Introduction
Empowerment is a process of gaining control over self, resources and decision making.[1] Associated with it are notions of freedom, justice, equality and equity as that is what widens choices available to an individual. As powers get more equally distributed, power relations change so that no individual or group can restrict others or render them powerless. In the context of women, it further means liberating them from the ideologies of oppression and stereotypes of gender roles. When women belong to sections that are underprivileged because of caste, poverty or any other reason, they get doubly disempowered because the group itself is disempowered in relation to others. Further women within the disempowered group are disempowered in relation to men who themselves are disempowered in relation to others groups in varying degrees. Therefore the disempowerment of women can take different forms and be of different degrees or nature but its existence cuts across all castes, classes and religious groups.
While talking of empowerment of women, it has to be remembered that the most difficult task is to grapple with centuries old mind set not only of men but also of women. Both find it very difficult to accept that gender is only a social construct that assigns men and women different social roles. It is a conceptual category which refers to masculine and feminine qualities, behaviour, patterns, roles and responsibilities to construct unequal relations and make them seem natural. These are naturalized and even internalized under the pressure of socialization so that women also subscribe to them.
Education for Empowerment
So how can women be empowered? Education is perceived to be one of the ways of doing it but can it empower women by itself or are other inputs needed? It is actually a complex transformative process in which several factors have to come together. Women themselves have to take steps both individually and collectively; civil society has to help; and the state has to continuously create enabling environments.
In South Asia, the patriarchal values and norms are widely prevalent. These put pressure on both boys and girls as girls are socialized into being submissive and unquestioning while boys have no option but to become breadwinners, unemotional and protectors. This significantly impacts the way the capacities of men and women are developed and has consequences for their lives.
Now the question arises why should education lead to empowerment. Perhaps because it is supposed to promote self-recognition and positive self-image, stimulate critical thinking, deepen understanding about structures of power including those pertaining to gender, and create an expanding framework of information, knowledge and choices which is central to empowerment. Further, it is seen as making resources accessible; building self-esteem and self-confidence so that women can hope to fulfill goals not necessarily traditionally open to them. It is supposed to give them the ability to make decisions and make informed choices. However, education does not necessarily stimulate critical thinking and expand understanding of structural or other forms of inequalities. It merely provides particular kinds of information and skills which by themselves may not necessarily lead to empowerment. The critical question is how can education become a route to foster change at various levels – self, family, society and economy so that there is a shift in power equations.[2] Obviously, some enabling environment is also needed which facilitates the participation of girls and women in education. And education has to be of the kind that leads to an understanding of gender relations so that it can create a shift in attitudes and mind sets.
South Asia has the highest levels of gender disparity in rates of participation in education. About 48% of world’s illiterates live in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, of which almost two-thirds are women. There are varying estimates for out-of-school children in the primary school age group but all of them show that gender disparities are highest in this region. Therefore the first step is to provide access to schooling and education to girls and then look at the kind of education according to the teaching experience already acquired by this time as in the last few years, there has been a significant growth in girls’ enrolment especially at primary levels. The gap however, begins to widen from secondary education onwards.
Within South Asia, Sri Lanka has been ahead of others in terms of gender parity at least at primary education with Maldives and Bangladesh also catching up. This is particularly creditable for Bangladesh which has a large population and great poverty. Secondary school participation rates are not high anywhere except Sri Lanka, but gender disparities even at this level are the least in Maldives and Bangladesh. There have been significant improvements in India and Nepal. Gender disparities are the highest in Pakistan at both the primary and secondary levels.[3]
Individual and Civil Society Initiatives
With increased school participation of both boys and girls, it would be relevant to examine whether education is able to facilitate empowerment or not? What signifies change and whether policies and practices are geared towards promoting change? Whether power relations are undergoing any change and if that has anything to do with education? Whether these can be measured at macro levels or micro levels or both?
Dilshad Ashraf and Iffat Farah try to examine the relationship between education and women’s empowerment through tracking the lives of five women educators in the mountainous northern areas of Pakistan.[4] Fatima, Zehra, Khadija, Saira and Rabia were among the first group of women in their families and villages to receive formal schooling and be professionally employed. Conforming to the dominant norms of the region, most of them got married at an early age and lived the extended families of their husbands. Four of them joined the teaching profession after completing their high school. They could not continue their schooling because of lack of resources and societal norms which prevented them from availing of long distance opportunities. Moreover, their reproductive roles and intensive engagement with their extended families meant that they were primarily responsible for family care, farming chores and cattle rearing. Hence, they could not leave their homes to enhance their qualifications in the cities where the opportunities lay. Tracking the lives of these women helps in reconceptualizing that women cannot be studied as a “singular category of analysis” in the development discourse. Education as a means of empowerment of women has to be examined in the light of the relationship between the individual and society which creates and perpetuates gender norms and determines the dynamics of power relations between men and women.
Namita Ranganathan talks of three micro initiatives which had a fair degree of success.[5] CARE, an international non-governmental organization undertook two of these in U.P. (Udaan) and Gujarat (Adolescent Girls Learning Centre of Kutch) in collaboration with local NGOs. The third was an initiative in Rajasthan undertaken by SARD, a large non-governmental organization. All were located in remote rural areas which were educationally backward. The aim was to facilitate the empowerment of adolescent girls through the process of education.
Certain important lessons were learnt, while analyzing what accounted for the success of these endeavours. It provided insights that could be acted upon. An important understanding was that the approach could not be confrontationist. The girls in these initiatives retained their sense of belonging and commitment to their villages and communities, but were encouraged to hope that if they made some small changes in their lives, families and world view, not only they but even other women in their village could lead better lives. Hence they did not get psychologically destabilized which would have been counter productive. Further, there was an attempt to change the perceptions of the parents so that they saw that they should educate their daughters; not push them into early marriages and parenthood; rethink issues pertaining to dowry; and enable women to participate in decision making.
Both the U.P. initiative Udaan and the Adolescent Girls Learning Centre of Kutch (AGLC) showed that members of their respective communities began to accept the zeal of their daughters for education. Although they found themselves caught in the education versus marriage dilemma, gradually they started opting for the former. They also began to rethink several village practices and beliefs and the new ideas started slowly getting accepted by the community. The girls themselves managed to initiate processes of change in areas pertaining to health, nutrition and home management making both education and empowerment more acceptable. This improved the quality of domestic life itself. With regard to the Meo-Muslim community, care was taken not to question the religious basis of the identity of the girls. Instead school timings were adjusted to enable them to get religious education that the community wished them to receive and also formal education so that the two were seen as complimentary to each other rather than antagonistic or exclusive. Given the opportunity, the girls began to get proficient in both. This led to a movement in the community from resistance to participation and finally even to an ownership in the programme.
Another strength of all the three initiatives was that the girls were encouraged to discover their ability to do what are considered masculine tasks. This was to mitigate the feelings of subordination or victimization at having to do typically ‘female’ tasks with their lower hierarchical value. Empowerment was in simple things; for example, the girls discovered that they could come and go on their own and did not have to be escorted by a male relative. They realized that they could talk to strangers, deal with banks and post offices, help in the family business and participate in decision making and other such tasks. It made them aware that the existing gender beliefs were not fixed but could be rethought and reworked.
This understanding provides an approach to gender equality which emphasizes equality in outcomes and not just equality in treatment. It questions the way in which gendering results in the subordination of girls and imposes corresponding pressures of masculinity on the boys. It believes in developing ability of the girls to examine relations of power that are central to the hierarchies of gender. Therefore, it analyzes the assumptions behind it, assesses the disadvantages resulting from it and develops a different treatment that attempts dismantle the disadvantage. The idea is that the process of education must be designed to empower the girls to overcome disadvantage rather than reinforce subordination. This cannot be done through studying women’s issues in isolation. These issues and awarenesses have to be woven into the entire curriculum.
As Namita Ranganathan points out, Stromquist has identified four clear dimensions of empowerment: cognitive, psychological, economic and political. [6] In the three initiatives disicussed by Ranganathan, empowerment does not only mean raising the social consciousness of girls towards gender issues but also inculcation of the feeling that a girl can do what she wants and the building of the psychological capacity accomplish her goals. This is psychological empowerment. It really means reversing the patriarchal scheme of things and taking decisions that would improve one’s position at the personal and social level.
Cognitive empowerment is the ability to understand the subordinate condition of women and its causes; to critically review one’s experiences and patterns of behaviour to see what leads to dependence and reinforces subordination. It implies an understanding of the self and the need to make choices that may at times go against cultural and social expectations. Economic empowerment involves the ability to engage in income-generating activities to get an independent income. This means acquiring knowledge and skills which will give access to jobs. Political empowerment entails the ability to analyze situations politically and mobilize for social change. Collective action has been identified as an important prerequisite for change.
Educators’ Networks for Empowerment
The importance of networking and organizing has been increasingly recognized as a way of advocacy towards empowerment. In a study on SAARC women’s network in the field of education, Tobin explored the lived experiences of 200 rural and urban Indian women from 14 states who faced daily challenges but collaborated with one another to effect changes within themselves, their school and union associations and society. The role of women in education has been gradually recognized.[7] The Serve Shiksha Abhiyan envisages 50% of teachers to be women for a variety of reasons. One is because of many parents will not send their daughters to school if there are no women teachers. The other is that women are found to be more conscientious and caring as teachers.[8] Considering the large number of women who work as educators and whose numbers will only increase, it becomes imperative to see what is their professional standing in relation to men, and whether they are treated as second class citizens. This is important because these women teachers will impact girls and become role models. If they are not seen in empowered and leadership positions, the message they will give their students would be one of gender inequality.
Networking is transformational because it involves creating change from within and without. As Tobin points that various studies on most literature networking discuss groups formulating common goals and working together to accomplish them. Transformative networking is complex, sometimes subtle, and not very noticeable.[9] It may brew within a person or an entire nation’s psyche, until it spills over into the public forum. The change process then escalates into action.
In 1994, the World Confederation of Organizations of the Teaching Profession, (WCO TP), member organizations in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) region and a number of cooperating countries including the Canadian Teachers’ Federation (CTF) established a Women’s Education Network. The purpose was to examine why women in appreciable numbers were not in leadership positions in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The goals were to promote women educators at local, regional and national levels. The ultimate aim was to assist women teachers to generate a collective public voice so that they could overcome factors that hindered their full and professional participation in their respective countries.
Tobin points out that the situation was not unique to South Asia. Women administrators were under represented at all levels of educational hierarchy in every country because the perception was that they could not deal with the complex challenges of administration. Most cultures assumed that the strengths which are considered “feminine” like community awareness and collaborative skills indicated weakness and lack of leadership. This perception however, was predicated on a male-behaviour model which privileges individualistic, competitive and ‘rational’ values as opposed to collective and ‘emotional’ values.
The study looked at the variable affecting the empowerment of women educators in India. These were (a) core beliefs about women as teachers and leaders, (b) leadership and professional development opportunities, and (c) satisfaction with the network. However, Tobin did not concentrate solely on women’s issues as though they were separate from social reality. It was found that the voices of women educators were being increasingly heard through networking and that they were as a consequence being empowered as leaders in different contexts.
In light of the Indian experience, Tobin’s study posed the meta question about SAARC Women’s Network which was whether collaboration with Indian colleagues could lead to the development of new knowledge in the area of networking for educational and societal change? The idea was to explore whether networking can be used as a tool for change in attitudes towards leadership that went beyond classrooms and reached school systems to even larger political arenas. In the area of schools, networking had proved to be a viable tool for professional development and implementation of change. But the question was that did it have the capacity to propel global social consciousness towards equity and equality for all citizens. Because if it did, technology and the information highway had collapsed distances and so regional and global networks were very easy to create.
Also was there a feminist approach to networking which was different from male networks. It was found the women’s networks created purposeful social connections and trusting relationships because women’s ways of knowing embraced a philosophy of inclusivity and honouring individual voices, while developing a common vision. The common focus on building trust and relationships made feminist networks powerful since people are central to the networking process. Therefore, groups of women who shared values, vision and voice and were clear about their short-term goals could create effective networks for change.
The study concluded that the SAARC Network leaders valued collaboration and shared decision-making and creative problem-solving. They were exemplars of women’s capacity to work together to accomplish goals in small groups, larger organizations and networks. Networking assisted women to develop empowerment strategies to expand their roles, manage helplessness, take positive steps and give them momentum. The Indian women teachers were seen as credible professionals who were using their influence in the networks to realize the rights that have been embedded in their Constitution since Independence. The word of caution that emerged was that it was critical for transformational feminists is to realize that empowerment could be a long process and that there could be “slippage” amongst sisters. Hence tolerance and patience were required in the process of achieving emancipation.
Tobin concluded that the women educators were like chrysalids in the process of transformation. They had an inherent understanding of deeply rooted issues, focused vision, and a strategic plan for educational and societal change. The concerns of India Women educators were both macro and micro covering the spectrum from how to heal society to selfless sacrifice within the family and close-knit community. Their attention appeared to be on all humanity, as opposed to the stereotypical traits of male dominance and violent solutions to conflicts.
The State and the Enabling Environment
Apart from civil society, the State has to also create an enabling environment. From the very beginning equity goals for women and the under privileged sections of society were embedded in the Constitution. Syeda Hameed and Devaki Jain have traced the gender discourse from the First Five Year Plan to Eleventh Five Year Plan.[10] Efforts of Syeda Hameed, Member, Planning Commission resulted for the first time in the constitution of an officially designated Committee of Feminist Economists (EOC). The members made valuable changes in the approach and implementation of policies and programmes pertaining to women especially in the context of poverty eradication.
From the First Plan (1951-56) to the Fourth Plan ending 1974, the goals of development were welfare goals specifically addressed to the removal of poverty, unemployment and historical inequalities. The emphasis was on welfare work, rural development, family planning and the development of the social sector. A shift took place in the Fifth Plan (1974-78) from Welfare to development. The Sixth Plan (1980-85) brought the situation and status of women to the fore as a separate chapter on women was added. It was accepted that women’s development had to be taken up in which emphasis had to be on health, education and employment that required a multi-disciplinary approach. Employment was a critical goal and bringing in data on women’s position in the occupational classification of India’s labor and other such information was a big leap forward. Lots of studies were done on women’s place in the political economy and their capacity to organize so as to pull themselves out of poverty and powerlessness. Each one of the four plans extending from 1981-2001, had a chapter on gender. Issues pertaining to women had always been considered in the Plans but right up to the Tenth Plan (2000-2007) solutions and strategies put forward were according to the perceptions of the Members of Planning Commission, which was generally a male perspective.
Dr. Sayeda Hameed began her term of office in the middle of the Tenth Plan. She gradually became aware that women were invisible on many agendas pertaining to deprivation even when they bore the brunt of it. For example, there was deprivation of food, water and infrastructure. There were dysfunctional health centres, malfunctioning systems and corruption at all levels. Also there appeared to be a disfunction between the statistics with the Planning Commission and the ground realities which made it obvious that the schemes were not actually reaching the people. Therefore Dr. Hameed realized that it was not enough to only have a chapter on women and children in the Plan. Rather the whole plan had to be gendered. This led to the formation of the Committee of Feminist Economics in 2007. For the first time the word feminist entered the official bureaucracy and with it the mandate to examine all the chapters of the Eleventh Plan to discuss not just the empowerment of women but see them as agents of growth in the political economy. The major shift of the initiative was to move women away from only the Ministry of Women and Children which was the traditional space for them into the macro economic space.
What the difference in approach did was to include data in the Plan that brought out the unequal status of women. For example, the differential earnings of men and women reflected the discrimination faced by women. Data was included on the female workforce participation in India and its comparison with other countries which also showed the double burden on women in India. The Eleventh Plan included for the first time an entire section on unorganized sector and home based workers both areas in which there was a concentration of women.
The Eleventh Plan building on the Tenth Plan laid out a five-fold agenda for handling challenges to gender equity : ensuring economic empowerment; engineering social empowerment; enabling political empowerment; effective implementation of women related legislations; and creating institutional mechanisms for gender mainstreaming and delivery mechanism. Specific locations of women were identified like women workers in the unorganized sector and farm labour. Specific issues highlighted like access to land, home, credits, employment, amenities for urban poor and the impact of globalization.
For the first time, best practices from the field were included. For example, the Ghadchiroli Model designed and practiced by Ravi and Abhay Bang was highlighted. Here local people, even those who were not educated were trained in health related areas and this reduced neonatal mortality. Then there is the lijjat papad model of growth; the Nalli experience for marketing of handloom products, and the grassroots movements of the single women – Ekal Nari. All these found mention in the Eleventh Five Year Plan document, as did many important subjects like mental health, internally displaced women, women with disabilities, and women affected by disaster. Also, the experiences in the field to examine how have women fared in the Panchayati system were included.
One of the greatest accomplishments was the inclusion of a separate chapter on Urban and Rural Livelihoods in which Village and Cottage Industries, handloom, handicraft, food processing and agro-industries were identified as engines of sustained and inclusive growth. It was emphasized that these sectors provided employment to thousands of people. Therefore, the specific vulnerabilities of groups working in them were identified together with their potential to contribute to India’s economic growth. The chapter on Women and Child was renamed Women’s Agency and Child Rights, to highlight the potential of women beyond reproductive roles of child-bearing and care.
As feminist economists worked together several pointers emerged. First, it was realized that it was useful to work within national spaces without constantly having to deal with international advisories, platform choices and methods that were usually linked to funding and to state machineries of governance.
Second, there was value in pulling together women economists who had engaged with women whether by studying action, innovation, and reality in the fields, or through research in specific areas dealing with women to collectivities or networks or friend groups. This provided space to learn from each other and also from outside.
Third, it was found important to highlight the location of women in economies and their role as economic agents apart from their being social actors. While education, health, gender relations and social services were all crucial inputs especially for women in areas of deprivation but their role as economic agents needed to be emphasized as often it was forgotten that women brought income to households. Therefore, it was not enough to provide safety networks for them in terms of food and nutrition for babies but to see them as making economic contributions. This was even more crucial in times of financial crisis.
The emphasis on women as earners was particularly necessary in developing countries. There were important differences between the South and North. While everywhere in the world, women bear the double burden of biological reproduction, and economic production, the question was what was crucial, at what time and where. The crying need in countries like India was that the State and the society had to understand the economic roles that women played especially at the lower end of the income scale. Once that was accepted, there would be a realization that they needed strong support with infrastructure; funding for organization; upgrading of skills and protection through appropriate labour laws. In the South, women had been the major workers in the export industries because they were willing to work monotonously for low wages without security. The financial crisis leading to reduction in exports because of market depression, had made these women even more vulnerable than before. This provided a lesson for understanding women’s location in economic growth strategies and the differences between the North and the South that would inevitably lead to different strategies.
Conclusion
Empowerment in effect means autonomy in decision making which can only come through the development of the mind and economic independence. Education is an instrument for both but for it to be effective requires individual effort, initiatives of civil society, formation of effective associations and the enabling environment created by the state. Unless all these factors come together, empowerment is not possible. What it also means is a transformation of attitudes of the women themselves and of society. It is a slow process but essential as fifty percent of the population cannot remain disempowered.
Kavita A Sharma
[1] Jyotsna Jha and Uma Masood, “Education, Gender and Empowerment: The Unfinished Agenda in South Asia,” Education Gender and Empowerment: Perspectives from South Asia, New Delhi: UNESCO, 2007, p.1
[2] Ibid p.2
[3] Ibid
[4] Ibid, p.5. See also, Dilshad Ashraf and Iffat Fareh, “Education and Women’s Empowerment: Re-Examining the Relationship, “Education Gender and Empowerment: Perspectives from South Asia, New Delhi: UNESCO, pp. 15-31
[5] Namita Ranganathan, “Towards the Empowerment of Adolescent Girls: Some Micro-Initiatives from Rural India,” Education Gender and Empowerment: Perspectives from South Asia, New Delhi: UNESCO, 2007, pp. 32-52.
[6] Ibid., pp. 49-50
[7] Marily H. Tobin, Today’s Freedom Fighters: Indian Women in Educational Networks, Edwin Mellen Pr. 2008
[8] “New Initiatives for Promoting Girls’ Education,” http://www.wn.org.in/JANSHALA/Oct-dec.3/newintve.html
[9] Marily H. Tobin, Today’s Freedom Fighters: Indian Women in Educational Networks, Edwin Mellen Pr. 2008
[10] Syeda Hamid and Devaki Jain, “Feminist Economists Engage with India’s Eleventh Five Year Plan”, Paper for the IAFFE Conference on Engendering Economic Policy, Boston 2009