Swimming Against the Tide: Educational Problems and Coping Strategies of Rural Female Students in Ethiopia

Abstract

Literature on girls' education in developing countries mostly focuses on identifying and describing constraints girls encounter in terms of accessing and succeeding in education, and it is thus problem oriented. What is lacking is the other half of the picture, that is, stories and coping strategies of successful female students. With this in mind, the current study attempted to describe some problems of girls' education, but gave emphasis to the personal and social resources girls access and utilize in order to succeed. Qualitative data analysis based on Reinharz's feminist ethnography was used. Some of the constraints identified include; poverty, school distance and cultural practices, such as early marriage and marriage by abduction. Regarding coping, though there are several facilitating factors such as support from parents and teachers, and models/mentors, many of the girls in the study indicated that in the final analysis, the student herself would take responsibility for her success or failure. Her aspiration and faith determines how much work she puts into her education. The more a girl aspires the harder she works, and the more chance she will have to succeed. Hard work when combined with success earns the girls recognition and support both from families and school. These factors, i.e., hard work, success, recognition and support the girls get from others feed into each other increasing the likelihood of girls succeeding in their education. As the findings show there are a lot of constraints that discourage the girls from attending their classes properly and succeeding in their education. However, many of the respondents resisted the pressures from different directions in various ways including; fighting back, ignoring or manipulating. As Reyes put it, "Their lives, however, were empowered through the will not to give up just because things do get a little hard," (1996, 24).

Earning a living on the margins: begging, street work and the socio‐spatial experiences of children in addis ababa

“…Notable exceptions, however, are studies on child domestic workers (Kifle 2002) and the livelihoods of working street children in selected towns (Veale 1993), including Addis Ababa (Aptekar and Abebe 1997); their sexuality, health and well-being (Tadele 2005); and children's perceptions about their working lives as part of comparative cross-cultural research (Woodhead 1998). The place of children in mainstream society (home, family and politics) has also been examined by taking the formal school system as a point of departure (Poluha 2004; see also Admassie (2003) and Mulugeta (2004) for policy-oriented discussions of child labour and girls schooling, respectively). Outside the home and schools, recent research has discussed girls' sociospatial mobility in connection with commercial sex work and the HIV/AIDS epidemic (Van Blerk 2007), the impact of the latter on orphans and how they negotiate care and reciprocity along with extended family households (Abebe and Aase 2007), and the livelihood strategies of rural children in the face of the changing global economic system (Abebe 2007).…”

Returning to Study in Higher Education in Ghana: Experiences of Mature Undergraduate Women

“…In both high-and low-income countries, studies have employed the constructs of age, SES (for example, Reay, 2003;Buchler et al, 2004;Mulugeta, 2004) and gender roles (Edwards, 1993;Baxter & Britton, 2001;Buchler et al, 2004), and the effect of these on mature students' HE completion (Bolam & Dodgson, 2003;Buchler et al, 2004). The discussion that follows presents some of the research evidence on this.…”

“…In both high-and low-income countries, some of the research findings on women's schooling seem to indicate that HE access and participation is for the socio-economically advantaged, who have all the time and encouragement to concentrate on their studies, and not for poor students (David et al, 2009;Morley et al, , 2010. Some studies that have been conducted in African countries suggest that the SES of a family is highly correlated with school enrolment and the persistence of daughters, and that females who come from economically advantaged families are more likely to enter and remain in high school and beyond (Hyde, 1993;Stephens, 2000;Mulugeta, 2004).…”

“…These findings were also reported in Adu-Yeboah & Nti's (2007) study of Ghanaian teachers' views about their chosen route to HE. The challenges are even greater in the case of rural women students (see Mulugeta's 2004 Ethiopian study), who face double constraints in the sense that they come from poor families, have to undergo all the village (farming) life and also suffer from all the inadequacies of the education system, thus making their HE studies even more difficult.…”