Gender justice, work and education in Sub Saharan Africa

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

This panel addresses the findings of a recent research collaboration funded by the British Academy (2020-23) that sought to deepen understandings of how young women navigate the demands of education and work in different rural contexts of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). A further research objective was to support rural female youths in developing their agendas for change about their education and work. The research took place in rural communities of SSA’s two largest economies, Nigeria and South Africa, both of which are fractured by enduring inequalities.
The project is informed by an overarching concern for gender justice, in particular with respect to the continuing misrecognition of women’s reproductive work and the ways this reproductive work impacts on education. Women’s reproductive work has been recognized as central to flourishing economies (Butler 1997; Oyewumi 2005; Pateman 1988), but much of this work has remained ‘invisible’. Women in contemporary neoliberal societies may participate more in the ‘formal’ economy, but are still over-represented in insecure, low-paid, part-time positions (McDowell 2014; ILO 2017). International initiatives attempt to address these inequalities by advocating for the right to ‘decent work’, a concept that is central to Goal 8 of the Sustainable Development Goals. Importantly however, such initiatives tend to assume that the socio-legal frameworks surrounding ‘wage labour’ structure most jobs. In contexts where this is not the case, the realization of ‘decent work’ is considerably more problematic.
In much of SSA, the employment situation bears little resemblance to that of post-industrial societies of the Global North. Across SSA, almost 70% of those with jobs are in ‘vulnerable’ employment (i.e. working within the family or for their ‘own account’), and that such employment is especially prevalent for females and for youth (ILO 2017). Of further concern is the high level of working poverty in SSA, which affects around two thirds of those with jobs. Recent research into rural youth employment in SSA has also demonstrated the heavy burden of domestic and reproductive labour that falls on young women in particular (Crossouard et al 2019; 2021). Overall, the precarity of female youth livelihoods in such contexts intensified a gendered - and indeed sexual - economy in which women constantly struggle against systematic subordination.
This research project brings into focus the intersections of education provision, gender equality, and the right to decent work, as reflected in Goals 4, 5 and 8 of the UN’s Sustainable Development agenda. It does this in rural SSA contexts in which there are high youth populations, high gender inequality, high incidences of forced or early marriage, early pregnancies, HIV/AIDS, low and gendered educational outcomes, and deep poverty. In partnership with researchers from Modibbo Adama University of Technology, Yola, in Northern Nigeria, it has explored the livelihoods of young women in a context affected by a violent insurgency. In South Africa, in collaboration with the University of KwaZulu Natal, it has explored young women’s livelihoods in a society which has suffered from deeply racialized and gendered employment structures.
More generally, the project addresses the chronic lack of research into rural youth and gender (Farrugia 2018), and into education in rural contexts, including within Africa (Pini et al 2018). It takes up how schools in SSA are gendered institutions, which often contribute to, rather than disrupting the reproduction of gendered outcomes (Dunne et al 2005; Dunne et al 2014; Crossouard and Dunne 2020). It also challenges overly-linear and under-theorised understandings of how education and work figure in youth livelihoods. Although initially conceptualized before the C-19 pandemic, the consequences of this have added to the relevance of the research, given the pandemic’s differential impacts on poorer communities and on women as primary carers. Finally, given that globally approximately one third of all women work in the rural economy (Mlambo-Ngcuka 2019), the project provides critical evidence in support of SDG ambitions to eradicate poverty by 2030 of relevance to policy-makers, NGOs, activists and academics.
The research has addressed the following research questions:
• How do female youth in rural contexts of Sub Saharan Africa understand ‘work’ and what significance does this have within their lives and imagined futures?
• How have these female youth navigated the demands of work and education?
• What are female youths’ agendas for social change with respect to work and how their work is valued?
The involvement of young women was of particular importance in this research, which drew on participatory visual methodologies (PVM) and life history approaches. After C-19 restrictions had been eased, we engaged rural young women in two communities in each national context in a series of PVM workshops, each lasting one or two days, spread over a period of approximately nine months. The workshops involved the young women in doing community mapping, drawing, walk-about activities, photo-voice and cellphilms (participatory videos made on cellphones or tablets) (Dockney and Tomaselli 2009; Mitchell, De Lange and Moletsane 2017). These creative PVM methods culminated in the co-researcher participants (CRPs) producing policy posters and action briefs based on their experiences and understandings of work. In each context, these were presented in a community exhibition and dialogue to discuss agendas for social change and garner local support for them. Alongside these participatory methods, 12 young women in each research site participated in life history interviews exploring how work and education had figured in their lives.
The papers that follow firstly address our theoretical framing of education, work and gender, before turning to two papers that take up our recent empirical research into the intersections of education and work for young rural women in Nigeria and South Africa.
Selected references
Crossouard, B., & Dunne, M. (2020). Gender and Education in Postcolonial Contexts. In C. Mayo & T. Mbisi (Eds.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dunne, M., Leach, F., Chilisa, B., Maundeni, T., Tabulawa, R., Kutor, N., et al. (2005). Schools as Gendered Institutions: the Impact on Retention and Achievement. London: DfiD.
Dunne, M. (Ed.). (2008). Gender, Sexuality and Development: Education and Society in Sub-Saharan Africa. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Sub Unit

• Gender Justice SIG

Chair

• Relebohile Moletsane, University of Kwazulu-Natal

Individual Presentations

• Reworking gender, education and work in Sub Saharan Africa - Barbara M Crossouard, Centre For International Education; Mairead Dunne, University of Sussex

• 'We will have our say': education and work for young rural women in Northern Nigeria - Dauda Moses, Modibbo Adama University; Safiya Adamu, Modibbo Adama University

• Advocating for community change: education and work for young rural women in South Africa - Relebohile Moletsane, University of Kwazulu-Natal

Discussant

• Paul Fean, Plan International