’ and consider their
contributions as vital to ministry of the church as a whole, they are becoming
more assertive in public.
Finally, the ASC is concerned with issues of gender relations. One member of the
ASC’s national bureau recounted to me how the ASC has identified the need to
have special, separate sessions for young girls where they can freely discuss issues
relating to sex and marriage, and any other concerns that they might have. The
ASC’s efforts to provide training for girls has been resisted by the all-male
leadership of JAD (Jeunesse des Assemblées de Dieu), the youth programme of the
AD church, who have interpreted the ASC’s efforts as an attempt to encroach on
their territory, to undermine their control. At the time when I conducted my
interviews, the women had not yet succeeded in obtaining girls-only programmes
or classes.
Thus, I believe, does this anecdotal evidence support my claim that in subtle ways
the women in the ASC are actively seeking to improve the conditions of women,
and expanding the space for women to advance economically and educationally.
But their scope for progress is constrained by the church’s teaching on the
submission of women to men. The ASC is officially under the leadership of the
national church, although they are financially self-sustaining and admin-
istratively independent. In times of prayer and discussion together, they discuss
their visions, plans, and ideas for the future, and sometimes, as we have seen with
the case of initiating special courses for young girls, their ideas come into direct
conflict with male leadership. Even the idea for the Day of the ASC was initially
rejected by the national church leadership, but over time the women were able to
convince them otherwise. One member of the ASC leadership told me that
although the idea is now accepted and endorsed by roughly 80 per cent of the
churches, the remaining 20 per cent are still resisting the idea of giving women
control of the service and allowing them to preach.
Ultimately, this all points to another important issue concerning the ASC: the
women appear to have carved out a considerable niche in church life and have
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made themselves indispensable to the success of the Pentecostal movement in
Burkina. With all their outreach activities, they have significantly enhanced the
church’s social capital, as described by Laurent, in the community. Several
pastors to whom I spoke recognised this fact, and commented that the women
were far better organised than the men, and more effective in accomplishing their
goals. Even the ASC’s financial contribution to the church should not be
underestimated: in a period of twenty years, the ASC gave a total of 64 million cfa
(or approximately $183,000)5 to the national church (ASC 1999).
Conclusion
What are we to make of the impact of Pentecostalism on the women drawn to its
churches? I would argue that the religious experience that typifies Pentecostalism
is clearly creating spaces to which women are drawn and in which their lives are
changed. The women to whom I spoke identify strongly with their own individual
religious experiences, and the narrative testimony arising from those experiences
becomes an empowering, life-affirming story. Moreover, this faith-based
narrative has provided a space for women’s education in the Pentecostal
movement in Burkina Faso. Education and learning, along with reading, writing,
planning, organising, and critical thinking, are viewed as essential elements of
both personal faith and women’s participation in the church. The research
suggests that the power of the Pentecostal experience can change the lives of
women and provide an increased sense of self-esteem, through the growth of
communal organisational networks and social group support, and through
encouraging financial independence. The women still face institutional
constraints in the church context in terms of their aspirations to leadership. The
women in the ASC in Burkina appeared inspired by their faith to actively change
the world in which they lived, and improve their lives in the process. As
development agencies, both foreign and local, search for partners to improve the
education of girls and women throughout the world, religious movements and
groups like the ASC could well prove to be allies.
Alicia Zents grew up in Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire. She has worked in Mali,
Honduras, and Kenya and is currently living in Kenya. The research for her chapter
was conducted as part of her work for her MA at the Institute of Education, London
University.

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Notes
1
I am indebted to the perceptive work of Elizabeth Brusco (1995), who researched the gender
and household impact of conversion to evangelical, Pentecostal Christianity in Colombia. In
trying to reconcile contradictions between her own anthropological training and the
knowledge of religious ideology as an instrument of patriarchy, she found it more useful to ask
how women in their traditional roles could be agents of change and even bring about gender-
role transformations, rather than asking from a Western feminist perspective how
Pentecostalism might inspire women to take on new roles in society.
2
I base these figures on my own calculations using the statistics available to me.
3
Elsewhere this final objective is described as ‘ameliorating or improving the conditions of the
Burkinabé woman’ (AD 1996: 74).
4
Exact figures are hard to come by, since the church does not distinguish between the sexes when
counting members, but I am assuming that women make up at least half the number of
adherents. The figures may well be much higher than those that I have quoted. Leaders that I
spoke to, pastors, etc., often had the impression that women were more numerous than men in
their assemblies.
5
This is a rough estimate, since the exact amount, due to the fluctuation of the cfa and the
devaluation in 1994, is difficult to determine. Even so, this is a significant sum for the women to
have raised, especially considering many women’s lack of resources.
References
AHPAC (Africa Harvest Projects and Coordination Office)(1996) ‘The Ladies Page’ (Assemblies of
God publication), Springfield: Division of Foreign Missions
ASC (1997) ‘Statuts de l’Association des Servantes de Christ’
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12 Enabling education for girls: the Loreto
Day School Sealdah, India

Ruth Doggett
The government of India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development lists the
fifth goal of Education For All in India as ‘The creation of necessary structures
and the setting in motion of processes, which could empower women and make
education an instrument of women’s equality’ (Ministry of Human Resource
Development 1997). It has been suggested that one structure to increase female
participation in education may be single-sex secondary schools (Brock and
Cammish 1998: 56). While in decline in the Western world, girls’ schools are
common in India, attracting about one third of all enrolments (Malhotra 1982).
Yet there appear to be no studies of students’ experiences of single-sex schools in
India. This chapter provides a snapshot of one such school in Kolkata which, in
its attempts to embrace ‘Education For All’ and widen the scope of education for
girls in urban India, is inconsistent with the prevailing image of private, fee-
paying, single-sex schools as the domain of the upper classes.
The chapter draws on a recent case study of Loreto Day School Sealdah (LDS),
which analysed the meanings and values that girls attach to their single-sex
schooling, and considered the ability of a single-sex school to effect social change
(Doggett 2003). The study built on previous work conducted by Jessop (1998),
which identified the school’s elements of best practice, and by Greene (1996),
which examined its approach to education from a religious standpoint. My study
was developed from analysis of documents referring to or published by the
school; observations made during my time working at the school; interviews
with the school principal; and questionnaires administered to 183 students by
their teachers in August 2002. These questionnaires, containing a number of
open-ended questions, were administered to girls from six classes, one class from
each of Years 7–12. This combination of research tools was designed to elicit
students’ perceptions and views of their schooling, in response to the fact that
students are often silent in the public sphere and hold little power (Ribbens and
Edwards 1998: 153). This sample was chosen also to reflect the reality that, in the
literature on single-sex schools, there is more debate about this form of schooling
in the context of girls reaching adolescence (Halstead 1991; UMO 1975: 14). It is
also at this age that girls often drop out of school in India (Stromquist 1998: 572),
which makes it pertinent to examine how adolescent girls were relating to their
education in this particular school.
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My interests in these questions arise partly from my own experiences and the
contradictions that I have experienced in growing up and being educated in
single-sex environments in Ireland. I first became aware of societal influences on
girls’ education in my teens, when a father of three girls expressed surprise that I,
a girl, was studying (and doing well in) higher-level mathematics. Later I
questioned why I eventually became channelled into studying the humanities
and traditionally ‘feminine’ studies, despite taking ‘masculine’ subjects for my
final-year exams at secondary school. If I had attended a co-educational school,
would my choices of subjects and career have been different, and what
possibilities would I have seen as being open to girls like me?
As a teacher in a wide range of different types of school in Ireland, the UK, and
New Zealand, I have witnessed diverse experiences of students in single-sex and
co-educational environments. For example, I have seen the streaming of boys
and girls into feminised and masculinised forms of study and have noted the
interactions between boys and girls in their co-educational schools, and their
teachers’ expectations of them. I have watched as boys and girls are pitted against
one another in competition, and lined up in separate lines outside their
classrooms. I have observed girls being told to report class ‘troublemakers’ to the
school authorities. I have heard boys whistle at girls and tell them ‘I’ll break you
in soon, yeah?’. I have noticed my own biases towards boys and girls in class,
invariably reporting afterwards that I have spent more time addressing the
‘boisterous’ boys. In short, I have become aware of teaching as a political exercise
in a gendered terrain.
These experiences, as well as working as a volunteer teacher in Loreto Day
School, Kolkota, in June and July of 1997 and 1999, have raised for me the
question of whether single-sex schools widen educational opportunities for
girls. The aim of this chapter is to provide a portrait of the Loreto Sealdah’s
learning environment and examine the impact of girls’ gendered identities on
their response to education.
Loreto Day School Sealdah: a brief history
Loreto Day School Sealdah belongs to the Institute of The Blessed Virgin Mary,
an order of Catholic nuns more commonly known as the Loreto Sisters.
Representatives from Loreto Ireland arrived in India in 1842. Charged with the
task of schooling the daughters of the colonial administration, they swiftly set
about opening English-medium schools for girls. Their arrival in Bengal
coincided with the time of Brahmo Samaj, a religious movement which
promoted social reforms that sought the controlled emancipation of women and
paved the way for the establishment of educational institutions for women
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(Karlekar 1994). They saw within these reforms the possibilities of further
widening the provision of education ‘for the upper classes as well as the poor’
(Colmcille 1968: 7). In this way it can be said that Education For All has always
been a central premise of the Loreto’s ‘mission’ in India.
Loreto Day School Sealdah (LDS) began life under the direction of Sister
Catherine Cantopher in 1857, but in 1938 the arrival of Mother Dorothy Maher,
described as a ‘woman of vision, clear sighted, strong willed and utterly fearless’
(Colmcille op.cit.: 280), changed the Loreto’s provision of education for ever. In
the spirit of their revolutionary founder, Mary Ward, the Loreto Sisters
challenged restrictions and sought ways to open education to all, rejecting
discriminations inherent in policies such as the code for Anglo-Indian schools
that dictated that no more than 25 per cent of students in such schools should be
Indian (ibid.; Doggett 2003: 62). Today there are seven Loreto schools in Kolkata,
within a network of 19 across India. The current principal, Sr. Cyril Mooney,
took up her post in 1979 and set about extending the scope of the school, which
at that time was a private school catering largely for the daughters of elite Bengali
society, with only 90 out of 790 students coming from poor backgrounds. LDS
therefore belongs to an elite English-medium academic tradition, very different
from the types of single-sex school in (for example) rural Pakistan, which cater
for some of the poorest girls in areas where co-educational schooling is not an
option.
On arrival, Sr. Cyril embarked on a mission to foster a school with students from
all financial, social, and religious backgrounds, because there was ‘a certain
uneasiness felt at being part of a formal education system imparting quality
education to a privileged few, while millions of their less fortunate peer group get
virtually nothing at all’ (Cyril 1997: 3). The school today has 1,400 girls, ranging
from the Nursery class to Year 12, half of whom do not pay fees on account of
their families’ financial circumstances. LDS has become a multicultural
educational setting, providing for Hindu, Muslim, and Christian students, and in
doing so has been recognised as ‘a model of best practice’ (Jessop 1998). Alliances
and networks have been formed between the school and organisations such as
UNICEF, Save the Children, the British Council, Rotary Club, Ashoka, Childline,
and Round Table, ensuring that LDS has a vast network from which to draw
experiences, lessons learned, and opportunities for advocacy on the rights of the
child. It challenges conventional assumptions that private fee-paying single-sex
schools are exclusively for the middle and upper classes, and thus raises questions
about the potentials of this form of school organisation.
Loreto schools have a distinguished reputation in India, and Loreto Sealdah is no
exception. On International Literacy Day 1994, it was awarded the UNESCO
Noma Literacy Prize for spreading literacy and education. Each year since 1998 it
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has won the Telegraph Better Calcutta Contest, as an acknowledgement of its
work towards achieving social excellence. More recently it was chosen out of 600
schools for the Telegraph 2002 award for the Best School in Calcutta, to mark its
work on social, health, and environmental issues. Such a reputation means that
politicians, business people, and the wealthy send their daughters to Sealdah,
paying tuition fees of up to 740 rupees per month. But despite the fact that it is a
private school, it does not perceive education as a profit-making exercise. In late
2002, when private schools were forced to increase their tuition fees by a reduction
in the State government’s Dearness Allowance, which provides a percentage of the
salaries of teachers of registered private schools, the school discussed the matter
with parents and guardians and it was agreed that 160 out of the 700 fee-paying
students could continue studying at the old rate of 440 rupees per month.
The school has also been successful in reaching out to families living in the nearby
slums, on railway stations and pavements. Students from such underprivileged
families study free of charge at the school and are often provided with school
uniforms, textbooks, and meals. They are supported by overseas sponsors and the
generosity of wealthy families associated with the school. The tuition fees are
covered by the fees of other students and by donations from overseas sponsors and
aid agencies, and the State-administered Dearness Allowance. As a strategy for the
integration of all children into the school community, uniforms and colour
coding of classes were introduced to eliminate social differences. Throughout
LDS, most classes are mixed-ability and include both fee-paying and non-paying
students.
This chapter discusses data from questionnaires gathered from both fee-paying
and non-fee-paying students (see Table 1).
Table 1: a summary of the fee status of pupils in Years 7–12 of Loreto Day
School Sealdah

Year
7
8
9
10
11
12
Non-fee-paying
9
12
6
9
5
6
Fee-paying
22
20
16
20
23
25
Unspecified
0
4
2
2
2
0
Total
31
36
24
31
30
31
Apart from the students attending the regular lessons, the school caters for
approximately 250 street children – or ‘rainbow children’, so named by the school
principal because they ‘drop in like rainbows, colourful as they are, giving joy as
they appear’ (Cyril 1997). These rainbow children attend the school’s ‘Rainbow
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School’ and night shelter, which, as explained below, consists of an informal
teaching programme for street children, provided by LDS students.
The success of such a school depends on the creativity and commitment of the staff.
In the past,Loreto schools were staffed mainly by ordained sisters,but over time they
have been replaced by lay teachers. Today, Loreto Sealdah has a staff of 65: 62 female
teachers and three men, many of whom have been through a Loreto education
themselves and come from a range of social and religious backgrounds. Some
teachers are first-generation learners. The unique ethos of the school requires that
teachers are constantly challenged and involved in a training programme which
involves their participation in reflective workshops. In addition, initiative and
personal investment are expected, thus ensuring that a sense of ownership of school
activities is fostered among the staff (Jessop 1998: 15).
Towards an enabling curriculum
Ethos
Loreto Sealdah’s unique status among Bengali schools is born out of its philosophy
and ethos. The vision of LDS is to create ‘dynamic people, with the values of giving,
sharing and extended love – a vibrant living instrument for human change’ (Cyril
1997: 3). This type of education, it is stressed, depends on ensuring that students do
not receive an insular elitist education, but one which involves their interaction at
all levels of society. The school has developed not only an academic curriculum,
but also a curriculum of non-academic activities, such as working with street
children, which support students’ interaction in the public arena. These activities
occur alongside the academic curriculum and are equally valued; they may
therefore be called co-curricular programmes, as opposed to extra-curricular
programmes. The focus is on education for community and solidarity, not
competition. This is seen as a way to tackle privileges and hierarchies within Indian
society which divide rich and poor, men and women. The vision is based on a belief
that, through exposure to life experiences, ‘the regular school child learns at first
hand what real destitution is and will be less likely to dismiss the poor when she
holds a position of power later on, and if the regular child is herself poor, then she
learns the need to work for her own community and is challenged to share rather
than climb up the social ladder and be lost to her own people’ (Majumdar 1999: 3).
In this way at LDS ‘Compassion is Compulsory’, just as maths is compulsory
(ibid.). This commitment is made explicit at enrolment, which is accompanied by
a value test. While most schools assess the students, this entrance test also evaluates
the parents’ values: they are reminded that their daughters must attend the school’s
various co-curricular programmes, and that the education that the school provides
aims to be dynamic and potentially liberating (Cyril 1997: 2).
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The academic single-sex schools, of the tradition from which LDS emerges, have
been identified as places for the academically oriented, with little on offer for those
not so inclined (Arnot 1983: 79). For LDS, however, the value system and ethos
present the academic side of school as ‘one of the tools for intellectual development
on par with but never taking precedence over the formation of mind and heart
necessary to produce an agent of human change’ (Cyril 1997: 12). Academic
achievement is expected, but is presented in a context that stresses co-operation
and the holistic development of its students, in contrast to the extremely
competitive nature of the contemporary Indian education system. An education
which promotes individual competition is rejected. This is reinforced by a request
that no student should receive extra tuition outside the school. Instead, students
with difficulties are encouraged to seek help from within the school.
Exam results suggest that this approach has not been to the detriment of
academic achievement. Loreto Sealdah achieves good results in the public
examinations – the Madhyamik Pariksha at Year 10 and the Higher Secondary
Exam at Year 12 – by both fee-paying and non fee-paying students, with 50 per
cent of students attaining a first-class pass annually (Jessop 1998:13). This is
comparable to the achievements of other private schools in Kolkota. However, it
is achieved in a school where students are admitted through a lottery system, not
through competitive examinations, as is the case with other private schools.
Sarmistha Sarkar is a former pupil of the school, now involved in a peace
initiative in Kolkota. Interviewed in 2003 about her experience of LDS, she
attributed her activism to empowering experiences provided by Loreto Sealdah,
and commented that ‘we were never expected to compete for marks and ranks.
What was stressed instead was our ability to reach out, to try and solve a problem
if we saw one. It was only when I went to college that I realized how paranoid
everybody was about academic performance!’ (Ray 2003). The school’s vision is
to awaken the consciousness of everyone who plays a part in the school. This
awakening happens through reflective participation in the variety of remarkable
programmes described below.
Co-curricular programmes
In 1979 LDS established a rural programme in co-operation with the Children in
Need Institute. Following negotiations with the village head teachers of suburban
Amgachia district, it was agreed that LDS students would teach in the village
schools once a week (Jessop 1998: 9). It is now well-established practice that each
Thursday, 150 regular students give up their day off and teach. I had the privilege
of accompanying students on one such weekly trip in July 1997 and was impressed
by the confidence and commitment with which students related to their peers and
taught them through participatory techniques using song, story telling, and art.
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Students are taught teaching methods and class planning from Year 5 onwards, by
their Bengali teacher. Teaching topics, selected in consultation with the village
head teacher, mainly consist of topics such as vocabulary building, environmental
and practical science, and practical maths (Cyril 1997: 5). At Year 11, students
begin teaching English in the village high school. The direct impact of their work
was the establishment of a junior high school for girls in Amgachia district, and an
increase in the number of girls attending the ‘boys’’ school in 1979 from 7 to more
than 800 currently studying in the new girls’ junior high school, funded by LDS
through overseas sponsorship. The involvement of Sealdah students in the village
schools increased the visibility of girls in education and set a positive example for
parents who were contemplating sending their daughters to school.
While the rural programme was initiated by staff, the ‘rainbow programme’ is an
initiative led by a group of students who approached Sr. Cyril in 1985, concerned
about the numbers of children and young people on the streets who were not
receiving an education. From their ideas grew the concept of ‘a school within a
school’. The dynamism of LDS can be seen in the progression of the rainbow
programme from an ad hoc weekly afternoon programme, run by volunteer
students, to one which is now an integral part of the school, involving all students
from Year 5 to Year 10. When a rainbow student was abused on the streets,
students again approached the school principal, and from their concern the
concept of a night shelter developed.
As part of this programme, children living on the streets and on the platforms of
nearby Sealdah and Howrah railway stations, both male and female, are invited
into the school for lessons. They are also provided with facilities to sleep and wash,
and they have the services of a nurse and social worker. The programme operates
efficiently, due to the use of ‘work education’ slots within the school. From Year 5
onwards, the school timetable is divided into ninety-minute slots of ‘work
education’ per week, with one class participating in it during every period of the
day. Work education is a curricular subject, preparing students for employment in
the workforce. This means that at every period there are at least fifty potential
teachers from the regular student community, ready to teach and play with the
‘rainbow’ students on a one-to-one basis. Their educational programme includes
literacy, numeracy, life skills, dancing, yoga, singing, painting, and crafts such as
pottery and tie dye which may later be used to generate income (Cyril 1997: 4).
The success of this programme is apparent through the integration of some
‘rainbow’ students into the regular school and other schools in Kolkata. One of the
earliest rainbow students is herself teaching in the rainbow school and in the
villages of Amgachia. A property next to the school was acquired in 1997, and the
night shelter for rainbow students is currently expanding to accommodate up to
300 students.
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The Hidden Domestic Child Labour Project began as a survey led by students
from years 5 to 7, which established that 4,900 children were involved in
domestic labour in the Sealdah area. In response to this, students established
social clubs for the children, currently involving more than 300 children.
Students’ activism includes approaching employers on Anti Child Labour Day to
demand the day off for child labourers, who are subsequently treated to an
organised trip. Further advocacy is carried out by the school through its
involvement in the Shikshalaya Prakalpa movement. Sr. Cyril is convenor of the
State Resource Group for the Education of Deprived Urban Children, which
began its work in January 1999 by surveying street children and discovering
44,646 street children out of school. Approximately 50 NGOs and government
agencies are working in partnership to identify and enrol all Kolkata’s children in
regular schools. As part of this movement, the school has trained more than 552
teachers, who work in pairs and collect the children in groups of 50 in areas
where there is either no school or no vacancy for the children in existing schools
(‘Ripples and Rainbows’, September 2001).
Recognising India’s need for more teachers, the school developed a Barefoot
Activity-Based Teacher Training Programme in 1988. This is a two–four week
programme held every month, designed to train teachers in child-centred
educational methods. The participants are young men and women who have
dropped out of school before reaching Year 10 and are consequently ineligible for
places at teacher-training colleges. As many of the participants work in rural
villages without access to sophisticated teaching materials, the programme
focuses on encouraging participants to develop learning and teaching aids from
locally sourced materials. Aside from designing aids, the trainee teachers also
undertake observation of Sealdah’s teachers, and learn about teaching
methodologies and self-evaluation.
Academic curriculum
Loreto Sealdah is affiliated to the West Bengal Board of Education, the West
Bengal Council for Secondary Education, and the National Open School. These
affiliations allow the school to design its own academic curriculum, as long as
students are prepared for the State exams: the Year 10 Madhyamik Pariksha exam
and the Year 12 Higher Secondary Examination. Up to Year 10, students study
science and maths, Bengali, English, history, and geography, and they also receive
physical education, work education, and values education. In years 11 and 12,
students choose between commerce, humanities, and science. In Sealdah the most
popular option is commerce, a phenomenon explained by Sr. Cyril in terms of the
financial rewards on offer in the IT industry. Other activities include Indian
dance, yoga, Indian singing, karate, sports, and team games such as basketball.
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‘Enabling’ activities
My research in 2002 drew on the work of Mukhopadhyay and Seymour (1994),
who developed the analytical concept of a ‘patrifocal family structure and
ideology’ to account for the way families regulate gender-differentiated access to
and control over resources both material and social, such as education, in India.
This concept implies subordination of individual goals to collective welfare,
which reinforces the centrality of men and the subordinate status of women. For
example, they identified that intrinsic to this ideology is a series of sanctioned
structural features, such as patrilocal residence or patrilineal inheritance, which
marginalise daughters and create a concern to regulate female behaviour
(Mukhopadhyay and Seymour 1994:3). This results, for example, in the
commonplace observation that educating girls is equivalent to ‘watering a tree in
your neighbour’s courtyard’ (in Stromquist 1998:581; see also the chapter by
Janet Raynor in this volume), which betrays families’ conviction that their
obligation to a daughter consists primarily in getting her settled in marriage. A
daughter’s education must be tailored to the opportunity of finding a suitable
husband, rather than enabling her to pursue what she herself wants to do.
In contrast to the subordination to which girls might be subject in the
coeducational school (Drudy and Uí Chatháin 1999; Spender 1980), Loreto
Sealdah tries to present students with the space to identify their own and others’
realities through the various school programmes and activities. LDS also
encourages girls to engage in activities that acknowledge their power to change
what is taking place around them. During their time at LDS, they become
involved in the public domain, participating in all sorts of rallies, competitions,
and social initiatives which address issues ranging from environmental health to
child rights. These activities are a vital component in the school’s attempts to
increase the visibility of girls, develop students’ critical capacities, and aid their
future employment prospects: they may therefore be called enabling activities.
The students’ exposure to the examples of strong women in positions of power,
such as their teachers, helps to reinforce the positive messages that they receive
through the school’s programmes. The first LDS newsletter was dedicated to
three women at the school and another to ‘women who have touched our lives’
(‘Ripples and Rainbows’, September 1997). Attempts are made to provide robust
non-stereotypical messages and images about women’s roles in life (as can be
seen in the Value Education Books, We Are The World, edited by Sr. Cyril, which
portray women as surgeons, construction-site managers, scientists, etc.).
It is within this supportive atmosphere that girls gain skills and confidence
which, it is hoped, will enable them to claim their rights. It is hoped that they will
realise that ‘we don’t have to settle for small meaningless lives – we can set realistic
meaningful goals, and do the things to make them happen’ (‘Ripples and
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Rainbows’, September 1997).The research found that students are aware of
structural inequalities, with comments such as ‘We all together can draw out
remedies for the women in poor families who are deprived most in this male
dominated world. Males do not accept this’
(Year 10), showing a firm resolve
to challenge the position of women in India.
The Value Education curriculum is seen as fundamental for the formation of
students who are reflective and want to promote social change. It also encourages
dialogue about life experiences. Analysis of the sequential curriculum materials
reveals a collaborative and participatory pedagogy with a strong emphasis on
reflection:

Key in (where students gather their own thoughts)

Share it around (sharing with friends)

Pass it on (sharing group work with the class)

Talk it over (class discussion)

Think it through (self-reflection)

Take it in (Scripture-guided reflection)

Carry it through (plan and carry out action)
Within these classes, the girls’ own experience and knowledge are validated and
used as building blocks for reflection, discussion, and action, nourishing
students’ critical abilities and their ‘capacity to form and express an opinion,
the courage to express and form an opinion which people may not agree with’
(Cyril, interview, 2002). Each lesson ends with the students developing an action
plan which reinforces the message that the girls themselves can be active agents.
They are provided with practical strategies at the end of each lesson, such as
encouragement to contact UNICEF or find out about and help a local women’s
organisation. That many students do become agents of change may be illustrated
by the participation of a ten-year-old student in the 2001 National Conference
on Domestic Labour in Mumbai, where she spoke about her experiences as a
former child labourer. She was accompanied by a fellow former LDS student,
herself a first-generation learner, who had gone on to become a qualified teacher
and now co-ordinated the LDS project on Hidden Child Domestic Labour.
The ‘enabling’ activities and the school ethos, therefore, are part of the reason
why ‘we don’t have drop outs because we don’t let them drop out, we provide them
with alternatives’ (
Sr. Cyril, interview, 2002). This is also achieved by avoiding
‘disabling’ educational experiences or experiences of failure, by providing
additional tuition for students experiencing difficulties, encouraging
participation in the National Open School, and allowing some students to sit one
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examination at a time. These strategies help girls to transform their lives and
empower them in their struggle against deprivation.
An LDS education – and the response of students
An education at Loreto Sealdah can therefore be seen to consist of two strands:
the academic curriculum, which supports the academic development of all
students and prepares them for State examinations, and the ‘curriculum of
agency’, which attempts to build confidence and a sense of capacity within
students through participation in the co-curricular programmes and other
enabling activities. This section uses questionnaire data (Doggett 2002) to
examine students’ responses to their education.
Responding to questions about the academic curriculum, and asked to name
favourite subjects, students appear to align themselves with the traditionally
‘feminine’ subjects such as languages and the arts, whose favoured status appears
to be rooted in their practical applications. See Figure 1.
Figure 1: Students’ favourite subjects
As can be seen in Figure 1, the majority of pupils in the survey chose languages,
which included English and Bengali. After this, favour was spread across
Commerce (Business, Maths and Accountancy), Science (Computers, Biology,
and General Science), and the Humanities (History, Geography, Political
Science, Nutrition, and Home Science).
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However, closer analysis revealed that the response of students to the academic
curriculum appears to be influenced by two factors: social position and
increasing awareness of women’s gendered roles in life. As Figure 2 shows, social
position affected the favoured status of subjects. Those students who showed
some ability to move beyond stereotypical ‘female’ areas of study were invariably
fee-paying. In contrast to the fee-paying students, who expressed interest in a
range of subjects, non-paying students clustered around the humanities and
languages. Similarly, every student, bar one, who gave either Nutrition or Home
Science as her favourite subject did not pay fees. In contrast, every student who
chose Accountancy, Political Science, or Maths as her favourite was fee-paying. It
could be that while poorer students may have greater aspirations in private, they
fear that these aspirations may be imprudent and threaten their future
marriageability or family reputation. Consequently they opt for subjects leading
to jobs which will provide them with security.
Figure 2: Favourite subject areas – fee-paying status
The co-curricular programmes, particularly the educational ones, evoked varied
responses from students. Commitment ranged between those who expressed little
connection with the programmes, seeing them as a ‘waste of energy (for me) but it
helps the poor children to learn about general knowledge’
(Year 9) to those who
expressed a sense of ownership, pride, and genuine excitement in the school’s
achievements: ‘I am proud to be part of such a unique institution. I plead to all the
other schools around the world to communicate with us and build up a chain to reach
out for the less privileged group. I hope the mission of our school would reach the apex
of success and prosperity and we will be able to feel all the more proud’
(Year 10).
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Enabling education for girls: the Loreto Day School Sealdah, India
When invited to describe the skills that their participation in the programmes has
developed, many students spoke of confidence and being taught ‘to become self
independent and build a character of our own’
(Year 8). Most students chose to
focus, not on personal gains, but on how the programmes are about learning to
‘Sacrifice, to co-operate and to be compassionate towards others’ (Year 10), and to
become ‘a complete countryman and … know how to serve the country’ (Year 9).
In cases where students said they had developed practical skills, these were linked
with becoming teachers or parents, by learning ‘how to control children and how to
behave with children’
(Year 9). This element of service appears to be closely linked
with their identification of women as nurturers and givers. Commenting on her
single-sex education, one Year 11 student asserted, ‘I strongly feel that it develops our
feminine identity and helps us to develop the feminine qualities like perseverance and
adjustment to our family members’.
Such a strong assertion suggests that this
student sees her education in terms reminiscent of the old 1920s education-reform
slogan ‘Educating a girl means educating a family’ (Mukhopadhyay and Seymour
1994: 38). It orientates girls towards family duties and suggests that a girl’s own
needs, and perhaps goals, should be subordinated to those of her family. While the
school’s outreach programmes give the girls exposure to the realities and
consequences of the patrifocal ideology and encourage them to reflect and speak
out, there is only tentative engagement in and a certain resistance to the parameters
of behaviour imposed on them by this ideology. For some, the programmes seem
to be equating femininity with ideals of self-sacrifice and service.
This definition of femininity was echoed by many of the students, and reinforced
by statements such as ‘from Loreto Sealdah we have learnt to give and give our
knowledge, love, respect, kindness and a helping hand to the needy persons but in
return we just want love, love and love’
(Year 8). The school’s philosophy of
nourishing students’ critical abilities and confidence to pursue justice for girls
and women around them appears here to be subordinated to students’ definition
of femininity. In stressing their capacity for self-sacrifice and their loving
natures, they are once again maintaining the ideology of appropriate female
behaviour that the patrifocal ideology demands in order to maintain group
harmony and welfare (Mukhopadhyay and Seymour 1994: 3).
A single-sex school and responses to sexuality
Regardless of the school’s academic record, enabling activities, and high
reputation, many parents continue to send their daughters to this school to
ensure maintenance of female purity. This is confirmed by Sr. Cyril and senior
students. Across all year groups, the data suggest that students have internalised
an ideology which considers boys and girls to have distinct natures which
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
necessitate separation in education, with single-sex schools providing the safest
option for girls. Comments such as ‘Nowadays not all boys are good so it is
important to a girl to study in an all-girls’ school’
exemplify perceptions of boys’
innate ill intentions, which must result in the restriction of girls’ movements.
Such an emphasis places all the responsibility for action on girls, with male
accountability a non-issue.
Further to these discourses, some students commented that the single-sex school
actually helps them to learn their distinct roles: School is a period when children
grow up. Boys and girls are to grow up according to the manners suitable to them,
which is different from one another
’ (Year 12). Asked what ‘manners’ are suitable
for girls, the students varied in their replies, according to their age. Ninety per
cent of Year 7 students questioned thought that girls should be modest and
obedient, while only 23 per cent in Year 12 agreed, which suggests that senior
students had become more critical and questioning through Loreto’s
programmes. For some students, perceptions of the ‘appropriate’ behaviour of
girls govern the range of topics that they can discuss. Some talked openly about
their future husband and the numbers of children they wanted, while other
deemed this ‘unladylike’. However, some Year 12 students acknowledge this
treasured space, saying ‘girls have their own problems and their own views of life so
it is better and easier to share these when in an all girls’ school’,
and they ‘can discuss
feminist matters freely’
. It is this opportunity for girls to discuss realities away
from the presence of men that has been prized by many feminists (for example,
Deem 1984; Mahony 1985; Scott and Spender 1980).
Reflecting on Loreto Sealdah’s programmes, one 15-year-old student spoke of
her increased awareness of women’s subordinate positions in India: ‘girls have
always been treated badly, especially in the villages... Girls are also being hit, kicked,
burnt and killed by their husbands and in-laws and some women are ill-treated by
other men. The children from poorer families are given in marriage under-age and
they suffer all their lives.’

However, the ability to negotiate a strong position after school was questioned by
some students, who stressed that the regulation of their sexuality and social
interactions through single-sex schooling may impede their success in future life,
because ‘it sometimes leads to fear and hesitation for some of the girls to commu-
nicate with the masculine world in their coming days’
(Year 11). This is made all the
more significant as senior students consistently identified life after school as
being within a masculine realm, within which they had yet to negotiate a space.
Students spoke of being ‘faced with a whole new world’ (year 10) and, repeatedly,
about ‘obstacles’ ahead of them in the outside world.
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Enabling education for girls: the Loreto Day School Sealdah, India
Life after Loreto – finding a place in ‘a whole new world’
LDS also appears to function as a sanctuary where ‘We can be ourselves (in our
school) without any second thought for our actions’
(Year 11). This is in contrast to
life beyond school, the masculine world, where girls feel that their behaviour is
under constant scrutiny. Students, particularly the older ones, mention their
teachers in the same sentence as friends and identify them as their allies. One
aspect of this openness towards teachers is the ability to approach teachers and
ask for help or advice on school matters or personal life. A Year 8 student declares:
‘All girls should be given equal rights as boys. Nowadays in an all-girls school, they
are treating girls equally. People must not think that girls are the weaker sex. Today
a girl can do all the things that a boy can. I feel each and every girl should be allowed
to go to school!
’ It is suggested that the single-sex school is the structure through
which this may be achieved.
As with choice of subjects, when students were encouraged to look beyond
school and focus on future careers, there was little evidence of moving beyond
culturally sanctioned female occupations, such as nursing and teaching. This is
not surprising, considering how strongly they perceive life after school as being
full of obstacles which advantage men. But some fee-paying students identified a
diversity of desirable careers, including those in science (6 per cent), law (4 per
cent), medicine (9 per cent), the military (2 per cent), and business management
(6 per cent), but they still showed little evidence of interest in risk-taking through
(for example) entrepreneurship, despite the school’s valuing of initiative. Non-
paying students were significantly less imaginative: legal careers were not
mentioned, and only 2 per cent wanted to be nurses, while 7 per cent mentioned
business management, usually of small family businesses.
As students become increasingly aware of the limited opportunities open to girls
in a male-dominated labour market, they see teaching as a reliable career: 12 per
cent of the students named it as their chosen career (8 per cent of fee-paying
students, 17 per cent of non-paying students). Such a choice does little to
threaten the prevalent ideology, but it provides the necessary social and cultural
capital to maintain status and provide economic stability, while allowing them
time to tend to their families. It may also demonstrate the function of teachers as
role models, some themselves first-generation learners, offering practical
examples of education leading to social mobility. This would clearly be
important to the non-paying students, for whom teaching would provide the
financial security denied to their parents. It is also a career of which all students
have some experience through their involvement in the school’s programmes, as
mentioned previously, and one which allows them to give something back to
their community – a very strong aspect of the school’s philosophy.
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Focusing on future careers appeared problematic for the 34 per cent of students
who chose not to answer this question. It may be that many girls see their future
roles within the home or that, for the wealthier students, education is about
building or maintaining status through qualifications, not careers. The fact that
only small numbers of students appear to be heading into ‘male’ environments
points to the continuing dangers that women can incur through damage to their
social reputations in a male-dominated society. Modest aspirations may also
indicate increasing awareness of the constraints imposed on girls, and the limited
time that they have in school to establish confidence in themselves. Students
therefore cherished their time at school, and 90 per cent agreed that ‘Education
helps to improve a woman’s position in society’. The strength of this conviction
may be reflected in the decision of 22 per cent of students surveyed to pursue
some form of higher education.
Conclusion
The form of schooling exemplified by Loreto Day School Sealdah presents
numerous advantages as a means for increasing the participation and retention of
girls in education in India. Its single-sex nature, combined with the levelling
strategies employed since 1979, ensure that students from a diverse range of
backgrounds participate fully in quality education. Once they are engaged in
education, Loreto Sealdah provides girls with the support and encouragement
that they need in order to remain in school and gain qualifications. Students are
encouraged to reach their full potential through the academic curriculum, at
which they are expected to succeed, and through the innovative co-curricular and
enabling activities, which provide girls with a range of opportunities to exercise
leadership and initiative, question the social position of women in India, and
develop practical strategies to effect change and achieve their goals. This study has
revealed that the students at LDS directly linked their reflection to the challenges
posed by social equations with the single-sex environment of their school.
However, although they are vociferous critics of the inferior position of many
women in India, their desire for independence and female autonomy appears to
be tempered by an internalisation of the ideals of female behaviour and roles that
are embedded in a wider patrifocal ideology. The study also indicates that girls
respond in different ways to the challenges ahead, according to what they believe
to be the possibilities for change in their future lives.
The case of Loreto Sealdah illustrates how students’ responses to their education
and their ability to maximise its benefits are conditioned by gendered identities
formed inside and outside school. It illustrates the complexity and the
interrelatedness of internal and external expectations and social pressures on girls.
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Enabling education for girls: the Loreto Day School Sealdah, India
The LDS education is designed to provide its female students with the
opportunities and abilities to challenge gendered identities that limit and constrain
the ways in which girls can respond to their education – an education that Sr. Cyril
describes as a true education: liberating girls from the fear which prevents them
from achieving their full potential spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally (Sr.
Cyril in Green 1996). Loreto Sealdah provides, therefore, an example of a valuable
approach to education, which offers girls from all backgrounds in urban India the
opportunity to achieve greater equality as women.
Ruth Doggett is a qualified teacher who has taught in Ireland, the UK, and New
Zealand. She gained her first degree in Mater Dei Institute of Education, Dublin,
and a master’s degree in Gender, Education, and Development at the Institute of
Education at the University of London. She is currently co-ordinating a programme
addressing educational disadvantage and early school leaving in Dublin.

References
Arnot, M. (1983) ‘A cloud over co-education: an analysis of the forms of transmission of class and
gender relations’, in S. Walker and L. Barton (eds.) Gender, Class and Education, New York:
Falmer Press
Brock, C. and N. K. Cammish (1997) Factors Affecting Female Education in Seven Developing
Countries, London: Department for International Development
Colmcille, M. (1968) First The Blade: History of the IBVM (Loreto) in India 1841–1962, Calcutta:
Mukhopadhyay
Cyril, Sr. (ed.) (1989) We Are the World – Experience Based Value Education for Schools, Kolkata:
Orient Longman
Cyril, Sr. (1991) ‘Nurturing to Freedom: Loreto Education in India’, paper presented at the Loreto
Education Meeting at Dhyan Ashram
Cyril, Sr. (1995) ‘A School for Justice’, Newsletter, Calcutta: Loreto Day School Sealdah
Cyril, Sr. (1997) ‘Ripples and Rainbows in a Regular School’, Calcutta: Loreto Day School Sealdah
Deem, R. (1984) Co-education Reconsidered, Milton Keynes: Open University
Doggett, R. (2003) ‘The Single Sex School as an Agent of Social Change – The Case of Loreto Day
School Sealdah’, unpublished MA dissertation, Institute of Education, University of London
Drudy, S. and M. Uí Chatháin (1999) Gender Equality in Classroom Interaction, Kildare: NUI
Maynooth
Greene, E. (1996) ‘From Dirt Streets to Rainbows: An Analysis of Loreto Sealdah’s Dynamic
approach to Education’, unpublished paper, Pontifical University of Maynooth, Dublin
Halstead, M. (1991) ‘Radical feminism, Islam and the single sex school debate’, Gender and
Education, 3/3: 263–77
Institute of The Blessed Virgin Mary website: www.IBVM.org
243

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Jessop, T. (1998) ‘A Model Of Best Practice At Loreto Day School Sealdah, Calcutta, India’, London:
DFID Education Sector Group
Karlekar, M. (1994) ‘Woman’s nature and access to education in Bengal’ in Mukhopadhyay and
Seymour (eds.) (1994)
Mahony, P. (1985) Schools for the Boys – Co-education Reassessed, London: Hutchinson
Majumdar, G. (1999) ‘At this school, compassion is compulsory’, available online at
www.humanscapeindia.net/humanscape/hs1099/hs10995t.htm
Malhotra, A. (1982) ‘Problems of girls’ education – future course of action’, in Educational
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Ministry of Human Resource Development Government of India (MHRD) (1997) ‘Goals of EFA’,
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Mukhopadhyay, C. and S. Seymour (eds.) (1994) Women, Education and Family Structure in India,
Oxford: Westview Press
Ray, A. (2000) ‘Sister Cyril’s army of barefoot teachers’, Changemakers Journal, August 2000,
www.changemakers.net/journal/00august/ray.cfm
Ray, A. (2003) ‘Rainbow children: dissolving differences’, Changemakers Journal, October 2003,
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Ribbens, J. and R. Edwards (1998) Feminist Dilemmas in Qualitative Research: Public Knowledge and
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‘Ripples and Rainbows’, Quarterly Newsletter of Loreto Day School Sealdah (1996–2001) Sealdah,
Calcutta
Spender, D. (1980) Learning to Lose: Sexism and Education, London: Women’s Press
Stromquist, N. P. (1998) Women in the Third World – An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Issues,
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Single Sex Schools, Jamadi-al-Awwal: UMO
244

13 Conclusion: policy and practice change
for gender equality

Sheila Aikman and Elaine Unterhalter
What have the contributors to this book offered in terms of improving
understanding, practice, and policy making to ensure that education for girls and
women is gender-equitable, that it transforms the structures that shape their lives,
and contributes to their empowerment? How can we use the learning generated
here to influence not only the development of good policies – for it should be
acknowledged that many good policies exist already, at least on paper – but to
influence the implementation of good policies which translate into high-quality
educational experiences for girls and women and men and boys?
The chapters in this book illustrate a vision of a transformational education that
is currently being put in practice in a number of places. This is an education that
promotes social change and contributes to building a just and democratic society.
It is a view of education as a human right, a right which we are ethically obliged to
provide for each other. The right to education is itself nested in other human
rights. These include the right to live in health, without the indignities of poverty;
and the right to an education which is free from violence and free from
discrimination – not only gender-based discrimination and injustice but ethnic,
economic, cultural, and social forms of discrimination. Where peoples such as
indigenous Quechua groups of Peru (Chapter 7) or Somali pastoralists of Kenya
(Chapter 6) experience negative discrimination in their education, women and
girls find themselves doubly or triply marginalised, with less access to education,
a poorer quality of education, and education of shorter duration than that on
offer to boys and men. These chapters help to expand the concept of rights and
capabilities presented in Chapter 1. Rights to education are not fulfilled simply
because a set of laws at national or international level confers them. Women’s and
girls’ rights to education are won through active processes of discussion and
negotiation, to which research makes a contribution. Rights, seen in this way, are
thus much like capabilities, and securing rights in education is bound up with
ensuring the freedoms against violence and discrimination that will enable rights
to be fulfilled.
We are calling for a transformation of policy and practice so as to achieve this
empowering education for all, irrespective of their sex. But what will it take to
achieve it?
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
In broad terms, there are three ways in which the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) can promote gender equality over the next ten years. In the first
scenario – a ‘business as usual’ approach – we continue with the current patchy
implementation of policies and programmes for gender equality, concentrating
primarily on improving access, and leaving the responsibility for fulfilling
human rights, promoting social change, and building a just society to short-term
projects located (for example) in small units within education ministries, or to a
handful of NGOs and groups of concerned teachers and education officials.
Larger numbers of children will come into school, but only some will learn in
ways that help them to thrive, and a considerable number will be subject to threat
and violence in school. Some innovative and transforming programmes will be
implemented, but funding and support for them may remain unreliable and
limited, provided through committed teachers, NGOs, and community-based
organisations with little institutional support or follow-up. This scenario is a
revitalisation of a ‘Women in Development’ (WID) approach, with small
projects engaged in ‘Gender and Development’ (GAD) work, or the development
of thinking about gender, education, and human rights.
In the second scenario we will have achieved Education For All, as proposed in the
Dakar Framework for Action (itself a considerably enlarged vision compared with
that sketched in MDG 2), and all children will be in school. But the links between
improved education quality and gender equality will be made only in part,
because attention will be focused on the formal education system, to the exclusion
of wider societal considerations. Schools may receive resources to implement
education reforms, and school–community relations may be improved through
the work of school councils and by enhanced training for teachers in gender
equality, as well as increased numbers of female teachers. But the vital linkages
across and between sectors will remain fragile. This second scenario would see the
expansion of GAD concerns within the formal education sector, and some
concerted efforts by governments to treat gender equality as a human right.
However, the links between gender equality in education and wider gender-
equality agendas would be limited.
In the third scenario the full vision for gender equality, as presented in the Beijing
Platform for Action, will be realised, together with the resolutions made at other
key international forums such as the International Conference on Population
and Development at Cairo in 1994, and the World Summit for Social
Development in 1995. This means that gender-equitable education will be based
on broader societal change for gender equality, with implications for the
sustainability of practice, and girls and women will be empowered to demand
that their rights be respected and their positions in society strengthened. They
will benefit from an education which provides them with the capabilities to
achieve the freedoms and the kind of life that they have reason to value. This third
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Conclusion: policy and practice change for gender equality
scenario would bring together the insights of all four frameworks discussed in
Chapter 1: WID, GAD, post-structuralism, and ‘capabilities and rights’.
Achieving no more than Scenario 1 in the next ten years would be extremely
unsatisfactory. It would mean that MGD 2 and MGD 3 were not achieved, and
the expanded policy visions articulated in the 1990s would have been
abandoned. Achieving Scenario 2 would be a good outcome, because it could
provide the conditions that would generate Scenario 3. If Scenario 2 were
achieved by 2010, therefore, we could push for a substantive change in social
development in order to reach Scenario 3 by 2015.
What have we learned about transforming policy and
practice?

Because we believe that good learning and good research can guide good policy
making, this book documents good innovative practice. However, it also
documents problems, weaknesses, and shortcomings in practice and policy
making. The book indicates that there are no quick fixes to the deep-rooted and
often widely accepted forms of gender discrimination that affect education and
schooling, but it does highlight key areas for change.
The participation of women and girls in decision making about their own
education is a fundamental aspect of developing an education which transforms
women’s lives in the way that they desire. Such participation would put into
practice the concept of rights and capabilities that we believe will guide
transformative policy. The school-based work on HIV/AIDS (Chapter 10)
illustrates how young people – both girls and boys – need opportunities and
space to explore, reflect, debate, and ask questions about their sexuality and
HIV/AIDS; it emphasises that the space needs to be safe, so that young people can
challenge gendered power relations and develop their own understandings,
which will enable them to change their behaviour.
Transformational education needs transformed teachers. It is important therefore
that the training of teachers and adult educators not only raises their status and
self-esteem but is empowering for them and, through their teaching, for their
students. In addition, the structures that shape teachers’ lives, salary scales, career
ladders, and conditions of work need to address concerns about gender
inequality if the GAD vision is to be realised. Failure to attend to the consequence
of gender inequalities in the employment and training of teachers created the
conditions for the reproduction of gender inequality. Where a teacher transmits
gender inequalities that are ‘hidden’ in the curriculum (for example in Mali, see
Chapter 9) or discriminates against female students because of the teacher’s own
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Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
prejudices and lack of awareness (for example in Peru, see Chapter 7), change is
urgently needed – change of a type illustrated in the enabling aims of Loreto
Sealdah School (Chapter 12), where teachers and students engage in structured
reflection. Raising women’s status through their participation in the Total
Literacy Campaign (see Chapter 8) is a step towards empowerment which needs
to be supported by government and by society. However, these small-scale
changes at the project level need to be sustained and enhanced by attention in
policy and practice to address the deep-seated structures of gender inequality
that will always constrain anything that the most transformative teacher can do,
unless they are supported by access to equal pay, good working conditions, and
secured rights to participate in political, economic, and social decision making.
But we are not suggesting that policies and practices which work in one context
can be replicated in others wholesale. On the contrary, what works in one context
may fail dismally in another. We are suggesting, however, that there is a need to
look beyond the confines of the school or the literacy class and understand the
bigger social, cultural, economic, and geographical environment in which it is
embedded. The diversity of context, of learners, of teachers, as well as the diversity
of frameworks for education and development within which we work (see
Chapter 1), mean that we must develop flexible policies and flexible practices that
take account of the different scenarios described above. The examples from Kenya
(Chapters 5 and 6) remind us not only of the need for flexibility within national
policies,
but also of the need for a range of different strategies for change, each
tackling different and interrelated aspects of education and gender equality.
The processes of learning and influencing that enrich policy and practice can only
flourish if there are good partnerships between practitioners, policy makers, and
researchers. The foregoing chapters recognise the importance of civil society
working in small-scale and innovative projects and programmes, linking with
government and intergovernment organisations charged with policy making.
They also recognise the extent to which NGOs themselves influence policy, and the
way in which governments responsible for national policy can also learn from their
own practice. We are not necessarily dealing with discrete categories – practitioner
or policy maker – but we should recognise that there is often a large degree of
overlap and also of movement between the two: policy makers sitting in
government ministries may have been teachers, or they may have worked with an
NGO or UN agency – and vice versa. A change of government, such as that which
took place in South Africa in 1994, or the successive regime changes in Peru during
the 1990s, means that an influential lobbyist from the NGO sector can overnight
become an influential policy maker in the ministry of education or finance.
NGOs and civil-society actors have an important part to play in influencing the
policy and practice of government. And good documentation of innovative,
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Conclusion: policy and practice change for gender equality
good-quality, and small (or not so small) education programmes is key to
successful advocacy and lobby for change. MDG 8 calls for developing a global
partnership for development and recognises the importance of civil-society
participation in change for the achievement of the MDGs themselves. Civil
society, and especially the work of national education coalitions of civil-society
organisations (see, for example, Chapters 2 and 5), have a very important role to
play in partnering government for successful education. The work of women’s
organisations in promoting transformative agendas is crucial, and here we find
that there is more work to be done across sectors (see, for example, Chapter 8) and
at all levels of the education system, to foster respect and facilitate negotiation of
aims and objectives. There are organisations and groups of concerned and
involved women, teachers, communities, and parents which need more space and
greater voice in policy-development processes. As Elimu Yetu in Kenya illustrates
(see Chapter 5), NGOs and national coalitions are lobbying to gain this space.
Strong political will and leadership in a range of social sectors and settings is
important, and there is evidence that political commitment is beginning to achieve
change. While that change may not be as extensive or transformative as we desire
(see Ahmed and Chowdhury 2005), it provides us with evidence of what is possible
and with examples of how to proceed where high levels of political commitment
are accompanied by civil-society action and dynamism. In countries where there
has been significant political commitment to change at all levels, we see how
dramatic actions, such as the abolition of school fees, can result in huge numbers of
girls attending school, and the first steps being taken towards gender equality in
education. There may be a process of moving from WID to GAD to rights and
capabilities, but it is important that the momentum of that process is maintained,
and equally important that policy should extend beyond a narrow focus on access.
As this book has shown, the evidence of political will and social mobilisation
does exist. We do know a lot about what good-quality, gender-equitable
education looks like, and what needs to change in order to achieve it. The
Millennium Development Goals provide an opportunity to galvanise new
resources, new partnerships, and collective energies and commitment to
overcome the difficulties and to achieve really significant results.
Reference
Ahmed, M. and R. Chowdhury (2005) ‘Beyond Access: Partnership for Quality with Equity’, Institute
of Education and Development, BRAC University; Campaign for Popular Education, CAMPE),
www.ungei.org
249

Index
Page numbers in italics denote information
need for equity and girls’ right to
in tables
education 188
not concerned with transformation
Abracancha, Peru 150, 156, 157, 159
191
ActionAid Kenya (AAK) 116, 117–18, 121,
promotion of girl-friendly
122
environment 187–8
adolescents 208–9
serve as positive role models for local
adult basic education and literacy 5–6
girls 186
advocacy and local sensitisation, Kenya
success in increasing number of girls
121–3
in school 187
affirmative-action programmes 23
success in increasing access and
Africa
retention of children 181
Central and Southern, in-school
work with Parents’ Associations 186
feeding programmes 47
ANPPCAN 123
East, Central, and South, Sara initiative
ASC see Association des Servantes de Christ
47
(ASC)
faith and gender in 214–15
Asia
French-speaking, gender inequalities
effect of communist governments on
53
the GEEI 72–3
reluctance to educate girls 131
effort needed to reach GEEI 95 by 2015
withdrawal of girls from school 39
74, 75
Africa, Commonwealth
GEEI (1993–2001) 70
changes 1990s–2003 69
most countries show gains 70
GEEI 69, 73, 74
Association des Servantes de Christ (ASC)
Africa, Southern
216–24
female enrolments 53, 203
response to HIV in schools 200
Bangladesh 46, 52, 73, 83–105
Aga Khan Foundation 120
Campaign for Popular Education
aid, needs to be increased and intelligently
(CAMPE) 63B
targeted 57
dowry violence 84–5
Alternative Basic Education, Karamoja
family ordinance laws 85
143
Female Stipend Programme (FSP)
animatrices 185–6, 188, 193, 194
85–90, 96–7
challenges 187
Food for Education programme 47
changes in attitudes to girls’ education
growth in secondary-school
187
enrolment 87, 88
impact on early marriages 187
Meena Initiative 51
lobbyists within local communities
Prohibition of Dowry Act, of little
188–9
value 84
250

Index
Qudrat-e-Khuda Education
important role in education 249
Commission Report 85
co-curricular programmes, LDS 231,
Bangladesh Rural Advancement
232–4, 238–9
Committee (BRAC) 45
Barefoot Activity-Based Teacher
Begusarai District, India 167–72, 178n
Training Programme 234
Beijing Declaration 27
concept of a night shelter 233
Beijing Platform for Action 3
element of service 239
gender-equitable education and
Hidden Child Labour Project 234, 236
gender equality 246–7
rainbow programme 233
Beira, Mozambique 200–2, 205, 208–9
rural programme 232–3
Bible reading 217–18, 220
varied responses from students 238–9
bilingual projects, rural Andes 161
Commonwealth Education Fund (CEF) 125
Boal, Augusto 204–5
Commonwealth Education Ministers’
the great game of power’ 207–8
Conference (2003) 28
Botswana 49
communities, raising awareness of
boys
importance of educating girls 51
attitudes to Female Stipend
community schools 45, 49
Programme 92, 93
condoms, gendered reasons for not using
attitudes to sexual partners 201
201–2
views on girls’ education 100–1
Convention on the Elimination of All
Brahmo Samaj 228–9
Forms of Discrimination against
bridging (accelerated) programmes
Women 84
50, 54
Convention on the Rights of the Child 27
Burkina Faso, gender, education and
curriculum reform, Mali 189–92
Pentecostalism 212–26
‘familial economy’ module 189–90
space for women’s education 224
opted for competency-based and skill-
unlikely to reach education goals in
based curriculum 189
Dakar Framework 215
reform processes, bilingual education
bursaries
and curriculum reform 189
for girls from poor families 160–1
survey based on male–female roles and
Kenya 117, 123
relationships 190–1
see also stipends
women’s and girls’ representation in
the curriculum 191–2
Calvary Evangelistic group 117
women’s and girls’ roles 190–1
Cambodia, community-based pre-schools
51
Dakar Framework 215
Campaign for Popular Education
democratic government, in countries with
(CAMPE) 63B
high GEEIs 72
capabilities, measurement of 65–6
democratisation, indigenous struggles for
capability approach (Sen and Nussbaum)
43–4
16, 28–9, 247
developing countries
Caribbean, girls in school affect boys’
few female primary-school teachers
underachievement 19
41–2
centres of excellence 119–20
gender and learning, variation
Christian Children Fund (CCF) 117
between countries 62
Christianity, its role in Africa 214
limited progress in expanding female
civic-society organisations
employment 38
BGVS as a civil-society partner 167,
nearly all require parents to pay some
168–77, 178n
charges 39
251

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
Development Alternative for Women in
problems with measures of gender
the New Era (DAWN) 167
equality and inequality 65
donors, bilateral and multilateral, to set
reasons for dropping out 39
clear targets 52
recommended initiatives to improve
dowries 84–5, 100
girls’ access 53
class-related issues in 94
right to nested in other rights 245
do not always work against girls’
in the rural Andes 156–60
education 39
seen as a tool for rebuilding livelihoods
education reduces dowry demand 94,
136
95
transformational 245
impact of education on 90
transformational needs transformed
drama and role-play 204–5
teachers 247–8
Dramaide 200
unprecedented demand for secondary-
school places 46
Early Childhood Development and Care
as a way to diversify the pastoral
Centres 40, 51
economy 135
early marriage
Education and Development Index (EDI)
low value attached to girls’ education
64
38–9
problems with 64–5
and schooling, Kenya 108, 109
Education For All (EFA) 229
EDI see Education and Development
changed perception of education for
Index (EDI)
girls, Peru 162
education 23, 24
and expansion of GAD 246
basic, value of increased spending 57
mainstreaming gender within
benefits of educating girls 18
44, 45B
and cultural values 96–8
official reports from Kenya 142
efforts to expand access for all children
pressure to achieve 2
36
programmes focus on easing
eliminating gender inequality in 43–4
constraints on access 44
encourage a range of provision 55–6
strategies of the Kenyan government
end the ‘queue’ for 54
113
enhancing children’s capacity/self-
success of BRAC schools 45
confidence 42
education and gender equality
formal, improving girls’ access to 2
challenges for 7–8
gender equity in 183–4
current measures of 60–2
for girls in Bangladesh 45, 83–105
four approaches to 15–17
huge popular demand for 2, 46
Education Management Information
Kenya, tradition of cost-sharing
Systems (EMIS) 61
140–1
education, quality of 156
as a key capability 28
crucial for achieving gender equality in
leading to social mobility 241
schooling 4
low rates of participation 141–2
efforts to improve in Peru 161
making gender equality a reality 52–8
impact of expanded access to
measuring gender equality, recent
schooling 98–9
developments 62–5
in Mali, flexible and innovative
parity, equality, equity and quality 2–4
approach 183–4
and Pentecostalism, Burkina Faso
educational materials, Mali 191–2, 194n
215–24
images portray current gender realities
a practical or strategic gender need 21
191
252

Index
educational materials, rural Andes,
based within a WID framework 87
remained little used 157
eligibility for 86
Elimu Yetu Coalition 249
logo on promotional material 96–7
approach to campaigning and
much non-enrolment attributable to
advocacy 124
poverty 100
campaigning to influence policies and
multiple meanings of girls’ education
plans 123–5
91–100
formation 123
offers an allowance to send girls to
empowerment 208
school 86
of girls and women 246–7
praised internationally 86
measurement of, Kabeer’s discussion
pressure for means-testing 86, 100
22
sees girls’ education enhancing
not an overt part of FSP programme
traditional cultural values 96
101
some public outbreaks of male
through experiences provided by
resistance 89
Loreto Sealdah 232
success in increasing enrolment 87
and understandings of equality 21–2
widespread support for 100
empowerment of women
female teachers
economic, support for 43
lack of, affects girls’ education 41, 111
in India 166, 173–4
needed to encourage girls’ enrolment
in a patriarchal system 167–8
99–100
women’s literacy proxy indicator for
feminism 21, 23
167
femocrats, obtain resources for gender
equality
equality in education 25
based on an understanding of human
FGM see female genital mutilation (FGM)
capabilities 28
forced marriage 119, 120, 121
GAD theorists’ understanding of 22–3
Forum for African Women
Escuela Nueva, Colombia 143, 145n
Educationalists (FAWE)
Ethiopia, challenging sexual harassment
challenges gender sensitivity of Mali’s
48
new curriculum 189–90
EYC see Elimu Yetu Coalition
establishment of centres of excellence
119–20
Fair Chance report 53–4, 53
wishes to influence education-policy
Family Planning Club (Ethiopia) 48
formulation 123
Fast Track Initiative (FTI) 57–8
Forum for African Women
feeding programmes
Educationalists (FAWE), Kenya
free school meals for girls 54
holistic approach to enhancing girls’
in-school, Kenya 116
education 119–20
in-school, Mali 182, 188
provides seed money to school
Malawi 46–7
managers 115–16
school breakfasts 161
Forum Theatre (community theatre) 204
female genital mutilation (FGM) 121–2
FSP see Female Stipend Programme
among the Maasai 107, 108
(FSP), Bangladesh
Female Stipend Programme case study
90–1
GAD approach 20–6, 30, 246
perceptions of FSP and girls’ education
expansion of 246
92–5
focused on sexual division of labour 21
Female Stipend Programme (FSP),
grew mainly out of women’s
Bangladesh 83, 85–90
organisations 21
253

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
measurement of empowerment,
criticisms of 68
Kabeer’s discussion 22
low position of Bangladesh 84
research, mainly small-scale projects
gender equality 2, 3–4, 55, 125
23–4
developing a concern for 208
significance of gendered power
differing approaches to 3
structures of inequality 20
equality means a functioning and
GAD (gender and development)
positive school environment 47–8
framework 15, 16, 17
expressed most fully by the Beijing
Gao region, Mali
Platform for Action 3
current Oxfam programme 182
as a human right 246
education still reinforcing gender
policy and practice change for 245–9
inequalities 193
raising importance of 5
Fatimata’s story 184–5
some aspects 3–4
home of pastoralists 181–2
a theme in HIV education 206
political marginalisation 182
a topical issue in Mozambique 208–9
population conservative and mainly
towards an alternative measure 65–6
non-literate 184
gender equality in education 249
severe food shortages 182
challenges for 7–8
GEEI see Gender Equality in Education
current measures of 60–2
Index (GEEI)
four approaches to 15–17
GEI see gender-related EFA index (GEI)
making it a reality 52–8
gender
no substitute for detailed research 66
dismissed by politicians as a foreign
problems with developing a
concept 44
quantitative measure of 66
in the EDI 64–5
recent developments in measurement
and faith in Africa 214–15
of 62–5
in HIV education 201–4
and in society as a whole 4
and power 207–8
Gender Equality in Education Index
gender advocates
(GEEI) 67–71
co-opted from NGOs to government
calculation 76, 77
positions 44
Commonwealth Africa 69
involving and nurturing of 51–2
in Mali 190–1
gender bias 138, 141, 145
measures used for girls’ access to and
in textbooks and school lessons 162
retention in school 67
gender blindness, in Malian educational
a weighted index 67
materials 191–2
what does it tell us 71–5
gender budgeting 25, 26
gender equity 3–4, 43, 200, 203
Gender Development Index (GDI) 65, 67,
in education 4, 183–4
68
gender gap 2–3, 42–52
gender and development strategies,
in access, targets for elimination 52
effective 43
bridging (accelerated) programmes
gender division of household labour,
50
Kenya 108–10
community schools 45, 49
gender and education
in enrolments and achievements 42
concerns in developing countries 24
ensuring girls’ safety and dignity at
in high-income countries 24–5
school 47–9
and human rights 246
free primary education for all 45–6
Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM)
greatest where enrolments are low 54
average of three indices 68
involving communities 51
254

Index
involving and nurturing gender
Kenya 140, 142
advocates 51–2
limited scope of 64B
mainstreaming gender within EFA
misplaced emphasis on in the MDGs 5
strategies 44, 45
a narrow aspiration 3
para-teachers 50
Peru, in primary education 149
parental incentives to educate girls
gender relations 205, 219
46–7
and HIV education 202, 207–8
priority measures for integrated
gender roles, impact of the ASC on 222–4
strategies 55–6
gender targets 52
promoting early childhood education
gender training 26
and care 51
gender-disaggregated data
shown by GER and NER 61–2
on primary gross enrolment ratios
still wide in Mali 181
(GER) 60, 61–2
taking women and education seriously
on progression through school 62
43–4
gender-enrolment parity 53
what has been done to close the gap
gender-equity approach, encouraged girls
42–52
to assert sexual rights 202
gender identities 242, 243
gender-related EFA index (GEI)
gender inequality, Mali 190, 192
concerned with parity 64
gender inequality(ies) 1
developed by UNESCO 62
in basic education, constraints 36,
gender-sensitisation clubs 115–16, 118–19
37–42
gender-sensitive curricula 42
conditions for reproduction of 247–8
GER see Gross Enrolment Rate (GER)
in education, elimination of 43–4
Girl Child Network (GCN) 115
and GAD 23
mentors act as role models 118
main success factors for elimination 36
now sponsors girls in secondary school
in pastoral districts of Kenya 138–40
117
in primary-school participation,
girls 51
Kenya 131
affirmative action in education
progress in elimination 42–3
provision 125
risk of creating in secondary school
African, schooling seen as irrelevant or
places 46
risky 139
in school 203
encouraged to take control of own
severe in universities/higher-
sexuality 219
education institutions 56–7
ensuring safety and dignity at school
WID approach to challenge of 19
47–9
gender mainstreaming 25–6
Fatimata’s story 185
across organisations 122
individual and social bias against,
within EFA strategies 44, 45
pastoralist Kenya 138
gender needs, practical and strategic 21
initially reluctant to respond in class
gender parity 2–3, 55, 62, 66, 86, 125
206
abolition of fees, girls may suffer
likely to be affected by impact of
(Kenya) 141
HIV/AIDS 57
among rural teachers 55
in mixed-sex groups, often the most
Burkina Faso’s chances of achieving
articulate 207
215
parental incentives for education 46–7
development of locally appropriate
poor, reasons for dropping out of
strategies 44, 45
school 39–40
in enrolment 89
promoting positive images of 118–20
255

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
strongly agreed the FSP was beneficial
strong reservations about quality and
93
relevance 89
and their future roles 241–2
stylised uniform of dupatta 96
urbanisation, positive pressure in
was focused on ‘enlightened
access to school 134–5, 135
motherhood’ 85
Girls’ Clubs (Ethiopia), challenging sexual
girls’ education, Kenya
harassment 48B
effects of poverty 110
girls’ education
financing initiatives to support girls
and early marriage 38–9, 108, 109B
115–16
failure to motivate or encourage girls
findings of the Elimu Yetu Coalition 106
41–2
government strategies 112–14
failure to protect girls’ basic rights and
in-school factors 106, 111–12
dignity 41
insufficient learning materials 112
girls have too much to do at home
Kajiado District 107, 108, 109, 111, 119
39–40
low opinions of some teachers of girls’
government schools are few and far
performance 111
between 40
Nairobi, informal settlements 107,
health and productivity benefits 56
109–10
integrated strategies for 44–5
need to raise community awareness of
Kanchi’s story 38B
importance 125–6
Mali, still about gender parity 193
not as highly valued as boys’ education
political commitment to 36
108
priority measures for integrated
Ominde and Koech reports 112–13
strategies 44–5
out-of-school factors 106, 108–11
school too expensive 39
re-entry programmes 115, 115
son preference 37–8
regional disparities in primary
still many obstacles to progress 125
enrolment 106
top–down approach a leading cause of
Tharaka District 107, 112
failure 56
variations in drop-out rates 106
girls’ education, Bangladesh 83–105
Girls Education Movement (GEM),
education and cultural values 96–8
intervention by WERK 117
fathers’ education and assets may have
girls’ education, northern Mali
negative effects 88–9
aim of Oxfam GB and local NGOs
Female Stipend Programme 85–90
182–3
focus areas 83
low demand for 182
frequently mentioned advantages 89
two sets of barriers to 182, 183
impact on dowry 90
girls’ education, rural Andes
impact of expanded access to
affected by multiple factors 150
schooling 98–100
distance and availability barriers to
multiple meanings of 91–100
156
objective of channelling girls into
interventions targeted at rural girls 163
teaching 90
more fragile and fragmented than boys
perceptions of FSP and girls’ education
162
92–5
girls, Peruvian 155, 160
purpose of 95–6
Global Campaign for Education 36, 58, 124
reasons sited for not educating girls 90
Global Monitoring Reports (UNESCO)
small amount of cultural bias against
2003 24
97–8
2003/2004 statistics for Burkina Faso
still significant gap in exam results 99
215
256

Index
2004, focus on four proxy measures for
rural, domestic work expected of girls
quality 63
40
tried to link quality with equality in
inequalities, of gender, class and
schools 63–4
race/ethnic identity 25
view of gender 62–3
Global Week of Action for Education
Jomtien Declaration 27
April 2003 185
and pastoralist Kenya 132
April 2005 2, 124–5
Jordan, limitations of quantitative
Gross Enrolment Rate (GER) 60, 61–2, 181
measures of gender parity 64B
Herz, G. and B. Sperling, What Works in
Kajiado District 107, 108, 111
Girls’ Education 18
Centres of Excellence 119
hidden costs of children’s schooling 46
chiefs try to reduce poverty 116
HIV education
collaboration to fight for the rights of
gender and power 207–8
the child 121
helping adolescents make sense of
early marriage and schooling 109
their culture 208–9
Kenya 106–27, 248
issues and assumptions about
abolition of (primary) school fees 20,
femininity and masculinity 201
141
need for training 209–10
advocacy and local sensitisation 121–3
team work in 205
Arid/Semi-Arid Areas, problems with
use of drama 204–5
girls’ schooling 116
workshop approach 205–7
Basic Education Fund 115, 119, 121
HIV/AIDS 57, 126
benefits of low-cost ECDC
and gender, comprehensive approach
programmes 51
needed 6
bursaries and sponsorship 117, 123
learning about in schools 199–211
campaigns against retrogressive
makes burden of work for girls acute
cultural practices 121–2
40
centres of excellence 119–20
needs to be mainstreamed into school
Children’s Act (2001) 113, 125
subjects 199
commitment to redressing problems
orphans in Kenya 110
in girls’ education 113
and post-structuralist thinking 27
cost-sharing in education 140–1
school-based work on 247
education needs to adapt 145
as a topic, still contested ground 202–3
expansion of primary education 128
human development and human rights in
factors influencing girls’ prospects
development 16, 17
108–12
Human Development Index 65
financing of small businesses 116
position of Bangladesh 84
flexible models of schooling 117–18
human-capital theory 28
Free Primary Education Programme
(FPE) 112, 113, 125, 141
India
Gender Education Policy 114, 125
crossing cultural boundaries 172–7
gender-sensitisation clubs 115–16,
gender segregation persists in the
118–19
classroom 41
Girls’ Clubs 117
Loreto Day School for Girls Sealdah
harambee (self-help) schools 140
227–44
head teachers, promoting girls’
purdah pratha, a physical restriction on
education 118
women’s liberty 172
in-school feeding programmes 116
257

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
interventions in girls’ education
Las Chulpas, Peru
112–23
comments of the head teacher 158
little change in education policy 145
corporal punishment 158–9
Mobile School Project, north Eastern
head teacher trying out new
Province 118
methodological strategies 162
national data, hide significant
life in 153
disparities 131
primary schooling 150
NGO initiatives 114–20
restrictions of family assets on girls
on-going review of the Education Act
155
114
the school day 157
out-of-school centres in Samburu
textbooks not used regularly 157
117–18
Las Lomas, Peru 162
pastoralist districts, gender-based
primary schooling 150–1
disparities 143
Latin America
public policy and attitudes and norms
effort needed to reach 95 GEEI by 2015
of behaviour 139–40
75, 75
teaching methodologies 130
GEEI for (1993–2004) 71
Western Kenya Girl Child Network 115
Nicaragua and Guatemala, low GEEIs
Kenya, learning to improve education
71
policy for pastoralists 128–48
sharp division in GEEI increases 72
abolition of fees, differential impact on
LDS see Loreto Day School Sealdah, India
girls and boys 141
Letting Girls Learn (World Bank
boarding-school provision vs. day
Discussion Paper: Herz) 87–8
schools 132–3
literacy
enrolment, low rate for NE Province
lack of 1
133
link to gaining empowerment 168
factors influencing participation
maintained and reinforced through
134–40
Bible reading 217–18
gender inequalities in primary-school
Loreto Day School Sealdah, India 227–44
participation 131
academic curriculum 234, 237–8
geographical inequalities in school
awards 229–30
participation 130, 131
brief history 228–31
girls perform domestic labour 139
career choice of some fee-paying
need for pastoralist-aware gender
students 241
strategy 143
co-curricular programmes 231, 232–4,
non-formal education, ensuring
238–9
quality of 143–4
‘Compassion is Compulsory’ 231
pastoralism and education 144
distinguished reputation 229–30
policies for effective change 142–3
‘enabling activities’ 235–7, 248
policies inappropriate for pastoral
ethos 231–2
districts 128
fee status of Years 7–12 230–1, 230
poverty and financing education
good public examination results 232
140–2
integration of some ‘rainbow’ students
provision 128, 132–3
233
retention 133–4, 134
involvement in Shikshalaya Prakalpa
vulnerable groups, basic education
movement 234
rarely available 133
life after Loreto 241–2
Kibera Slum Education Programme
a model of best practice 229
(Kenya) 123
a multicultural educational setting 229
258

Index
non-stereotypical messages/ images
challenges 187–9
about women’s roles 235
Fatimata’s story 184–5
opportunities and abilities to challenge
a joined-up sustainable approach
gender identities 243
192–3
reaching out to the underprivileged
new curriculum, women’s and girls’
230
roles 190–1
single-sex school and responses to
Oxfam’s strategic aim 184
sexuality 239–40
women and girls in the school
social position affects favoured status
curriculum 191–2
of subjects 238, 238
MDG 2 1, 2
Value Education curriculum 236
concerned with gender equality in
‘work education’, a curricular subject
schooling 15
233
failure to meet targets 30
Loreto Day School Sealdah students
MDG 3 1, 2, 4
aware of structural inequalities 236
advancement of 5–7
critical of inferior position of women
concerned with the empowerment of
242
women 15
definition of femininity 239
and reaching gender parity 62
an LDS education: response 237–9
MDG 8, calls for a global partnership for
development 249
Maasai, cultural beliefs and education 107
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
Mahila Shikshan Vihar, Jalore (Rajasthan),
1, 2, 4, 5–7, 15, 52, 249
residential education programme for
government and donors must work
young women 50
together 54–8
Malawi
information from the GEEI 73–5
abolition of school fees 20, 46
low-income countries need substantial
feeding programmes for primary-
help 57
school children 46–7
promoting gender equality 246–7
League of Malawi Women 51–2
Mobile School project, Wajir District,
Mali
Kenya 137–8
attitudes/textbooks reinforce gender
Muslim women, effects of purdah 172
inequalities 192
barriers to education 183
Nairobi, informal settlements 109–10
curriculum reform 189–92
girls lack money for sanitary wear 110
distance to school in rural regions 40
girls overburdened with housework
mobile-school initiative discontinued
109
188
reasons for dropping out of school 110
needs flexible and diverse approaches
work of Singa Center 117
to education 188
Nepal
Oxfam programme works towards
democracy movement and girls’
curriculum reform 189
education movement 43–4
parents’ expectations of marriage for
female primary-school teachers in 42
their daughters 39
primary-school stipends 46
Ten Year Plan for Transforming
net enrolment ratios (NER) 60–3
Education 192
NGOs 6
training in health/hygiene and
gender advocates co-opted from to
HIV/AIDS awareness 183
government positions 44
Mali, pastoralist schools in 181–95
initiatives in Kenya 114–20
the animatrice model 186
key role of in education 55–6
259

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
may influence policy 248
research site 150–1
see also ActionAid Kenya (AAK);
the school experience 156–60
Oxfam GB
temporary or permanent withdrawal
Nigeria, teachers more responsive to boys
from school 154
41
physical facilities in schools 41
non-formal education (ActionAid Kenya)
policy and practice 7
117–18
change for gender equality 245–9
Ntanira Na Mugambo, raising awareness
changing things through practice
about FGM 122
8–10
nutrition, improved 46–7
development of flexible policies and
practices 248
opportunity costs, higher for girls than
doing things differently 11–12
boys 39–40, 139
GAD influence seen at two levels 25–6
Oxfam GB 116
need to take a wider view 248
data on attitudes to change and gender
NGOs and civil-society actors 248–9
equity in Mali 190
policy-making process 56
Gender Equitable Education in West
political will and leadership 249
Africa programme 193–4
post-structuralist approach 26–7, 247
on-going work with pastoralist schools
equality not a major concern 27
in Gao, Mali 181–95
methodology and the ‘colonial gaze’
Promoting Gender-Equitable Basic
26–7
Education, West Africa 181
questions stability of definitions of
support for Kibera Slum Education
gender 16, 17
Programme 123
poverty 6, 141
supports Nomadic Primary Health
affecting girls’ education 39–40,
and Mobile School in Wajir 118
115–16
supports partner in Wajir 117
Burkina Faso 215–16
driving force behind urbanisation in
Pakistan, North West Frontier and
Wajir 136
Baluchistan 37–8
extra help needed to keep girls in
para-teachers 50
school 26
participatory methods
and the financing of education, Kenya
involving communities in girls’
140–2
education 51
of pastoralists 138
use of in HIV training 200
prevents girls from realising full
pastoralism, problematic relationship
potential 37, 38
with education 129
in rural Peru 152–5
‘patrifocal family structure and ideology’
power and gender 207–8
235, 239
male participants 208
Pentecostalism in Burkina Faso 212–26
various types 207–8
People’s Movement, Rajasthan 51
women participants 208
Peru, educational exclusion of rural girls
pre-schools, community-based 51
149–65
pregnancy
daily life, work and poverty 152–6
considered girl’s responsibility to avoid
initiatives guarantee enrolment of all
203
school-age girls 161
forces girls to drop out of school 48–9,
issues affecting girls’ exclusion 161–2
111
methodology 151–2
and re-entry programmes 49, 115, 126
new projects forget needs of girls 161
primary education 67, 120
260

Index
focus of MDGs on questioned 5–6
Sector Wide Approaches to Education
free for all, Bangladesh 45–6
(SWAPs) 52
Kenya 128, 130, 131, 132, 142
sedentarisation, and education 135
Peru 149, 150, 156
sexual harassment
re-entry after giving birth 115
and abuse, sanctions/penalties against
teachers’ stipends 46, 54
55, 126
private secondary schools 40
of girls in schools 41, 111
purdah 166–7, 172–7
and intimidation, dealing with 48
sexual intercourse
rights, needs, and capabilities 16, 27–9,
traded for goods or lifestyle benefits
245, 247
201
risk, gender-related dimensions of 206
unprotected, and spread of HIV 206
sexuality and gender, issues for adolescents
San Juan, Peru, primary schooling 150,
209
156
Singa Center, Nairobi 117
school attendance, influences on 154
single-sex schools (LDS) 239–40
school-attendance ratios, Peru 152
son preference, in education 37–8
schooling
South Asia
flexible models of 117–18
concept of ‘joyful learning’ 42
hidden costs 154
expansion of private secondary schools
impact of expanded access to 98–100
40
parental decision-making 37–8
lack of literacy and numeracy in girls 3
removal of fees makes schooling easier
Sperling, B. see Herz, G.
54
sponsorship, in girls’ education 117
too expensive 39
stipends 47, 54
schools
for boys, an issue 92
appropriate places to teach about
Female Stipend Programme (FSP),
HIV/AIDS 2–3, 203–4
Bangladesh 85–90
ensuring girls’ safety and dignity 47–9
primary-school 46, 54
fail to motivate or encourage girls 41–2
sub-Saharan Africa
fail to protect girls’ basic rights and
expansion of private secondary schools
dignity 41
40
in poor communities, rescue plan for
feeding programmes for children 46–7
55
gender equality, impact of HIV/AIDS
provision of toilets and running water
on attainment of 57
47–8
gender gap 3
and re-entry programmes after
gender-enrolment parity hard to reach
pregnancy 49, 115, 115, 126
53
secondary education for girls 227
sustainable education provision, support
felt to be good for society 96
for NGOs 55
private 40
a remote possibility for rural Andean
Tanzania, removal of school fees 30
girls 155, 156
teacher-training college, access for young
secondary-school places
women 41
need to create more 54, 56
teachers
risk of creating gender inequality 46
in BRAC schools, recruited from local
shortages of 56
community 45B
secondary-school scholarships/ stipends
can reverse effects of HIV-awareness
47, 54
work 203
261

Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education
and gender inequality 247
experiences of organisers, volunteers,
engaging in sexual relations with
and learners 173–7
young girls 203
opened important spaces for all to
in India, use of biased language 41
make use of resources 167
LDS, openness towards 241
Post-Literacy and Continuing
male, common response to HIV 202–3
Education phases 168
in Mali 193
provision of space outside home for
and managers, concern about gender
women to participate 172–3
equality 67
pushing social and geographical
need for urgent 46
boundaries 173–4
not trained to teach a second language
raising women’s status through 248
157
women’s roles in the campaign 167
pay more attention to boys 41
Total Literacy Campaign, India 166–7
payment of salaries 57
aim 166
professional training seems inadequate
delivery 166–7
158
‘Improved Pace and Content of
regular in-service training 119
Learning’ 166
seen as role models 241
post-campaign study in Begusarai 167
status, pay, and support improved 55
training, of facilitators for HIV
transformational, need for 247–8
education 209–10
teachers, rural Andes
approaches to teaching/learning
Uganda
limited 157–8
Alternative Basic Education, Karamoja
changing practices have negative
initiative 138
impact on girls 162–3
introduction of free primary schooling
dissatisfied and frustrated 158
54
leave children open to abuse 159–60
only African country with significant
low expectations of pupils 158, 159
educational gains 69
order and control enforced through
under-achievement, girls and boys 25
threats 159
UNDP, Human Development Reports 28,
reinforce the domestic role of women
65
among students 159
UNESCO
teaching
development of the Education
India, seen as a reliable career for girls
Development Index (EDI) 64–5
241
Global Monitoring Reports 24, 62–3,
a political exercise in a gendered
63–4
terrain 228
Noma Literacy prize for Loreto
teaching methodologies 130
Sealdah 229
textbooks, images of women and men 42
UNICEF
Tharaka District 107, 111
awareness-raising programmes 51
bursary funds for girls 117
supported development of community
lacking adequate sanitary facilities
schools 49
112
United Nations Women’s Conference
work of Ntanira Na Mugambo 122
(Nairobi) 167
toilets and running water 47–8, 55, 112
Universal Declaration of Human Rights 27
Total Literacy Campaign, Begusarai 167,
Universal Primary Education (UPE) 45–6
168–72
university students, highly respected 209
Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti (BGVS)
urbanisation, and participation
167, 168–77, 178n
relationship 134–5, 135
262

Index
Wajir District, Kenya
women 247
cost-sharing negative and inequitable
empowerment of 43–4
128–9
encouraged to learn to read 217–18
education decisions based on family’s
Gao, little say in partner choice/age of
best interests 136–7
marriage 184–5
education a livelihoods-diversification
lack of empowerment in Jordan 64
strategy 136
lacking Spanish, relegated to
factors influencing participation
subordinate positions 161–2
134–8
position in Burkina Faso 216
government response to increased
stereotyped views of suitable work
demand for schools 132
95–6
latent demand for education among
working outside the home 95
pastoralists 138
women as campaign organisers 170–1,
lowest primary-school participation
173–4
rates 128, 142
women as campaign volunteers 171,
Mobile School project 137–8
174–5, 177
need for alternative models 129
Women Educational Researchers of Kenya
poverty driving urbanisation 136
(WERK) 117, 123
primary-school provision 132
women learners 171–2
retention rate higher than nationally
‘coming out of purdah’ 176, 176–7
134, 134
crossing social and geographical
small percentage of children attending
boundaries 176
school 130, 131
largest personal risk 177–8
subordinate status of girls and women
mostly from lower castes 171
139–40
participation not a simple matter
success of the only girls-only school
176–7
140
women’s movements, differences 24
unequal gender relations 129
workshop approach, for discussion of
ways of strengthening the family
gender relations 205–7
economy 136
World Bank, influence of King and Hill
war/periods without democracy,
papers 18
countries with low GEEIs 71–2
World Declaration on Education for All
WERK see Women Educational
(1990) 129–30
Researchers of Kenya (WERK)
World Food Programme, feeding
WID approach 17–20, 30, 246
programme for Malawi children 47
equality understood as equal numbers
of resources 19
young mothers, right to continue
gender, education, and development
education 48–9
or empowerment 18
Young Muslim Association 117
human-capital approach 28
Youth Alert project, Mozambique 200–1,
importance of including women in
201–2, 205
development planning 17
influence of the King and Hill papers
18
little attention to gendered learning
processes 19
policies associated with 20
WID (women in development)
framework 15, 16
263

Document Outline

  • Contents
  • Introduction
  • 1 Unterhalter
  • 2 Global Campaign for Education
  • 3 Unterhalter, Challender, Rajagopalan
  • 4 Raynor
  • 5 Coalition
  • 6 Leggett
  • 7 Ames
  • 8 Oommen
  • 9 Sanou,Aikman
  • 10 Thorpe
  • 11 Zents
  • 12 Doggett
  • 13 Conclusion
  • Index


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last updated Sat Sep 01, 2012