1. SCHOOLING GIRLS:
GETTING RID OF
PARADOXES
Shweta Singh, Ph.D., M.S.W.
Associate Professor,
School of Social Work, Loyola University Chicago

2. TENSIONS OF IDENTIT Y, ACHIEVEMENT, AND
SOCIET Y: URBAN SCHOOLING FOR GIRLS IN INDIA
Explores pathways to identity and its
underlying motivations in the context of
urban education and schooling.
Used structured focus groups:
Study of girls aged 11 to 15 years enrolled in
grades 6 to 10 from 5 different schools
located in urban India.

3. IDENTIT Y IN CULTURAL CONTEXTS
 Literature on women and girls’ identity:
 Religion and the media are considered the most influential
cultural influences (Collet, 2007; Housee, 2012; Mankekar,
1993)
 With adolescent identity development in Asian populations,
family and parental control are found to be important
influencers of self-concept (Lam, 2007).
 For girls in India, the negotiation of identity is influenced by
both traditional values and values of the evolving social
systems (Bhatia, 2006).
 Adolescents in Delhi reported the self-other construction, i.e.
importance of others in defining self, as important aspect of
identity (Sapru, 2006)

4. RESEARCH PROCESSES
 Six focus groups discussions
 Open-ended questions- narrative-like content.
 Interview questionnaire focused on descriptions of self and
articulation of identity
 Stories and anecdotes of life experiences were encouraged
 40 girls in the age range of 11 to 15 years old enrolled in five
dif ferent schools in a North Indian
 The schools in the study can be categorized as public and private
schools, coeducational and girls’ only schools, and schools with
English versus Regional (Hindi) language as medium of instruction .
 The participants came from a range of middle class households and
the majority of the participants were Hindu.

5. SENSE OF SELF
 The responses described identity as -- impor tant, great,
unique, good, special, talent, and respect
 illustrates an underlying grasp of self
 The importance of “good” over “bad” is stressed in traditional
and religious texts and in contemporary media, television, and
newspapers in India (Kothari, 1994) as well as in the primary
cultural discourse surrounding construction of self and
identity
 The integration of “being” and “doing” and the instinctive
association of both with growing up automatically as a
function of aging
 Responses were indicative of the continued collectivist nature
of Indian society, which supports the importance of group over
individual.

6. RECOGNITION FROM OTHERS
The association with family in Indian
culture is a salient factor of locating self
for these school-going girls (Chaudhuri,
2001).
School was mentioned more frequently
as a context than family

7. IDENTITIES OF WOMEN FRAMEWORK
 Integrates poststructuralist feminist thinking with
social psychology and cultural anthropology
 Explore the multiplicity of pathways to identity and its
underlying motivations under the influence of divergent
cultural, social, and institutional discourses
 The application of identities of women framework
demonstrates that finding meaningful ways to
articulate concepts like: identity, self-location
with social systems, and individual ranking of
systems can be useful tools in social
development

8. NEED
Shows need for a developing research
approaches in International Social Work
 To identify the divergences in composition of self and
identity, roles of social institutions and their values in
constituting and influencing the individual, and
identify and assimilate the likely differences within
societies like India’s

9. LINKAGES BET WEEN GOAL-SETTING AS
AGENCY AND THE EXPERIENCE OF GIRLHOOD
IN THE HOME AND THE SCHOOL.
 For the girls in this study, home and school are
both physical and social spaces, comprising of
individuals with whom they have significant
social relationships and of symbolic positions
within these spaces
 13 structured focus groups with 40 girls enrolled
in grades 7-10 from five schools in Northern
India.
 Phenomenological research examines the
linkages between goal-setting as agency and the
experience of girlhood in the home and the
school

10. CONCEPTS OF GOAL-SETTING, CONTEXT
AND AGENCY
Goal-setting is a multi-layered concept that
involves the establishment of long-term career
goals
 Process comprises the coordination of learning or
mastery, performance and social goals in classrooms
in pursuit of such long-term objectives.
Hypothesis that individual women’s nonlinear
construction of contexts, grounded in culture,
informs the nature, scope and perceived
outcome of agentic performance.

11. GOAL-SETTING IN LITERATURE
Students pursue learning or mastery goals
according to how much they value the content
and whether they “are taught in ways that
encourage or at least allow deep processing
strategies” (Brophy, 2005)
Job values are multi-dimensional constructs
and examine “the content of job-related goals,
that is, what individuals seek to attain through
work” (Barten and Stromso, 2008).

12. METHODOLOGY
 Phenomenological research
 Reflection on the phenomenon being studied
 Researcher identifies emergent common themes and
key statements after deep engagement with the
data.
 Selection of the statements
 Interpreting the selected statements and exploring the
interrelationships between concepts.
 Synthesized and constructed into a case study that highlights
the essential structure of the phenomenon.
 Verifies the constructed case with the participants

13. RESULTS- HOME
Family members’ values are the most
significant factors influencing goalsetting.
On multiple occasions, student state that
they are motivated and encouraged by
different family members to pursue
specific career goals

14. T YPOLOGY OF INFLUENCE
Fathers (n=21), mothers (n=9), and
sisters (n=12) appear in higher
frequency in the girls’ narratives in
connection with education and life goals
than such figures as brothers (n=7),
grandfathers (n=4) or uncles (n=2)

15. RESULTS- SCHOOL
 School is a formal goal-processing site.
 School is instrumental for the achievement of life
goals and capacity for agency.
 However, the educational agenda of the school converges
with the goals set by actors in the home sphere.
 The non-formality of the home takes precedence
over the formal atmosphere of the educational
institution
 The school staff, including teachers, is not
viewed as career role models

16. IDEOLOGIES
 Ideological values are ascribed through practices in
the home and the school and disseminated through
the media.
 Common themes emerge in the dialogues referenced in the
next sections highlight the moderate realist ontology that is
representative of the phenomenological methodology
 The participants themselves do not explicitly
mention broad ideological frameworks (such as
liberal feminism and developmental economics)
 Examined the common strands and the substantial differences
among the students’ articulations of their experiences
 To identify and verify the influences of ideological currents in
the process of goal-setting for the girls

17. DISCUSSION
 The multiple goals perspective is especially instructive in
this case
 Actors in the home sphere seem to exert the most
dominant influence
 The social goal of pleasing parents and relatives seem to be the
most prominent among the three categories of goals
 Performance goals related to academics conform closely
with performance goals deemed necessary for the
achievement of long-term goals, as dictated by actors
within the home.
 Home and school are interconnected in the goal
achievement process and rank first and second in the
hierarchy of social institutions in the girls’ lives.

18. DISCUSSION CONTINUED
Teachers and principals do not act as role
models or influential persons in regards to
goal-setting for the girls
Intrinsic job values of altruism and societal
contribution, such as bettering the economic
lot of the less well-off in India, become
enmeshed with extrinsic job values such as
economic gain and prestige

19. CONCLUSIONS
For the adolescent girls in this study situated
in Lucknow, the performance of agency is
inherent to the goal-setting process
Academic performance goals are coordinated
with learning goals in the classroom
environment and social goals related to family
members’ approval
Career counseling can enhance the agentic
performance of the girls’ during the goalsetting process within the school setting and
later in life.

20. SC HOOLI N G GI RLS A N D T HE GE N DE R A N D DE VE LOPM ENT
PA RA DIG M:
QUE ST FOR A N A P P ROP RIATE F RA M EWORK FOR WOM E N ’S
E DUCATI ON
Proposes that research on girls’
education and schooling in the
developing societies of India and
China is an illustration of the gender
and development paradigm.
Dyad of social value and individual
benefit

21. PERSPECTIVE ON EDUCATION OF WOMEN
IN DEVELOPING WORLD
Feminists are concerned with study of gender
bias against women in content, process, and
objectives
Social activists focus on incorporating content
that is aware of the social and cultural
realities of women
Research approaches in education of women
are grounded in macrotheories

22. THEMES IN EDUCATION OF WOMEN
RESEARCH
 Social value of schooling in Indian and China is
drawn from measurable outcomes
 Two main themes in education of women research:
 Focuses on returns from education
 Feminist theme with a focus on gender bias in education
 Developmental research in women’s education is
primarily focused on the evaluation of the role of
education in generating individual and social
benefits in a cost-benefit framework

23. LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION
Hypothesis of development proposes that
educating women will yeild both social and
individual benefits (McMohan, 1999; Schultz,
1993).
Questioned due to:
 Variations in strength of associations between levels
of education attainments and labor force
participation and growth of domestic output
(Cameron et al., 2001).
 Stems from use of labor force participation as
indicator of women’s contribution to economy

24. FERTILIT Y REDUCTION
 HYPOTHESES:
 Education leads to a desire for smaller family and autonomy
that helps make family planning decisions
 Education leads to awareness of better childcare/lowers infant
mortality
 Women’s awareness about good parenting increases costs of
child rearing (school cost)
 Education of women helps reduce bias against girl -child and
desire for boy-child
 Educated women marry later in life
 Educated women find employment and have less time to
devote to raising children

25. CHILD WELFARE OUTCOMES
Mother’s education in less developed areas
has been found to explain more of the
variance in child welfare outcomes (survival,
health, schooling)
Qualified by two factors:
 The son preference remains strong among women,
even those with higher status as a result of education
and work
 The education of the mother either adversely affects
or does not play a role in survival and health
quotients for a girl-child

26. SOCIAL FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH
ACHIEVEMENT GAP IN INDIA
Social factors associated with the educational
achievement gap are considered common to
most South Asian societies
 Limited number of schools for girls, the
inaccessibility of schools and poor infrastructure of
schools
Traditional role expectations affect the
educational achievement of women, even at
high levels of education
Social limitations of subjects in higher
education

27. INDIVIDUAL FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH
ACHIEVEMENT GAP IN INDIA
 For girls especially: poverty and constraints in
obtaining credit determine the level of investment a
family is willing to make in education of children
 Parents prefer investing in the boys’ education when a choice
has to be made between send a boy or girl to school
 Rural areas also contributes to the gender gap in
achievement
 Gender disparity is noticeable at 2 levels of
schooling:
 Enrollment
 Achievement level

28. GENDER GAP IN RETURNS FROM
EDUCATION
 One reason for achievement gap in education is lower
economic returns from educating women as compared to men
 In addition to lack of opportunity, there is a lack of incentive
for women and their families to support educational
achievement of women
 Gender-based stratification of systems of society
 Occupational systems, labor markets, or state structures, and
economic factors, such as market failure or immature markets
 Studies in India have found a positive association between
higher education of women and increasing economic returns
 Irrespective of gender, there is equality when the years of education
are the same
 Findings reaf firms gender bias against women in the labor
market

29. DO WE NEED A NEW PARADIGM?
 Identifies the:
 Inadequate incorporation of women’s social contexts in setting
goals of women’s education
 Preoccupation with economic developmental goals in
assessing outcomes of education
 Narrow frame of reference for the identification of problems
 Advocacy of universal solutions for women’s education
 Underlying principle of gender and development
paradigm in research on women’s education is that
education is beneficial, irrespective of local and
individual context

30. DO WE NEED A NEW PARADIGM? CONT.
 The social outcomes of education/schooling are considered
preludes to beneficial outcomes for the individual (self esteem/self-reliance)
 The process of deciding upon the need, suitability, and
usefulness of education emphasizes social benefits and
ascribed individual benefits while largely ignoring women’s
viewpoints.
 Focus of education women research is more on individual
performance
 Need to study education and schooling within individual
contexts in order to provide alternative explanations for
dif ferences in educational achievement and education
associated outcomes for women