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- Convenors:
-
Luisa Ciampi
(University of Cambridge)
Rabea Malik (Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives)
Asma Zubairi (University of Cambridge)
Tayyaba Tamim (Lahore University of Management Sciences)
Send message to Convenors
- Chair:
-
Pauline Rose
(University of Cambridge)
- Discussant:
-
Asyia Kazmi
(Bill Melinda Gates Foundation)
- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Gender justice
- Location:
- S312
- Sessions:
- Friday 28 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Tackling harmful gender social norms is vital to achieve goals of social justice. This panel shares evidence from studies exploring if and how education programmes shift gender social norms in communities and societies across diverse global South contexts.
Long Abstract:
Some gender social norms hinder goals of social justice as they underpin gender-based inequalities which impede development. Finding novel ways to identify, assess, and shift such gender social norms is essential to reach goals of social justice and gender equality in multiple spheres of human development including education. Education is both affected by gender social norms, and also provides a key space and vehicle to challenge and shift harmful gender social norms. This panel shares evidence of the role of gender social norms in education settings in a variety of global South contexts, including evidence of the effects of programmes that aim to shift them. It will consider the implications of the evidence on future research, practice, and policy with the aim of contributing towards goals of social justice.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 28 June, 2024, -Luisa Ciampi (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
How is CAMFED’s education programme shifting gender social norms in Tanzanian communities?
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines this in the context of an NGO education programme in Tanzanian communities. It draws on new qualitative evidence to identify if and how CAMFED (an NGO supporting social justice for secondary school girls) is shifting gender social norms. It focuses in particular on the role that ‘Learner Guides’ (CAMFED graduates supporting the next generation of girls) play in these shifts.
Luisa Ciampi (University of Cambridge) Asma Zubairi (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
To what extent has the Girls’ Education Challenge promoted girls’ agency and choice in decision-making for marginalised adolescent girls in Ghana, Kenya and Nepal?
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the extent to which FCDO’s Girls’ Education Challenge has promoted girls’ agency and choice in decision-making for marginalised out-of-school adolescent girls in Ghana, Kenya and Nepal. It focuses on projects aiming to support these girls to continue their education through alternative pathways and transition to work. Using a participatory ‘Rivers of Life’ approach, it captures changes in their agency and choice due to participation in the programme. It highlights if and how these changes have affected girls’ engagement in wider decision-making in their households and communities.
Luisa Ciampi (University of Cambridge) Rabea Malik (Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives) Tayyaba Tamim (Lahore University of Management Sciences)
Paper short abstract:
The interplay between education and gendered social norms in Pakistan.
Paper long abstract:
This paper identifies the interplay between education and gendered social norms in Pakistan. Conducted with The Citizen’s Foundation, this study set in urban Pakistan shares evidence regarding the extent to which education can disrupt reproductions of negative social norms and support shifts in positive social norms supporting goals of social justice. It presents insights from interviews with young men and women about how education has shaped their lives and helped or hindered their agency to achieve their goals.
Emily Henderson (University of Warwick) Nidhi Sadana Sabharwal (National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration) Ann Stewart
Paper short abstract:
Higher education (HE) choice is a spatial phenomenon which unfolds along gendered lines. This paper is based on a 5-year project ‘Fair chance for education’ on gender and HE choice in Haryana, India, and considers how spatial gender norms of educational choice can be challenged.
Paper long abstract:
In North India, Higher Education (HE) choice is a spatial phenomenon that operates along binarised gendered lines for young women and men, particularly in rural areas where conservative, patriarchal gender norms are more prevalent and where a history of HE in previous generations is less likely. Families show a clear preference for young women attending the nearest HE college, irrespective of daughters’ academic record or the college's reputation, in order to protect young women’s honour before marriage. For men, there is a clear preference for sons to attend the best possible college within the family’s means, irrespective of distance. These spatially inscribed gender norms result in gender disparities in HE choice, which in turn affect the benefits young people can access through attending HE. Our paper discusses the extent to which rural/semi urban HEIs, in an era of massification, are presently contributing to social justice objectives in reducing inequalities in life chances and enabling informed decision making by disadvantaged young women and men. It is based on a five-year project ‘A Fair Chance for Education: Gendered Pathways to Educational Success in Haryana’, funded by Fair Chance Foundation (2017-2022). The project adopted an evolutionary methodology which ensured that the phased research findings led to a collaborative programme of activities designed to contribute to positive social change. It explores the gendered spatial dimensions of HE choice, and how the project developed a programme of college taster days to demystify HE as a way of challenging spatial gender norms of HE choice.
Syeda Ayesha Subhani Ahmad Nawaz (Lahore School of Economics) Hira Noor (University of Notre Dame)
Paper short abstract:
Violence-justifying-attitudes represent harmful gender social norms led by patriarchal biases. In Punjab,Pakistan, women besides men accept and justify violence by husbands/men as a norm. Education may play a significant role in altering negative attitudes perpetuating violence and social injustice
Paper long abstract:
Violence-justifying-attitudes constitute sticky gender norms and provide a premise for violence-against-women, perpetuate gender inequalities and disrupt social justice. The situation is even worse in Pakistan where patriarchy constitutes complex power-hierarchies and necessitates violence for its existence, male dominance and subjugation of women to men. Such patriarchal violence or male violence-against-women(Kaufman, 2023) is pervasive in Punjab, which has high population but low literacy rate. Society follows men’s perception of ‘treating a woman’, despite rights and laws for women-protection. There is social acceptance of comprised women’s evaluation and inferior status relative to men. These violence-justifying-attitudes hinder interventions to curb male violence-against-women. Education has the tendency to shift societal norms as observed in India(UN,ADB,UNDP, 2019). In Pakistan, despite high rates of illiteracy and Violence-against-women, no earlier empirical evidence on the correlation between the two exists. The present study thus examines if and how Education impacts Violence Justifying attitudes of both women and men in a patriarchal setup. It then bifurcates rural and urban population, and captures the impact of the spatial intersectionality/rural-urban marginalisation. The sample is based on household survey from Punjab Pakistan. Interestingly, our preliminary evidence points towards less significant relationship between women’s education and violence-justifying-attitudes signalling toward inter-generationally passed on, deep-rooted and embedded gender social norms. Empirical findings may allow us to understand the complex nature of the relationship between education and violence-justifying-attitudes. It may also provide micro and macro level interventions to manage harmful (pro-violence) gendered social norms and catalyse social justice.
Jihye Kim (University of Manchester) Mohammed Ibrahim (University of Manchester) Wendy Olsen (University of Manchester)
Paper short abstract:
This study aims to provide insight into the relationship between early pregnancy, vulnerability, and the reproductive health education environment in Ghana. Findings suggest that peer pressure, adolescents’ aspirations, and gender attitudes can play a role in influencing sexual behaviours.
Paper long abstract:
A high prevalence of teenage pregnancy in Ghana has raised critical concerns. This study aims to understand the causes of early pregnancy in Akatsi North, Ghana while assessing the underlying attitudes of young people towards future marriage and pregnancy. It seeks alternative measures that do not involve direct inquiries about sexual experiences when engaging with young teenagers. Causal factors of teenage pregnancy from the socio-economic and cultural context are under investigation. By collecting primary data from junior high and senior high school students (n=655) based on cluster sampling, we regressed several models, mainly focusing on the timing and attitudes toward the age of pregnancy and marriage. We conducted focus group discussions at three levels, providing diverse opinions regarding teenage pregnancy causes. In our models, peer pressure and pro-equality gender norms are indicated as key drivers of attitudes towards marriage and pregnancy. Ethnicity and religion are not the key matters here. Focus group discussions confirmed that parents’ neglect, particularly in low-income families, can be a risk factor. Norms around marriage included the expectation that both young women and young men should be able to earn before marrying. The findings suggest that there should be more positive and moral peer pressure to socialise with young people. Also, girls’ and boys’ aspirations for future education and work can play a positive role. Sexual and reproductive health and family planning education must cover both factors and counter disinformation/misinformation.
Taanya Kapoor (University of Oxford) Ravinder Kaur (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi)
Paper short abstract:
Detailing the consequences of daughters’ higher education becoming a normative goal for the new middle class in India, we argue that the access, visibility and legitimate occupation of hitherto inaccessible public spaces by women has potentially transformative effects on how daughters are perceived.
Paper long abstract:
Shifting social norms around the value of education, especially for daughters, has meant that in recent years, India has witnessed a dramatic increase in girls enrolling in and completing higher education, often with the support of encouraging parents eager to make great sacrifices to fulfill their daughters’ educational ambitions. Using data collected from qualitative studies combined with a survey of ethnographic literature, this paper discusses the consequences of daughters’ higher education becoming a normative goal for the new middle class in India. We argue that girls’ inclusion in education reflects a shift in patriarchal norms around the construction of daughters, with spillover effects for the way daughters are viewed within natal families. Education legitimizes the presence, occupation and visibility of women in public spaces hitherto inaccessible to girls, with potentially transformative effects for their sense of self and capacity to be agentive. The access and exposure to, and sheer presence of girls in large numbers in centres of higher learning, such as schools and colleges, we argue, can be a source of subversive agency. By facilitating enabling and diverse social encounters and peer-group interactions across divisions of gender, caste, class and religion, such spaces allow girls to reshape their sense of future selves and their aspirations, enabling them to negotiate patriarchal structures self-reflexively, resulting in incremental diminution of gender- unequal social structures. The shifting value of education, we thus hypothesize, is an indicator of a silent revolution which has the potential to upend, albeit gradually, harmful patriarchal biases against daughters.
Manika Bora (O.P.Jindal Global University)
Paper short abstract:
The choice to marry early for girls in rural India is played out in the presence of a viable alternative of continuing schooling. This paper is based on a project in Bihar, India to study the life outcomes of girls in the context of state-led programs of increasing access to secondary schools.
Paper long abstract:
In a society typified by strict gendered norms, girls are expected to display modesty and respectability. The norm of marrying girls early, that is, before attaining of the legal age, is in keeping with these concerns of respectability. For girls, marrying early often implies dropping out of school. State-led programs intended to increase access to secondary schools have led to a slow movement of delaying of marriage for girls. Cessation of the early marriage norm and continuing of schooling has implications for other life choices and outcomes for girls, stemming from exercise of greater autonomy. In 2006, the Government of Bihar introduced a girls’ bicycle program to increase girls’ enrolment in secondary education. Every girl who enrolled in class 9 (penultimate year of secondary school) was provided a one-time cash transfer by the government to purchase a bicycle for the girl to travel to school. This paper is based on the fieldwork conducted in Bihar as part of the Cycle to Empowerment Project (CTEP) undertaken in 2016 and funded by the International Growth Centre. There is a noticeable decline in the practice of early marriage with more girls completing secondary schooling. This paper presents mixed method insights that affirms the trend and contributes to the understanding of the marriage-schooling trade-off in the lives of the girls who are at the centre of the aspiration-anxiety matrix generated from the state led educational campaigns in a developing country context.