‘Boys don’t rule us’: exploring Rwandan girls with disabilities’ resistance to masculine dominance in school

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how economically disadvantaged girls with disabilities resist masculine domination at Rwanda’s largest inclusive school, Busengare Secondary. Based on 16 in-depth interviews and 3 focus group interviews with Rwandan girls with disabilities, this study draws on critical feminist perspectives to examine the subjectivities of girls with disabilities marginalised by virtue of their gender, class and disability. The findings reveal that girls with disabilities challenge the enduring power of masculine domination that seeks to limit their leadership and learning in classrooms through two distinct strategies: assertive resistance and subversive resistance. At its core, this paper exposes gendered structures of dominance among young people with disabilities not yet addressed in gender studies and disability studies scholarship in Rwanda.

KEYWORDS:

• Politics of education
• disability
• inclusive education
• girls education
• social inequality

Disclosure statement

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

Notes on contributors

Derron Wallace is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Education at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, USA. He is a sociologist of education, whose research focuses on inequalities and identities of race, class, gender, and disability in schools and neighbourhoods. His teaching interests include comparative perspectives on race and ethnicity, disability and society, social inequality, urban educational policy, and critical social theory. Previously, he served as a policy analyst at the Ministry of Education in Rwanda.

Evariste Karangwa is the Founding Dean of the School of Inclusive & Special Needs Education in the College of Education at the University of Rwanda. He is the Chief Editor of the Rwandan Journal of Education and has spearheaded the development of Rwanda's national policy on inclusive education, the University of Rwanda's guidelines on inclusive teaching and learning, as well as the Inter-University Council of East Africa's quality assurance guidelines for students with special needs.

Jeannette Bayisenge is a Senior Lecturer and Acting Director for the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Rwanda, College of Arts and Social Sciences. Her research interest focuses on gender and property rights, women and youth's land rights and rural livelihoods, gender equality, gender in education. She teaches gender-related courses like Gender and governance, Gender and research methodology, Gender and Development: theory and practice as well as Gender conflict and violence.

ORCID

Derron Wallace http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0103-6588

Evariste Karangwa http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2168-4881

Jeannette Bayisenge http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8936-1982

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Gates Cambridge Trust.