Social control in women’s pursuit of secondary education in Kathmandu, Nepal: ‘if I can’t sign my name, I can’t maintain my privacy.’

ABSTRACT

Women’s secondary schools in Nepal are improving non-traditional student’s educational access. Few studies examine the challenges faced by women returning to attend secondary education. Using Risman’s gender structure theory, we demonstrate the dual burden of social control experienced by women attending secondary school in Nepal. Engaging in qualitative semi-structured in-depth interviews with married women students, we find that women face challenges due to a lack of basic literacy, including an inability to: independently venture outside the household, maintain the privacy of their bank accounts, use mobile phones, or become employed. Women feel the pressure of social control more harshly when they lack functional literacy. By recognizing the challenges women face, our study contributes to the literature emphasizing education’s role in women’s empowerment. Our study highlights how the intersection of caste and gender influences women’s access to education and how they experience social control. Additionally, we demonstrate how cultural processes lag behind material change enabling the persistence of the gender structure.

KEYWORDS:

• Women
• secondary education
• social control
• Nepal
• feminist gender structure theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. A pseudonym is used to protect confidentiality.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Srijana Karki

Srijana Karki is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. Her research interest includes stratification, gender inequality, transnational feminism, education, environment, and disaster.

Tamara L. Mix

Tamara L. Mix is the Department Head and Laurence L. & Georgia Ina Dresser Professor in Rural Sociology at Oklahoma State University. She has research interests in environmental justice, social movements, and race, class, and gender inequality. A qualitative researcher, she has conducted community-engaged projects addressing issues of environmental contamination, water access and quality, food justice and security, and resource inequality.