Power,knowledge and politics: Exploring the contested terrain of girl-focused interventions at the national launch of the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative in The Gambia

Abstract

Gender equality in education has become a highly embedded norm in global development policy, as well as within the poverty reduction and national development policies of aid recipient countries. Despite such progress, however, we know little about the significance of competing gender equality and education policy orientations (e.g., human capital, human rights, human capabilities), especially in relation to the power and political dynamics at work in the enactment of global gender equality in education policies in national policy spaces. This article addresses these gaps in the literature through a qualitative examination of girls’ education policy in The Gambia, a country widely hailed as a leader in the promotion of gender equality in education. I use an analysis of the produced knowledge of World Bank and government documents alongside the findings from an ethnographic account of the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) national launch workshop in The Gambia to illustrate my central claim that girls’ education policy, on the ground, is more complex and contested than is suggested in the produced knowledge of donor and government documents. Moreover, my account of the UNGEI launch workshop serves to highlight some of the challenges and tensions associated with the global–national interface of efforts to promote gender equality in education.

Keywords

education Gambia gender knowledge policy UNGEI

Gender equality in education has become a highly embedded norm in global development policy, as well as within the poverty reduction and national development policies of aid recipient countries. Goals, targets and commitments concerning gender equality in education are included in the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and Education for All (EFA) global frameworks, as well as the World Bank-led Education for All–Fast Track Initiative (EFA–FTI), now the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), and the UNICEF-led United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI). The policy documents associated with these initiatives indicate that bilateral donors, multilaterals, international and regional financial organizations, transnational civil society, and the private sector generally agree that gender equality in education is an important development (however defined) goal (Fast Track Initiative, 2004; Global Partnership for Education, 2011a, b; United Nations, 2001; UNESCO, 2000; UNGEI, 2010).

However, despite the fact that the way problems such as gender inequality in education and beyond are understood and conceptualized shapes the forms of policy solutions imagined and adopted, researchers have only recently begun to take seriously the significance of different rationales driving the promotion of gender equality in education, be they focused on the extrinsic values associated with human capital development, the intrinsic values associated with human rights, or a combination of both extrinsic and intrinsic values associated with human capabilities (Robeyns, 2006; Unterhalter, 2007a). Moreover, tensions between human capital and social justice orientations have remained largely ignored by the key global education research and aid agency, the World Bank,¹ an agency deeply involved in funding and shaping educational development in The Gambia (Bergeron, 2003; Sarfaty, 2009). Thus, the goal of this article is to engage and extend Unterhalter’s (2007a) conceptual framework, comprising interventionist, institutionalist, and interactive approaches to gender equality in education, through a case study of girls’ education policy knowledge in The Gambia. Comparing the findings from document analysis and an ethnographic account of the 2007 UNGEI launch workshop in the country, I illuminate some of the tensions and potential synergies within and across produced and constructed forms of gender equality in education policy knowledge.

The article is organized as follows. In the first section I link key findings from a review of the gender and education literature to Unterhalter’s conceptual work on interventionist, institutional, and interactive approaches, followed by a brief discussion of the study methods, focusing in particular on how and why I use the concepts of produced and constructed knowledge in my analysis. Next, I provide a brief account of the Gambian socio-economic and political context and education policy landscape, with particular attention given to gender relations. Representing one of the leading gender equality in education initiatives globally, UNGEI is then introduced and briefly discussed, followed by the presentation of the key findings from the launch workshop before wrapping up with some concluding remarks.

Conceptualizing and analysing the production and construction of gender equality in education policy knowledge in The Gambia

As introduced above, in her important book Gender, Schooling and Global Social Justice, Elaine Unterhalter (2007a) theorizes three main policy approaches characterizing the global promotion of gender equality in education: interventionist, institutional and interactive. In support of the shared EFA and MDG gender-related education goals of promoting girls’ access to and completion of basic education, interventionist approaches have dominated, in which the focus has been on assessing gender gaps in education, identifying barriers, and developing best practices (see Hertz & Sperling, 2004; Kane, 2004; Tembon & Fort, 2008). Whereas interventionist approaches, following the logic of the Women in Development (WID) paradigm, emphasize changing individual women and girls rather than changing the system structures that constrain girls’ and women’s educational and life opportunities, institutional approaches, as the name suggests, focus on legislative reform, the creation of new institutions, and other forms of gender-sensitive capacity-building in the system.

A central critique of interventionist and institutional approaches is that they have tended to be de-linked from local level relations of power and the politics both between and within global and local policy communities involved in efforts to promote and enhance girls’ educational opportunities through the formation of multi-level and multi-sited partnerships such as those associated with UNGEI (Connell, 2010; Unterhalter, 2007a; Vavrus and Seghers, 2010).² However, within the context of calls to move ‘beyond access’³ – that is, moving beyond minimalist concepts, such as parity, of what gender equality in and through education entails – recent literature has begun the necessary task of examining gender equality in education as a contested policy terrain at both national and global levels (Aikman and Unterhalter, 2005; Heward and Bunwaree, 1999). For example, this literature has highlighted the challenges (and, at times, opportunities) posed by different theoretical orientations informing policy and practice (i.e., human capital, human rights, human capabilities) (Unterhalter, 2007a); variations in political commitment and leadership with respect to promoting gender equality as a transformative and political process as opposed to a technical and depoliticized exercise (North, 2010; Unterhalter, 2005; Unterhalter and North, 2010); and the different priorities, perspectives and strategies of various local feminisms which are informed by context- specific historical, political, economic and socio-cultural dynamics (see the collection of chapters in Basu, 1995).

Starting from the premise that interventionist and institutional approaches are ‘necessary but insufficient’, Unterhalter theorizes the interactive approach as a blend of the two former orientations to promoting gender equality in and through education (Unterhalter, 2007a: 141). Drawing on and aligning with some of the major tenets of human capabilities theory,⁴ such as difference, freedom and capability equality, the interactive approach emphasizes the necessity of dialogue and negotiation concerning the weighting and content of rights and capabilities claims as a means to broaden and deepen the gender equality in education (and beyond) agenda (Unterhalter, 2007a). In the context of the contemporary aid architecture, where education partnerships between civil society, government and donors are becoming a norm, the interactive approach seems promising; however, it remains largely untested, and as yet there seems to be little interest in exploring its potential with respect to deepening and extending the gender equality in education agenda (Unterhalter, 2007a; see also Connell, 2010).

For the purposes of the study I focused on two different forms that knowledge can take – what Brock, McGee and Gaventa refer to as produced and constructed knowledge (2004). As implied by its name, produced knowledge refers to ‘industrially produced knowledge . . . by certain actors for certain kinds of users’ (Brock et al., 2004: 12). As applied in the study, produced knowledge was defined as encompassing the statistical and situational data produced through quantitative and qualitative inquiry into the lives of women and girls in The Gambia. Produced knowledge is also that which describes the vision and rationale for gender equality in education, as represented in official policy and project documents. Key knowledge producers included in the analysis are donors, international financial institutions (especially the World Bank), government and non-governmental actors and organizations. Like Brock et al., I understand that produced knowledge is not a politically neutral driver of policy knowledge; rather, it carries ‘considerable quantities of ideological baggage’ (McGee and Brock, 2001, cited in Brock et al., 2004: 12).

An important assumption underpinning the notion of constructed knowledge is that it is ‘not always evident, visible or explicit’ (Brock et al., 2004: 12). Post-positivist constructivists emphasize that ‘reality’ is constantly in flux as different actors construct different, yet sometimes overlapping, ‘realities’. I conceptualize gender equality in education policy as a ‘highly charged and contested’ political process, with girls’ education discourses and practices shaped by social changes and patterns in wider economic, political, cultural and social settings (Maguire, 2006: 110). Thus, in the study from which this article draws, I expected there to be different ‘realities’, or knowledges concerning gender equality in education circulating and vying for dominance in policy spaces. As Sylvia Walby notes, ‘“gender equality” is a “signifier” that actors attempt to fill with their own preferences’, thereby raising the issue of power struggles in the production and construction of knowledge of what constitutes gender equality, and why this policy goal is important, as well as what precisely it hopes to achieve (2005: 371).

The focus in this article on the launch of the UNGEI network in The Gambia is part of a larger qualitative study I completed between January and May of 2007, which looked at the production and construction of gender and education policy knowledge and action in the country (Manion, 2010). The Gambia represents an excellent setting for an exploration of the global–local interface with regard to gender equality in education policy knowledge because of its relatively long history of state-led efforts to promote women’s advancement, its extensive connections with global development partners, the vibrancy of its civil society sector and the existence of formal government–civil society partnerships in the governance of education. The Gambia’s small geographic size and its proportionately small education policy community were also factors in the country’s selection for the study because these conditions permitted an ethnographic study of policy processes to be accomplished in a relatively short period of time.

The study methods included: in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 35 government officials, civil society representatives and development partners engaged in partnerships with government agencies; participant observation at relevant high-level and other public meetings and workshops; and document and archival data collection and analysis. With the goal of gathering a range of perspectives and understandings concerning girls’ education from central and regional government officials and civil society organizations (CSOs), interviews and observation activities were completed in two rural and one urban region of the country.⁵

The two-day launch workshop for the UNGEI network in The Gambia brought together a range of governmental, non-governmental and donor actors to develop the national Terms of Reference (ToR) to guide the development and action of the UNGEI network in the country. The findings from this workshop are based on data drawn from field notes, hard copies of keynote presentations and the draft ToR document that was circulated at the workshop.

The Gambia country context and policy landscape

The Gambia is the smallest mainland country on the continent of Africa and has an ethnically and linguistically diverse population of around 1.7 million (2007) (UNESCO, 2010: 306). It is a majority-Muslim country, increasingly influenced by Islamic reformist and revivalist movements active in the West African region (Darboe, 2004; Janson, 2005; Miles, 2004; Musawah/Sisters in Islam, 2009). While governed by an officially secular state, Islamic symbolism, ideologies and practices have historically been significant in public and political spheres (Darboe, 2004; Hughes and Perfect, 2006; Miles, 2004).

Ranked 168 out of 205 countries in the Human Development Index of the most recent Human Development Report, The Gambia is among the poorest countries in the world (UNDP, 2011). The Gambian economy is generally considered weak and undiversified, and there is high unemployment, especially among youth (Chant, 2007; DoSFEA, 2006). A high population growth rate in The Gambia has been identified as a constraint on the Government’s ability to serve the educational needs of its growing population (World Bank, 2009).

Donor-supported national efforts to promote and enhance girls’ educational opportunities appear to have had a significant impact with respect to girls’ enrolment, particularly at the basic education level. For example, the Gross Enrolment Rate (GER) for girls at the primary level increased from 50% in 1990 to 89% in 2008 (World Bank, 2010a). At the secondary level, the GER for girls increased from 12% in 1990 to 49% in 2008 (World Bank, 2010a). Primary completion rates for girls have increased from 36% in 1995 to 83% in 2008 (World Bank, 2010a). Despite these gains in girls’ participation in formal education, as of 2008 only 34% of Gambian women aged 15 and over were considered literate, compared with 57% of the adult male population (World Bank, 2010a). While overall gender inequalities in the education system continue to favour boys, a declining enrolment rate for boys, particularly at the primary level, in some regions of the country has been noted (RTG/DoSE, 2004: 52; World Bank, 2010a).

In The Gambia the reproduction of gender norms rooted in socio-cultural, economic and religious processes that generally relegate women to second-class status appear to co-exist in tension with the official state discourse concerning the critical importance of promoting women’s advancement, particularly through enhancing formal education opportunities. In 2010, The Gambia ranked 120 out of 137 countries on the Gender-Related Development Index (GDI), with a value of 0.742, slightly lower than the average for low human development countries (UNDP, 2010). High fertility rates, high levels of female illiteracy relative to men, the common practice of early marriage and women’s general lack of decision-making power in so-called private and public spheres serve to maintain women’s subordinate position in Gambian society (Bessis, 2005; Bojang-Sissoho, 2004; Cheruiyot, 2006; Cole et al., 1999; Parrett, 2004; Touray, 2006).⁶

Indeed, the same constraints and challenges that were identified in the first World Bank study into why families under-invest in girls’ education persist today (World Bank, 1995). Factors such as the heavy domestic burden of girls, the practice of early marriage, parental fears of pregnancy or generally ‘immoral’ behaviour amongst school girls, sexual abuse and harassment in schools, as well as parental preferences to educate sons because they presumably will ‘lead’ the household in the future, whereas women are ‘married off’ and any education received will benefit their husbands and in-laws, all pose constraints to enhancing girls’ education and achieving gender equity in and through education. Clearly, there is a need to maintain girl-focused interventions to address gender-based educational inequalities, perhaps in addition to measures aimed at understanding and addressing some of the recently exposed educational challenges facing boys in the country.

The Gambia is a country heavily dependent on external development assistance, particularly in the education sector (World Bank / African Development Bank, 2008: 31). Consequently, the development, funding, implementation and evaluation of national education policies, particularly those addressing gender concerns, have been strongly influenced by donor priorities, discourse and practice. Education is a constitutionally enshrined right in The Gambia (Republic of The Gambia, 1997). Since the late 1990s through to present day, national education policy documents and project proposals in The Gambia have explicitly expressed formal political commitment to enhancing girls’ education, particularly framed in human capital terms towards the goal of poverty alleviation (Republic of The Gambia, 1997, 2002, 2006).

The Revised National Education Policy (RNEP) 1988–2003 (revised in 1998) and its companion, the Education Master Plan 1998–2005, make fundamental the achievement of ‘equity’ and the reduction of gender disparities in terms of access and retention in education (RTG/DoSE, 1998a: 10). Articulating government commitment to liberal notions of formal equality, the Education Master Plan (which establishes specific strategies and lines of responsibility for different actors) states that: ‘Equal opportunities and access will be created for girls and women from an early stage . . . all interventions will be geared towards creating an enabling environment for girls and women to compete equally with boys and men’ (RTG/DoSE, 1998b: 22).

Toward the achievement of gender-related education policy goals, and for the first time in the country’s history, a Girls’ Education Programme was implemented in The Gambia between 1998 and 2005, with the support of the World Bank and UNICEF (RTG/DoSE, 1998a, b). In its project appraisal document for the Second Education Sector Project (1990–1998), the Bank framed girls’ education as a predominantly rural problem, with key barriers being the lack of adequate facilities as well as religious and cultural factors (World Bank, 1990). The policy solutions implemented as part of the Girls’ Education Programme reflect those associated with interventionist and institutionalist approaches, including:

Lowering the cost of education for girls through a female scholarship scheme at the upper basic and secondary levels;

Encouraging a flexible payment schedule of fees for non-sponsored students in addition to lowering tuition and book fees through policy reform;

Providing a clean, safe and supportive environment for girls in school;

Mobilising and sensitising communities to develop local solutions to the problem girls face in their communities by expanding Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) activities. (RTG/DoSE, 1998b: 22)

In line with a human capabilities perspective a key assumption is made in the RNEP that through formal schooling individuals can ‘develop to their full potential’; however, this is framed in instrumentalist terms as enabling individuals to ‘contribute to life in their community and the nation at large’ (RTG/DoSE, 1998a: 9), and not in terms of the goals of human freedom and well-being as articulated within the human capabilities approach (Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 2000). As framed in the RNEP, the role of education is the facilitation of national development by raising the human capital necessary to increase productivity and competitiveness to achieve economic growth:

By increasing the productivity of the people, education contributes to better income distribution and the reduction of poverty. An educated and skilled population capable of adapting to change is essential for social and economic development in an environment of growing international competition and in a rapidly changing workplace. (RTG/DoSE, 1998a: 9)

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2004–2015 makes explicit its alignment with EFA and MDG goals broadly, and in particular with the gender equality goals of the respective frameworks of the Department of State for Education⁷ (RTG/DoSE, 2004). According to the NEP, it is towards the EFA goals of ‘gender parity’ and ‘equity’ that the policy seeks to eliminate educational inequalities. Gender disparities are dominantly attributed in the policy document to ‘traditional beliefs and practices coupled with other factors’ (RTG/DoSE, 2004: 26). Further gender analysis is not provided.

Seemingly in alignment with the institutional approach discussed above, a basic aim of the NEP is to ‘Mainstream gender in the creation of opportunities for all to acquire literacy, livelihood skills and the utilization of these skills in order to earn a living and become economically self-reliant members of the community’ (RTG/DoSE, 2004: 13). Yet, gender equity is identified only under the first of five main policy priorities:⁸ ‘Access to Education’ (RTG/DoSE, 2004: 15). Gains made in girls’ education enrolment are noted, but remaining challenges are identified, specifically in terms of enrolment and participation of girls and women at the secondary and tertiary levels. The NEP identifies several types of barriers or constraints on girls’ education – economic, socio-cultural and individual; however, the document does not provide deeper analyses of these, and greater emphasis appears to be placed on the economic barriers to girls’ access to schooling.

The NEP dominantly frames the importance of girls’ education in terms of its contribution to human capital development and economic growth:

The Gambia as a Nation [original capitalization] remains highly committed to developing its human resource base . . . it is for this reason that this policy will be used as a means for the attainment of a high level of economic growth to alleviate poverty . . . (RTG/DoSE, 2004: 13)

Despite using the language of rights in several instances, and even as a main policy aim – namely the creation of ‘an awareness of the importance of peace, democracy and human rights, duties and responsibilities of the individual in fostering these qualities’ – the NEP does not seem to otherwise represent a rights-based approach to education expansion or reform (RTG/DoSE, 2004: 14).

The EFA–FTI has been one of the most important partnership arrangements for the Gambian Government since 2005 (World Bank, 2006b: 9). To be endorsed as an EFA–FTI partner country, The Gambian government had to make a commitment to girls’ education as part of their national education plan and grant proposals. Thus, both the original 2003 proposal for EFA–FTI financing and its companion National EFA Plan document identify the attainment of ‘gender equity’ in primary and secondary enrolment by 2005 as key policy goals (RTG/DoSE, 2003: 2). Government commitments to girls’ education, as spelled out in the 2003 EFA–FTI grant proposal, are largely premised on human capital and economic-instrumentalist⁹ assumptions (as opposed to human rights and/or human capabilities) concerning the role of girls’ education in facilitating national economic growth and development (Unterhalter, 2007a). For example, the document states that ‘Increasing the participation and retention rates of girls will be a critical part of this EFA/FTI proposal, considering the returns associated with girls’ education and the potential it has in overall poverty reduction (RTG/DoSE, 2003: 12).

In the 2007 Technical Proposal for support under the EFA–FTI Catalytic Fund increasing girls’ access to and retention in basic education is again identified as a priority; however, in describing the challenges to ‘increasing access and equity to basic education’ the document states that ‘there has been considerable access in basic education, it should be noted that such expansion has been in favour of girls due to the worrisome drops in enrolment for boys in lower basic education’ (RTG/DOSE, 2007: 4).

Before concluding the discussion of the girls’ education policy context in The Gambia, I want to draw attention to an important and recent shift in World Bank project documents away from equity concerns and toward giving greater priority to quality of education issues. My analysis of Phase II (2005–present) program documents for the World Bank’s Third Education Sector (1998–2012) project suggested that the sense of urgency concerning girls’ education, which characterized the discourse of earlier World Bank education projects in the country has been downgraded in more recent times. While challenges in terms of girls’ performance in school were identified, project documents highlight that near gender parity has been achieved at the basic education level (grades 1–9) (World Bank, 2006b). Moreover, in both the Phase I (1998–2005) evaluation reports and the Phase II program documents, boys’ education emerges as a key theme (World Bank, 2005, 2006b).

A key difference between Phase I and Phase II of the Third Education Sector Project concerns the relative emphasis on improving access, and therefore equity in educational enrolment. Whereas expanding access through building schools and providing financial incentives to parents to send their daughters to school was a component of Phase I, in Phase II the emphasis has shifted to improving the quality of education. This is most evident in the recent proposal for additional funding for the implementation of Phase II, where the document is oriented towards justifying the abandonment of equity and access issues in favour of quality (World Bank, 2010b, c; see also World Bank, 2009).

Overall, the produced knowledge in EFA–FTI proposals and implementation reports is similar to that of World Bank sector project documents, as well as national education policy documents. It is clear that education is a priority sector for the Government, particularly because of its role in promoting human capital development and framed as a means of achieving the MDG goal for poverty reduction. The EFA–FTI does appear to be helping maintain formal government attention to issues of gender in education, albeit framed as it is in terms of the goal of ‘gender parity‘. Yet the analysis revealed a decline in the attention paid to issues of girls’ education in the years since the original proposal in 2003.

Education for All and the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI): a brief background

The United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) is a product of the World Education Forum (WEF) held in Dakar, Senegal, in 2000 (Seel and Clarke, 2005). At the WEF, members of the international development and donor communities reconfirmed a global commitment to achieving quality basic education for all children by 2015 (UNESCO, 2000). The launching of UNGEI subsequent to the WEF reflected a shared consensus amongst donor and development partners of the importance of girls’ education and the recognition that there is an ongoing need to target specific efforts towards the promotion and enhancement of girls’ education – where the need is greatest in most countries around the world – in tandem with more broad-based EFA efforts (Rao and Smyth, 2005; Seel and Clarke, 2005; Tembon and Fort, 2008; Zaalouck, 2005).

UNGEI formally advocates gender equality in and through education and thus encourages governments and donors to think and act in connection with a policy vision that goes beyond gender parity objectives and toward the twin goals of social justice and social transformation (Seel and Clarke, 2005). Marking the initiative’s ten-year anniversary, the report, UNGEI at 10: A Journey to Gender Equality in Education, identifies that its vision is ‘A world where all girls and boys are empowered through quality education to realize their full potential and contribute to transforming societies where gender equality becomes a reality’ (UNGEI, 2010: 7). UNGEI has specifically sought to highlight the importance of girls’ secondary education as well as equity in education outcomes – a far more expanded conceptualization of ‘gender equality’ in education than ‘gender parity’ (numerical sameness) (Unterhalter, 2007a). Additionally, while formally a ‘girl-focused’ initiative, UNGEI appears to acknowledge that some boys (especially those from poorer families) lack equitable access to educational opportunities (UNGEI, 2002, 2010).

UNGEI, with UNICEF as lead agency, has been expected to play a complementary role in relation to the World Bank-led Education for All–Fast Track Initiative and the UNESCO-led Education for All movement more broadly (UNICEF, 2008: 12; see also Seel and Clarke, 2005). In its complementary role within these two related frameworks, UNGEI represents a transnational multilateral girls’ education initiative that focuses on developing public–private partnerships towards promoting the principles of efficiency and effectiveness in girls’ education programming, donor harmonization and coordination (UNGEI Representative for Central and West Africa, field notes, 2007; see also Rao and Smyth, 2005). An early UNGEI document states that ‘UNGEI is a pressure group whose mission is to ensure that the EFA goals on gender equality in education are met through collaborative efforts among UN agencies, civil society, governments and donor agencies’ (UNGEI, 2002: 3).

A key strategy toward increasing the effectiveness and sustainability of girls’ education policies and programming is the promotion of national ownership of gender equality in education goals and activities (Rao and Smyth, 2005). Thus, facilitating and encouraging dialogue and networking have been central instruments through which UNGEI seeks to influence the gender equality in education policy process at the global and national levels (Unterhalter, 2007a). Zaalouck (2005) offers a positive assessment of UNGEI, stating:

It encourages countries to foster partnerships to attain these goals and to tackle gender issues in national plans of action, including sector plans and wider development frameworks. It motivates governments to take strategic action on girls’ education, in a collaborative manner which develops known mechanisms and established practices. It calls for the building of flexible structures and – most importantly – strong partnerships which help to strengthen capacity to reach the goals and objectives of the global girls’ education movement. (Zaalouck, 2005: 23)

However, despite registering some success in terms of strengthening attention to gender within the EFA–FTI, producing knowledge and documenting gender and education practice, and cultivating partnerships and spaces for different actors to come together to develop strategies to achieve gender equality in education,¹⁰ there has been some criticism of the initiative:

While the international commitment to partnership for girls’ education appears genuine, lack of funds and human resources, lack of clarity about concepts, respective roles, and responsibilities, and about whether engagement should be strongest at the national or at the regional level, all seem to have plagued this promising activity. (Rao and Smyth, 2005: 13)

The literature also suggests further challenges facing UNGEI, some shared with the partnership approach in general, and others relating specifically to UNGEI itself (Wright, 2005). First, the partnership approach assumes value consensus and a common vision, and in the case of UNGEI the vision is structured by the gender-related MDGs 2 and 3 which call for gender parity in primary and secondary education by 2015 and women’s empowerment (Howell and Pearce, 2000, cited in Rao and Smyth, 2005: 7). It has been suggested that one of the key challenges facing UNGEI concerns the matter of ideological differences between partners, despite there being a seeming consensus on the importance of gender equality in education:

One must, moreover, remember that different organisations may have different justifications for conforming to the consensus: from purely instrumental arguments which advance the economic reasons to increase human capital (World Bank, 2002) to those that emphasise human rights and empowerment. (Heward, 1999, cited in Rao and Smyth 2005: 2)

Ideological differences make partnership work more complex and give rise to questions such as ‘To what extent are partners willing to suppress their own identities to achieve “common” goals?’ and ‘How “common” are these goals given the different ideological orientations of partners?’ (Rao and Smyth, 2005: 2).

Given the reality of ideological differences underlying the promotion of gender equality in education, Rao and Smyth and others (see Basu, 1995) highlight the need to acknowledge power differentials within partnerships for them to be effective and sustainable – something that UNGEI (and most other global initiatives) has largely ignored (2005; Zaalouck, 2005). For example, Wright speaks of the significant ‘agency capital’ that external agencies bring to their engagements with national-level partners, with the implication that context-specific interests and understandings can be overshadowed and marginalized within multi-level and multi-sited partnerships such as UNGEI (2005: viii). Furthermore, Rao and Smyth alert us to the dangers of cooptation facing civil society groups entering into partnerships with more powerfully connected and resourced governments, donors and other external actors, especially given the pattern that donors tend to choose to work with those who are willing to comply with their priorities and agendas (2005: 7). Citing Howell and Pearce (2000), Rao and Smyth suggest that ‘donors’ attempts to strengthen civil-society partnerships have in fact led to the imposition of a particular vision of civil society and of partnerships, blunting the political potential of such organisations‘ (2005: 7).

Speaking broadly about the challenges facing partnerships, UNICEF’s Chief of Education, Cream Wright, states:

. . . partnerships are not only about principles, technical strategies, and operational arrangements. They are more importantly about the ‘politics’ and perceptions of each agency, in terms of its own competencies, comparative advantages, and mandates, as they relate to other agencies, the sector in question, and the country involved. (Wright, 2005: viii)

Based on analysis of the evolving strategic direction and activities of UNGEI, as documented in policy documents, working papers and historical accounts, as well as the findings from consultations with civil society, and the composition of the UNGEI Global Advisory Committee (relatively few civil society organizations), a second challenge relates to the concern that UNGEI processes have been too top–down, despite the official discourse of promoting country-led development and national ownership (Unterhalter, 2007a). One of the consequences of UNGEI’s top–down tendencies is its failure to engage meaningfully with civil society at the international and national levels (Unterhalter, 2007a). For example, at the 2010 UNGEI-sponsored ‘Engendering Empowerment: Education and Equality’ (E4) conference, held in Dakar, Senegal, it was noted that there was ‘a low representation from civil society, women’s organizations and locally based groups, and a strong representation of UNICEF and certain governments’ (Vaughan, 2010, cited in Unterhalter and North, 2011: 16). Moreover, speaking to the goal of promoting national ownership of girls’ education policy processes, Igboemeka argues that it is important that initiatives such as UNGEI are not over-identified with the interests of external actors (2005: 41; see also Unterhalter, 2007a: 149–52). Igboemeka suggests that it is necessary for UNGEI, or any partnership that is committed to the principle of national ownership, to find ways to effectively address diversity and difference in terms of the needs and interests characterizing particular national contexts so as to develop appropriate policy solutions (2005; see also Unterhalter, 2007a). This means taking seriously the claims that feminism speaks differently to differently positioned people and that women’s activism is locally situated (Basu, 1995). Taking difference seriously implies that global partners in the fight against gender inequalities in education (and beyond) must acknowledge the history of ‘complicated and conflictual’ interrelations between global and local feminisms and figure out ways to engage with local specificities in ways that are respectful, yet productive, of new ways of thinking and doing that support the advancement of the disadvantaged in different societies (Basu, 1995: 4).

Launching UNGEI in The Gambia

The 2007 launch workshop for UNGEI in The Gambia, during which the terms of references for a Gambia–UNGEI network partnership were to be established, occurred after years of ‘inexplicable’ delay (Gender Education Unit staff remark at UNGEI launch, March 2007).¹¹ The workshop format included presentations, whole-group discussions and smaller group break-out sessions. There were approximately 50 people in attendance, including representatives from a range of government ministries, civil society organizations, donor and multilateral agencies. Like the other two policy events I participated in during field research, neither the Secretary of State for Education nor the Permanent Secretary for Basic and Secondary Education was in attendance, although they were billed to be (substitute representatives were present). Over the course of two days there were formal presentations given by four government officials, two representatives from multilateral agencies, the UNGEI representative and two non-governmental organization staff.

According to the draft Terms of Reference for the UNGEI Network in The Gambia, produced by the Department of State for Basic and Secondary Education’s Gender Education Unit (GEU), the main purpose of the workshop was to forge a consensus on the vision for girls’ education advocacy and policy practice as well as developing a plan of action for joint collaboration amongst national actors towards the MDG and EFA goals and targets regarding education for all and gender equality (GEU, 2007: n.p., emphasis added). In what follows, I identify and discuss four main interrelated findings from the research, organized by theme: (a) girls’ education policy achievements and remaining challenges, (b) the politics of terminology, (c) boys’ education as an emergent policy concern and (d) questioning the gender agenda in education (and beyond).

Girls’ education: policy achievements and persistent challenges

As articulated by the UNGEI representative at the meeting, the workshop formally focused on promoting and enhancing girls’ education and girls’ education advocacy networks and partnerships; however, an important backdrop to the workshop discussions were the gains made in terms of girls’ education policy as a result of past and ongoing policy interventions. Reflecting the increasing importance, amongst donors and governments alike, of statistical measurements for assessing policy impact, the single most frequently repeated evidence of the success of girls’ education policy interventions was the achievement of gender parity at the lower basic level and near-parity at the upper basic levels.

The UNICEF representative, in her opening remarks, noted that The Gambia’s ‘best practices . . . should be shared regionally in order to consolidate gains’. Indeed, the role of The Gambia as a model for other countries to follow in their own efforts to promote girls’ education was noted by all workshop speakers. Some of the ‘best practices’ highlighted were: the provision of scholarships to needy girls; the elimination of school fees for girls; the mobilization of civil society organizations and local communities in education governance; and the Mothers’ Club initiative.¹² In general, those policy solutions singled out for praise by participants at the workshop were those most widely endorsed by key institutions, such as the World Bank, and reflective of interventionist/instrumentalist approaches as set out at the beginning of this article.

Boys’ education: an emergent policy concern

Reflecting findings from the larger study, during the UNGEI launch workshop boys’ education policy concerns emerged as a key source of contestation and discussion, particularly in relation to UNGEI’s mandate to promote girl-focused education policy interventions. Based on audience dialogue and the speeches made by government, donor and civil society representatives, it was clear that the girl-focused orientation of the workshop’s agenda was broadly recognized; however, concerns over the appropriateness and relevance of continuing to pursue girl-focused policy interventions in education in the absence of those aimed at addressing boys’ educational inequalities were palpable. All of the presentations, except for the ones given by multilateral representatives, mentioned ‘needy boys’, or the ‘boys’ decline [in education]’, or the ‘boys’ backlash’. With respect to the last idea, one government official in the audience suggested that the re-naming of the Girls’ Education Unit to the Gender Education Unit should go ‘some way’ to tempering the ‘boys’ backlash’ against the ‘overfocus’ on girls’ education.

The politics of terminology

Evident throughout the course of the UNGEI workshop was the significance of the language used by policy actors in their discussions of girls’ education issues and policy objectives. In contrast to official UNGEI discourse, the conceptual language of ‘gender equality’ was rejected by powerful government officials in their presentations at the workshop in favour of ‘gender equity’. For example, one of the first speakers, a senior official from the Department of State for Basic and Secondary Education (DoSBSE), raised his voice in emphasis each time he said ‘gender equity’ and emphatically stated that ‘no, we are not going for gender equality’. The preference for the language of ‘gender equity’ expressed by the DoSBSE official did not go unnoticed and it appeared to shape the dialogue that was to follow over the course of the two-day workshop.

For example, when the Executive Director (ED) of the Women’s Bureau rose to formally speak at the workshop she began by explicitly using the language of ‘gender equity’, emphasizing it and saying it loudly, stating that ‘this is what [the senior official from the DoSBSE who spoke earlier] would like to hear’, to some laughter in the room. Later in her presentation, the ED noted that The Gambia had achieved gender parity at the primary level and identified the provision of gender disaggregated statistics on the DoSBSE website; however, she then linked such efforts to the promotion of ‘gender equality’. At this point a senior government official sitting beside the Executive Director of the Gender Education Unit (woman) called out ‘gender equity’ in an attempt to ‘correct’ the participant’s terminology. Apparently in an effort to by-pass the politics of advocacy terminology, the ED switched to the language of ‘women’s empowerment’ for much of the remainder of her presentation. However, the concept of ‘women’s empowerment’, as used by the ED, seemed not to imply power redistribution between men and women; rather, it aligned most closely to depoliticized notions of economic empowerment and instrumentalism, ideas often favoured and promoted by the World Bank.

While individuals did not explicitly explain why the pursuit of ‘gender equity’ was a preferred policy position to ‘gender equality’, findings from the larger study pointed to the idea, expressed in some circles, that the latter was not compatible with an interpretation of Islam that emphasized ‘complementarity’ rather than ‘equality’ between the sexes.¹³ However, rather than directly cite Islam as the source of knowledge underpinning a preference for ‘gender equity’ over ‘gender equality’, participants in the larger study who expressed this belief, as well as those not specifying their position but who dominantly used the conceptual language of ‘gender equity’ during interviews with me, commonly used a discursive strategy in which the issue was identified as being about ‘fairness’, which was in turn positioned as linked to the principle of ‘equity’ but not ‘equality’.

In contrast to UNGEI’s focus on promoting girls’ education, the conceptual language of ‘gender’ and particularly ‘gender education’ was forcefully advocated by government officials as a more appropriate term for describing ‘equity’ efforts in the education sector, replacing the ‘girl-focused’ policy interventions of the past. I suggest that powerful efforts at the UNGEI launch workshop to institute and maintain the focus on ‘gender’ rather than ‘girls’ in terms of educational equality policy was part of a broader pattern found in the study concerning the depoliticized use of gender as a noun (Manion, 2010). In such a construction, ‘gender’ replaces ‘sex’ and is used to refer to groups that are understood to be biologically distinct (Unterhalter, 2007a). This is, quite obviously, far from understanding gender as referring to hierarchically arranged and socially constructed, enforced and performed identities and roles.

During audience questions and comments, many if not most speakers spoke of ‘gender education’ rather than using ‘UNGEI’, or ‘girls’ education’. I was curious as to what the UNICEF/UNGEI representative would (or could) do to address this (i.e., ask questions concerning the meaning behind the concept of ‘gender education’, why it seems to be preferred and the role it plays in dominant understandings of girls’ education policy). However, the UNICEF representative stood to speak next and suggested that the workshop participants keep in mind that, while all the discussions of ‘gender education’ were well and good, the mission of UNGEI was to keep specific and focused attention on promoting and enhancing girls’ education. Re-emphasizing her point about the priority need for sustained attention to girls’ secondary and higher education, and drawing on human capital arguments, she said; ‘Completing primary education is not enough if we want women to make a social and economic contribution to national development’. Field notes record that there were many in the audience who nodded to this statement and several who began speaking out loud about the problems of boys’ education, in connection with promoting national development. The ED responded to the UNGEI representative saying: ‘. . . you want to do a lot and are very ambitious . . . but do we have the capacity [for reviewing social sector policies from a gender lens]?’ The rhetorical question posed by the ED was reflective of earlier concerns she had raised concerning the lack of coordination and clarity of multi-sector gender mainstreaming initiatives. In my analysis, the reaction of the ED reflected a tension between the aspirations and expectations for national-level policy actors expressed by global policymakers and practitioners, and their capacity to meet these.

What is not said in policy discussions can be as important, if not more so, than what is said. The discourse and language of human rights and specifically the right to education was largely absent in both the written manuscripts from workshop presentations by government (including the Gender Education Unit) as well as during group discussions. The UNICEF and UNGEI representatives both emphasized the importance of rights-based approaches and connected these with international conventions such as CEDAW and the UNCRC; however, the only time that the language of human rights was used by a government official was when the ED brought up the draft National Women’s Bill that aimed to ‘protect the rights of women and men’ (original emphasis as recorded in field notes). Field notes recorded that following this statement the audience broke up into laughter. The absence of rights language was somewhat surprising to me given that the draft terms of reference drawn up by the GEU before the workshop explicitly stated that one of the purposes of the UNGEI network was ‘To promote political commitment, multi-sectoral involvement, and appropriate adoption of policies, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child and human rights policies’ (GEU, 2007).

Thus, while the workshop officially represented national commitment to the UNGEI agenda, including the adoption of a rights-based approach, the absence of rights language and the seeming preference for the terminology of ‘women’s empowerment’, largely framed in depoliticized economic-instrumentalist terms, and ‘women’s contribution to national development’ discourses, suggested to me that advocating girls’ education from a human rights perspective was effectively ‘off-limits’. Moreover, the UNGEI regional representative either could not or would not push the rights agenda, thereby missing an opportunity to lend support to national civil society efforts to push for a rights-based approach to promoting gender equality in education and beyond.

‘Do we know where we are going? Do we know what we want?’ Questioning the national gender agenda in education policy

While a central theme of the larger study was the depoliticization of the gender agenda in education (and arguably beyond), there were moments during the research that I witnessed responses from policy actors that revealed awareness of the broader political implications of promoting girls’ education, particularly as framed as part of a social justice and/or feminist agenda. During the presentation by the UNICEF/UNGEI representative, the need to ‘speak with one voice’ and to have a ‘clear vision for girls’ education’ was emphasized in the context of developing ‘public–private partnerships’ (PPP) between civil society, government and the private sector. However, audience responses suggested that finding consensus on a common vision for girls’ education posed more of a challenge than may have been anticipated by the UNGEI representative.

For example, a question asked early on by a woman government official participating at the UNGEI launch workshop both reflected and shaped key concerns and questions regarding the value and appropriateness of continuing to pursue girl-focused educational equity policy in The Gambia. Quite serious and at times appearing exasperated, this education official addressed what she called ‘the gender activists’ at the workshop and asked ‘Do we know what we want? Have we clearly thought about and discussed how it is we can get there?’ She described as a ‘fundamental flaw’ what she found to be a lack of clarity and consensus concerning a national gender agenda and the place of ‘women’s issues’ within it. She asked if it was ‘fifty percent’ that was sought by gender activists, connecting this with MDG 3 concerning the achievement of gender equality, and concluded with the statement that ‘it can’t happen overnight’. The official emphasized the importance of having an educated workforce for the achievement of national development (i.e., economic-instrumentalist interpretation), but stressed that boys and men are ‘being eliminated’ from public policy spaces and ‘that’s a problem’.

The ED joined in the discussion saying ‘gender equality is something to question’ and lamented that there was ‘much confusion’ between what were ‘gender’ issues and what were ‘women’s’ issues and that men were forced to ‘sit behind’ in any case when it came to either of these topics. She asked ‘Are our priorities rights?’ followed by ‘I don’t know? I don’t think so!’ The ED declared that ‘gender activists’ must see it that ‘men are not strangers’ in order to avoid ‘problems’. Again she asked ‘Would I advocate for something I don’t do at my own home? I don’t believe in those things. I see our sisters on TV [talking about] fifty-fifty and I think “we’re taking ourselves back”.’ Further arguing against what she seemed to perceive as oppositional politics, the ED brought up the draft Women’s Bill¹⁴ that was under development at the time, saying ‘what you want to put in it won’t go through . . . you can’t have issues that create controversy’. Claiming that gender activists had their priorities and approaches wrong, the ED indicated that ‘we have to ask for fifty percent not one hundred percent now because people aren’t ready’.

When speaking to the goals of girls’ and women’s advocacy and the concept of gender, a governmental official emphasized that ‘When we talk about gender we do not want to compare [men and women] and create a situation of competition: we want partnership’. The idea of partnership between men and women was connected by this official to the global shift from the Women in Development (WID) to the Gender and Development (GAD) frameworks. She indicated that there had been an ‘over-focus’ on women-only projects and that this has ‘caused problems’. The official proposed the idea of developing a ‘National Gender Policy’ to be implemented alongside the National Policy for the Advancement of Gambian Women (NPAGW) as a means of addressing ‘the problems caused by the confusion that gender refers to women’s issues.¹⁵ Specifically, the hope was to use policy to ‘raise awareness so as to bring more men on board’, saying that ‘we took the wrong direction [focusing on women], but we’re trying to reverse’. The audience responded to these comments with some of the loudest applause of the two-day workshop. All of the other presentations emphasized ‘partnership’ between men and women as the necessary basis for future girls’ education advocacy.

Returning to the theme of responding to a ‘boys’ backlash’, a male government official in the audience suggested that the overriding goal of girls’ education efforts was ‘sustainable national development’ and that it was ‘not advisable to look at it from a feminist ideology or feminist point of view’. The interpretation represented was one that equated ‘feminism’ with being ‘anti-men’, with the official admonishing women’s activists to ‘Involve men if you want gender to be sustainable.’ A woman NGO representative spoke up in support of ‘bringing men in’ and ‘addressing their needs’ as a way of addressing ‘resistance’ to women’s advocacy. However, she also stated that ‘you can’t turn a blind eye to the socio-cultural barriers to girls’ education’ and that there was a continued need for girl-focused policy interventions to combat persistent barriers other than poverty. Expressing a transformative understanding of the role of girls’ education this individual concluded by saying that ‘education was a start’ in challenging socio-cultural norms and practices that constrained ‘gender equity’ in formal schooling.

The UNGEI representative acknowledged her support of the goal of including men in girls’ education policy spaces, saying ‘the Women’s Bureau is very lucky because you have men that want to join you’ (V. Cristofili, field notes, 2007). Following up this statement, the UNICEF/UNGEI representative attempted to re-direct the discussion back to the importance of continuing and strengthening policy interventions towards enhancing girls’ education, without much success.

Discussion and concluding remarks

I began this article by drawing attention to two key problems connected with the global consensus concerning the importance of gender equality in education. The first problematic concerns the inadequate attention paid to the significance of competing policy orientations and rationales for gender equality in education: instrumentalist/interventionist, human rights/institutionalist and human capabilities/interactive (Unterhalter, 2007a). The second problematic concerns the marginalization of questions of power and politics at work in the enactment of global gender equality in education frameworks in national policy processes.

Drawing on some of the findings from my qualitative study in The Gambia in 2007, and using the analytic concepts of produced and constructed knowledge, I have explored some of the central tensions arising in connection to the promotion of girl-focused policy interventions in The Gambia – a country that has historically been recognized by the donor community as strongly committed to promoting girls’ education and women’s empowerment (however defined). Specifically, I have presented the dominant themes and discursive strategies used by different policy actors at the launch of the UNGEI network in The Gambia (constructed knowledge), and sought to compare these findings with the produced knowledge of government and donor documents, where political commitment to gender equality in education has appeared unwaveringly until quite recently.

Based on the findings, I first suggest that the circulation of competing gender equality policy orientations at the global level offers countries substantial leeway to choose between fairly minimalist, human capital-driven economic-instrumentalist accounts of gender equality in education and those that promote more broad-based and substantive notions of gender equality in and through education (e.g. human rights and human capabilities approaches). Even though each policy orientation has been endorsed by key international development institutions, the dominance of narrowly conceived economic-instrumentalist accounts of gender equality in education cannot be denied, and when governments make the choice to adopt such a perspective, this can make the work of gender activists and their allies at the international, national and local levels more difficult.

The second finding concerning the global–local interface of gender equality in education policy highlights the differences between official policy pronouncements and the perceptions and values of those responsible for enacting policy at the national level. Beyond demonstrating The Gambia’s formal commitments to gender equality in education since 1997, the discussion of the girls’ education policy context in The Gambia also highlighted the dominance of human capital-based instrumentalist assumptions driving the gender equality in education agenda in the country. In this respect, equity in education was seen as a driver of economic development, through the enhancement of women’s productive capacity and ‘self- sufficiency’. While space did not permit a full discussion of the gender equality in education policy interventions implemented in the country, it is clear that interventionist, institutional and, to a lesser extent, interactive policy approaches have been/or currently are being attempted in the country. Given the formal policy commitments made by the Government and the relatively extensive girl-focused policy interventions, including efforts to mainstream gender across all sectors of the education system, it would seem reasonable to be optimistic concerning the future of the gender equality in education agenda.

However, the Gambian launching workshop for the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) revealed nationally based tensions and questions concerning the promotion of girls’ education and women’s advancement. In contrast to deficit accounts that locate the main barriers to girls’ education as located at the level of family/community practices rooted in ‘culture/tradition’, the workshop revealed cracks in the officially constructed consensus amongst elite policy actors concerning the importance of girls’ education and the urgency of maintaining and even scaling-up girl-focused policy interventions. In particular, the workshop presentations and group discussions highlighted three main lines of tension mediating the Gambian encounter with UNGEI. First, findings from the workshop revealed the critical importance of the language used in the official articulation of perspectives on girls’ education and ‘women’s issues’ more generally. Second, during the keynote presentations and participant discussion, government officials expressed a mixture of mistrust, resistance, and at times an outright rejection of some of the global commitments made by the Gambian state with respect to a specific focus on girls’ education. Lastly, presentations by both civil society groups and government officials underscored the importance of working with, rather than against, men. Here, the metaphor of ‘partnership’ was dominantly used to describe the Gambian vision for promoting and realizing national socio-economic development.

Ultimately, the findings from the UNGEI workshop suggest that reaching consensus in terms of defining a national gender agenda in education, and beyond, remains an ongoing and somewhat contested process in The Gambia. Moreover, the findings cast doubt on the capacity and/or willingness of donors to critically engage with tough questions concerning how to expand and deepen gender equality in education policy goals and solutions, particularly in contexts where local consensus concerning the importance of such goals is fragile.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the valuable feedback and suggestions of the anonymous reviewer(s) and the special issue editors Elaine Unterhalter and Rosie Peppin-Vaughan.

Funding

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The author also wishes to acknowledge the support of Dr. Patrice Brodeur, Canada Research Chair – Islam, Pluralism and Globalization.

Notes

Biographical note

Caroline (Carly) Manion holds a PhD from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, specializing in comparative, international and development education. She is currently a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Montreal, working with the Canada Research Chair on Islam, Pluralism, and Globalization. Caroline’s geographic region of focus is sub-Saharan Africa and her research interests include gender and education, human rights, sociology of religion, feminist transnationalism, educational multilateralism, global governance and policy borrowing.

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