Framing gender, education and empowerment

Abstract

Discourse about gender and education is dominated by policy relating to girls' education globally that seeks to improve the situation of girls in low-income countries, increase educational opportunities, and positively influence international development. This perspective, while well intended, continues to rely on several shortcomings - namely, a conflation of the notions of sex and gender, prioritizing educational access over quality of the educational experience, and relying on under-theorized concepts such as empowerment. In general, scholarship has insufficiently addressed the relationship of sociocultural, political and economic contextual dynamics as they relate to the educational experience. This special issue includes a range of contextualized case studies of gender and education with the goal of breaking through these shortcomings, to reveal the story under and beyond the statistics and deepen our theoretical understanding. This introductory article presents an overview of the articles included herein, and discusses the notion of empowerment, and a number of other issues that could help us move forward to a richer knowledge base relating to gender and education internationally. © Symposium Journals Ltd.