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.