Gender and education- a review of issues for social policy

Abstract

"In this paper, Ramya Subrahmanian provides an overview of key issues relating to the achievement of gender equity in education, laying out some of the contradictions and tensions in donor discourse and policy efforts, and pointing out some of the disjunctures between policy assumptions and the complexities of household decision making in different contexts. The past decade has witnessed a significant increase in the importance accorded to education, with both instrumental as well as intrinsic arguments made for increasing financial investment and policy attention to education provision. Investing in education is seen as one of the fundamental ways in which nation states and their citizens can move toward long-term development goals and improve both social and economic standards of living. The education of women in particular is seen as providing the key to securing intergenerational transfers of knowledge, and providing the substance of long-term gender equality and social change. Yet the author argues that analysis of how advances in female education can be achieved requires sophisticated conceptual frameworks and tools, which unpack the intersections and interlinkages between social and economic aspects of exclusion. In particular, she argues that it is necessary to understand household education investment strategies as part of a continuum of well-being decisions, vulnerable to the counterpressures and fluctuations caused by economic insecurity and social disadvantage."(pg iii)