Gender, education and the possibility of transformative knowledge

Abstract

Global policies today encourage greater access by women to formal schooling but leave aside issues of content and school practices essential to the modification of the social relations of gender. This article assumes a holistic approach and compares the promise of education with its actual contribution to transformative knowledge. It examines why education is upheld as such a promising mechanism, despite the numerous obstacles it faces given contemporary developments, particularly the increasing pressures of globalisation that move steadily weakened nation‐states away from interventions to foster social justice. Lack of consensus within the women's and feminist movements, limited efforts to change teacher training programmes and scant attention to the work of women‐led non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) in the provision of alternative education are identified as key elements in need of attention if transformative knowledge is to be secured.

Keywords:

• Social change
• Gender
• Policy
• Redistribution
• NGOs
• State

Notes

1. Exactly why they do is not clear. Possible reasons are: (1) women have stronger circulatory systems than men and are thus less susceptible to heart attacks, (2) infant boys seem more vulnerable to early deaths and (3) because of the dominant sexual division of labour, women are involved in less dangerous and stressful occupations and engage in less risky activities.

2. The MDG's, unlike the EFA goals, make no mention of free or good quality education. Further, MDG targets do not identify any specific threshold, thus leaving the assertion of goal attainment flexible.

3. The past few years have seen an increased interest in the links between masculinity and power, masculinity and violence, masculinity and crime, masculinity and child abuse and masculinity and the law. While there is a need for a materially based analysis of gendered power relations, the concept often leads to cultural as opposed to materialistic analyses of men's practices.

4. One reason may be that Latin America obtained its independence earlier (between 1810 and 1821) than other developing regions (most after World War II) and that education since independence became a resource allocated through public policy.

5. The programme, now known as Oportunidades, reaches over 20 million poor persons, providing them with a combination of health services, nutrition supplements and access to schooling.

6. The Gini coefficient is a measure of inequality of any distribution. It ranges from 0 (full equality) to 1 (total inequality).

7. An extensive literature based on cross‐sectional data shows that income or wealth is strongly related to school access, completion and performance (for a complete summary, see Lloyd, 2005). A rare study based on panel data found that this relationship persists after controlling for opportunity costs of schooling, the supply and quality of schools and changes in the rates of return (Glewwe and Jacoby, cited in Lloyd, 2005).