The document examines girls' education in South Sudan and South Africa and the dialectic between global gender goals and local empowerment. It uses a post-structuralist approach to look beyond numerical equality and instead focuses on issues of power, discrimination, and exclusion. The research investigated whether and how education can empower girls locally by conducting interviews and focus groups. Key findings included a gap between gender policies and local practices, girls' desire for autonomy and contribution, and lack of collaboration between communities and schools. Solutions proposed include the government playing an active role, challenging traditional gender roles in schools, and achieving substantive gender fairness beyond just access.

1. The Dialectic between Global
Gender Goals and Local
Empowerment:
girls’ education in Southern Sudan
and South Africa
Holmarsdottir at al., 2011

2. To what extent has
school and family
shaped your gender
identity?

3. Key issues
• How is gender equality and equity
understood at grassroot level? And how
does it relate to the national policies of
”global governance”?
• How to research gender equality in
education, not in a numerical way, but
going beyond parity?

4. Context
South Sudan South Africa
• Post-civil war • Post-apartheid
• 7% of the teachers are • Reached numerical equality
women
• 2% of girls graduate primary
school

5. Post-structuralist approach
• Examines the construction of meaning and power
relations as they affect the contemporary educational
decisions
• Seeks to identify and expose biases that marginalize the
educational needs of women and contribute to
educational disparities

6. Global Governance/
World Institutionalization of Education
Global governance does not only affects the way
in which educational systems are influenced, it
also involves how we view and define various
issues within education.

7. Empowerment
A process by which people, organizations, or groups, who
are powerless become aware of the power dynamics at
work in their life context, develop the skills and capacity
for gaining some reasonable control over their lives,
exersice this control without infringing upon the rights of
others and support the empowerment of others in the
community.

8. Empowerment contd.
Situation of empowerment Empowering Situation
Dimensions of empowerment
Cognitive Psychological Political Economic

9. Composition of Power
Power over Power to
Controlling power which may be Generative or productive power
responded to with compliance, which creates new possibilities
resistance or manipulation. and actions without domination
Power within
Power with The spiritual strenght and uniqenes that
recides in each one of us and makes us
A sense of the whole being grater
truly human, its basis is self-acceptence
than the sum of individuals and self-respect which extents to respect
for and acceptence of others as equals

10. Liberal Developmentalism
New dimensions to the liberal concept of justice. It
emphasizes that the goal of both justice and
poverty reduction should be to expand the
functional capability people have to enjoy
functional capability *Valuable beings and doings such as being
nourished, being confident or taking part in group decisions

11. Main objectives of research
Investigate whether or not (and to what extent)
education can be seen as a tool of empowerment
for girls.
Case of South Sudan (Juba) and South Africa(Cape Town)
Methods used
Focus group discussions, formal and informal
observations, and individual interviews

12. Findings
• Gap between policy and local practice in education
• High desire of girls to have control over their own life
choices, to be autonomous, to make a contribution to
the community
• Education represents hope for the future and change
• Peer group culture within the school environment
• Lack of correlation between the community and
school
• The NGO’s and the government in South Sudan do not
collaborate as equal partners

13. Solutions
• The government needs to be an active partner in
implementing gender equality projects
• Schools that challenge traditional sex roles
• Female teachers as role models and agents of
change
• Pedagogical structural tools to achieve gender
equity (fairness)
• Seeing gender equality as a part of the larger
vision of a democratic society
• What about the boys?

14. Conclusions
• “Go beyond the numbers”
• A post-structural approach focusing on qualitative studies
of the nature of power, discrimination and exclusion
• Parity doesn’t necessarily bring about empowerment
• Access to meaningful education (that provides epistemic
access)
• Development of fair gender practices, pedagogical content
and social settings at school

15. To what extent can education
contribute to gender equality
and equity?