Gender And Education Policy

This book combines analysis of policy and empirically based studies on gender, education, and development.

Drawing on case-study research that examined initiatives which engaged with global aspirations to advance gender equality in schooling in Kenya and South Africa, this book looks at how global frameworks on gender, education and poverty are interpreted in local settings and the politics of implementation. It discusses the forms of global agreements in particular contexts, and allows for an appraisal of how they have been understood by the people who implement them. By using an innovative approach to comparative cross country research, the book illuminates how ideas and actions connect and disconnect around particular meanings of poverty, education and gender in large systems and different settings. Its conclusions will allow assessments of the approach to the post-2015 agenda to be made, taking account of how policy and practice relating to global social justice are negotiated, sometimes negated, the forms in which they are affirmed and the actions that might help enhance them. This book will be valuable for students, researchers, academics, senior teachers, senior government and inter-government officials and senior staff in NGOs working in the field of education and international development, gender, poverty reduction, and social development.

This book presents ideas on education, gender and intersectionality through a transdisciplinary frame by crossing disciplinary and methodological borders. Exploring the diversity of educational settings ranging from early childhood to adult education, it brings together scholars from various disciplines to discuss, deconstruct and problematize gender and education in relation to several themes in a comparative, intersectional, local, national, regional and international perspective. Each chapter approaches the topic in an intersectional and/or transnational manner and creates powerful gendered educational knowledge. Questions addressed in the book include: What are the challenges or barriers to gender-equal education? How can we understand the gaps between formal policies and educational practices? The chapters in the book illustrate how gender and education are relevant and needed concepts within the field of transdisciplinary research. The authors hail from a range of countries, such as Croatia, Indonesia, Turkey, UK, as well as the Nordic region, and they critically examine gender and education at all levels and in diverse sectors, and with varied lenses, such as neoliberalism in education, and the inclusion of newcomers and refugees. The work also critically investigates programs and pedagogical approaches, culture and values, knowledge and identity in teacher education. The book further addresses criticisms of Western and Anglophone bias around “white feminism” and the norm of white, male and heterosexual privilege.

This book grounds the education of women and girls in the realities of their lives and experience in diverse areas of the developing world. Moving beyond the previous emphasis on access to education to problematise its content and the way it is experienced, the case studies range from the Arakambut of Peru to the changing experience of racialised education in South Africa. The contributors take issue with the World Bank's view that the education of girls and women is important primarily as a cost-effective mechanism for making women more economically productive. Including an overview chapter on the impact of structural adjustment on education throughout Latin America and Africa, the book provides detailed information on Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Ethiopia, Tanzania, South Africa, Niger and Mauritius. It meets the urgent need to understand the education of women and girls in their economic, political and cultural contexts.

Contributors discuss some key challenges in achieving gender equality in education, give examples of initiatives in a range of contexts, and make recommendations for action. They suggest that there is a more substantive goal to aim for than gender parity, for an equitable education system which allows all individuals to develop their potential.

Despite over thirty years of activism and legislation to eliminate discrimination, parity has yet to be achieved for women in academe. This book describes policy discourse analysis as a framework for considering how those involved in policy-making efforts may make use of discourses that inadvertently undermine the intended effect of the policies they set forth. Allan illustrates the methods of policy discourse analysis by describing their use in a study of twenty-one women's commission reports. In so doing, she highlights the important work of university women's commissions while uncovering policy silences and making visible the powerful discourses framing gender equity policy initiatives in higher education. Her findings reveals how dominant discourses of femininity, access, professionalism, race, and sexuality contribute to constructing women's status in complex and at times, contradictory ways. This important volume will interest researchers across a number of disciplines including policy studies, educational leadership, higher education and cultural studies of education.

Produced for units ESA842 and ESA846 offered by the School of Education in Deakin University's Open Campus Program as part of the Master of Educational Administration and Master of Education degrees.

"For the third time in three decades world leaders reaffirmed their promise of "Education For All" when adopting Sustainable Development Goal 4 in 2015. It is the most far-reaching commitment to quality and equity in education so far, yet, there is no consensus on what the agenda means in practice. With a decade left until the 2030 deadline, Grading Goal Four calls upon the education community to engage more thoughtfully and critically with SDG 4 and related efforts. As an ever-growing number of actors and initiatives claim to contribute to its achievement, it is becoming clear that the ambitious but broad priorities within the goal are vulnerable to cherry-picking and misrepresentation, placing it at the heart of tensions between instrumentalist and rights-based approaches to education. This text, a critical analysis of SDG 4, provides a framework for examining trends and developments in education globally. As the first volume that examines early implementation efforts under SDG 4, Grading Goal Four formulates a critique along with strategies for moving forward. By scrutinising the challenges, tensions and power dynamics shaping SDG 4, it advances rights-based perspectives and strategies for effective implementation and builds capacity for strengthened monitoring and analysis of the goal"--