Gender Inequality and Democratic Education: Ironic Outcomes of Equality Programs in Bolivian Classrooms

• In Event: 115 - Regular Session. Development and Gender: Paradoxes, Unanticipated Effects

Abstract

The importance of girls’ education for promoting a country’s long-term development and the recognition of women’s rights as human rights has spurred international support for gender-equality educational projects in lower-income countries. This study examines the implementation of the Bolivian Educational Reform, which endeavored to create the foundation for a participatory democracy based on multiculturalism and gender equity and received heavy support from the World Bank. Specifically, this paper focuses on how inequalities of gender, race, and class impacted the practice of democratic education in the classroom based on qualitative fieldwork in Bolivian classrooms during the reform era. Despite the egalitarian objectives of the policies and teachers’ intentions, gender discrimination not only persisted in classrooms implementing progressive pedagogical programs, but, ironically, such programs actually opened windows for increased and new forms of sexism, which intersected with race and class, in the classroom. This paper explores how these ironic outcomes manifested in three particular reform programs: (1) visual classroom materials, (2) interactive-style teaching, and (3) multicultural celebrations. The cases presented demonstrate how structural inequalities and cultural context outside the classroom can subvert progressive educational programs and therefore must be taken into account in both the creation of such policies and their implementation strategies.

Author

• Julie A. Reid, University of Southern Mississippi