The tenacious Ethiopian woman and her rise to success

• In Event: Publication mentoring workshop session
  In Special Session: Gender & Race Studies - Group B

Proposal

Doctoral Candidate final stages
The purpose of my research is to discover characteristics of educationally successful rural Ethiopian women. Much of the literature on retention in Ethiopia focuses on reasons women fail(Demise, Shinebaum, & Melesse, 2002; Mersha, Bishaw, & Tegegne, 2013; Mersha, Yeshimebrat , Bishaw, Alemayehu, Asrat, Ato, 2009; Semela, 2007). My paper however, takes an in-depth look at 35 women from rural areas in Ethiopia who completed their masters’ degrees. My research question is: What are the characteristics and strategies of Ethiopian women who obtain masters’ degrees?

Much like some of the literature on minority educational attainment in the U.S., a considerable amount of literature on Ethiopia focuses on why women fail (due to sociocultural structures and/or personal characteristics) rather than those structural and individual factors that contribute to women’s success. Yosso’s (2005) framework on Community Cultural Wealth guided my inquiry. This theory helps to “shift the research lens away from a deficit view of Communities of Color as places full of cultural poverty disadvantages, and instead focuses on and learns from the array of cultural knowledge, skills, abilities and contacts possessed by socially marginalized groups that often go unrecognized and unacknowledged” (p. 69). (Yosso, 2005)

This is a qualitative study using narrative Inquiry. Narrative Inquiry makes meaning “through the shaping or ordering of experience, a way of understanding one's own or others' actions, of organizing events and objects into a meaningful whole, of connecting and seeing the consequences of actions and events over time" (Chase, 2008, p. 64). Narratives not only are used as a way of passing on a cultural heritage which is very common in Ethiopia but they are also a common genre in which to retell sensitive times and events (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996, Riessman, 1993).

One hour semi-structured interviews were conducted in Addis Ababa and Sodo Ethiopia with 35 women from rural areas who completed a master’s degree in Ethiopia. The purpose of the interviews was to gather participants’ educational history through stories. Purposeful selection and snowball sampling were used to find participants. Interviews were conducted in English but there was a translator present when a participant needed to explain a deeper concept that she could not get across in English. Interviews were transcribed and uploaded to NVIVO, a data analysis tool. Three rounds of coding were conducted and several themes emerged from their stories. Follow up with participants over the phone took place to confirm findings.

Several themes were highlighted through the analysis: Parental & family support; High motivation to complete their education; Navigating challenges successfully; Naturally academically gifted. These themes were common throughout the data yet I also found individuals unique in their circumstances and experiences. For example, one of the overall themes was parental support yet several participants did not have parents. Therefore, I am careful in claiming my findings because individuals have unique circumstances and situations.

Parental and Family Support was demonstrated multiple times in many of the interviews even when parents were not educated. One way parental support was demonstrated was through having their daughters do less housework in the home so they could focus on their education. Motivation to earn a degree was demonstrated throughout each participant’s story. Usually their motivation stemmed from wanting to get out of poverty or from wanting to help their parents get out of poverty. Some participants highlighted how they overcame obstacles in their path whether it stemmed from financial challenges or corrupt professors. For example, when Nyala was asked to receive her grade in her teacher’s office late at night, she brought a friend with her. Other participants followed in this path and were able to navigate around unfavorable circumstances. Many of the participants shared how they were in the top of their class in elementary school and that teachers took a special interest in helping them succeed because they believed they could go all the way through college. Furthermore, they were motivated and their families became motivated to help them because they saw the results in their grades and test scores.

These participants went beyond their educational success and changed the lives of their families and in some instances their communities. These findings touched on Yosso’s (2005) Community Cultural Wealth demonstrating participants not only had navigational capital, but also had other experiences and abilities that led them to be successful in their education.

Author

• Anna-Maria Karnes, University of Pittsburgh