Unterhalter, Elaine; Heslop, Jo; Mamedu, Andrew; (2013) Girls claiming education rights: : Reflections on distribution, empowerment and gender justice in Northern Tanzania and Northern Nigeria. International Journal of Education and Development , 33 (6) pp. 566-575.

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Abstract

The article considers the analytical connection between two approaches to discussing girls’ schooling and gender justice. One trend considers injustice primarily as a question of inequalities in distribution and raises few questions about the nature of the gender norms associated with inequitable distribution. A second approach looks at issues of empowerment, the ways in which structural gendered inequalities in the political economy and socio-cultural formations constrain the capacity of girls inside and outside school to claim the rights promised by education, but tends to underplay issues of distribution. The article considers what the relationship between these two approaches to gender justice might be though a detailed discussion of baseline data collected in 2008 for the NGO led TEGINT (Transforming education for girls in Nigeria and Tanzania) project. Girls’ identification of the obstacles to claiming education rights and possible solutions are used as proxies for empowerment, while different features of distribution are examined with regard to gender parity in access and progression, governance and management, and teacher qualifications. Quantitative data based on responses to a survey allows for correlation between aspects of distribution and empowerment to be considered across different contexts. The strongest association between empowerment and distribution is found with regard to the levels of teachers’ qualifications, although there is not sufficient data to explain the reasons for this. The conclusion highlights the importance of contextual factors in understanding the relationships between distribution and empowerment evident from the data and the importance of designing future studies to look more closely at the dynamic two way relationship of distributional and empowerment aspects of gender justice in education.

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