Education, Poverty and Global Goals for Gender Equality ─ How People Make Policy Happen

Throughout the 1990s an ambitious global process of policy making was associated with the work of UN agencies which believed that global co-ordination and connection was key to dealing with a range of pressing challenges. Gender inequality in education and poverty reduction featured prominently in these concerns and in attendant policy. As 2010 approached and commentators could look back at ten years of the MDG process, a large number of studies were published assessing the successes or difficulties with this framework. However few looked at how it had been interpreted in particular national and sub-national contexts or how staff in different organisations operating at a global level viewed this approach.

This book contributes to filling the gap in the empirical literature. Drawing on case-study research that examined initiatives which engaged with global aspirations to advance gender equality in and through schooling in contexts of poverty in Kenya and South Africa, it looks at how global frameworks on gender, education and poverty are interpreted in local settings and the politics of implementation. It thus sets discussion of the form of global agreements in a particular context, which allows for an appraisal of how they have been understood by the people who implement them. In using an innovative approach to comparative cross country research it illuminates how ideas and actions connect and disconnect around particular meanings of poverty, education and gender in large systems and different settings. Its conclusions will allow assessments of the approach to the post-2015 agenda to be made taking account of how policy and practice relating to global social justice are negotiated, sometimes negated, the forms in which they are affirmed and the actions that might help enhance them.

This book will be valuable for students , researchers, academics, senior teachers, senior government and inter-government officials and senior staff in NGOs working in the field of education and international development, gender, poverty reduction, and social development. It should be of particular interest to students and academics studying and researching in education, economics, international relations, social policy, African area studies, Development Studies, Women’s Studies.

Elaine Unterhalter is Professor of Education and International Development at the Institute of Education, London, UK

Amy North works in the Faculty of Policy and Society at the Institute of Education, London, UK