Tracing policy and practice for gender equity and justice: Rethinking goals for educating middle school girls

• In Event: Holistic approaches to girls’ schooling and schooling across the life cycle

Proposal

Tracing Policy and Practice for Gender Equity and Justice: Rethinking goals for educating middle school girls

For more than three decades, the education of girls and women in developing countries has taken center stage among the education goals and strategies of most multilaterals including UNICEF and UNESCO, bilateral development agencies, development banks, and non-government organizations (NGOs) (UNESCO, 1994, 2004; UNICEF,1992,1994).

Many reasons have been cited including better mothering, health gains, and economic gains, for example, the World Bank claiming that educating girls is “the one investment with the highest return in the developing world”—an investment that in the long term has the potential to transform society (World Bank, 1992). Many countries and development agencies anticipated the highest rates of return for investment in Universal Primary Education (UPE); therefore, they united in their support for the Education for All (EFA) initiative in the context of fulfilling the International Development Targets to achieve UPE by the year 2015 (UNESCO, 2003).

However, extending beyond utilitarian gains, the language of gender equity and gender justice have become more synonymous with policy actions and the broader goals of bringing social justice and human rights to the forefront of educating girls and women, including an emphasis on social emotional needs (Author, 2015). In addition, as progress was made in access, retention, and achievement for girls at the primary level, educating girls at the upper primary or middle level became a more evident and natural progression of concern by governments and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). Specific policies and strategies to keep upper-primary or young adolescent girls in school are more challenging as children in the middle school years, generally defined as between the ages of 10 and 14, experience numerous developmental changes in their physical, intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, and sexual development. Yet children, especially girls at this age, in developing countries, experience numerous additional challenges to remaining in school than do girls of the same age in more industrialized countries (Novelo, 2001; Save, 2004; Author, 2015; UNICEF, 1992). Numerous political, ideological, familial, and educational system challenges and obstacles remain in girls’ educational pathways.

This presentation acknowledges these roots and directions in girls’ education, and recognizes and expands on the relevance of continued support for educational policies and practices that promote gender equity and gender justice. In this presentation, I rely on critical and feminist theory to ponder where we have been, and where should we be in efforts to contextualize, foster, and sustain gender equity and justice, especially for young adolescent girls. The discussion interprets and builds on existing literature and research specifically on educational challenges, programs, and curriculum that have engaged aspects of equity and justice for young adolescent girls (Author, 2015). These include, for example, access/distance and empowerment aspects of schooling (Shah, 2015), environmental and cultural barriers calling for education to include curriculum on self-agency and cultural identity (Levitan, 2015), and education on gender-based violence and human rights (Queen et al, 2015).

As one aspect of rethinking directions of policies and programs, I recognize and demonstrate the evolving policy language itself as momentum has swung more toward gender justice thinking, This is even evident in the creating of a gender justice SIG within CIES. In discussing gender justice, Goetz (2007) indicated that
"gender justice should emerge from practice on the ground, acknowledging some attention to local cultural and social conditions and norms. However, she emphasizes the salience of the institutional perspective on gender justice, indicating how a primary concern is with the distribution of opportunities, resources, and agency and the accountability of power-holders at all levels. Thus any actions to prohibit women realising their rights will be prevented or punished through some form of redress or restitution.”

Gender Justice encompasses and moves beyond equality as it entails ending the inequalities between women and men that are produced and reproduced in the family, the community, the market and the state. Non-discrimination, participation and empowerment, elimination of violence against women and girls, and acting in the best interests of girls are some gender justice principles (Oxfam 2022; UNHCR, 2022).

Education is just one institution in the gender justice fight. As we continue to create and monitor programs for middle school girls, we must ponder the nuances implied or evident in gender justice goals and strategies. Is equity, which is not the same as equality, being emphasized? What does use of these terms tell us about our evolution in thinking about solutions for gender inequalities? I bring this rethinking to the context of education for young adolescent girls.

Author

• Sandra L Stacki, Hofstra University