‘We understand better because we have been mothers': teaching, maternalism, and gender equality in Bolivian education

Abstract

This article explores Bolivian schoolteachers’ attitudes and practices surrounding gender in the context of a national educational reform law that mandated gender equity. Teacher interviews and primary school classroom observations indicate teachers’ discourses and practices reflect a sometimes paradoxical blend of advocacy for gender equality and reinforcement of existing traditions of patriarchy. Specifically, long-standing cultural assumptions that essentialise women's maternalism were common within schools and supported by both teachers’ attitudes and classroom practices. While this served to reinscribe gender inequality and women's subordination, teachers’ discourses also drew upon ideals of maternalism as a basis of women's strength and empowerment in opposition to sexism. In this article, we explore the tensions that arise as teachers negotiate their own staunch support for girls’ rights alongside their assumptions about gender differentiation.

Keywords:

• Bolivia
• gender inequality
• schooling
• teachers
• motherhood: educational policy

Funding

This work was supported by an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Latin American Sociology.

Notes

1. These gross enrolment figures are ‘calculated by dividing the number of students enrolled in all levels of schooling by the total population in the official age group corresponding to these levels’ (UNDP 2005, 215).

2. The reform's policy referred to gender ‘equity’ – rather than ‘equality’ (see Lara 2003). Some educational administrators indicated that this highlighted a complementary gender relationship that was not based in ‘sameness' as inferred by the word equality. However, during interviews and conversations about these semantics, teachers overwhelmingly indicated that they recognised no difference between the terms gender equity and gender equality. As such, we use both terms in this paper, using ‘equity’ to specifically reference the reform's policy on gender but ‘equality’ to reflect the discourse of teachers. As Luykx (2000) explains, some actors involved in the development of the intercultural dimensions of the reform objected to the reform's gender equity component, labelling it as a Western imposition that disrespected indigenous cultural approaches to gender relations. However, such perspectives privilege cultural group rights over the individual rights of members who compose the group, and it assumes cultural uniformity, serving to silence diverse voices within the group (Luykx 2000; Benhabib 2002).

3. Controversy surrounding the reform was largely based in political conflict among various organisational actors who were involved – or excluded – in the creation of the reform, with those being excluded significantly including the teachers’ union. In particular, many Bolivians objected to the lead role of the World Bank in the reform's origins and its enormous funding even though they expressed strong support for its ideals of equality. The new law carries on many equality-centred programmes such as bilingual education but reflects an explicit anticolonial orientation in line with the politics of the new government administration. See Howard (2009) for more details.

4. The pedagogical advisor programme ended a few years prior to the end of the overall reform at which point most advisors returned to their previous jobs as teachers.

5. All names are pseudonyms.

6. Given limited opportunities for social mobility in Bolivia, teaching is one of the few options for a steady salary available to many, especially those from poorer backgrounds. As such, it is doubtful that all teachers who claimed that their primary motivation for entering the field was ‘a calling’ – whether based on their love for children or for the subject matter – were completely sincere (Speiser 2000). Nonetheless, how teachers articulated the calling – sincere or not – fell into clearly gendered patterns.