Education, poverty and "purity" in the context of adolescent girls' secondary school retention and dropout: A qualitative study from Karnataka, southern India

Abstract

BackgroundGender-related norms and poverty remain important structural barriers to secondary school attendance among adolescent girls in southern India. We analyse how gender norms interact with family deprivation and dynamics to result in girls dropping out of school; we identify the main facilitators of school retention and changes to gender socialisation.MethodsLongitudinal qualitative case studies with 36 girls were nested within a cluster randomized trial to evaluate the Samata intervention targeting adolescent girls in Bagalkote and Vijayapura districts in northern Karnataka. We used two rounds of in-depth interviews, conducted in 2014 at a time when respondents were in 8th standard at the age of 13 to 14 and sixteen months later. We combined thematic and narrative analyses.ResultsOur study found that poverty and socioeconomic realities at the household level strongly affect conformity with discriminatory gender practices such as restricting girls’ mobility. The value placed on education by parents clearly differentiates the regular school goers from those frequently absent and others who dropped out. With active encouragement of the girls’ educational and career aspirations, parents engendered the girl’s agency to communicate openly both at home and at school, allowing subtle changes to gender performance while resisting the pressure of social sanctions. In contrast, where educational aspirations were weak, parents invested more intensely in enforcing correct performance of gender, prioritising her well-being by aiming to secure her future in a good marriage. Among poorer families, girls’ domestic duties came at the cost of schooling with concerns about protecting her sexual purity predominating.ConclusionsIn contexts where a strong gender ideology of virginity before marriage rules, subtle shifts in harmful gender practices are possible. Interventions aiming to improve education need to target the most deprived families, focussing on trust building through open communication.

The critical need for reciprocity between educational migrants and communities for continuing education and socio‐cultural capital in Laos

“…This research shows that educational attainment and outcomes are dependent upon relational factors that intersect with the pursuit of education. These findings are supported by studies in other contexts (see Da Costa, ; Bhagavatheeswaran et al ., ; Morarji, ; Ryan et al ., ; Chea and Huijsmans, ; Ramanaik et al ., ; Wadhwa, ). In Laos, this was evidenced by some participants having the time and resources to develop social groups and an urban community, while others spent more time working and struggled with loneliness.…”

“…Post‐primary school experiences for students from rural areas in Laos may be somewhat likened to the first‐year university experience in other cultures due to the need to leave the family home or village to undertake further study. Similar studies in India (Da Costa, ; Bhagavatheeswaran et al ., ; Morarji, ; Ramanaik et al ., ; Wadhwa, ) and Papua New Guinea (Ryan et al ., ) have identified many relational factors between communities, students and education systems that influence educational attainment and outcomes, including the student's and family's position within their community, gender, caste and familial roles. In Laos, students also grapple with ethnic socio‐cultural hierarchies (Faming, ).…”

Exploring male adolescents' perceptions of gender relations in South India: A project ethnography of theParivartanprogram

“…Given our research focus on the Parivartan program for adolescent boys, we were not able to carefully attend to the realities and experiences of adolescent girls. However, within the context of the larger Samata project, research on adolescent girls' secondary school dropout and retention have been conducted extensively (Beattie et al, ; Bhagavatheeswaran et al, ; Prakash et al, ; Ramanaik et al, ). While our data provide important information on emerging dynamics of masculinity, some areas may have been under‐explored as the short duration of our fieldwork did not allow us to fully describe the diverse experiences and realities of adolescent schoolboys.…”

Assessing the effect of the Samata intervention on factors hypothesised to be on the pathway to child marriage and school drop-out: results from a cluster-randomised trial in rural north Karnataka, India

“…The global literature and data from our previous analyses suggests that a variety of factors may influence whether a girl in impoverished rural communities enters into and completes her secondary education, or not. 1,17,18 These include her academic attainment; her desire to stay in education; poverty and the economic need for (girl) labour at home; and community norms around family honour and the visible preservation of a girl's 'sexual purity' once she reaches menarche in order to ensure her future marriageability (leading to withdrawal from school once menses start). 17,19 Our findings here suggest that while the intervention did impact on girl's uptake of skills and training, and participation in extra-curricular activities (some of which were provided by the intervention), there was no programme impact on girl's access to financial schemes offered by the government to support continuation of SC/S girls in secondary education, with most in-school girls ac-cessing scholarships.…”

“…Studies elsewhere find that reduced social interactions or loneliness can lead to psychological distress 23 and we also report here that girls who are out of school or married were twice as likely to report not having hope for the future, compared with girls in-school or unmarried. The underlying community-level norm around preserving a girl's sexual purity until marriage, which indirectly leads to early marriage and withdrawal from girls from school, was only identified part-way through our intervention, 17 and subsequent efforts to address this with families were likely too late. Thus, this wasn't included on our Theory of Change or our evaluation questions, but was likely important.…”