Gender Transformative Education: An Emergent Concept’s Opportunities and Limitations in the Global North and South

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The term gender transformative education (GTE) is increasingly used in conversations within international education policy, yet it is only beginning to be theorized and engaged in research. GTE emerged as a framework in the international development sector focused on the global South. Within international education, the framework has been most directly defined by four international organizations, UNICEF, UNGEI, Plan International, and Transform Education, in a 2021 policy brief entitled Gender Transformative Education: Reimagining Education for a More Just and Inclusive World. The brief describes GTE as mobilizing all parts of an education system “to transform stereotypes, attitudes, norms and practices by challenging power relations, rethinking gender norms and binaries, and raising critical consciousness about the root causes of inequality and systems of oppression” (p. 4). It recognizes the disproportionate harm that conventional gender norms have on women, girls, and LGBTQ+ people. GTE not only aims to eliminate all forms of gender-based violence, it positions education as a vehicle to advance gender justice more broadly throughout communities and societies. To date, the concept has primarily been employed by international development organizations and used in relation to the need for transformation of education systems with the assumption that gender repressive societies are situated within the global South.

Even though GTE has not been a specific concept within gender and education efforts in the global North, feminists around the world continue to shape and push boundaries around how gender is conceptualized and taught within educational sites. At the same time, in past decades, we have witnessed backlash as right-wing populism and authoritarianism expands globally. Anti-gender efforts have emerged around the world. They threaten reproductive rights such as the overthrowing of Roe v. Wade in the United States in 2022, legislation such as Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Act in Ghana that criminalizes LGBTQI communities in early 2024, and the banning or restriction of sexuality education in diverse contexts in the global North and South.

Gender inequity in its many manifestations, including misogyny, sexism, transphobia, and homophobia, remain pervasive in every country in the world. Although the degree of inequity and its specific manifestations across contexts may vary dramatically, in a world increasingly connected by digital technology, the discourse of both progressive gender movements and those working to reinforce oppressive gender norms spread rapidly across borders and continents. GTE is essentially about envisioning societies that are free from gender-based violence and discrimination and harnessing the capacity of education to build that vision into a reality. It incorporates Paulo Freire’s (1973) concept of critical consciousness, involving critical reflection, political efficacy, and critical action toward social and political change. GTE mobilizes feminist theory to focus on strategic gender interests that address the root causes of inequality using systems level thinking (MacArthur et al., 2022). It also integrates intersectionality, a concept introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw and described by Collins (2015) as “the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but as reciprocally constructing phenomena that in turn shape complex social inequalities” (p. 2). Collins further notes the essence of intersectionality as attending to the relationships between power relationships and social inequality, and the contexts that enable systems of oppression to flourish. This panel will analyze the ways in which feminist theory, critical consciousness, and intersectionality are being taken up in GTE.

This panel examines GTE broadly, involving critical reflection upon the theoretical and contemporary operationalization of the concept, considering how it is being used and adapted at local levels, and the resonance and limits of its significance within diverse cultural, geopolitical, and socioeconomic contexts around the world. The panel includes scholars and stakeholders with varying perspectives and relationships to the concept of gender transformative education, including those that draw from applied research and activism, empirical research, and theoretical framing to consider the concept from multiple vantage points. From these diverse perspectives, panelists will respond to the following questions:

How is gender transformative education taken up and interpreted in a variety of contexts?
What opportunities does using this concept create?
What limitations or challenges does using this concept create?
What are the theoretical implications of gender transformative education, and why are those implications important for researchers, educators, activists and other organizations using it?


References

Collins, P. H. (2015). Intersectionality’s definitional dilemmas. Annual Review of Sociology, 41 (1): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-073014-112142.

Freire, Paulo. (1973). Education for critical consciousness. The Seabury Press.

MacArthur, J., Carrard, N., Davila, F., Grant, M., Megaw, T., Willetts, J., & Winterford. (2022). Gender-transformative approaches in international development: A brief history and five uniting principles. Women’s Studies International Forum 95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2022.102635.

UNICEF, UNGEI, Plan International & Transform Education. (2021). Gender Transformative Education: Reimagining Education for a More Just and Inclusive World. UNICEF. https://www.unicef.org/reports/gender-transformative-education

Sub Unit

• Gender Justice SIG

Organizers

• Catherine Vanner, University of Windsor

• Karishma Desai, Rutgers University

Chair

• Antara Ganguli, UN Girls' Education Initiative (UNGEI)

Individual Presentations

• Gender Transformative Education: Potentials & Possibilities of a Feminist Reparative Education - Karishma Desai, Rutgers University

• Metaphor Drawing and Storytelling as Tools for Catalysing Gender Transformative Education with Teachers in South African Rural Schools - Relebohile Moletsane, University of Kwazulu-Natal

• Needing Transformation: School-Related Gender-Based Violence in Canada - Catherine Vanner, University of Windsor

• Safety in Education: LGBTQI Activism and Gender Transformative Education in Nigeria - Esther Nwanegbo, Center for Health, Education, and Vulnerable Support (CHEVS)

Discussant

• Elaine Unterhalter, Centre for Education & International Development