Theorising gendered childhoods and girls’ schooling: Poverty, patriarchy and girls’ education in urban India

Abstract

This paper offers gendered accounts of girls’ schooling and childhood from urban India. It challenges global ‘girl effect’ narratives by grappling with the interplay of poverty and caste patriarchy and how it shapes families’ struggles and concerns and girls’ (re)productive labour, (un)freedoms and classroom experiences. Moving beyond the notion of ‘multiple childhoods’ it develops a conceptual framework that accounts for the way the state, the market, economic inequalities and local patriarchies inscribe poor girls’ schooling and work. Drawing upon ethnographic work with Class VIII students in a state school it also unpacks girls’ negotiation of classed and casted patriarchies.

Beyond Enrolment and Appropriation Politics in Dalit Girls’ Education: Caste and Patriarchy Among Scavenging Communities of Urban Haryana, India

“…In between this blaming process, patriarchal structures are often considered a separate subject/variable (e.g., Narwana & Gill, 2020), thereby taking away the spotlight from the primary root cause (the intersection of caste and patriarchy) and its deep embedded networks within the socio-economic difficulties in Dalit girls’ education. Such a common-sensical approach to Dalit girls’ education conveniently detaches itself from the gendered experiences and the geopolitics of patriarchal and marginal histories that have shaped the educational experiences of Dalit girls today (Yunus, 2021).…”

“…Recently a few studies, that is, Balagopalan (2010) and Yunus (2021), explicitly challenge the broader common-sensical assumptions embedded in the socio-economic barriers working against Dalit girls’ education and attempt to unmask the caste and patriarchal synergies present behind them.…”

“…The notions of 'double discrimination' are often interpreted in an either/or framework that locates the educational experiences of Dalit girls as a sole repercussion of upper-caste patriarchy only. For instance, while theorizing gender among Dalit girls' education in India, Yunus (2021), Arur and DeJaeghere (2019), and Narwana and Gill (2020) do not explicitly recognize and question the attacks by the internal Dalit patriarchy on Dalit girls' education and again fall into the vicious cycle of appropriation politics around abuse on SC women carried out by upper castes only.…”

In/secure childhoods: Children and conflict in Kashmir

“…These are marked by colonising forces that attach presumed South Asian values to the “pre-modern” and traditional (Behera, 2007a). Importantly, colonial and postcolonial experiences continuously shape societal norms, driving discourses and practices that instrumentalise children’s bodies in the quest for “modernisation” (Balagopalan, 2010; Yunus, 2021). Within the larger literature on South Asian childhoods there is less work from Kashmir.…”

Shrinking Civil Space? Exploring State and Civil Society Perspectives on the Contemporary Situation of Human Rights Defenders in South Asia

“…They conclude, ‘in South Asia gender discrimination is most severe.’ A burgeoning literature attests to the diverse strands of this oppression. It includes—but is not limited to: public spending (Panday & Chowdhury, 2022), health (Fikree & Pasha, 2004), the labour market (Delavande & Zafar, 2019) and education (Yunus, 2021). The inequality is compounded by patriarchal cultures (Sechiyama, 2013), enduring violence against women (Bennett & Manderson, 2003), as well as the intersection of gender with other social characteristics such as faith (Ahmed-Ghosh, 2015), disability (Nakkeeran & Nakkeeran, 2018), sexual orientation (Roy, 2020) and indigeneity (Sigamany, 2017).…”