Learning practices of femininity through gendered craft education in Finland

This paper discusses the processes and practices that link crafts and gender in the upbringing and education of girls. The paper is based on a study conducted among female primary school trainee teachers in Finland. The data are comprised of their experiences with crafts as schoolgirls. The methods of the study were memory work and writing of craft autobiographies. The processes that interlink gender and crafts are culturally established and maintained both through informal sociocultural learning and formal education at school. The impact of the gendered tradition of crafts is strong and affects the teaching of crafts at school in Finland. This became clear in the analysis of the processes of girls learning to become full members of a community of such femininity practices as textile crafts. The gender‐based teaching of crafts is an example of the unofficial gendered practices of the officially gender‐neutral school.     

Identity politics,justice and the schooling of Muslim girls: navigating the tensions between multiculturalism,group rights and feminism

This article focuses on the concerns expressed by three female Muslim educators who are support staff at an English comprehensive school. Consistent with the debates associated with multiculturalism, group rights and feminism, the article illuminates spaces of gender constraint and possibility within the discourses shaping these women’s lives and the lives of the Muslim girls they educate. With reference to an initiative at the school designed to support these girls’ greater self-determination – an Islamic discussion group – the article highlights the significance of a justice politics that begins with overcoming relations of status subordination rather than on differentiated group identity.     

‘For good,God, and the Empire’: French Franciscan sisters in Ethiopia 1896−1937

In 1897, four French Franciscan sisters arrived in Ethiopia, having been summoned there by the Capuchin missionaries. In 1925, they ran an orphanage, a dispensary, a leper colony and 10 schools with 350 girl students. The students were freed slaves, orphans and upper-class Ethiopian and European girls. After providing a brief background to the relations between the Ethiopian government and the missionaries, this article describes the general activities of the Sisters, the importance they dedicated to education, and their religious and political motives. In the second part, it analyses the sociological backgrounds of the female students and the way in which education intersected with gender, class and race. Third, it reconstructs the multiple power relations within which the Sisters’ educational work was embedded. Finally, it demonstrates how schooling girls in a class-based manner – in conformity with the Franciscan Sisters’ perceptions about what lower-class and upper-class women should be – enabled them to secure relations with Ethiopian political elites. These relations both benefited the Ethiopian elites and furthered the cause of French imperialism.     

Between returns and respectability: parental attitudes towards girls’ education in rural Punjab,Pakistan

This article focuses upon perceptions of girls’ education in the family context within which decisions around children’s education and opportunities are made. The article presents a framework showing how parental attitudes to girls’ education are shaped by an objective logic framed by the notion of returns, relating to potential benefits of daughters’ education, and respectability, relating to girls’ modesty and threats that education may present to normative expectations for girls. Drawing upon data collected in 2011 in rural areas of the districts of Faisalabad (Jaranwala town) and Chiniot (Tehsil Chiniot) in the province of Punjab, the study highlights how assumptions around the liberating effects of education implicit in global education programmes fail to take into account cultural values around gender norms that are central to informing parental attitudes towards their daughters’ prospects for education.     

Frictions that activate change: dynamics of global to local non-governmental organizations for female education and empowerment in China,India, and Pakistan*

This article examines how non-governmental organizations create resources and spaces for girls and women’s education and empowerment in China, India and Pakistan – in the context of global expectations and local state relations as well as cultural norms. We examine the dynamics that foster female empowerment associated with educational attainment. Analysis showed that the five NGO’s responses to enabling and constraining local needs and demands gave rise to productive friction that activated positive development. We conclude that engaging local individuals as managers, teachers or facilitators who can negotiate with international actors and with the state is an effective foundation for maintaining a balance between being accountable to local contingencies and norms and to global social justice principles of the projects. These models indicated that “effective scale” might better be defined as a collaboration between the local and global, rather than “scaling up” in size.

International NGO partnerships with several of state organizations and local leadership can be a catalyst for fundamental change, subject to dynamic engagement with productive friction that activates educational empowerment and social change.     

Malala: the story of a Muslim girl and a Muslim nation

ABSTRACT

In this article, we analyze the coverage of Malala in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to explore how these influential media sources characterize Islam and Pakistan to tell Malala’s story. Our discourse analysis reveals how these newspapers construct Malala’s status as a global icon as an embodiment of her subject position as a girl. This media discourse mobilizes Malala’s agency in relation to her potential as an individual whereas her vulnerability as a young girl is presented in reference to her Muslim heritage and culture. Malala’s image as a global icon, thus, is produced through approaching her as an agent in a culture where girls are vulnerable victims of patriarchy. Through focusing on this media discourse, this article argues that Malala’s image as a global icon of girls’ education has become a site to reinsert, rather than challenge, the dominant images about Islam and Muslim societies.     

Four generations of women's educational experience in a rural Chinese community

Our study sought to understand changes in gender inequality in education across four generations of rural Chinese women's educational experiences in a small community in southern China. The 24 interviews and numerous informal conversations with 12 women showed that gender-based favouritism for men and against women undergirded family expectations, support, and decisions about women's formal education, but this manifested in different ways over generations. It appeared as strict gender division of labour within families, control, or ignorance of women's access to schooling, participants' emotional trauma, lower expectations of daughters' schoolwork, and gender-discriminating language in schools.     

Education as Part of the Migratory Project of Latin American Migrant Women Traveling to the United States in Undocumented Conditions

Education is an indispensable element for the development of society. In Latin America, the point of origin of most of the undocumented immigrants to the United States, equal opportunity in access to education and educational achievement is still pending. The study presented here focuses on the analysis of the expectations of female migrants via Mexico’s northern border, focusing attention on educational attainment as an important aspect of the “American Dream” of the migrant women interviewed and their dependents.     

Unfinished business: re-positioning gender on the education equity agenda

The long-standing relationship between social disadvantage and poor educational outcomes continues to preoccupy educational policy-makers, with teachers at the front line of the ongoing struggle. Across the range of equity concerns, gender may be noted as either qualifying disadvantage or compounding it, but the meaning of gender as a simple binary category is rarely challenged. Using data drawn from a study in three disadvantaged urban fringe Australian high schools we argue that the policy-driven gender-as-difference approach can serve to mask educational inequality rather than to challenge it. By demonstrating the ways in which the girls and their teachers respond to, interpret and understand their schooling experience, we suggest the enriched capacity of a relational theory of gender that, while inclusive of earlier theoretical moments and cognisant of progress made, does offer a more coherent and potentially redemptive basis for educational intervention     

Comparing three South African student cohorts on their attitudes to the rights of working women

This study compares three cohorts (1998–1999, 2005–2006 and 2010) of undergraduate psychology students at a South African university on the level of support for working women (women in paid employment) on various issues considered to be feminist. Cohort 1 (n?=?244), cohort 2 (n?=?311) and cohort 3 (n?=?266) completed an adapted version of a questionnaire used by the Research Group on Women and Work (Kitch, S. L. 1994. “‘We're All in this Alone’: Career Women's Attitudes Toward Feminism.” In Women and Careers: Issues and Challenges, edited by C. W. Konek and S. L. Kitch. London: Sage). The expected liberalisation of attitudes over the cohorts was evident for the females but not for the males: the second male cohort had more conservative attitudes than the first and third male cohorts. While there appeared to be strong overall support for gender equality in work and educational fields, there were equally solid endorsements of the importance of marriage and motherhood for working women. Across the cohorts there were somewhat moderate attitudes on the need for structural change in the family and at work. The implications of the findings are considered.     

The transformative power of Chicana/o Studies: social justice and education

This essay responds to Professor Aguirre’s article in this issue that explores through personal narrative the trials and tribulations of being a faculty member with an expertise in Chicana/o Studies. The author joins his exploration by introducing the structural disadvantages that Chicana/o Studies suffers as a field. She then expounds on what we have gained by developing a new field with an explicitly political focus that includes putting student interests at the center of its development while fighting for economic and social justice as an integral part of its intellectual agenda. Her conclusion explores the challenges that the field of Chicana/o Studies faces as we confront changing demographic and societal conditions.     

论民族国家与男性自我主体表达——析郁达夫小说的妓女叙述

在20世纪初性压抑被视作现代性征候之一而被中国知识界的精英所接受。作为一个弱国子民的现代知识分子郁达夫,他的性欲望生成与表达就不仅仅是个体生理的事件与趣味爱好,而是与国家民族的现代性建构和男性现代性别主体生成缠绕在一起。郁达夫小说中有关个人情欲的狂热迷乱与苦闷压抑的妓女叙述就具有了现代性的意义。通过书写中国留学生在异国他乡嫖娼的创伤性记忆,郁达夫宣泄了作为弱国子民建构自己民族身份的焦虑以及在强势民族面前自我身份被女性化的屈辱;而通过叙述知识者与本土底层妓女充满苦闷与愤怒的交往,郁达夫释放了自己作为一个在政治经济上处于劣势的男性知识者性别身份的不安。     

浅析抗战时期陕甘宁边区的女子教育

1937年抗日战争爆发,陕甘宁革命根据地的女子教育进入活跃期。中共中央和陕甘宁边区政府颁布一系列法律、法规保障女子受教育的权利。边区的女子教育有正规的学校教育以及非正式的社会教育,这些措施使边区女子的精神面貌焕然一新,文化素质迅速提高,以极大的热情投入到边区的生产建设中去,对中国革命的胜利起了巨大的推动作用。她们的精神对现今的女大学生有一定的启示作用。     

中日女教育家及其女子学校的比较研究

在日本教育史上,女子学校的发展离不开女教育家。女教育家们参与或独立创办许多初等、中等和高等女子学校,实施各具特色的教育方针,提升了整个日本社会女性的知识和教养,并鲜明地提出了自己的教育思想和理念,在近代日本的女子教育史上写下了重要的篇章。同样在近代,中国也产生了不少女教育家,她们积极创办各种女子学校,致力于中国妇女的解放运动,但是由于中日两国迥异的社会状况以及文化背景等因素,中日两国女教育家们参与或独立创办的女子学校的发展状况以及产生的社会影响存在着很大的差距。     

Learner pregnancy in South Africa’s Eastern Cape: The Factors affecting adolescent girls' school withdrawal during pregnancy

An early pregnancy often puts an end to a girls’ education. However, few studies have investigated which factors affect adolescents’ school discontinuation during pregnancy. This study interviewed 1,046 adolescent mothers from the Eastern Cape province in South Africa. The results showed that a quarter of school-going adolescent girls withdrew from school during the pregnancy - many as early as the first trimester. School withdrawal was associated with higher poverty, higher grade repetition, an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy, and greater lack of information about the pregnancy. Given the high enrolment rates at the onset of the pregnancy, school-based services may provide an opportunity to identify which girls require substantial support to remain in education throughout pregnancy, using a history of poor school performance as an indicator for dropout.     

我国现行社会女性就业困难问题探析

我国现行社会女性就业存在的性别歧视、性别隔离及劳动年龄的性别差异等问题,是不可回避的现实矛盾。这对于劳动力资源配置、性别平等、人的自由发展以及社会进步都是不利的。发展生产力、完善政策法规、构建先进的性别文化是促进女性就业的现实路径。     

Claiming modernity through clothing: gender and education in Pakistani Muslim and Indian Hindu communities

Through focusing on forms of clothing, this article reveals how educated women from marginalized communities in Pakistan and India made differential claims to being modern. Our analysis of two ethnographic studies shows how the participants mobilized their subjectivities as modern and educated women through a distinction between ‘local modern’ and ‘local traditional’. In this article, our goal is not to define modernity, but instead to illuminate what it meant to be modern in both contexts. We integrate the narratives of young, rural Muslim women in Pakistan with those of young, rural Hindu women in India to disrupt the linear telling of the production of universal and homogenous modernity through education.     

The impact of training and education in Indonesian aid schemes

This paper sets out to understand the impact that training and education programmes have had on institutions and on individuals in Indonesia and to identify theoretical and practical approaches that appear to be effective in bringing about planned change. An analysis was made of evaluation and research studies that included significant components of training and education. The evidence of longer-term impacts does not support the belief that development and change will automatically follow from training. The studies show that the absence of systemic and institutional commitment and the absence of sustainable links in a complex chain of institutional arrangements are impediments to the goals of development. For trainees, the outcomes derived from overseas training are a complex mix of professional, affective, cultural and career advantages mediated by the nature of the work environment. Although most graduates believe in the advantages of overseas training there are also important disadvantages, such as difficulties with re-entry, work relationships, and the development of appropriate professional networks. The studies identify several input and contextual factors that have had a significant influence on longer-term change.     

Women,literacy and health: comparing health and education sectoral approaches in Nepal

Functional adult literacy interventions have been regarded for many decades by policy makers as an effective way of imparting health knowledge. Supported by research on the statistical relationships between women’s literacy rates and health indicators, this dominant policy discourse is based on assumptions that non-literate women lack understanding and confidence, and that formal programmes and institutions constitute the main sites of learning. Proposing a broader conceptualisation of literacy as a social practice and of health as connected with social justice, this article draws on policy analysis and the authors’ earlier research in Nepal to re-examine the relationship between gender, literacy and health. By comparing health and literacy approaches used within the education and health sectors and taking account of new and indigenous informal learning practices, the article points to ways of investigating the complex interaction of factors that influence inequalities in gender and health at community level.     

Creating an educational home: mothering for schooling in the Australian Women’s Weekly, 1943–1960

Abstract

This article examines cultural representations of the mid-twentieth century mother of schoolchildren in a mass-circulation Australian women’s magazine, arguing that schools and schooling have been under-acknowledged in the historiography of mothering, despite their importance in shaping modern childhood and family life. Framing the Australian Women’s Weekly as a medium of public instruction, we identify and analyse its advice about schooling, both direct and implied, across a variety of the magazine’s sections: in illustrations, news, feature articles, advertising, letters and advice columns. This advice was informed by the popular dissemination of medical, psychological and educational expertise, by managed exchanges amongst the magazine’s readers and by the availability of a variety of consumer products. Much of the guidance offered to mothers was aspirational, aimed at educating and thereby modernising the readership. The interconnectedness of advertising and editorial produced visual and textual images of an “educational home” in which children had their learning supported or enriched, just as their bodies were capably fed and clothed. By the 1950s there was an increasing emphasis on interpersonal relations and therapeutic psychology and the Weekly had embarked on a project of encouraging mothers to learn more about schooling, to do more to support their children’s learning and to take an interest in education as a social project. Despite her strong and growing connection to the school through her children, however, the school mother was almost always represented as working outside its physical boundaries during this period.