Gender, ethnicity, class, and culture: Comparing global-local tensions in Peruvian and Indian Higher Education

• In Event: Gender equity in Higher education

Proposal

Gender, Ethnicity, Class, and Culture: Comparing Global-Local Tensions in Peruvian and Indian Higher Education

Purpose
In this paper, we discuss hidden tensions that impact marginalized women students’ experiences within higher education (HE) institutions in Peru and India—looking specifically at the complex structures, practices, and policies influenced by both globalized trends and local contexts. Much scholarship is currently isolated within two areas: macro-globalized trends and analysis, or local, deeply context-specific analysis. Yet, the intersection between the two is where students experience the tensions generated by the policies, practices, and cultures of both the global and the local. Uncovering these often hidden or implicit tensions allows for more responsive policy and practice aimed at expanding access and supporting success for women, particularly those from non-dominant identities in Peru and India, and beyond. We explore: 1) How do local and global realities collide to influence these students’ HE experiences in Peru and India? 2) What are the gaps in the HE policies in India and Peru that do not reflect local realities? 3) How do these gaps create tensions that affect the experiences of women from non-dominant identities?

Background
Access to HE does not guarantee students’ success unless the structures that lead to experiences of social and academic exclusion are addressed. Experiences of exclusion act as barriers to students’ success, persistence, and wellbeing. Students’ identities and how they intersect with HE structures, practices, and policies have important implications for persistence and wellbeing (Carr-Chellman & Levitan, 2016). While individuals have multiple identities—based on gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and more—key identities, such as gender, cause women to face more deeply entrenched barriers, especially when understood in conjunction with the intersections of other identities, such as age, ethnicity, class, race, or caste (Crenshaw, 1993; Women and girls, 2021). Globally, women are more likely to be first-generation college students and are more likely to drop out (Kim et al., 2019). Women from marginalized communities face more severe challenges that impact their survival and representation in HE. For instance, Dalit women in India and Indigenous women in Peru are under-represented in HE (National Education Policy, 2020).

One explanation is that students from marginalized communities lack access to quality education grounded in their unique identities and cultures (Authors, 2020). As a result, they feel unwelcome, isolated, and excluded. It is therefore important to critically understand how learning experiences intersect with women from non-dominant communities’ identities to have a better-informed policy. Such experiences are rich accounts that help us understand the gaps in HE policies and practices.

Frameworks
To identify and understand the challenges that women students from Dalit and Indigenous communities face in HE, as well as how legacies of colonialism are at once global and locally manifested, we use a multi-theory lens (Levitan, 2018) to understand the intersections of students’ identities and their HE experiences in both contexts.

First, Dalit feminist theory acknowledges the patriarchal oppression from outside the caste system as well as within it (Sen, 2019). However, it is not limited to gender and caste, but also offers an anti-hegemonic lens. This helps us to understand the intersection of the other oppressive structures too, such as class, race, religion, language, and culture, and how these structures mutually construct each other and shape multiple power relations (Magubhai, 2013) that marginalize certain identities. Dalit feminist theory helps us to understand how these structures affect women from marginalized communities; their agency, their relationships in formal and informal institutions, their exclusion, and more (Arya & Rathore, 2020).

However, the effects are not limited to their agency, and relationships, but extend to their wellbeing. Therefore, we turn to Pragmatic Identity Theory (Levitan & Carr-Chellman, 2018), which was developed based on work with communities in Peru, to explore the multiple, multifaceted identities embodied by women students from Dalit and Indigenous communities, and how their identities relate to wellbeing and persistence in education. Through Pragmatic Identity Theory, we analyze identities as “both personal and social constructs, which are held in complex relationships internally and intersubjectively, as well as in complex relationships with the social and physical world” (Levitan & Carr-Chellman, 2018). For example, the relationships that are developed during HE can support or hinder wellbeing and success. It helps to uncover and understand the roles identities play in relation to wellbeing.

Methods
Our team engaged in co-constructive interviews (Authors, 2022) with women students in both countries (10 in India, 16 in Peru). Because these interviews were part of two different studies, they looked different in each country. However, both explored how students’ multiple identities shaped and were shaped by their access to and experiences in HE.

We inductively analyzed the data to understand students’ identities and how they interacted with HE structures, practices, and policies. Then, we applied our multi-pronged framework to these findings to understand the systems affecting students and how students with overlapping but different identities were impacted. Finally, we compared the two sets of data to illuminate how both global and local phenomena converged to impact students’ experiences.

Findings
Preliminary findings show the differences between local context/culture/knowledge and pressures brought on by globalization. The findings also show the life/lifestyle changes–e.g., new living arrangements, spaces, friends, etc. These findings direct us to how policy needs to engage with the local context to reduce the culture gap between local culture and academic culture. For example, a Peruvian student who was living without family in Cusco was attacked and robbed while walking to class, while a student in India was being oppressed because they were forced to have a chaperon to and from class. Both situations were based in sexism and show how the breakdown of positive social situations in Cusco due to colonial legacies of capitalism put students at risk, while traditional caste-based protection methods created a loss of freedom.

Implications

This paper initiates dialogue with the policymaking process to overcome gaps/hidden tensions within HE institutions that impact women students’ experiences. This is critical, so that students from marginalized communities do not feel unwelcome, isolated, or alienated.

Author

• Kayla Johnson, University of Kentucky