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Beyond access: transforming policy and practice for gender equality in education

This book is the result of a collaboration between Oxfam GB, the Institute of Education, University of London and DfID. The value of this book is its efforts to take seriously the promises of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 2 and 3 in particular, and to explore conceptually and empirically what these imperatives mean in a range of lowincome contexts. It starts by making important conceptual distinctions and clarifications to broaden concerns for gender equality beyond those of statistical surveillance or policy objectives to more qualitative issues and relations in a range of national and institutional contexts. The editors convincingly make the point that viewing education within a wider social landscape connects the aspirations of MDGs 2 and 3 with major implications for policy, practice and interventions for gender equality as well as for research. They specifically highlight the need to go beyond the singular concern for girls’ access to primary school to include issues related to adult literacy, HIV/AIDS, masculinities and conflict in ways that acknowledge the complexities of gender and other social relations within different contexts. The interplay between policy and practice is set up as a central axis of the contributions which follow. Part 1 focuses on the breadth of the challenge, Part 2 looks at the relations between policy and practice in projects in a range of national contexts and Part 3 provides examples of successful innovatory interventions. The main issues are brought together in the Conclusion which emphasises the positives but restates the key challenges for social and educational change for gender equity. Part 1 starts with a chapter by Elaine Unterhalter in which she provides a review of theoretical frameworks in the field. This covers, in an almost developmental way, Women in Development (WID), Gender and Development (GAD), poststructuralism and finally the preferred rights and capabilities approaches. It provides a good overview in relation to WID and GAD but becomes rather schematic and truncated in its consideration of poststructuralism which, in passing, is linked to postcolonialism. They appear to be set aside as of limited use to policy and practice, and because they are predominantly used in ‘Northern’ contexts. All three approaches fade compared with the potential of the capabilities approach although the justification for this is also rather brief and for me not very convincing. This chapter is followed by a Global Campaign for Education review of the issues on the ground and some successful interventions ending with a manifesto for future action. In a somewhat contradictory way, given the earlier arguments in the book, the third chapter then proceeds to discuss the development of another set of indicators through which gender equality in education might be measured. To some extent this section of the book is trying to deal with two key tensions in considering gender equality in education, that between the universal commitments, indicators and measures and the acknowledgment of the importance of contextual conditions in the production of inequality (and identities), and secondly the imperatives of advocacy and for intervention irrespective of understandings of how the Compare Vol. 38, No. 5, October 2008, 643–656