Formal education and empowerment

Formal education defined by Coomb and Ahmed (1974)³⁴ as an “institutionalized, chronologically graded and hierarchically structured education system, spanning lower primary school and the upper reaches of the university”. In short, Formal education means institutionalized form of learning or institutional teaching centres. In this thesis, the researcher has collected data on lower educated group and higher educated group, where the lower educated group in a normative sense consists of a people who have passed minimum primary school and maximum secondary school. Whereas educated people consist of a group of people who have passed minimum university education. It is the process by which people acquire knowledge, skills, values and culture of the society. Which in turn helps in empowerment as well development of a society.

33 Dave, R. H. “Foundations of Lifelong Education”. ed. (Hamburg: UNESCO Institute for Education, and Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1976), quoted in Tuijnman, Albert, and Ann-Kristin Boström. "Changing notions of lifelong education and lifelong learning." International Review of Education 48, no. 1-2 (2002): 93-110.

34 Coombs, Philip H. and Ahmed, Manzoor. “Attacking Rural Poverty: How Nonformal Education Can Help”.

(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1974), quoted in quoted in Tuijnman, Albert, and Ann-Kristin Boström. "Changing notions of lifelong education and lifelong learning." International Review of Education 48, no. 1-2 (2002): 97.

There are several definitions of empowerment. The definition used by the researcher for current thesis: empowerment is a bottom-up process of transforming gender power relations, through individuals or groups developing awareness of women’s subordination and building their capacity to challenge it (Ogato 2013; Dejene, 2003; Baden and Reeves 2000; Baden and Oxaal 1997). In this bottom-up process, the researcher mainly focuses on how women have challenged traditional social norms, male domination and confronted a violence on them. The rationale for the focus is to investigate whether education has empowered women in challenging patriarchy in the country and has influenced the status of empowerment in the country.

The pre-literature review showed that the association of education and violence, but few articles discuss how education helps women to fight against patriarchy. To understand this, it is necessary to analyse literature on how education has changed gender norms and challenged patriarchy.

The literature review is incomplete without reference of Bourdieu’s work on education and reproduction of power. Though Bourdieu had not much discussed about gender but his work on education, habitus, cultural capital are still relevant for feminism. Education, for Bourdieu, plays an important role in the construction of Habitus. Habitus which is defined as socially ingrained habits, skills, and disposition. It is the way by which an individual perceives the social world around them and react to it (Bourdieu and Passerson 1990). According to Bourdieu, education legitimized belief on dominant group, “The function of the educational system, Bourdieu argues, is above all to produce the necessary social belief in the legitimacy of currently dominant power structures, or in other words: to make us believe that our rulers are ruling us by virtue of their qualifications and achievements rather than by virtue of their noble birth or connections” (Moi 1991, p 1023). In patriarchal society, male dominance is legitimized through various mediums. One of them is the educational system. Thus, the system

is a tool to transfer the power of dominant group to all pupils. Male domination is re-established and legitimized through the system. Teachers, curriculum and even parents against their will transfer the patriarchal values. Through these values, an individual perceives the social world around them.

Past literature discusses about context specific factors such as an educated woman dealing with violence depends on many factors such as rural-urban dynamics, literate and illiterate husband or poor and rich households. An urban educated woman is more empowered than a rural educated woman (Bental et.al 2012) or financial condition such as in household of educated and financially independent women likely to experience less violence (Simister

&Makowiec, 2008). These articles analyzed education with reference to other factors, but very few articles discussed about education curriculum or academic content of education. It is well known fact that society considers women as ‘lesser’ or ‘other’ form and the image further disseminated or institutionalized via different literary texts, encyclopaedia and various journal (Bührmann 2014). But very few articles discussed changes, perception and interpretation of the knowledge.

As mentioned earlier, the agent of education system are namely parents, teachers and most importantly the curriculum. Curriculum plays pivotal role in re-establishing patriarchy.

There are considerably few articles and books which are critically analysing curriculum from the feminist standpoint. One such study was undertaken in the book called ‘Textbook Regimes, a feminist critique of nation and identity’ (Bhog.et.al, 2010). In this book, the authors have analysed various textbook such as language textbook, social science textbook, moral science, physical and adolescent textbook from gender perspective. The curriculum is analysed due to the fact that textbooks, for young children, are major source of information of outside world.

They understand society around them with the help of their textbooks. For many children, especially for underprivileged children, school textbooks are only source of knowledge. The

textbooks construct knowledge officially for mass consumption and transferred patriarchal stereotypical values among students. Authors, though accepts that in the new modern curriculum women’s representations have quantitatively increased and even modern curriculum is making efforts to break some gender stereotypes. Such as women now in school text shown doing men’s job. But structure of the syllabus remains the same though she is shown as a bread- winner but men are not shown fully as home maker. Due to the reason that in the process of development of curriculum, feminist critiques have largely remained absent. The book tends to answer how gender was constructed and intersection of caste and class in the school curriculum. The authors have taken power as a central concept for this study. How power is transferred through education.

While talking about women empowerment and education, Bhog et al. stated “In formulaic terms, if women are the bearers of a nation’s identity, it is through the instrumentality of education that they are inducted to assume that role. The process of gender socialisation is mediated through the category (or justification) of the nation. The school is a key arena for the creation and normalisation of these specific sets of values, norms and ideals. It sets out the notion of the ideal citizen, the ideal woman, the ideal family, the ideal worker, and so on” (p 23). Thus, education curriculum is a major tool to create and institutionalized new normal values. Education curriculum represents not only present status of women empowerment but also web of intersecting factors such as gender with caste, class, religion. Identities are created through the educational institutes by teaching them what is normal, natural and obvious. Thus, the educational institutes teach pupils their roles in the society, also prepare them for modern societies’ new challenges but these institutes hardly empower them.

A recent study shows that, increasing female education has not played any role in curbing female foeticide. Sex-selective abortion is still rampant in the country. As stated by Kumari (2015), a lot of educated women chose to abort female foetus due to marital pressure.

The study conducted by Kumari on educated women’s attitudes towards female foeticide finds out that educated women justify aborting female foetuses due to various socio-cultural reasons, their logical and scientific reasoning gets influenced by their socio-cultural position. Though Kumari’s field area is a north Indian state (Patna), which is known for its strong patriarchal norms compared to rest of India (Dyson and Moore 1983), the findings are also applicable to Maharashtra state, Pune city. The reasons are Maharashtra state has also witnessed a consistent sharp decline in the female sex³⁵ and increasing female education which supports the findings by Kumari. The researcher agrees that, the powerlessness increases mental pressure among educated women in India. So, the more educated women are, the more pressurized they are and still controlled by society or the group’s collective conscious.

The institute not only re-institutionalized normal and obvious socio-cultural values and norms but also sexual identities. Human body is never purely biological but constructed socially. Socialisation and sexualization of the body are important for the curriculum in preparing women for their future roles. As discussed above, the educational institute has not played any active role in women empowerment, but role of informal education also must be taken into account for over all analysis. To understand the process of women empowerment in the country it is necessary to understand role and contribution of media in this process. Thus, formal education is an institution like any other institution where gender inequalities are institutionalized, internalized and patriarchal social norms become validated among educated masses (Rajan 2011; Bhog et al. 2010).