This article draws on the five other papers from South Africa in this issue of "Gender and Education" to consider how Southern theory has been developed and is developing in relation to gender and education in South Africa. We argue that Southern theory is not an on-the-shelf solution to global geopolitical inequalities but a work in…

Empowering women to control and change their lives continues to be an important goal for many nations. This article examines the empowering effects of being selected and trained to lead rural schools in Bangladesh, using survey and interview data from 152 village women working with the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee education programme.…

Over the last several decades a number of strategies have emerged and evolved to promote gender equity in development efforts. Yet debates regarding the relative efficacy of these strategies remain. On Thursday, April 26, 2007, the Woodrow Wilson Center convened a group of experts on gender and development to address the issue of gender inequality…

A regional UNESCO seminar aimed to follow up on the goals set at the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000 and to contribute to the "Ten Year UN Girls' Education Initiative" (UNGEI). The seminar established three primary aims: (1) to develop a regional cooperation mechanism or network of Education for All (EFA) gender focal points, to…

This report presents research findings about the intellectual, political, and organizational processes that have shaped government and donor policies and projects concerned with promoting the education of women and girls in Malawi, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. The study seeks to assess the extent to which gender interventions in education have been…

Noting that girls' lack of access to education is related to a number of economic, social, religious, and cultural factors as well as a scarcity of places in schools and that promoting gender equity in school may help equity spread throughout the entire community, this report illustrates the gender equity approach used in the Save the Children's…

A program to train literacy providers to help empower women was developed with funding from the United Nations Development Program. The training program is based on a manual titled "Educate to Empower." The manual, which is designed to train material developers to prepare gender-sensitive learning kits on various topics related to…

Women's literacy rates have improved in nearly all countries for which data are available. However, discrimination in access to education starts in early childhood and tends to continue throughout women's lives. Reproductive, productive, and community roles are considered family responsibilities to be assumed by women. Because these activities…

Economic restructuring has severely affected the education of girls, particularly in the poorest and least developed countries where poverty is the major obstacle to education. Girls still constitute the majority of children not enrolled in school, and illiteracy among women remains one of the biggest challenges for the 21st century. Deep-rooted…

This symposium is comprised of three papers on issues of gender in human resource development (HRD). "The Impact of Awareness and Action on the Implementation of a Women's Network" (Laura L. Bierema) reports on research to examine how gender consciousness emerges through the formation of in-company networks to promote corporate women's…