Shailaja Fennell

Decentring hegemonic gender theory: the implications for educational research

The knowledge gathered and reviewed in the field of gender studies has been disseminated globally over the twentieth century but has paid relatively little regard to the contexts and meanings that have simultaneously emerged in other regions of the world. The emergence of global equality agendas in education associated with new frameworks and metrics for national growth provides a unique opportunity to bring together these diverse understandings of gender. This paper compares gender education theory in Western Europe and North America on one hand, and those from locations within Africa and South Asia on the other. We examine the major contributions of Southern gender theorists, two from Africa and two from South Asia, through four themes raised by these authors: the category of ‘third world woman’ and by implication the ‘girl child’; the othering of motherhood; the sexual/gendering of the body and the consequence of dislocation on academic positionalities. A new feminist research agenda is indicated that aims to reduce binaries, increase bi‐cultural workings, and readdress the role of positionality in the field of gender education research.

Gendered education and national development: critical perspectives and new research

The rationale for this special issue on gendered education with its focus on national rather than international development is the need to engage critically with the impact on national education systems and policies of the demands that have been made by international agendas on gender and women’s rights since the 1990s. These demands are encapsulated in the Millennium Development Goals with their calls for gender equality in education by 2015. Now, not only is gender equality within education represented as an achievable goal, but there is also a strong assumption that education can make a major contribution to the promotion of gender equality in society (UNESCO 2003). Both these goals are highly ambitious because of the tight time framework (with a target of 2015), the complexity of the implied notion of equality and the difficulty of measuring it (Colclough 2007). This new global agenda puts pressure on nation states not just to open up access to education for male and female youth, but also to transform gender relations found within educational institutions. This latter goal involves far more than educational reform – it requires substantial sustained transformation of gender relations within families, communities, and in society as a whole (Rai 2002). Nation states are being asked to rethink the social construction of gender and the place of gender differentiation within their territorial borders. Gender differentiation, where it occurs, consolidates and amplifies unequal power relations between the sexes. Further, it constrains the role which female citizens can take in the development of their nation. As Yuval-Davis and Stoetzler argue, even though women are the symbol of national imaginary, they have what the authors call a ‘paradoxical relation’ to the nation (Yuval-Davis and Stoetzler 2002, 335) – women tend to represent the nation’s past whilst men, its future. These political tensions in the relation of gender to national development have yet to be fully explored. Contemporary discussions of gender education tend to focus on the international macro context almost marginalising the significant role of national and traditional cultures in their concern for cosmopolitan social justice ideals. The value of empirical research into historically formed yet shifting gender relations in education is that it could identify important aspects of education that are neglected in international aid programmes, especially in countries which are assumed to be able to benefit from the Educational For All approach. The international debate about how to ‘measure’ gender equality across nations tends to be associated with indicators which relate more to the presence of female students and teachers in schools rather than to their gendered experiences within national educational institutions. It is much harder to define the national conditions which would need to apply for ‘gender equality’ to be a realistic goal for both groups (Stromquist 2005). As Connell (2005a) pointed out, since the UN Development Program in its 2003 annual report on Compare Vol. 38, No. 5, October 2008, 515–523

Between a rock and a hard place: the emerging educational market for the poor in Pakistan

This paper examines the manner in which consumers and providers of education operate within, and how they withdraw from, the educational marketplace in Pakistan. It focuses on the use of exit and voice mechanisms used by households in response to the range of educational provision available from state and non-state providers. The conceptual framework is drawn from the original model of exit, voice and loyalty created by Hirschman in 1970. The paper uses a range of exit, voice and loyalty types to map how households of different socio-economic status make schooling choices when they are faced with a range of educational providers. The evidence shows that the better-off households are benefiting more than the poorer households from the higher quality education provided by low-fee private schools. The poorer households face economic, social and political hierarchies that work against equal access. The implication of our findings regarding the diminished exit and voice mechanisms exercised by poorer households is that these are unlikely to halt further deterioration in the quality of education currently experienced in local government schools.

Democratic Freedoms, Capabilities and Public Provision: A Defence and Some Possible Extensions

At the heart of Jean Dreze and Amartya Sens (2013) latest book on India are two distinct themes. One of these themes concerns itself with the contribution of democratic freedoms to human well-bein...

Linking Capabilities to Social Justice: Moving towards a Framework for Making Public Policy

Creating Capabilities takes forward Nussbaum’s ideas of human development that were first encountered in Sen and Nussbaum’s (1993) Quality of Life and became the subject of numerous books, mostly prominently addressed in Sex and Social Justice (Nussbaum, 1998), Women and Human Development (Nussbaum, 2000) and Frontiers of Social Justice (Nussbaum, 2006). The book introduces us to a public policy scenario where nation-states are morally bound to ensure that central capabilities are provided to their citizens. The aim of the book is to provide an easily accessible account of the capability approach, which has been discussed in specialist articles for the most part (Nussbaum, 2011, p. ix), and to show how the pursuit of capabilities requires a recognition of the right to human dignity for all people. These are noble objectives and it is heartening to see a work that makes explicit links between the individual pursuit of human well-being and the role of the state in ensuring that such pursuits are not denied to any on account of their position or status in society. This central innovation in Creating Capabilities is providing a potential way forward to establish how the individual pursuit of capabilities can be achieved by appropriately designed public policy. There is, however, an absence of analysis in the book with regard to the way to deal with those institutional mechanisms that actively exclude and marginalize individuals with particular social markers such as caste, gender or ethnicity. The case made in Creating Capabilities is based on a philosophical argument of the existence of a moral obligation to ensure all living creatures, and most particularly human beings, are treated with human dignity. The centrality of human dignity is regarded as a necessary and sufficient basis for directing public policy to ensure the capabilities of an individual. Nussbaum is clear that each person is to be regarded as an end, and as each person is different so the capabilities that they would need must be qualitatively distinct and plural (2011, p. 18). She makes the point that the pursuit of such capabilities is dependent on the opportunities available to each person and these cannot be reduced to a single or numerical equivalent through a simplifying Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 2013 Vol. 14, No. 1, 166–171, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19452829.2013.762179

The Rural–Urban Transition

When income is examined with regard to the rural and urban sectors in China, the definition of rural/urban has to be clarified, specifically in terms of how the rural and urban sectors are divided.

Institutions, Urban Bias and Local Relations

This research has combined qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate rural–urban income disparities. Both qualitative and quantitative methods have shown that counties like Qinggang in Heilongjiang are at a very low level of development. The interview data indicate that farming was almost the only source of peasants’ income and maize as their major product. The peasants were largely confined to the land, with few income-generating opportunities, apart from agriculture. The quantitative results confirm that transferring the surplus labour out of agriculture will help to increase rural income, thus reducing the rural–urban income gap.

The Perspective of Peasants

The fieldwork for this study was conducted in Qinggang County, Heilongjiang Province. Located in east central Heilongjiang, Qinggang is one of the grain producing counties of the province with maize as its major product if not the only one (other grains and vegetables grown there are mostly for self-consumption). Qinggang County is in the hinterland of the Songnen Plain, 120 km north of the provincial capital Harbin and 120 km east of Daqing, the city famous for its oil resources. No railway service is available in the county, though it is universal throughout China. Its transport link to the outside relies on buses and private vehicles (There are many bus services available from Harbin to other places by way of Qinggang. But when the fieldwork was conducted the only one between Harbin and Qinggang was a mini-bus service, which was extremely unreliable because of the poor condition of the vehicles. The first author took twice, and for both times the mini-buses broke down on the way).

The Officials’ Perspective

Our first ‘official’ knowledge about peasants was from the Director of Rural Affairs Committee of Daoli District, Harbin City. While driving the first author to do a pilot study, he commented that peasants were both ‘pitiful’ and ‘hateful’. It is easy to understand how pitiful they are. By having a brief look at the poverty they have been living in, one could not help sympathizing with them. As to why peasants are hateful, according to the Director, it was extremely difficult to talk them through any policies. One of the examples was the compensation for land confiscation. It was stipulated that if there was any building or construction (such as a well) on the land confiscated, a higher compensation would be given by the government. However, many peasants would only pay attention to the latter half of the sentence without thinking of the condition. This meant that many peasants went to the government offices asking for higher compensation without listening to the explanation. This has made working with the peasants difficult especially in the implementation of a new policy. In the following chapter, we will explore the views of local officials on various issues.

Qinggang—Ten Years on

On entering Qinggang, a catchy slogan by the road came into sight, saying ‘precise poverty alleviation to initiate motivity; three-year decisive battle for moderate prosperity ahead of schedule’ (精准扶贫, 激发内生动力; 决战三年, 提前奔向小康.). While the first author still could not remove out of the mind the image of Qinggang in 2006, a question came up immediately: is it still the county in poverty as ten years ago?