Highlighted session: Feminism, leadership, and agency in education programs for girls of color in the United States

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

Sustainable development is about inclusion, and inclusion requires equitable access to education of high quality that facilitates social and economic mobility as well as critical thinking. In the United States, low-income young women, particularly young women of color, make up a disproportionate number of school expulsions and juvenile arrests; such factors have also led in some cases to trafficking and exploitation. Young women ages 16-19 are four times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault; further, women ages 18-24 who are college students are 3 times more likely than women in general to experience sexual violence (RAINN, n.d.).

In the current climate of discussions of gender-based violence and larger discussions about the nature of ‘morality,’ it is an opportune moment to take up issues of social justice, leadership and agency for young women, particularly those living on the margins.

In this panel, several scholars come together to situate the realities of young women of color seeking access to secondary and higher education, and the types of co-curricular supports that seek to increase their capacity for critical social analysis as a means of navigating and overcoming obstacles. This type of fostering of what has been referred to as “thick” (as opposed to “thin” or unsustained) agency, has been highlighted by scholars of girls’ education and feminist-informed educational programs (Klocker, 2007). Each paper discusses the realities and/or analyses actual interventions in New York City or the San Francisco Bay Area.

The data presented offer applied research that pertains to the principles of sustainable development, and most specifically to the work of the Gender and Education Committee at CIES that seeks to examine issues of access, inclusion and empowerment.


References

Klocker, N. (2007). An example of thin agency: child domestic workers in Tanzania. In: R. Panelli, S. Punch and E. Robson, eds. Global Perspectives on Rural Childhood and Youth: Young Rural Lives. London: Routledge, pp. 81-148.

RAINN. (n.d.) Statistics. Accesses Ocober 8, 2018 at https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence

Sub Unit

• Committee: Gender & Education

Chair

• Shabnam Koirala-Azad, University of San Francisco

Individual Presentations

• Creating a research hub for community accountable research with young women of color - Chitra Aiyar, Sadie Nash Leadership Project; Ja'Dell Davis, Sadie Nash Leadership Project

• “To be our best selves”: critical dialogue with girls of color about their experiences in a social justice leadership program - Tashal Brown, Michigan State University

• Girls of color as agents of change in the San Francisco Bay Area - Marylin Zuniga, Roses in Concrete Community School; Leslie Clark, University of San Francisco; Monisha Bajaj, University of San Francisco

• Post-secondary pathways for young women of color - Rowena Tomaneng, Berkeley City College

Discussant

• Stephanie Sears, University of San Francisco