Gender and Education in Developing Contexts: Postcolonial Reflections on Africa

Two of the most pressing educational concerns in sub-Saharan Africa — violence and HIV/AIDS — are directly related to the ways in which gender is socially constructed. In developing contexts gender has stubbornly remained a one-sided topic with the focus firmly (and justifiably) on the plight of girls in schools. In the African context where girls have often been marginalized, the benefits of education including increased economic opportunities, smaller families and its role as a “social vaccine” against HIV are well documented. Yet, in many African countries, access to education is curtailed by lack of resources and the question of quality of education has been raised as an important reason why girls continually lack the skills and confidence to make appropriate choices in environments that are plagued by unemployment, poverty, violence, conflict and HIV/AIDS. Schools are not safe places for girls and most of the gender analyses focus on the ways in which sexual violence manifests in school sites hindering and harming the education of girls. The focus on boys on the other hand and the construction of masculinities as a gendered construct has been largely absent from the literature on gender and education in development discourse. Where the focus has been present the construction of violent masculinities has received attention (Morrell, 2001). In industrialized and developed economies, research on gender and education has focused on boys, with a great deal of attention being given to the crisis of masculinity and feminist gains at the expense of boys. In this writing, boys have been presented as gendered victims who need support. This is in contrast to writings about boys and men in Africa who have often been demonized and seen as potentially dangerous. Recently though, an approach in gender and education in sub-Saharan Africa trying to shed light on the construction of masculinities and their complex relationship to socially and materially impoverished contexts ravaged by HIV/AIDS is emerging. These analyses generally conclude that violent and hegemonic forms of masculinities within resource-poor contexts nurture unequal gender relations and it is usually boys and male teachers that use violence. Girls mainly suffer the consequences of violence in school. Similarly, most reports on HIV/AIDS focus on how girls are made vulnerable to the disease by a rampant heterosexual masculinity. Girls account for nearly 60% of HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa (UNAIDS, 2004). Given that gender identities and processes are related to high rates of violence and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, educational approaches have begun to focus on the meanings that boys and girls give to their gendered identities in the attempt to address the problems associated with rigid definitions of masculinity and femininity and to find ways of increasing the possibilities of upholding peaceful gender identities. To this end sex and HIV/AIDS education is now premised on working with the lives and identities of children and youth in schools to create alternate possibilities of doing gender analyses. This chapter argues that in the context of violence and HIV/AIDS a more sophisticated gender analysis is beginning to emerge in sub-Saharan Africa that requires us to understand how both boys and girls are made vulnerable to rigid notions of masculine and feminine hierarchies. It seeks to explore two key questions. First, how does a focus on masculinities help better to understand school boys in sub-Saharan Africa? And second, in terms of HIV/AIDS, what are the implications of gender-specific realities and vulnerabilities of boys and girls and how might these shifting and changing gender identities be used to enable education to embrace and promote gender equity.