CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2013
| Author | Pater, Cayley Elizabeth |
|---|---|
| Title | Seeking "empowerment" in the classroom: a look at two educational programs targeting the girl child in India and Turkey |
| Summary | The “empowerment” of the global “girl child” through education has emerged as a popular focus of international development schemes since the turn of the century, rooting itself in liberal notions of individualism and capitalist economic perspectives. How do universalized conceptualizations of “empowerment” create constraints on girls’ cultural, linguistic and occupational freedoms? This study examines two programs that aim to improve girls’ situations across diverse regions: Educate Girls in India and the Association for the Support of Contemporary Living (Çağdaş Yaşamı Destekleme Derneği - ÇYDD) in Turkey. This paper addresses two ideological foundations of “empowerment” within mainstream development discourse as they are reflected in the programs’ designs: (1) prioritizing the girls’ economic advancement and (2) an assumption of their psychological “interiors.” Both initiatives seek to increase girls’ access to and retention in formal education systems as well as cultivate their personal and social development through training and counseling activities. The socioeconomic shifts in Turkey and India, both recently and historically, create important opportunities to understand the impact of globalization on what it means to be a girl and how girls’ empowerment emerges in these contexts. The diversity of localized needs in terms of improving girls’ lives resists generalization across regions or countries, especially when comparing urban and rural contexts. I argue that education as a means of girls’ empowerment demands an interrogation not only of its curricular content, but also of the content’s local applicability and tendency to discriminate against rural lifestyles. This work is intended to offer insight into programs that address girls’ needs on large scales and therefore has implications for the way similar program models may be designed in the future. |
| Supervisor | Cerwonka, Allaine |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2013/pater_cayley-elizabeth.pdf |
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