Girls’ education: The power of policy discourse

Abstract

Girls’ education has been a focus of international development policy for several decades. The discursive framing of international organizations’ policy initiatives relating to girls’ education, however, limits the potential for discussing complex gender issues that affect the possibilities for gender equity. Because discourse shapes our understanding of reality, the emphases and omissions of policy language can affect our understanding of complex issues such as the challenges of girls’ education in international development. Using feminist critical policy discourse analysis, this study analyzes 300 policy documents, published between 1995 and 2008, that represent the ‘public face’ of 14 organizations active in the field of international development education. We examine three types of discursive arguments given in the documents for educating girls: justice arguments, utility arguments, and empowerment arguments. We show that the robustness of ‘gender’, and related concepts such as equity and equality as theoretical constructs, are limited, which is a factor constraining what can be understood as important in gender equity in education. Policy remains focused on girls and not gender (or boys), and on easily measurable indicators (counting boys and girls in school). This policy discourse does little to recognize that gender as a social process reproduces – or has the potential to challenge – social inequities.

Keywords

Discourse education equity gender girls policy

Introduction

Gender inequalities in international development policy have a long history. In 1970 Boserup noted that, despite women’s centrality in subsistence agriculture and other life activities, they played a marginal role in internationally funded projects. In the early 1990s, King and Hill (1993) took stock of enrollment patterns in education in low-income countries, revealing clear gender disparities. Following the Beijing World Conference on Women in 1995 and a variety of international development policy conferences and initiatives throughout the decade, educating girls became a key global policy priority in education, as shown by its prominence in international agreements such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed to in 2001 and the Education for All (EFA) Platform for Action (2000), to which many governments, UN and bilateral development agencies, and nongovernmental organizations are committed. Since the 1990s, the number of girls in schools has increased and the disparity between girls’ and boys’ enrollments has decreased. Overall, the number of all children in school has increased, although not enough to meet the 2015 goals for full primary education for all children as indicated by the MDGs and EFA (UNESCO, 2008). Furthermore, a number of other significant issues related to educating girls – violence in and en route to school, quality of education, gendered stereotyping in curriculum, girl-friendly pedagogy, to name a few – have been slower to be implemented in projects and programs (DeJaeghere and Lee, 2011; Leach and Mitchell, 2006; Monkman, 2011). How we understand issues related to educating girls globally, or to gender and education, shapes the ways we then engage in them. Policy discourse shapes our understanding, which defines what is within and outside the scope of possible action. If getting girls into school is the primary problem (discursively framed), then efforts to increase enrollments will be prioritized. If the social construction of gender is recognized as key to determining who goes to school, why, what is taught, and how education is important, then we might prioritize engaging those more complex social processes and their consequences in our work.

The purpose of this study is to make sense of policy discourse on girls’ education through an analysis informed by interpretive and qualitative approaches to textual discourse analysis (Altheide, 1987; Ball, 2006; Lakoff, 2004; Rizvi and Lingard, 2010) that will be explicated in the third section. Our aim is to go beyond the obvious and manifest meanings in policy texts, and probe latent meanings, assumptions, and omissions. The textual discourse analysis involved about 300 publicly available documents produced between 1995 and 2008 by 14 organizations (international development agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), consulting agencies, and multi-organizational initiatives) heavily engaged in girls’ education activities globally. This article is not about what actually happens in girls’ education programs or about how organizations do their work; it is about how the language employed in policy about educating girls globally shapes the ways readers understand the field. This article examines the discursive framing of this policy priority with an eye to understanding how that framing both enables and constrains certain conversations and ways of understanding and of doing. As with other critical approaches to policy analysis, we regard ‘policies as . . . representations of knowledge and power, discourses that construct a topic’ (Maguire et al., 2011: 597). In this study we focus on the various ways in which education policy has discursively constructed girls’ education globally, and find that it has not only narrowed the scope and complexity of the issues, but also fallen short of engaging a rich notion of gender to inform work in this area.

Girls’ education and development

Twenty years ago, King and Hill (1993) compiled a collection of World Bank commissioned studies on the education of women and girls worldwide. In examining the state of women’s education across regions, they found that ‘. . . the level of female education is low in the poorest countries, with just a handful of exceptions, and by any measure, the gender gap is largest in these countries’ (p. 2). In following up on this research, Lewis and Lockheed (2006) found, based on data of 2000, that although many countries have made gains with regard to gender parity in enrollment, and a few now have more girls in school than boys, the general patterns remain the same: too many children are not in school, and overall the majority of these are girls. Ten years later, comparing 1990 and 2010 data, UNESCO/UIS (2012) found that the gap between boys and girls not in school has been reduced from 20 million to 1.5 million: great strides have been made in reaching gender parity (parity refers to equal numbers of boys and girls in school). While gains have also been made toward enrolling all children in school – an increase of 45 million children now in school – there are still over 165 million children globally who are not in school (UNESCO/UIS, 2012). Most of these statistics pertain to primary school; less progress is seen in other levels of schooling.

Field research (e.g. ethnographic studies and localized projects), on the other hand, points to a much more complicated set of concerns (DeJaeghere and Lee, 2011; Holmarsdottir et al., 2011; Molyneaux, 2011; Murphy-Graham, 2012; Shah, 2011). Reasons why girls are (or are not) in school are complex, and the integral relationship of education to social context (including structural inequities, discrimination, patriarchy, etc.) are not fully addressed in policy discourse (UNICEF/Miske Witt and Associates, 2007; Herz and Sperling, 2006). Reasons for gender disparities and less-than-universal enrollment include sociocultural and religious values, long distances to school and safety concerns, and financial and opportunity costs for educating girls including the economic burden of school fees and uniforms along with the loss of girls’ work in the home or fields (Cammish, 1993; Colclough, 1993; Page and Jha, 2009; UNCIEF/Miske Witt and Associates, 2007). No one of these factors alone is responsible for keeping girls from school; the issues are complex and involve cultural, ideological, social, and economic elements (Aikman and Unterhalter, 2005; Heward and Bunwaree, 1999; Kinyanjui, 1994; Page and Jha, 2009).

The increase in enrollment for all children, but especially girls, has been facilitated by global commitments to educating all children. A focus on education as a key strategy for development began with the 1990 United Nations World Conference on Education for All (EFA), followed in 2000 with a meeting in Dakar to take stock of progress and recommit to EFA. The original 2000 target date was moved to 2015. The third (of six) EFA goals focuses on gender parity, and several of the other goals also acknowledge the importance of educating girls. Also in 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were adopted with a target date of 2015. Three of the eight MDGs focus on education and/or gender. In addition to these international commitments was a commitment to gender equality agreed to at the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women, resulting in a Platform for Action. Furthermore, three treaties address gender and education concerns: the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, in force in 1990 and ratified by 192 countries), the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, in force in 1981 and ratified by 185 countries), and the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, in force in 1976 and ratified by 160 countries). The CRC supports access to schooling for all children, including girls, CEDAW addresses discrimination and violence against women, and ICESCR prioritizes equality in a range of life domains (work, education, etc.). Unterhalter (2012) argues that, while these treaties are ‘a tighter form of legal agreement between states, [there is] less detail [about] aspects of educational organization . . . that might bear on gender equality’ (75). In contrast, she sees that the Beijing Platform for Action is the ‘fullest statement of gender equality in education’ but is ‘the least implemented’ (73), while EFA and the MDGs have a much more ‘minimalist’ (74) approach to specifying targets as can be seen in their focus on enrollment and parity (that is, on more easily measurable indicators).

Alongside the development of global policies and conventions that encourage the education of girls (EFA, MDGs, CRC), and gender equity (The Beijing Platform for Action, CEDAW, ICESCR), we have also seen, since the 1990s, that an increased global focus on coordination and the formation of partnerships has been integral to the work on gender and education. The development banks (e.g. the World Bank), the UN agencies (particularly UNICEF and UNESCO), bilateral agencies (USAID, DfID, SIDA, CIDA, and others), and NGOs (e.g. Save the Children, Oxfam, CARE), and others, have sometimes formed collaborative initiatives, in part, to coordinate efforts in working with countries on development concerns. An important example is the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI), formed in 2000 (expanded from the African Girls’ Education Initiative, AGEI) as ‘a wider call to action on the part of United Nations Member States to partner in promoting girls’ education and gender equality’ (UNGEI, 2011: 11). UNGEI was formed as the UN flagship initiative for EFA with a focus on gender. USAID’s Strategies for Advancing Girls’ Education (SAGE) was another such initiative, although smaller in scope. It involved five countries, was implemented by the Academy for Educational Development (AED), and supported by USAID’s Women in Development office.¹ Partnerships across organizations (which involve more people in the same conversations and often lead to convergence in agendas), and influence of world conferences (global-level agenda-setting forums) and from the global women’s movement (which positioned gender more centrally within development agendas), have resulted in a global policy dialogue about gender, education, and international development.² As globalization has become more evident, global economics, politics, and cultural forces are also shaping education policy (Rizvi and Lingard, 2010).

More than a decade into the new millennium, it is evident that important strides have been made relative to gender parity in school enrollments: there are now almost equal numbers of girls and boys in school at the primary level. And the numbers of children – girls and boys – in school globally has increased, especially at the primary level. However, as a field, we remain concerned about the numbers of children still not in school, the larger discrepancies at levels beyond primary education, the quality of education, and the myriad issues beyond the ‘processing’ of girls and boys through school (Unterhalter, 2012: 74). It is not enough to get girls (or boys) into school. Despite decades of calls for moving beyond access and enrollment (Aikman and Unterhalter, 2005; Gordon, 1994; Sutton, 1998), much of the policy remains focused on these more easily measurable indicators of success. It is this persistence in focus and persistent marginalization of deeper concerns about gender equity that we engage in this study, in order to explore how policy discourse conditions policy priorities.

Methodology: Feminist critical policy discourse analysis

We approach our study of how policy language shapes or frames ways of understanding issues, priorities, and realities in the gender, development, and education world, through policy discourse that is feminist and critical. Here we first discuss policy research, then the importance of discourse to policy research, and, finally, we outline the approach we took in our own research.

Policy research

Education policy research takes a variety of forms, based in part on how policy is understood. Rizvi and Lingard (2010: 5) see education policy as both texts and processes, while Ball (2006) sees it as things (e.g. texts), processes, and outcomes. Policy as process is sometimes assumed to be a fairly linear process from formation through implementation, or as a more complex cyclical process, which is messier, contested, and nonlinear (Ball, 2006; Rizvi and Lingard, 2010; Sutton and Levinson, 2001). Some education policy research seeks to measure the impact of a given policy, but often privileging the interests of the funders or originators of the policy and not accounting for the ways that implementers (e.g. teachers) understand, resist, reinterpret, or reappropriate policy (Bowe et al., 1992; Sutton and Levinson, 2001). Interpretive policy analysis often takes the form of detailed analyses based on qualitatively informed case studies with greater attention to the meaning of policy in the lives of actors affected by it (Sutton and Levinson, 2001); these types of studies might interview teachers about how they understand new policies and how they have responded. Even in these studies, however, basic assumptions (i.e. of teachers) can go unquestioned.

Critical policy analysis foregrounds deeper explorations, asking who benefits and who does not by the ways that policy is formed and implemented, framed and understood. It ‘must offer a critique of the assumptions built, either explicitly or implicitly, into any given policy with a view to showing how they might either support or undermine the values of democracy and social justice’ (Rizvi and Lingard, 2010: 70). Feminist critical policy analysis is:

. . . research that conducts analyses for women while focusing on policy and politics [. It] asks, first, how does this policy or structure exclude certain publics . . ., then asks, what political arrangements support policies and structures that devalue alternative perspectives, that reinforce gender [and other] inequities, and asks, who benefits from these arrangements, and finally, what are possible ways to restructure power dynamics and political arrangements to address issues of social justice? (Marshall, 1997: 2, emphasis in original)

Marshall (1997) continues: ‘Bias, power, and values drive the identification and legitimation of a problem and the methods seen as useful for studying and solving it’ (p. 3, emphasis in original). This identification and legitimation affects ‘what we do and do not see as problems’ (p. 4, emphasis in original). How we ‘see’ problems related to educating girls globally, or to gender as it pertains to education in a wide range of contexts, legitimates certain actions and delegitimizes others. If a global policy community considers that getting girls into school is the primary concern, then efforts to increase enrollments will be prioritized. On the other hand, if they recognize that the social construction of gender is highly influential in determining who goes to school, why, what is taught, and how education is important, then policy might focus on understanding those more complex social processes and their consequences.

Discourse analysis

We suggest that it is important to analyze and interpret official statements of policy to understand how policy makers are framing problems and solutions, foregrounding particular perspectives, and possibly shutting out alternative views. Discourse analysis, when applied to policy documents, can get us closer to understanding the framing of policy and the likely consequences. The language used in policy documents is important in understanding the politics pushing policy forward. Such documents constitute ‘policy talk,’ which refers to the ‘diagnoses of problems and the advocacy of solutions’ (Tyack and Cuban, 1995: 40). These documents are not mere epiphenomena mirroring objective reality; they proactively shape reality. ‘They have real effects. They do make a difference symbolically and materially’ (Apple, 1994: 350). Policy texts ‘are one aspect of sense-making activities through which human beings construct, sustain, contest, and change our senses of social reality. They are socially constructed realities that warrant study in their own right’ (Miller, 1997: 77). Therefore, understanding the discursive meaning of what is written and what is not written in these documents is key to understanding both the forces that shape the text and how the text is intended to influence perceptions of reality.

What is discourse? Gee (2008: 3) defines discourses as ‘ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking, and often reading and writing . . .’. Each discourse, he explains:

. . . incorporates a usually taken for granted and tacit set of ‘theories’ about what counts as a ‘normal’ person and the ‘right’ ways to think, feel, and behave. These theories crucially involve viewpoints on the distribution of ‘social goods’ like status, worth, and materials goods in society (who should and who shouldn’t have them) . . . Such theories, which are part and parcel of each and every discourse, and which, thus, underlie the use of language in all cases, are what [he] call[s] ideologies. (Gee, 2008: 4)

Ideologies constitute our taken-for-granted assumptions about how the world works, and what is important and worth paying attention to. Since, as Gee argues, ‘Discourses are inherently “ideological”, . . . [they] are resistant to internal criticism and self-scrutiny’ (Gee, 2008: 161). Similar to Gee’s interest in how people use language and how that language is embedded in discourses that are ideologically informed, Lakoff (2004) focuses on how the framing of political issues shapes the way the public sees the world. Framing, as we see it, gives us clues to the discourses that shape the ways that policy is understood. Our unconscious mental frames ‘shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we act, and what counts as a good or bad outcome of our actions. In politics our frames shape our social policies and the institutions we form to carry out policies’ (Lakoff, 2004: xv). In regard to policy discourse, ‘all words are defined relative to conceptual frames’ (Lakoff, 2004: xv), as discourse activates mental frames and shapes our understanding of common sense.

Neither Gee nor Lakoff works specifically with policy language, although frames and discourses also pertain to policy. Ball, in distinguishing policy as text from policy as discourse, explains that discourses ‘produce frameworks of sense and obviousness with which policy is thought, talked and written about’ (2006: 44). Policy texts exist within these frameworks. It is this framing of the possibilities – and impossibilities – of policy that we are interested in here: how does the discursive framing of girls’ education policy shape the ways we think about the issues of girls out of school? How might we reframe the issues to move closer to equity and sustainable changes?

Data sources and analysis

Many organizations, with different histories and priorities, are involved in the development and implementation of policy related to educating girls globally. Because we wanted to examine how policy discursively constructs girls’ education, we selected a wide range of organizations from which to choose documents to analyze. We identified the main types of organizations and initiatives and selected two organizations within each type that are actively engaged in girls’ education work globally (see Table 1). This is not an exhaustive selection of organizations active in this field. We selected some organizations because of their central role in the field (the World Bank, UNICEF, UNGEI, for example), and others because of their overall gender focus (FAWE, which is a pan-African consortium of women educational researchers and policy makers, and BRAC, a Bangladeshi NGO well-known for work in educating girls). Others (e.g. CIDA) were selected because we found pertinent documents in our initial broad search for policy documents addressing girls’ education. USAID was selected because the authors are from the US and we wanted to examine our own country’s gender agenda in education.

Table 1.

Organizations, agencies, and initiatives (data sources)

Type	Organizations, agencies, initiatives included
Development banks	Asian Development Bank (ADB), World Bank (WB)
Multilateral agencies	UNESCO, UNICEF
Bilateral donor agencies	Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
International NGOs	Oxfam, Save the Children
National/regional NGOs	BRAC, Forum of African Women Educationalists (FAWE)
Initiatives specific to girls’ education	United Nations Girls Education Initiative (UNGEI), USAID’s Strategies for Advancing Girls’ Education initiative (SAGE)
Consulting agencies	Academy for Educational Development (AED), Center for Global Development (CGD)

We searched for policy documents that represent the ‘public face’ of the organizations relative to educating girls and/or addressing gender in education, because it is more accessible to more people, and it is a direct effort of the organizations to tell the world about their own policy priorities. Therefore, we selected readily available documents, both online and broadly distributed, as they are the most widely disseminated and used by a broad range of readers. Nearly 300 documents were analyzed qualitatively, inductively coding the text in the documents and thematically categorizing the coded text. We used open coding to generate an initial set of codes to see what types of issues and ideas emerged from the data. Initially we categorized the codes thematically. We then coded again, to fine-tune the codes and categories. Initially, the main categories were goals/agendas, barriers, strategies; for this article we worked with the data coded ‘goals/agendas’ to delve more deeply into what the organizations say they are doing and why. The documents span a period from 1995 to 2008. The documents come from the 14 organizations, agencies and initiatives listed in Table 1.

The organizations selected varied in the amount of information they offered about girls’ education policy. Some organizations had relatively little information about girls’ education but more general information about gender and development or the relationship between education and poverty with some mention of girls and/or gender. In general, only those documents that specifically mentioned education along with girls or gender were included. A great deal of repetitive language occurs across the documents and organizations. In the analysis below we state sources only when presenting quoted text; otherwise, the examples are paraphrased from multiple sources which state the same general themes. Even with the quoted examples, however, readers should know that there are often multiple occurrences of the stated example in documents from the same organization. This article does not explicitly compare policy discourses across organizations, other than pointing out a few clear differences relating to specific issues. It is also not intended to be a representation of what is actually happening in the field: this study is about how organizations discursively present their policies to the public and not about how girls’ education programs are implemented. It is also not intended to be a direct critique of the actual policies in a general sense; that is, we agree that educating girls is a good thing.

Findings: Arguments for girls’ education

In the documents analyzed, girls’ education policy talk is organized around a variety of arguments about why girls’ education should be a priority. Discursively, these arguments influence the way the field of girls’ education is shaped and constrained. In this article we are concerned with the broad contours of the global discourse pertaining to girls’ education. While there are variations within the policy discourse, across time and across organizations, we do not directly highlight those variations here. Furthermore, the examples we cite are not the only examples in the policy documents.

Eight arguments are evident in the policy documents; we present these as three broad types. Most arguments fall into two broad categories that reflect justice-oriented concerns or utilitarian goals, which we will call utility goals to avoid confusion.³ A third type of argument – education for empowerment – is both utility and justice-related. This final argument asserts that girls should be educated for empowerment, that empowerment is a good thing in itself (a justice argument), and that empowerment enables girls to engage in the development process both in their individual lives and in society (the utility aspect).

Justice arguments

Justice arguments for educating girls situate girls as a part of the population deserving of the same rights and opportunities as all people: they are human and therefore should be included equally in schooling and other social processes. There are two types of justice arguments: equality and inclusion arguments, and human rights arguments. Common examples of the equality/inclusion arguments include assertions that girls are half the population, and everyone should be in school, so girls should also be in school. Virtually all organizations make this argument. The reasons stated vary for inclusion, and primarily point to utility reasons (which are discussed later). Many statements implicitly or explicitly recognize girls’ contributions and participation as needed, useful, worthy, and as important as boys’. These arguments can easily be seen as reflecting the MDGs and EFA, which strive for parity, although they are more likely not limited to these agendas. Interestingly, no cause–effect or rationale arguments are provided for any statement: ‘it just is’.

The second type of justice argument is a human rights argument, reflecting the basic argument that girls should be educated because education is a human right. All children – including girls – have a right to education and basic social services. These arguments commonly rely on the CRC and CEDAW as support.

Human rights and inclusion/equality arguments are discursively constructed in a similar way. All children – including girls – have a right to education and should therefore be included. Equality, inclusion and human rights arguments are presented as unarguable statements of fact. Some organizations such as Oxfam (2005) and UNICEF (Pigozzi, 1999) clearly state that a human rights agenda guides their work. All organizations use the language of human rights, but most are less comprehensive and deliberate in how they engage it. Beyond including girls/women because it is the right thing to do, little is said about how that inclusion would look, suggesting a likely ‘add women and stir’ approach (Rathgeber, 1990; Tadros, 2010).

Utility arguments

A range of utility arguments are also common in the policy documents, including assertions that educating girls will reduce poverty, make development sustainable, foster democracy, promote peace, improve public health, and improve general well-being.

Poverty reduction arguments center around a vision that reducing the gender imbalance in education will transform society and reduce poverty. CIDA’s (2002: v) guiding principles list basic education as an ‘essential element’ of poverty reduction; girls are included in their discussion of basic education. The World Bank notes: ‘Since the World Conference of Education in Jomtien in 1990, the Bank’s emphasis in the area of girls’ education has increased and gender equality has been integrated as an important component of the Bank’s poverty reduction mission’ (UNGEI, n.d.: paragraph 4). Linking the education of girls to poverty reduction is common across the organizations.

Educating girls makes development sustainable. Examples include: by educating girls a nation realizes substantial economic and social gain, in GNP and family welfare indicators; and ‘The long-term objective [of a girls’ education project is] to bring more women into the mainstream of socioeconomic development by progressively improving their educational level’ (Asian Development Bank, 1998: ii).

Democracy arguments come in two forms: an abstract or general version and a more concrete or practical version. Examples of the abstract or general version include: education supports the spread of democracy as a form of political development; ‘Education fosters democracy, equality, justice, dignity, and respect for human rights’ (CIDA, 2002: v); education is a ‘key’ to stability ‘within and among countries’ (CIDA, 2002: 1); and, where market-driven economies within democratic nations are concerned, USAID (2002) expresses its commitment to educating girls in order to encourage political stability. As seen in these examples, democracy, generally, is conceptually linked to certain values (equality, justice, dignity), and particular political structures (stability, and a market-driven economy), yet these concepts are not adequately defined in the policy documents.

In its concrete form we find statements such as: community-managed (and girl-friendly) schools where the parent associations ‘map the community, take a census . . ., and inventory community resources . . . [, and then] develop and prioritize their ideas for action in a school development plan’ (Save the Children, n.d.b: 2); enable ‘new institutions to develop at a local level, sowing the seeds of democratic government’ (Save the Children, n.d.a: paragraph 4); and ‘Women with a secondary education are three times more likely to attend a political meeting than are women with no education’ (UNESCO, 2000: 2). Civil society and participation are recognized as important. Education, it is argued, empowers girls to participate in civil society and democratic processes, to actively participate in the transformation of their own lives and in the societies in which they live.

Educating girls is a way of promoting peace, in many policy documents. Educating girls can help eradicate poverty and promote peace (UNICEF, 2000: 2, column 2); and ‘Education is key’ to peace, as well as stability (CIDA, 2002: 1) are typical examples.

Public health concerns are also evoked as reasons to educate girls. Assertions include: educating girls lowers the incidence of HIV/AIDS, health risks are averted by girls’ education, infant mortality rates are lower when mothers are more educated, and lower birth rates are associated with increased education of girls. Although this policy language about health recognizes that there is a relationship between education and fertility, infant mortality, maternal morbidity, and HIV/AIDS (Malhotra et al., 2003), it does not reveal that research is often indecisive about the causal direction (Basu, 2002; Jejeebhoy, 1995).

Finally, girls’ education is linked to well-being (World Bank, n.d.a) in the policy documents, although ‘well-being’ is not explicitly defined. Education, it is argued, reduces girls’ trafficking, sexual exploitation, domestic violence, youth violence, and sexual harassment.

Similar to the language of justice, explanations are lacking about the relationships between educating girls and the results expected. An uninformed reader is likely to assume that educating girls causes the changes suggested, even when research clearly shows correlation and not causation. How does educating girls alleviate poverty, sustain development, spread democracy, promote peace, etc.? In reality, educating girls is not a guarantee that these results will be reached, yet the policy language makes it sound simple, direct, and unchallengeable.

Beyond the rather direct utility arguments noted above, there are four additional themes related to utility: women’s traditional roles, supporting others, investment, and serving the organizations themselves.

From a feminist perspective it is surprising to see the range and consistency of statements that equate educating girls to strengthening their traditional roles as women. These assertions tend to follow the argument that educated girls make mothers who institute good child and family care, ensure child survival, enable success of their children in school, and provide better nutrition. To illustrate, UNESCO (2001) explains the value of girls’ education endeavors as resting on the impact of a woman’s education on her traditional caregiving duties:

As the pillars of family life, educated women are better able to institute good child and family care and to manage these appropriately. Child survival, the success of children in school, nutritional status are all better assured in homes, in which the mothers and the sisters have had the benefit of good education. (paragraph 2)

Educated women, it is argued, tend to increase the rates of schooling for the next generation, and they have a strong impact on health, family welfare, and fertility. While we are not challenging the value of work that women typically do in families – this work is critically important – we notice that this language was not situated in a broader gender-informed discourse that might have at least recognized the social reproduction function of maintaining traditional women’s roles as the only real option for women and, by omission, not appropriate for men. UNESCO is the only organization that explicitly states that this agenda of supporting traditional women’s roles has shifted, somewhat, to one of empowerment (Hyde and Miske, 2001; UNESCO, 2002); however, the emphasis on traditional women’s roles seems to be very much alive in their policy documents as well as the documents of the other organizations.

We assume that these statements are included uncritically in the policy language because they reflect what women actually do, for example, care for children and families, and because girls’ education policy depends on wide-ranging support including that from countries and communities who will not support educating girls to question traditional lifestyles. Should policy documents more directly challenge the social reproductive role of education regarding traditional gender roles, they may disincentivize some countries’ support for the global EFA agenda, or the MDGs. Finding a way to acknowledge the more complex issues relating to gender is an important challenge we continue to face (UNICEF/Miske Witt and Associates, 2007; also see Aikman and Unterhalter, 2005; Heward and Bunwaree, 1999).

Similar to traditional women’s roles, documents also clearly argue that educating girls influences the lives of others now and in the future. Examples include: educated girls benefit family and community; educating girls benefits boys as well; ‘improved education reaches beyond individuals . . .’ (World Bank, 2002: 1); ‘female education . . . is the most important . . . the catalyst’ (World Bank, 1995b: 1); ‘Girl’s [sic] education makes all the difference’ (UNESCO, 2000: 1). Two comments get a bit closer to expressing the logic of the line of thinking: targeting girls’ and women’s education increases efficiency and effectiveness of school systems; and boys also benefit from efforts to promote the participation of girls, in enrollment and achievement. That is, improving education for girls also improves education for everyone in the schools. Educated girls grow into educated women who benefit family and community, including boys; they are ‘the catalyst’ (World Bank, 1995b: 1), ‘mak[ing] all the difference’ (UNESCO, 2000: 1). And, finally, UNICEF (2000: 2, column 1) asserts that when ‘girls are denied rights [they shrink the] chances of generations’. This argument seems to have two strands: that future generations enjoy benefits gained by educating current generations of girls (when girls are denied rights, chances of generations shrink); and that improving education for girls improves schools generally, and that improvement also benefits boys who are in the same schools (targeting girls’ and women’s education increases efficiency and effectiveness of school systems). Little is offered as an explanation, however, as to how educating girls will benefit family and community, or boys, or what would need to occur within schools and how that would result in these stated outcomes.

Finally, we have the investment arguments: investing in girls’ education is an investment in individuals, families, and developing countries. Examples include: ‘Girls education is among the best possible investments in developing countries’ (Save the Children, n.d.c: 1); and ‘All indicators show that girls’ education is a proven effective investment for society’ (UNESCO, 2000: 1). The World Bank documents include numerous investment statements: ‘Girls’ education is . . . the most effective investment . . .’ (World Bank, n.d.b: 2), ‘Social returns . . . [are] significantly greater’ (World Bank, 1995a: 3), and ‘Investment in girls’ education yields some of the highest returns of all development investments, yielding both private and social benefits that accrue to individuals, families, and society at large’ (World Bank, n.d.a: 3). Investment in girls’ education is, according to a number of documents, a way to increase employment opportunities. Rates of return are high, it is argued, and it ‘sets off a process’. Investment arguments invoke discourses of economics (investment, rates of return, efficiency) and assessment and accountability (all indicators show it is a proven and effective investment for society), which suggest to readers that there are factual bases for the assertions. However, little evidence is presented so readers are unable to interpret or question that basis. While these discourses are invoked, they are not followed: evidence, which is key, is lacking. Similar to the types of arguments already discussed, investments arguments are presented as unchallengeable assertions.

An additional utility argument was evident in the documents that focused on benefits to the organizations themselves. UNICEF, particularly, positioned educating girls as their top priority (UNICEF, 2000, 2002a) as a way to consolidate education’s place in the agency. They indicated that this supports their other organizational priorities, e.g. early childhood development, immunizations, HIV/AIDS, child protection. Making girls’ education a core priority, then, helps UNICEF to become known as ‘the girls’ education agency’ while also enabling a more cohesively linked approach to related issues.

Empowerment arguments

Empowerment arguments are conveyed through numerous general comments about education and/or literacy leading to empowerment. However, there are several problems with these arguments. The policy documents do not mention any particular model of empowerment and do not define what is meant by empowerment; the implied meanings are incomplete when compared with most theorized models of empowerment. Similarly, the documents do not reflect the clear theoretical argument that empowerment must take place on two levels: individually and collectively (Rowlands, 1997; Stromquist, 1995). Statements such as literacy leads to empowerment (UNESCO, 2000) and sending a girl to school empowers her (Gertner, n.d. [re: SAGE]; UNICEF, 2002b) are not uncommon. There is no discussion or explanation of how that happens; it is portrayed as automatic. We know that this is not necessarily the case, however; Murphy-Graham’s (2012) study of girls in Honduras highlights a complicated relationship of school and social structures; without changing social structures, education does not guarantee empowerment. A girl may attend school without becoming empowered or necessarily even educated, depending in part on her readiness to learn, the quality of the education, and the content of what is taught and learned. Other examples are arguments that education ‘empowers entire nations’ (UNESCO, 2002: 13); that empowerment is a fundamental goal, it decreases early marriage, and [because of education] ‘women are empowered to participate fully in all spheres of society’ (UNICEF, 2002b: 5); that women are more independent and gain confidence and self-esteem through education; that with a secondary education women are more likely to attend a political meeting; and assertions that ‘the program has empowered the stakeholders to think critically about their lives’ (Gertner, n.d.: 15), and ‘the children are not only learning literacy and numeracy; they are empowered with the relevant knowledge that they are realizing through the life skills materials’ (Gertner, n.d.: 11).

These empowerment arguments include varied targets for the intended empowerment, from girls who will be empowered to entire nations becoming empowered. The arguments also reflect a variety of definitions – often disparate – of empowerment. For example, delaying early marriage, participating in society, gaining confidence and self-esteem, attending political meetings, thinking critically, and gaining knowledge and life skills are named as examples of empowerment in various documents. While we found policy language that acknowledges individuals or groups relative to empowerment, we did not find clear assertions that both levels are related or necessary. Without following a holistic and integrated model of empowerment, we perpetuate work that assumes that only some dimensions (e.g. enhancing self-esteem, or enabling participation in a community meeting) are sufficient to be empowered (Monkman, 2011).

As there is little to no explanation about how empowerment is understood, and what the relationship is between education and empowerment, we argue that the policy language perpetuates an imprecise and problematic notion of empowerment. Furthermore, and most importantly, the element of power is all but absent in the discourse on empowerment, even though power is the root of the concept of empowerment (Monkman, 2011; Rowlands, 1997).

Discussion: Framing that limits policy potential

The arguments for educating girls, as policy discourse, achieve what policy texts intend, namely a fairly straightforward and clearly understandable (albeit superficial) presentation of issues that support the work being done by the organizations. At the same time, however, it frames the issues in a particular way, invoking a particular understanding of the issues while excluding from the conversation particular other ways of thinking about them. We will discuss here two implications of the way girls’ education is framed discursively: the narrowing of girls’ education policy and the engaging (or disengaging) with the notion of gender.

The narrowing of education policy

Picking up on points made in the earlier section, three concerns are evident in the documents that relate to a narrowing of educational policy: the discursive positioning of issues as unquestionable or unchallengeable (it just is), framing within a limited use of theory (policy as atheoretical), and incorporating accountability agendas focusing primary attention on easily measurable evidence (superficial accountability).

It just is

As mentioned earlier, there is often no explanation as to relationship, cause–effect, rationale, or theory of action relating to the arguments for educating girls. Arguments that increasing the numbers of girls in schools and reaching parity will serve to eradicate poverty, generate peace and democracy, stimulate development, and improve public health, for example, are not explained. They are stated as assertions that do not have to be questioned, interrogated, challenged or critiqued. Situating girls as key to so many dimensions of development, each of which is very complex in and of itself, makes it nearly impossible to engage with or contest this policy logic. We are not saying that the focus on girls’ education should necessarily be contested; the point is that with strong definitive statements in the policy documents, with no explanation as to the logic of the arguments, it is hard to engage with unambiguously stated (yet unsupported) claims. The discourse eliminates any space within which a meaningful dialogue about educating girls might occur. Framing the issues in this way excludes questioning what equality, equity, justice, rights, peace, development, etc. are beyond a superficial understanding of the concepts. It all sounds good – and why wouldn’t we want these things anyway – so why question it?

Unless readers know the field well enough to be able to question the embedded assumptions, there is no basis on which to challenge them. This is a ‘feel good’ discourse, not a discourse that encourages or enables a deeper engagement in understanding, examining, or challenging the assumptions that undergird the arguments.

Policy as atheoretical

Two discursive strategies demonstrate limited ways in which theoretical lenses are invoked (or made invisible) in the policy discourse: the use of terms without attention to conceptual or theoretical understanding of them, and the relative absence of a critical or feminist lens.

Regarding the first, many terms that are used could relate to rich bodies of scholarly analysis, including justice (Fraser, 1997; Sen, 2009), equality and equity (Farrell, 2007; Levin, 1976; Streitmatter, 1994), empowerment (Monkman, 2011; Stromquist, 1995), democracy, development (Kabeer, 1994), and many more. Each of these terms has various definitions, some of which are contradictory. Along with virtually no indication of which conceptualizations of a certain term are assumed, policy documents of the sort analyzed herein rarely include references or citations that would provide additional insight. An example may illustrate the importance of this lack of clarity for this field. Equality (sameness, or equal-ness) and equity (fairness) are not distinguished or problematized. A reliance on a simple conceptualization of equality would steer policy toward the kinds of goals embedded in EFA and the MDGs – equal numbers of girls and boys (parity) – while a notion of equity would draw attention to what is fair but not necessarily equal – what kinds of preferential treatment might girls (or boys) need in order to reach a state of fairness?

Another example involves the highly contested concept of ‘development’ (Arnot and Fennell, 2008; Daun, 2001; Kabeer, 1994), although that contestation is not evident in the documents. International development from a functionalist perspective focuses on improving the existing system in order to promote change, while critical perspectives recognize the structural basis of inequalities that slow progress toward social justice and equity-based goals. Most of the girls’ education discourse is rather functionalist in nature, although there are a few suggestions of a more critical stance in these documents. These usually take the form of referring to Paulo Freire (2000 [1970]) as influential, yet fall short of showing how his ideas are relied upon. SAGE, for example, advocates for incorporating ‘locally designed solutions and programs’ and an interactive learner-centered approach (Gertner, n.d.: 1) based on ‘the Freirian [sic] concept of incorporating participant experiences and local realities’ (Gertner, n.d.: 2). While the notion of empowerment grows out of critical theory, and is often associated with Freire’s ideas, which positions power as a central idea, the policy documents often talk about empowerment as if it were unrelated to power.

Superficial accountability

The global drive for accountability encourages the articulation of goals that are easily measurable so that progress is clearly demonstrated by providing evidence. Yet evidence in supporting policy is generally absent in the documents. However, one feature of the discourse is the way it privileges use of easily measurable data, marginalizing richer, more nuanced evidence.

Relying on easily measurable data – numbers of girls and boys in school – limits the scope of data that are then available to inform policy. This seems to perpetuate a cycle that reinforces a focus on certain policy priorities, and excludes or marginalizes others. Since the most available and globally comparative data measure the numbers of girls and boys in school (access, enrollment, attendance rates, etc.) and compare them (gender parity), efforts focused on increasing enrollment and parity are emphasized, as seen in EFA and the MDGs. Girls’ education policy stumbles, however, in addressing patriarchy, gender bias in teacher attitudes, cultural practices and beliefs that privilege boys (or girls in some areas), or other more complex issues that are not easily measurable. Progress is not as easily seen, and so cannot as easily be used to justify supporting initiatives that move beyond getting children to go to school. It is these other kinds of commitments – challenging stereotypes and gender-based violence, or improving the curricula, for example – that are more likely to address the underlying bases of inequity.

The ‘it just is’ orientation sets up a situation where there is little need to engage theory directly, thereby allowing policy to remain atheoretical. At the same time, the superficiality of accountability seems to be accepted as sufficient, thereby avoiding deeper analysis. These three dynamics work together to keep us focused on counting girls and boys in school, and discourage the messier work of attending to the more complex gendered issues that influence educational experience.

Engaging gender

Several concerns important to a fuller gender analysis run through much of the policy discourse relating to girls’ education. Here we discuss three: the conflation of sex and gender, the absence of boys, and missing or limited contradictions in understanding gender.

Girls’ education policy language generally confuses the notions of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’. A few decades ago, ‘sex’ was replaced by ‘gender’, when it became clear that sex refers to social categories that are generally understood to be biologically based – male and female – and gender as a social construction process that is fluid, dynamic and context-specific (Lorber, 1994). However, while the terminology changed, the meaning underlying the terms seems to have remained the same. ‘Gender’ is now used to mean ‘sex’ as seen in counting the girls and boys in school. When gender is understood as a social construction, it is the meaning that people attribute to being male or female, and the ways that social relations are embedded in society that are important. Gender meaning sex⁴ continues to be used in the policy documents, and is not fully acknowledged, explored or engaged as a social process or guiding cultural force. This continuing focus on sex categories limits our ways of engaging the concept of gender in educational policy. It is gender that is important for understanding cultural belief systems that are gendered, gender-based violence, and other complex social phenomena.

Even as a measurable indicator, however, the policy discourse on gender (sex) is reduced to a focus on girls, thus excluding boys’ gendered educational experiences and needs. Some countries experience disparity that favors girls, yet little is said about why boys are not in school in those contexts. Gender seems to really mean girls in most of the documents.⁵ A broader policy focus would include the gendered nature of social phenomena that influences who – boys or girls, and which boys and girls – goes to school (or doesn’t) and why. How do the social relations of gender condition these patterns? Educational policy could, with a richer framing of gender in education, be focused on more than counting girls and boys in classrooms.

For obvious reasons, policy language tends to eliminate contradictions in order to portray a coherent policy agenda. This elimination of contradictions prevents readers from understanding how agencies are grappling with a range of contradictory issues (traditional vs. feminist ideas about sex roles, different development agendas, banking education vs. active and engaged learning, for example), thus giving the impression that issues are more simple and straightforward than they are in reality. This elimination of the complexities of some of the relevant issues discourages readers from conversation about gender, education, and development. There is, however, also contradictory language in the policy documents, and ambiguity as we showed for the documents that address traditional gender roles. UNESCO may serve as an example of an organization that does allow for contradiction in its document. It explains the value of a girl’s education as resting on her impact, as a grown woman, on her traditional caregiving duties: ‘As the pillars of family life, educated women are better able to institute good child and family care and to manage these appropriately. Child survival, the success of children in school, nutritional status are all better assured in homes, in which the mothers and the sisters have had the benefit of good education’ (UNESCO, 2001: 1). In a separate UNESCO document, such a philosophy of improving performance of traditional female roles appears to be overtly challenged with an ideology of feminist empowerment: ‘The agenda has shifted from one of “making girls better mothers” to an agenda that encourages the autonomy and empowerment of women and girls’ (Hyde and Miske, 2001: 12, emphasis in original). They claim that ‘the discourse has moved from extolling the virtues of education in making girls better mothers, to asserting girls’ and women’s rights to education as their due as citizens of nation states to be on a par with fellow male citizens, to demanding education in areas and for purposes that will empower and liberate them’ (Hyde and Miske, 2001: 12). By acknowledging the existence of education for women’s traditional roles and for empowerment education, UNESCO maintains a space at the table to engage in the contradictions and in multiple curricular and pedagogical approaches to education as related to gender. Many other documents, however, suggest that educating girls to improve their performance in traditional female roles is still a widespread policy agenda.

Conclusion

Educating girls globally is a good thing to do. We are supportive of the girls’ education agendas. Through this study, however, we sought to raise issues about the framing of girls’ education in policy. Policy discourse, as analyzed in this study, has situated girls’ education as a high priority, yet continues to marginalize the importance of gender in understanding sufficiently the full range of issues related to educating all girls and boys. Additionally, by its very nature, policy discursively narrows the scope of relevant issues and simplifies complex social, cultural, political, and economic phenomena, thereby encouraging initiatives that are, in many cases, not designed to address the actual causes of gender inequities identified.

Understanding how policy text shapes a particular framing of educational issues, and how that framing defines in or defines out certain ideas and topics, is an important contribution to the broader scholarship on gender, education, and development, as it supplements the implementation and evaluation studies, ethnographies, and statistical studies in ways that could help us to raise new issues, or old issues in new ways. It can help us to see what we take for granted in our own thinking, thus enabling us to move beyond unquestioned assumptions. Policy documents revealing the ‘public face’ of an issue are important for conveying broad ideas to a global community. We must acknowledge, however, that those ideas are selectively conveyed, and issues not named can be just as, or more, important to the work we do. To recognize this we must understand how policy issues are framed and actively engage in reframing them so that we contest the narrowing of policy and the limited focus on gender.

In offering these critiques of girls’ education policy, we are not criticizing the work that has been done in this field. Girls’ education development work is necessary to get girls into school and to reach parity, and good gains in these areas have been made in many countries. Quality of education has improved as well and some of the more difficult issues are engaged with creatively, yet we argue that the limited policy framing has likely slowed and narrowed progress in this area. The purpose of this study is not to say what is but to hold a mirror up to the discourse of girls’ education policy as presented by a range of organizations and as the public face of their work so that we can recognize how policy is discursively framed and proactively try to reframe it to reflect a more robust notion of gender equity. If we want to make a deep and sustainable difference, we need to include a focus on issues that reflect messy social phenomena that are not so easily amenable to measurement and tracking of progress.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Biographical notes

Karen Monkman is Professor of Educational Policy Studies and Research at De Paul University College of Education. She has written various publications on gender and globalization as related to education globally, and edited Globalization and Education: Integration and Contestation across Cultures with Nelly P. Stromquist (2000).

Lisa Hoffman is Assistant Professor of Graduate Studies at Indiana University SouthEast School of Education. Her research interests include cultural identity and education among immigrant and refugee children and families, as well as reflective and reflexive practices in teacher professional development.

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