'Capable’ mothers and their daughters’ access to education

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday VI)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Women's educational narratives as students, parents, teachers and leaders

Proposal

Girls’ access to education is a daunting task for Pakistan. With the global focus on gender parity in school access and learning, Pakistan struggles to ensure complete participation of girls in schooling. Literature in South Asia identifies mothers as an important determinant for improving daughters’ access to education. For instance, establishing a positive relationship of mothers’ education or autonomy with their daughters’ education. Utilising quantitative methodologies, many researches present a dilemma. They highlight women’s role in reaching gender parity in school-access but by focusing on particular attributes, present them as objects rather than actors. In doing so they prioritise the importance of attributes such as mothers’ education or empowerment and exclude the role of mothers’ agency as a driver of development. Women’s potential is constrained because of unequal access to productive, non-productive and social resources. Agarwal and others (2016) support this by finding that women in Bangladesh who have equal access to agricultural resources outperform men in farming. In a country like Pakistan where approximately 50% of the population is female, providing context specific support can unlock underutilised potential. In order to address this, there is a need to understand the process through which mothers with different levels of education may be influencing their daughters’ education. I explore this process from the perspective of a mother’s capability to influence her daughters’ education. I adopt a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews for this purpose.

I conceptualise mothers’ influence as their ‘capability’, drawing from the Capabilities-Approach (CA) and the model of cooperative-conflict (CC). The theoretical frameworks focus on the freedom of individuals to achieve their goals. The CA makes a claim that it is of moral importance that people have the freedom to achieve their well-being. This freedom is seen in terms of their capabilities, defined as having real freedom to ‘do things and be in a state that a person values’. Looking through the lens of CA I explore mothers’ aspirations for their daughters’ education and then attempt to understand how they exercise their freedom to achieve these goals while being in their unique environments. The model of CC helps me appreciate how mothers self-censor their involvement in household educational decisions, based on the way they perceive their well-being status in case their assertiveness causes a breakdown in their marriage. With the help of this integrated theoretical framework I pose the question: How do mothers’ shape their daughters’ education in some neighbourhoods of central Punjab Pakistan?

I collected the data for this study by conducting semi-structured interviews in 30 households from three different villages in central Punjab Pakistan. To understand mothers’ influence I interviewed mothers, daughters, household heads, other dominant decision makers in the family and sons. I developed specific sections of the interview schedule by incorporating key concepts taken from the theoretical framework. The interview schedules were mother-centric, and I created different versions for other family members. I selected these 30 mothers for the study through purposive-sampling, using a maximum variation sampling technique. The selection criteria were mothers with various levels of education (0-10 years of school) and their daughters with different educational statuses (currently enrolled, dropped out, never enrolled). To identify villages for selecting mothers I used the ASER Pakistan dataset (approx. 85000-households). I conducted a pre-study survey in the identified villages and chose 30 mothers according to the criteria. In a second wave I interviewed mothers and their family members using the semi-structured interview schedules.

I made efforts to ensure reliability in data at various stages of the study. During the interview I occasionally requested participants to rephrase their responses. After transcribing the interviews, I had them reviewed by two research assistants who were involved at the interview stage. I validated interpretations of data by cross-checking against various data sources including different members of the same family, fieldwork-reports and fieldnotes. I analysed the data using systematic thematic analysis. To frame a background of the mothers, in the initial cycle of analysis I mapped physical and social resources available in the three village neighbourhoods, from participant perceptions, fieldwork-notes and observations. In the second cycle I identified categories for mothers’ aspirations and actions to support their daughters’ education. In the third cycle I investigated mothers’ participation in household decisions and empowerment status and finally related these with their historical, social and environmental contexts to understand their freedom to pursue their goals. To draw substantive conclusions, I performed intra and cross-case analysis by going back and forth between the two logics.

The findings highlight that mothers are continually engaged in supportive activities for their daughters’ education. Their aspirations provide motivation, but their participation in educational decisions is conditioned by their social and environmental surroundings. Using the example of two mothers Maria and Bushra, I explain the variation between mothers’ freedom to act, in the presence of resistance from their immediate milieu. The differences are made visible by analysing for mothers’ perceptions of their well-being in case of a breakdown in their marriage (CC). Bushra perceives her position to be strong in case of a breakdown and therefore does not fear the consequences resulting from her non-cooperation. Maria on the other hand perceives a considerable lowering in her well-being when faced with a similar scenario. As a result, Bushra takes fearless steps to ensure that her daughter receives the best possible opportunities for education. Maria on the other hand, adapts her actions to optimise her goals remaining within the net of opportunities available to her. Upon deeper analysis it is revealed that Bushra benefits from stronger informal social support network in the shape of her family which Maria lacks. These findings suggest that mothers are capable of optimal achievement of their goals even in socially constrained environments if they are given appropriate support. Social support policies that financially empower women and engage communities in awareness programs are important to reach these ends. These efforts may be supplemented by providing alternative sources of social insurance for example strengthening inheritance laws for women and introducing schemes to support divorced or widowed women.

Author

• Aliya Khalid, University of Cambridge