What does it mean to re-envisage education for gender equality and green transformation in the age of a digital society?

• In Event: Gender Justice in Educational Access and Equity in Global Perspective

Proposal

This paper aims to explore some of the opportunities, challenges and potential threats linked with digital technologies for supporting women activists’ engagement and leadership in processes for re-envisioning gender equality, social justice and green transformation in education in South Africa.

Existing literature highlights the importance of understanding the intersections between climate change, gender, education, poverty and other social divisions, and how these are localised in different contexts (Pankhurst, 2023; Author, 2024), the necessity of addressing gender and intersecting inequalities in and through education in ways that engage with long-term strategic and feminist issues around gender equality, women’s empowerment, social justice and countering misogyny, and actively involve women who are most affected by these issues in processes of change (Author et al., 2021; Author, 2024), and the pressing need for better data to document progress and support effective change (Author et al., 2024). However, while digital technologies can provide opportunities for re-envisioning education in ways that engage with these key concerns, the process is far from straightforward.

Studies discuss the potential of digital technologies to support women and girls, especially those who are poor and/or marginalised, to access information and develop greater awareness of their rights, to have their voices heard and facilitate or enhance their participation in different forums, and to communicate and share knowledge, ideas and information and build solidarity and networks with their peers (UNESCO 2024; Cummings & O’Neil, 2015; UN Women 2024; Barrera Yañez et al. 2023). But studies also highlight the ways in which digital technologies and rapidly increasing technological change can not only mask, reinforce and deepen existing gender inequalities, including through the ‘digital divide’, but also lead to new forms of inequality, discrimination, silencing, distortion and misinformation, enabling the spread of practices and narratives that further marginalise and discriminate those who are already marginalised (West 2023; UNESCO 2024; Galloway 2024; Di Meco & Wilfore 2021; Zuboff, 2018).

This paper considers how to evaluate both sides of this dilemma – to consider both what the opportunities and challenges are in relation to digital technologies and how they can be used to facilitate better understanding of issues, enable women to speak and to be listened to and inform what actions need to be taken – in relation to some emerging findings from a participatory research project with women activists in three neighbourhoods in South Africa where acute effects of climate change, including as a result of drought, floods and the warming ocean, intersect with issues linked with gender inequalities in education. The research project draws on an in-depth participatory approach and reflections on a measurement framework for gender equality in education that is underpinned by the principles and concepts of the capability approach to consider local level insights on how gender inequalities interrelate with climate change issues and what achieving gender equality and climate justice in and through education might entail, what data are required to document these issues, how connections can be built to ensure women’s increased access to information, communication and social capital can support their leadership in climate activism and gender equality in education, and in what ways better data can help inform effective policymaking and practice for re-envisioning education in ways that support gender equality and green transformation.

Authors

• Helen Ruth Longlands, IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society

• Elaine Unterhalter, Centre for Education & International Development

• Relebohile Moletsane, University of Kwazulu-Natal