The Prospects and Challenges of Reforming the World Bank's Approach to Gender and Education: Exploring the Value of the Capability Policy Model in The Gambia

Abstract

The World Bank is currently the lead education research and lending body operating internationally, including in the area of girls’ education. As such, the World Bank wields considerable power in terms of shaping the policy agendas of borrower nations and for this reason is scrutinized in this paper for its privileging of an economic-instrumentalist normative framework for education policy development within which formal schooling is viewed exclusively as a means for economic growth, rather than as a potential tool for the achievement of social justice. An analysis of World Bank work in The Gambian education sector is used to illustrate the limits of a human capital-driven, economic-instrumentalist approach to education policy, with specific attention paid to gender and education issues and related policy solutions. We ultimately argue the value of the World Bank adopting the human capability policy approach as a means to advance World Bank education sector work.

Keywords:

• World Bank
• The Gambia
• International education policy
• Capability approach
• Gender
• Education
• Economic development
• Human rights

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Caroline Manion

Caroline Manion, PhD, is SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Montreal, Canada

Francine Menashy

Francine Menashy, PhD, is Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston, MA, USA