Girls Education and Violence: Reflections on the first decade of the twenty-first century
| Authors | Type | Stream | Full Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jenny Parkes, Fatuma Chege | Commissioned | Violence |  en |
In the fifteen years since Beijing, there has been enormous progress in awareness of multiple forms of violence against girls, with research, policy and practice increasingly focusing on and attempting to address violence in and out of school settings. This paper traces these important areas of progress and considers the many related gaps and persistent challenges and how these have tended to influence girls education. The key question in our analysis is why it is that despite the growing awareness of the negative effects of violence vis-à-vis the increased familiarity with the relevant international and local policies, we still have insufficient knowledge about how to contest violence particularly against girls, with girls lacking adequate support and capacity to protect themselves. In this context we address four broad areas foregrounding pertinent theoretical debates, examining evidence from research and practice and interrogating how emergent knowledge about violence interacts with various policies within different contexts where gender is an important factor. From this, we hope to make some tentative suggestions for the way forward.
Theoretical debates
Considering that acts of violence are often hidden, sometimes taken for granted and hence, unrecognised; and that at other times violence is unreported for fear of repercussion or rejection, it is noteworthy that theoretical debates have focused on violence against girls as it occurs frequently in intimate private spaces deemed to be outside the public gaze. These include families and homes, educational institutions mainly schools, neighbourhoods and other social sites in the communities. Even as recent years have seen the evolution of human rights standards to address violence against girls, the meaning of violence has proved to be relatively complex and the concept often contested. This notwithstanding, however, current definitions include emotional violence as well as physical acts of violence, with recognition of the harm that can be inflicted through psychological means. But, while it may be important to agree on universal standards and universal rights to bodily integrity, the subjective meanings of violence vary considerably within and across contexts. For example, various sub-groups of children –and girls in particular – experience violence differently and in ways that reveal the differentiated effects of the intersections of violence and age, gender, sexuality, socio-economic class, caste, race or ethnicity. Further, an act of physical punishment might, for example, be seen as a human rights abuse in one context, while in another it is understood to keep order and in a way protects girls – ironically, ‘in the interest of girls’. Also, the shifting ways of theorising gender in the performance of masculinities and femininities – for example among girls and boys in classrooms or in other school spaces, illuminates the power struggles involved that are creating more nuanced analyses of violence. In addition, the fact that non-physical forms of discipline may sometimes be more distressing than physical forms, adds to the complexity of the notion of violence, making the borders and boundaries around what is or is not violent frequently unclear.
Highlights from Empirical Work
The first decade of the twenty-first century has witnessed an increase in research attention to violence within education, particularly in school settings where emphasis on increasing girls’ access to schools is noteworthy. Our review focuses on different types of research that include small-scale in-country research, rich qualitative studies that give insights into contextualised everyday violence in girls’ lives, as well as a few large scale, multi-country education studies that highlight patterns of various types of violence against children, specifically girls. We also address violence against groups of girls who are marginalised due to various differentiations, and the relatively scanty research on violence against boys, taking into account that knowledge in this area is key to understanding the role that such violence plays in fuelling boys’ and men’s violent practices towards girls in schools, families and communities. The growing interest in researching quality of girls’ education yields revelations of widespread violence that directly/indirectly affects the well-being of girls and their educational achievements. This research has strengthened understandings not only of the nature and types of violence against schoolgirls, but also the multifarious composition of perpetuators who include on the one hand, ‘internal’ actors, such as male and female peers, teachers, school administrators and other school personnel vis-à-vis ‘external’ actors on the other hand, located outside the school space in neighbourhoods, family, home, as well as en-route to and from school. These understandings have informed research strategies often encouraging adoption of holistic approaches that allow triangulation of multiple perspectives of roles of male and female peers, parents/guardians, teaching/non-teaching staff, and other adults in girls’ lives –not overlooking the fact that focus tends to differ across country and region. For example, the OECD countries tend to focus on bullying and peer violence while Latin America, the Caribbean and South Africa have generated work mainly on youth gangs and masculinities. The UK and USA have in recent times, portrayed interest in girls’ engagement in violent crime while sexual violence has remained an area of research focus in Sub-Saharan Africa. Explicitly/implicitly, studies have challenged the notion of school as a safe haven, raising questions about whether and how schools can act as sites for promoting safety and gender equity as prescribed by EFA goals and the MDGs. This brings to question the capacities of education personnel –particularly teachers- to protect girls and to empower them with relevant knowledge and skills for identifying and challenging violence.
From policy to practice
Understanding violence against girls as a human rights issue stems from 20th century movements for children’s rights and for women’s rights. The women’s rights strand drew attention to gender-based violence following on from CEDAW. While international treaties and frameworks have led to improvements in constitutional commitments and legislation since 2000, major challenges continue to hamper implementation of country-level legislations. Because the work focusing on children’s rights and EFA has been slower in recognising violence as a key concern, and because the two movements have been somewhat disconnected, important issues relating to violence have fallen through the policy gap. Further, gender violence for example is not included in the quantitative indicators measuring performance on EFA and MDGs, while, violence against girls within schools is often omitted from national legislation on violence against women and girls and sometimes only included quite simply under the teachers’ code of conduct. As the UN Secretary General’s World Report on Violence against Children (2006) provided an important platform for documenting the nature, extent and consequences of violence against children, oftentimes countries have remained at the level of rhetoric condemning violence against girls, while many of the girls and other youth and adults in local communities lack knowledge of their rights, of reporting systems, or of health and welfare support. Even where there are notable local programmes and interventions working to combat violence against girls, frequently, girl-friendly and responsive resources and infrastructure are inaccessible. Hence, school-based programmes aiming to strengthen teachers’ skills in supporting girls, or peer-led mentoring programmes and girls clubs that seek to empower girls to combat violence and gendered inequalities, need regular evaluating that would help to strengthen and link them to levels of partnerships with NGOs and government sectors that advocate for change at national level.
Developing a vision for the next decade
We conclude the paper with reflections on the key issues for the next decade, arguing for research, policy and practice to function interactively in combating violence against girls. Drawing on key conference themes, we frame our proposals under the sub-theme of power, participation and partnership.
Power – If we are to build on the enormous strides in research, policy and practice on violence against girls, we need to understand how violence serves to maintain and increase inequalities. If we are to combat acts of violence, we need to address the broader structures of power and inequality that produce violence, as well as the microdynamics of power within everyday relationships. We need to consider how to respond to changing dynamics of power and violence against girls arising from current crises, including for example changing patterns of war and conflict as well as electronic technology that complicates the private nature of gender violence. We need to focus on the intersecting inequalities through which the most marginalised girls and boys are frequently exposed to comparatively higher levels of violence. And we need to understand how power can be exercised in new ways, through strengthening girls’ capabilities to identify and contest violence and for boys and girls to learn to complement each other in challenging violence.
Participation – Strengthening girls’ participation in actions to contest violence is crucial, but must be combined with building relational programmes involving boys as girl’s allies –not antagonists. It is important to respond effectively to transform the near-absence of boys from work on gender violence which clearly jeopardises the possibilities of developing harmonious relationships as a strategy for improving girls’ education, reducing violence and preparing the youth for harmonious render relations.
Partnership – As we move away from narrow understandings of violence which label and blame certain individuals and groups as perpetrators, and disempower others as victims, we can move towards working together to understand and address socio-cultural relationships that reproduce violence. Building links between women’s movements and children’s rights/education movements can help to forefront issues of violence in policy and legislative frameworks. Building links between stakeholders across different spheres of health, education, justice and social welfare will strengthen local systems of support. School based partnerships can help to promote gender-friendly schools and above all, facilitating female and male parents/guardians to learn how to work with their daughters and sons towards non-violence as a way of enhancing gender equality at family and community levels.
