Adolescent girls’ education, empowerment, and marginalization in Gujarat, India: Inclusion, exclusion, or assimilation?

• In Event: Gender and Education Committee Highlighted Session: Educating adolescent girls around the globe: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Entrenched in discourses of exclusion, inclusion, marginalization, and empowerment this chapter illustrates how a national residential school program in India attempts to increase access to education and empowerment for the ‘most marginalized’– rural, low caste, adolescent aged girls. This critical, feminist qualitative case study focuses on the experiences and narratives of adolescent aged girls from the nomadic pastoralist Rabari community in Gujarat to illustrate the circumstances and realities that one facet of the ‘most marginalized’ in India face, how this affects their ability to attend school, and how this particular school structure has or has not been adapted for it to remain relevant to and promote a better quality of life for these girls. This case study illuminates how schooling, as a modern normative institution, has limitations in its ability to promote an inclusive and empowering experience for all. This chapter provides an illuminating case study of the challenges in providing education for rural, marginalized adolescent girls in India.

Author

• Payal Shah, University of South Carolina