Beijing+20: Much done, more to do
The 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action which outlined a broad vision of women’s rights and gender equality has not been fully achieved in the ensuing 20 years.
That’s according to Elaine Unterhalter, of the University College London Institute of Education who was addressing the EI Women’s Caucus at EI’s 7th World Congress in Ottawa, Canada, on 21 July.
There have been three approaches to the issues of education, gender equality, and women’s rights as discussed in the second Strategic Objective of the Beijing Platform which was initiated in 1995 at the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing.
Get girls into school
The first approach, ‘Get girls into school’, defines poverty in terms of income and “is often silent on questions of gender equality, and only rarely looks at outcomes beyond school”, said Unterhalter, whose keynote speech at the Women’s Caucus was titled, ‘Beijing+20 and education; How far have we come?’
Different learning styles
The second approach was based on the assumption that boys and girls have different learning styles: quiet girls and attention-seeking boys. Whilst this approach could instead be used to provide “spaces to challenge stereotypes and norms and do gender differently, there has been much less policy work and many fewer documented initiatives”, she said.
Unequal power
The third approach raised aspects of “unequal power associated with poverty, cultures of violence, and exclusion”, said Unterhalter. Schools can often reflect and reproduce unequal power in gender, race, ethnicity, politics, the economy and health. Gender equity in education, then, concerns exposing and transforming those inequalities in the curricula, policy, pedagogy, pay, working conditions, and decision-making.
The future
According to Unterhalter, education still remains a space where gender equality and women’s rights issues can be explored critically. Policies that seek short-term outcomes without undoing inequalities – such as private sector interest in girls’ education – will need “scrutiny and evaluation from the perspective of gender equality and women’s rights”, she said.
Photo Credit: Gabriel Castro - IEAL
