“They Will Chase Me Away from Classroom or Ask Me to Sit on Floor”: Belonging Dissonance Among Marginalized Adolescent Girls

• In Event: Gender transformative education in practice

Proposal

“R: Suppose I go to a school where there are rich people, there are boys, there are people who might be fairer than us or from other castes, can I feel strange because of these aspects? How would you feel in such situations?
C: I feel either they will chase me away from the classroom or ask me to sit on the floor.”
–Rimsa, Grade Nine, Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV), Haryana, India.
Belonging refers to a sense of relatedness and connection to a social group or system in which a person feels she is a valued or important member (Hagerty et al., 1992). It is interpreted as a fundamental, universal need (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), and has been shown to affect a person’s well-being (Shochet et al., 2011), self-efficacy (Uwah et al., 2008), academic performance (Maurizi et al., 2013), and engagement in educational settings (Neel & Fuligni, 2013). Even though a sense of belonging makes big differences to educational outcomes and is shaped by both the individual and the context, it has been examined largely through conceptual frameworks rooted in psychology as an individual trait. In doing so, scholars often miss context-sensitive experiences or information, especially while studying marginalized populations like historically underrepresented adolescent girls in the Global South. The lack of representation of studies in psychology conducted in non-western geographies is well known (Chaudhary & Sriram, 2020). Across popular journals, 68% of subjects between 2003-2007 came from the United States, and 96% of subjects came from countries with only 12% of the world’s population (Arnett, 2008). As a result, negative outcomes continue to persist for marginalized populations because crucial constructs like sense of belonging are not well studied in their educational contexts. In the quote above, Rimsa draws attention to the conditions under which she feels supported and valued in school settings necessary for girls like her to become intellectual and economic contributors in society.
This completed paper examines sense of belonging for girls who face extreme poverty and gender discrimination via an intersectional approach between psychological and sociological disciplines, accounting for structural factors that contribute to such inequalities. The girls attend special schools called Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas or KGBVs in the north of India, that are meant for the “most underprivileged sections” of the country (NITI Aayog, 2015). This paper addresses the question, ‘what does sense of belonging to school settings mean to historically underrepresented adolescent girls in rural India?’

Theoretical Framework. Psychological research has operationalized belonging primarily from a personality and individual differences research perspective. It frames the tendency to experience a sense of belonging (or lack thereof) as a trait or a fundamental mode of relating (e.g., (Hagerty & Patusky, 1995; Malone et al., 2012). Whereas sociological studies have shed light on the politics of belonging as governed by socially and culturally mediated emotional processes that dictate aspects around inclusion and exclusion of a person (Antonsich, 2010; Yuval-Davis, 2006). This work is grounded in the view that to truly account for sense of belonging among marginalized populations, such as that of historically underrepresented adolescent girls in educational settings, it is essential to account for structural determinants of gender inequality and in doing so, an intersectional approach to belonging is imperative (Crenshaw, 2017).

Procedure. Focus group discussions were conducted from December 2019-January 2020, in the five KGBVs of Mewat a district in the north Indian state of Haryana. The fieldwork resulted in five focus group discussions with 60 girls from grades 6 to 9 with an age range of 8 to 19 years (M=13).

Analyses. All focus groups were conducted in Hindi and were transcribed and translated from Hindi to English. My overall analysis process drew upon the phronetic iterative approach by Sarah Tracy (2019), which is an iterative data analysis approach that fluctuates between grounded analysis of qualitative data (such as interviews, participant observation field notes, documents, and visuals) and existing literature and theory.

Preliminary Findings. I argue for a case of belonging dissonance that is experienced by the girls and is defined as emotional place-belongingness that evokes a sense of inclusion for the girls, and the politics of belonging that marks out their exclusion, at the same time (Isakjee, 2016). On one hand, there are their own aspirations to study, family’s encouragement to pursue education due to economic returns, KGBVs created under national policies (recently proposed to be expanded under India’s New Education Policy - Government of India, 2020), and global campaigns like UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (George et al., 2020). These efforts have trickled down to their households through awareness campaigns and government incentives (e.g., girl scholarships) and signals that girls’ education and empowerment are national priorities. While on the other hand, these young women are subjected to opposing signals as a direct consequence of patriarchy. They experience ongoing discrimination, and several other forms of gender oppression that reinforce their inequality (e.g., they are married against their will, and equal resources and opportunities to continue education are denied).

Implications. This paper addresses the issue of studying sense of belonging through an intersectional approach among historically marginalized adolescent girls in India, while accounting for structural factors that contribute to gender inequalities. I explore belonging dissonance as a concept that occurs when marginalized school going girls experience competing signals from policies and socio-cultural norms about their rightful participation in and capacity for education. My work argues that merely investing in policies and incentivizing education for girls is not enough, unless the social and cultural fabric that surrounds them on a daily basis is cultivated to be more equitable– in a manner that increases their sense of belonging to school settings.

Significance to the CIES 2022 Theme. This work ties to the goal of framing education as a transformative tool of protest those societal forces that otherize communities based on gender, caste, and class. It advocates for better policies for future that are not just tied to quantitative learning outcomes in girls’ education but create a socio-cultural fabric where they can flourish as citizens.

Author

• Ananya Tiwari, Texas A&M University