Globalizing Education for Work: Comparative Perspectives on Gender and the New Economy (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education)

GLOBALIZING EDUCATION FOR WORK GLOBALIZING EDUCATION FOR WORK Comparative Perspectives on Gender and the New Economy ...

Author: Richard D. Lakes | Patricia A. Carter

25 downloads 1371 Views 2MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

GLOBALIZING EDUCATION FOR WORK

GLOBALIZING EDUCATION FOR WORK Comparative Perspectives on Gender and the New Economy

Edited by

Richard D.Lakes Patricia A.Carter Georgia State University

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS Mahwah, New Jersey London

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.

“ To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. ” Camera ready copy for this book was provided by the editors. Copyright © 2004 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be repro duced in any form by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means, without prior written permission of the publisher. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers 10 Industrial Avenue Mahwah, NJ 07430 Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Globalizing education for work: comparative perspectives on gender and the new economy/edited by Richard D.Lakes and Patricia A.Carter, p. cm.—(Sociocultural, political, and historical studies in education) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8058-5029-5 (alk. paper) 1. Women—Vocational education—Case studies. 2. Sex discrimination in education—Case studies. 3. Globalization. I.Lakes, Richard D. II. Carter, Patricia Anne. III. Series.

LC1500.G56 2004 374’.013’082—dc22

ISBN 1-4106-1049-7 Master e-book ISBN

2003064202 CIP

Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education Joel Spring, Editor Spring • The Cultural Transformation of a Native American Family and Its Tribe 1763–1995 Peshkin • Places of Memory: Whiteman’s Schools and Native American Communities Nespor • Tangled Up in School: Politics, Space, Bodies, and Signs in the Educational Process Weinberg • Asian-American Education: Historical Background and Current Realities Lipka/Mohatt/The Ciulistet Group • Transforming the Culture of Schools: Yu’pik Eskimo Examples Benham/Heck • Culture and Educational Policy in Hawai’i: The Silencing of Native Voices Spring • Education and the Rise of the Global Economy Pugach • On the Border of Opportunity: Education, Community, and Language at the U.S.-Mexico Line Hones/Cha • Educating New Americans: Immigrant Lives and Learning Gabbard (Ed.) • Knowledge and Power in the Global Economy: Politics and The Rhetoric of School Reform Glander • Origins of Mass Communications Research During the American Cold War: Educational Effects and Contemporary Implications Nieto (Ed.) • Puerto Rican Students in U.S. Schools Benham/Cooper (Eds.) • Indigenous Educational Models for Contemporary Practice: In Our Mother’s Voice Spring • The Universal Right to Education: Justification, Definition, and Guidelines Peshkin • Permissible Advantage?: The Moral Consequences of Elite Schooling DeCarvalho • Rethinking Family-School Relations: A Critique of Parental Involvement in Schooling Borman/Stringfield/Slavin (Eds.) • Title I: Compensatory Education at the Crossroads Roberts • Remaining and Becoming: Cultural Crosscurrents in an Hispano School Meyer/Boyd (Eds.) • Education Between State, Markets, and Civil Society: Comparative Perspectives

Luke • Globalization and Women in Academics: North/West—South/East Grant/Lei (Eds.)—Global Constructions of Multicultural Education: Theories and Realities Spring • Globalization and Educational Rights: An Intercivilizational Analysis Spring • Political Agendas for Education: From the Religious Right to the Green Party, Second Edition McCarty • A Place to Be Navajo: Rough Rock and The Struggle for SelfDetermination in Indigenous Schooling Hones • American Dreams, Global Visions: Dialogic Teacher Research with Refugee and Immigrant Families Ben ham/Stein (Eds.) • The Renaissance of American Indian Higher Education: Capturing the Dream Ogbu • Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement Books (Ed.) • Invisible Children in the Society and Its Schools, Second Edition Spring • Educating the Consumer-Citizen: A History of the Marriage of Schools, Advertising, and Media Hemmings • Coming of Age in U.S. High Schools: Economic, Kinship, Religious, and Political Crosscurrents Heck • Studying Educational and Social Policy: Theoretical Concepts and Research Methods Lakes/Carter (Eds.) • Globalizing Education for Work: Comparative Perspectives on Gender and the New Economy Spring • How Educational Ideologies are Shaping Global Society: Intergovernmental Organizations, NGOs, and the Decline of the NationState Shapiro/Purpel (Eds.) • Critical Social Issues in American Education: Democracy and Meaning in a GlobalizingWorld, Third Edition Books • Poverty and Schooling in the U.S.: Contexts and Consequences Reagan • Non-Western Educational Traditions: Indigenous Approaches to Educational Thought and Practice, Third Edition Bowers/Apffel-Marglin (Eds.) • Rethinking Freire: Globalization and the Environmental Crisis

Contents

Preface Contributors

1 Globalizing Education for Work: An Introduction Richard D.Lakes and Patricia A.Carter 2 Education and Work as Human Rights for Women: A Feminist Analysis Patricia A.Carter

ix xiii

1

17

3 Working-Class Masculinities and Schooling: New Considerations for Vocational Education 41 Richard D.Lakes 4 Defying the Grip of Globalization: Brazilian Women’s Employment and Education for Work Tania Ramalho

57

5 Preparation for (In)equality: Women in South Korean Vocational Education Hye K.Pae and Richard D.Lakes

83

6 Poverty and Powerlessness in Ethiopia: Shaping Gender Equity Through Technical, Vocational Education, and Training Johanna Lasonen

95

7 Changing Work, Changing Households; New Challenges to Masculinity and Femininity in Norwegian Vocational Education 109 Liv Mjelde

viii

CONTENTS

8 Gender and the New Economy—Enterprise Discourses in Canada: Implications for Workplace Learning and Education Tara Fenwick

129

9 Where Are the Women in Vocational Education and Training?: An Assessment of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) in Australia Marg Malloch

151

10 Disincentives to Employment: Family and Educational Policies in Unified Germany Katrin Kraus and Patricia A.Carter

167

11 Gender Equity in Vocational Education in the United States: The Unfinished Agenda 185 Steven M.Culver and Penny L.Burge

Afterword

199

Richard D.Lakes and Patricia A.Carter Author Index

205

Subject Index

213

Preface One can hardly help but notice the controversy surrounding changes in the world economy. Some 70,000 protesters took to the streets in Seattle in November of 1999, to voice opposition to the World Trade Organization’s policy, which they believe disregard human rights, labor negotiations, environmental stability, and virtually upend economies in the developing world. In April of 2000 over 10,000 marched on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) buildings in Washington, D.C. In September of 2000, the 55th annual summit of the WB and IMF in Prague, Czechoslovakia, closed a day earlier than planned in response to another round of street protests. One hundred thousand people demonstrated at the July 2001, G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy. Many more political actions have occurred in towns and cities around the world since that time. Although the issues are complex and diverse both those for and against the international trade policies agree on one thing: The world is drawing closer economic, political, and social ties. As educators we became interested in investigating what roles schools played in this evolution. Was there a parallel between an increasingly globalized economy and a viable universal concept of education for work? What effect does a nation’s global economic posture have on its training policies? As educators who have focused our past research and teaching on gender and labor issues, moreover, we wanted to know how changes in the world economy impacted the education of male and female workers—are there appreciable differences? Are the needs of female workers still driven by patriarchal agendas? What are the governmental policies in socialist and capitalist democracies or in developing and developed nations toward education for work? Are educational equity issues heightened or submerged in the new economy? In this volume we incorporate these questions along with others brought to the text by the contributors. We start with the understanding that gender and culture are multifaceted, historically situated, constructed around dominant economic and institutional structures, class identities and social positions, as well as discursive practices. We also note that tensions arise as one contests-resists-accommodates capitalist advances in the new economy. Our comparative perspective helps the reader to more clearly analyze commonalities as well in nation-state policymaking contexts for education.

x

PREFACE

OVERVIEW Lakes and Carter (chap. 1) provide a sense of changing relationships between gender and education for work. They argue that donor organizations, such as the WB and the United Nations (UN), influence the conceptualization of what constitutes good practices regarding job training in the new economy, especially among developing countries. Although the WB and UN define work and education as essential human rights for both males and females, they have also gained—what some consider—a disproportionate control over vocational education and training (VET) in poorer nations through loans, technical expertise, and political power. Carter (chap, 2) provides a feminist analysis of the historical evolution in the conception of education and work as human rights. She provides examples of nongovernmental organizations, such as the International Suffrage Alliance (in 1881), that contributed to global treaties granting women and children civil rights such as the freedom from rape, sexual harassment, and inequitable labor and education practices. She notes that despite these accords women still face systemic economic, cultural, educational, and legal constraints that impede real access to equal opportunities for work and education. Lakes (chap. 3) uses a literature review to analyze the educational effects produced by globalization and deindustrialization in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States on working-class masculinities and schooling. He illustrates how the economy has shifted from male-defined industrial workplaces to one dependent on service jobs requiring differently gendered social and emotional skills. Rising unemployment and underemployment of vast numbers of working-class men has encouraged renewed attention to schooling and the socially constructed process of risk in aligning educational preparation to the marketplace. Ramalho (chap. 4) examines women’s work and education in Brazil, exploring the meaning of workforce development under neo-liberal state policies that promulgate modernizing the VET system. She takes aim at the colonizing practices of donor agencies that leave the country in debt, resulting in fewer social programs for women and the poor, with less attention to its Freirean legacy of democratizing education. Pae and Lakes (chap. 5) describe the South Korean educational system and illuminate the dialectical tension for females in accessing education for work. Girls and women face cultural constraints through patriarchal and Confucian ideology, yet expanded trade policies generate new opportunities for females in the marketplace and in vocational education and training programs. Since the 1990s, the rapid globalization process in the country has forced governmental leaders to identify and generate policies that attend to female equality.

PREFACE

xi

Lasonen (chap. 6) provides a recent historical overview of the status of women and educational reforms in Ethiopia. She analyzes the ways in which contemporary VET systems and state policies could contribute to poverty reduction and gender equity, but notes the limitations created by the severe economic, political, and structural disadvantages within the country, Mjelde (chap. 7) discusses the recent historical changes in Norwegian VET in relation to equity policy; and offers a qualitative study of apprenticeships for women in the printing industries of Scandinavia. She finds that the gendered division of labor is declining as the long-term effects of social democratic policies such as the Gender Equality Act of 1979 have advanced women’s position in the employment and training sector. Fenwick (chap. 8) finds neo-liberal discourses of self-reliance and individualism are linked to heightened rhetoric about entrepreneurship and small business development as essential in Canada’s new economy, She argues that women still face enormous barriers in paid labor, skilled jobs, and work-based training. In fact, self-employed women are among the group with the lowest income; and, are faced with the erosion of governmental support for gender equity in VET. Malloch (chap. 9) examines the situation of women and girls in Australia’s Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges, policy contexts, organizational culture, staffing patterns, promotional opportunities, and workforce changes, among others. She finds that TAFE exhibits patterns of institutional sexism, despite the untiring efforts of a core group of feminists who question the system’s commitment to equity. Kraus and Carter (chap. 10) contrast the two German state policies toward women’s position in the workplace prior to that nation’s reunification in 1989. They illustrate how the unified state’s efforts to increase the native German birthrate has shaped social policy reforms and dominated expectations about women’s work and mothering roles. Culver and Burge (chap. 11) summarize gender equity efforts in the United States pertaining to the VET system since the mid-1970s. They see an erosion of the educational equity agenda through declines in governmental policies and fiscal support, and in general a conservative posture toward special needs programming. The Afterword identifies overarching themes emerging from the volume, and illuminates various comparative perspectives on gender and the new economy. These include: (a) The ways in which new conservative politics of neo-liberalism have shifted equity policies away from state responsibility and onto individuals; (b) Despite efforts to renovate education for work social and cultural traditions of patriarchy continue to limit female equity; (c) Vocational education and training systems reinforce sex-typed training

xii

PREFACE

programs reproducing gender stereotypes and a culture of masculine privilege; and (d) Donor agencies often wield an unfair advantage in determining vocational training and gender equity agendas in the developing nations.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Our comparative perspectives on education for work have been enriched by membership in the European Vocational Education and Training Network, and we want to recognize Anja Heikkinen of the University of Jyväskylä and Rudolf Husemann of the University of Erfurt for hosting recent visits abroad. We are indebted to the people at the Interlibrary Loan Office of Georgia State University for assistance with hard to find citations, and a special thanks to Jeffrey Stockwell in the Department of Educational Policy Studies for help with pre-publication matters. Joel Spring, our series editor, and the external reviewers Mutindi Ndunda of the College of Charleston, L. Allen Phelps of the University of Wisconsin, and Jay Rojewski of the University of Georgia offered positive feedback for manuscript revisions. Our editors at Lawrence Erlbaum, Naomi Silverman and her assistant Erica Kica, and Art Lizza and his production staff have been invaluable in giving of their time and energy to the project. Finally, pulling together this edited book required hard work on the part of our contributors—a talented group of scholars globally. We wish to thank each and every one of you.

Contributors Penny L.Burge is a professor of educational research and evaluation in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. She recently completed a 6-year tenure as the founding director of the Women’s Center at Tech. Her research has focused on diversity and multicultural concerns, with emphasis on gender. She has authored numerous publications on gender equity in vocational education. Patricia A.Carter has administered and taught in women’s studies programs for over 20 years. Her previous publications have focused on the historical relationship between female educators and the feminist movement, and include a recently published book on 20th-century women teachers. She teaches at Georgia State University in the Social Foundations of Education. Steven M.Culver is a professor of research methods in the School of Social Work at Radford University in Virginia. He serves as a reviewer for several professional journals and has been invited as a gender equity consultant to numerous universities and agencies. He has authored journal articles and research reports related to vocational education, gender issues, and social and economic justice, Tara Fenwick is an associate professor in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Alberta in Canada. Her research in work-based learning explores relationships between knowledge development, identity and the politics of changing work contexts. Her critical publications focus on gendered practices in education and organizational development. Katrin Kraus is a doctoral student in the Department of Pedagogy, program in Further Vocational Education, at the University of Trier, Germany. Her research interests are adult education, lifelong learning, comparative education, and education for work-labor. Richard D.Lakes is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at Georgia State University where he coordinates and teaches in the Social Foundations of Education. His research specialties are critical pedagogy, vocational education, gender studies, and youth development.

xiv

CONTRIBUTORS

Johanna Lasonen is a professor in the Institute for Educational Research at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. She also holds a UNESCO professorship and is the UNESCO Chair of Finland. Her research has been on comparative trends in women’s education in Europe and Finland. Marg Malloch has worked in education in a variety of roles, teaching, administration, research, and curriculum development. Her areas of specialization and interest include gender equity, women in education administration, capability and work-based education and training. She currently coordinates postgraduate programs offered in Australia and Thailand in the School of Education, Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. Liv Mjelde is a professor of vocational pedagogy in Akershus University College in Oslo. She specializes on the changing relations between vocational and general education from psychological (forms of knowledge), didactic (workshop and classroom learning), and sociological (division of manual and mental labor) perspectives. Recent research on gender focuses upon the history of manual labor and family ideology in Norway. Hye K. Pae is a research associate at Georgia State University and teaches at Georgia Perimeter College. She received her doctorate degree from Georgia State University in Educational Policy Studies. Her general research interests lie in the interdisciplinary studies of education and communication, with specialties in Korean media literacy. Tania Ramalho is an assistant professor of education at State University of New York, Oswego. A Brasicana (Brazilian-American), she teaches social and historical foundations of education from a global social justice perspective. Her interests are women’s lives in the Americas, teacher professional development, professional development schools, and the connection between education and development at the personal, organizational, and societal levels.

1 Globalizing Education for Work: An Introduction Richard D.Lakes and Patricia A.Carter Georgia State University

The impact of globalization on women presents policy analysts with a new set of problems pertaining to equity and education. Vocational education and training (VET) once offered young people and adults (notably males) a set of craft and production skills readily useful for local commerce and regional industry that is becoming increasingly irrelevant today. The changes are evidenced by rapid capitalization in developing countries, First World deindustrialization, reduction in union memberships, decline in regulatory mechanisms for worker health and safety, and an accompanying shift to lower-paying service employment (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, 1996). Grupta (2001) explained: Globalization is to the world what marriage used to be for women: inevitable and transformative. And like marriage, globalization and the concurrent spread of new technologies affect women differently than men—particularly in the developing world, (p. 95) Many would argue that the recent economic transformation is not necessarily good for women. This volume takes a critical look at the relationship between globalization and women as it relates to education for work. We use cross-national perspectives to illuminate the meaning of VET equity theory and practice in the global economy, and explore the current use of VET as a means of achieving gender equitable work opportunity. We recognize that gender equity in education and government policy is constructed differently from place to place, dependent upon a variety of factors including economic development within nation-states and geographic regions.

2


Thus we have chosen to present specific case studies of countries with economies ranging from Ethiopia (chap. 6), an impoverished country that has not yet been positioned to benefit from globalization, to South Korea (chap. 5), which achieved unprecedented growth in the 1980s and 1990s due to its tie to the global export market. Brazil (chap. 4) provides a stark contrast to South Korea. Unable to repay debts incurred in an effort to modernize its economy so it could compete in the global marketplace Brazil sinks further and further into a dismal financial malaise. While older European countries like Germany (chap. 10) and Norway (chap. 7) share a common social democratic perspective they face significantly different economic problems. Once the uncontested economic powerhouse of Europe, Germany’s annexation of the former soviet German Democratic Republic, places the unified country in the position of reevaluating its wide but increasingly expensive social welfare network. Norway, one of the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of gross domestic product, benefits from a relatively stable economy buffered by the continuing world demand for its oil, agricultural and fishing production. Although Australia (chap. 9) and Canada (chap, 8) retain similarly strong economic positions they remained tied to the whims of the United States, which continues to hold the advantage as the principal player in the world economy. WOMEN’S CONTRIBUTION TO NATIONAL ECONOMIES In the search for cheap labor worldwide, investing in women oifers high economic gains offset by low investments in human capital. Accordingly, the “UN and other global estimates show women providing two-thirds of the hours of work, earning one-tenth of the world’s income, and possessing less than one-hundredth of the world’s wealth” (Cockcroft, 1998, p. 42). Cockcroft called women “super-exploitable,” particularly in free-trade zones such as maquiladoras on the Mexican border (but elsewhere as well), who deliver low-skills, often subcontracted piecework in the garment trades, without benefit of social security, unionization, health and retirement plans, and the like. The modern version of sweatshop labor, Cockcroft (1998) claimed, repeats two very important patriarchal and capitalistic assumptions. Women’s unpaid household labor is a justification for employers to pay all workers less, and women are viewed as a reserve army of labor who can be hired and fired at will. Of course women and children of color are doubly disadvantaged in the politics of globalization. For instance, Afro-Brazilian women who have the highest levels of illiteracy at about 50% rarely obtain entry-level jobs or further education (Da Silva, 1998).

1. GLOBALIZING EDUCATION FOR WORK

3

Not only do women work 25% longer hours to earn far less than men, they obtain a reduced amount of schooling too. According to the United Nations Development Program, female literacy rates in 1990 were threequarters that of males in the developing world (McCleay, 1991). While girls are enrolling in greater numbers in primary schools—nearly 70% worldwide in 1995 (Mitchell, 1998), some 90 million girls are not receiving basic instruction. The largest pockets of illiteracy exist among adult women; in Southwest Asia more than three-quarters of women ages 20 to 24 have no education at all. In Africa, most women do not obtain secondary education and adult illiteracy is over 60% among women (“Perspectives,” 1995). INCENTIVES OF EDUCATION The costs of education and the loss of potential income collude to take girls out of education in a much larger proportion to boys. Often girls are removed from school to care for younger siblings or are put to work to provide another source of family income. Patriarchal traditions that insist that wives become a part of their husbands’ families upon marriage, further diminish incentives for parents to finance a daughter’s education (Hill & King, 1993). Since wealth in developing countries emanates from children, specifically male children, high fertility is seen as economically rational, Thus, new global priorities for schooling can be seen to conflict with the immediate good of the family unit as it “reduces children’s economic contributions, increases their costs, lengthens their dependence, and speeds up cultural and value change” (Hadden & London, 1996, p. 33). One emerging indicator of cultural and value change is that educated women tend to have fewer children. A study by Population Action International (Conly, 1998) found that higher fertility rates (more than five children per mother) are present in countries with the lowest female education rates: Afghanistan, 6.9; Chad, 6; Guinea, 6.1; Mali, 7.3; and Yemen, 7.5. In these countries, 76 million fewer girls than boys are enrolled in primary and secondary schools. Chad ranks the lowest with only 1 in 30 girls attending school. The average adult woman has obtained less than 1 month of education. Another example is Laos, where women are so poorly educated that only 9% complete elementary school (Lao Embassy, 2000). Along with reduced fertility, education is associated “with increased economic productivity, better family health and nutrition, lower maternal and child death rates” (Mitchell, 1998, p. 154). Some scholars are optimistic about the promise of globalized standards of education for women, A U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) report found that in 30 of 47 countries surveyed, the percentage of women with little or no formal education was significantly reduced by about

4


one-half in a single generation (Mitchell, 1998). Countries such as Tanzania, Jordan, and Kenya exhibit a high proportion of females ages 20 to 24 with primary schooling. The assumption is that more education will inevitably lead to better lives for women in a global economy offering jobs requiring at least basic literacy skills. While sweated labor and subsistence wages abound in developing countries, new jobs offer different-better options than before (Kelly & Wolf, 2001). For example, in Indonesia anecdotal evidence suggests women’s moderate earnings allow consumption patterns previously unattainable, and labor conditions much preferable to slogging in the village rice fields. In Nicaragua, globalization is bringing Third-World women into contact with more resources and international feminist perspectives through nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) located in wealthier countries (Kelly & Wolf, 2001). In fact, the global economy may present females with new resources to challenge patriarchal relations, create innovative expressions of community building and empowerment, and build novel forms of resistance and contestation (Basu, 1995; Ghorayshi & Belanger, 1996; Mohanty, Russo, & Torres, 1991; Smith, 2000). Whatever forms of resistance female workers may take, most scholars agree that education and economic independence must be at the heart of new roles for women in the global marketplace. In this volume we examine various delivery systems being used in VET in an effort to establish a fair chance for women in the global workplace. VET AND GENDER EQUITY VET can most easily be defined as training for jobs. Yet the delivery system is highly diverse throughout the globe due to a variety of factors including economic development, cultural traditions, industrialization strategies, and relationships between the state and economic enterprise (Caillods, 1994). For amplification, the World Bank (WB) offers a 9-point taxonomy of delivery systems (Carnoy, 1994, p. 223): traditional apprenticeships which involve fundamental skill acquisition; regulated apprenticeships requiring on-the-job training with experienced workers; enterprise training delivered through inhouse training centers; sectoral training institutions where public training for a sub-sector of the economy is taught; project-related training involving specialized in-service training; vocational secondary schools, either public or private, which prepares adolescents for work; comprehensive schools that provide separate academic and vocational tracks within the same building; diversified secondary school in which all students take vocational courses in a general curriculum; and vocational schools in which general education is taught along with VET for commercial, industrial, or agricultural occupations.


5

With transnational capitalist expansion into East Asia, for instance, VET is central to improving market competitiveness as well as strengthening workforce skills, labor mobility, and adaptability to changes in global economics (Caillods, 1994). Industrialized Pacific rim countries, such as South Korea, have shifted emphasis over the last 30 years from primary education to secondary vocational schools and, more recently, to postsecondary technical and applied science or engineering colleges. Japanese education and training, too, is distinguished by centralized state control of curricula with “a strong emphasis upon the development of group cohesion and conformism”—characterized by Green (1999, p. 64), as “a specific form of articulation between formal school systems and labour markets that is not found elsewhere.” Underlying social and cultural reproduction in education is the longstanding Confucian tradition that places great emphasis upon loyalty to family and filial piety within the patriarchal organization of large firms. Perhaps China’s recent embrace of globalized markets is most telling in that VET delivery systems now are forming in impoverished rural provinces, a move that is viewed positively by the government—assisted by international donor agencies such as the World Trade Organization—as a way to not only increase employment and earnings potential but drive foreign investment (“China to Train,” 2002; “Enhanced Vocational Training,” 2002; “Vocational Education Crucial,” 2002). The Ministry of Education predicts that the need for vocational education will rise dramatically in the next 3 years with plans to train upward of 30 million people. The enrollment rate for students in western areas of the country alone is forecast to jump from 2.54 million to 4 million. China’s vocational schools have increased fourfold from 2.27 million students in 1980 to 11.64 million students in 2001. In addition, VET systems are aided by high job placement rates (78.4%) for graduates. Still, empirically documented evidence is lacking on the economic performance levels and community development aspects of rural populations impacted by VET through applied, technology-based training for production and entrepreneurship (Tiedao, Hui, Mengxia, & Yan, 2001). EDUCATION FOR EMPOWERMENT OR ECONOMY? How can globalization aide women’s social and economic positions and enhance their prospects in life? One group of development theorists insists that education offers greater empowerment through opportunities for mobility and advancement and by “developing understandings that can challenge the prevailing oppressive social and sexual order” (Mickelson,

6


Nkomo, & Smith, 2001, p. 5). This argument finds that higher levels of schooling are linked favorably to rises in female political participation, decline in fertility rates, decreases in infant mortality, and increases in the workforce. Historically, policies regarding vocational education and training for women have been developed at the national or state level. However, the increasing globalization of the economy has seen a parallel influence of international assistance agencies, especially in developing countries. Also called donor organizations, these groups, such as the World Bank (WB) and the United Nations (UN), provide both technical assistance and funding through loans and matching or direct contributions. A 1994 United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) report asserts a sentiment long held in the donor community: “There is a widespread agreement that the education of girls is one of the most important investments that any developing country can make in its own future” (Hadden & London, 1996, p. 31). Assistance agencies tend to approach female education from two perspectives: economic and social. From an economic viewpoint researchers have found that the education of girls can be translated into growth in the gross national product (Benavot, 1989). Yet general economic growth does not always lead to a fair distribution of social resources as indicated by factors including infant mortality, literacy rates, life expectancy, political stability, and women’s status. Thus, since the 1970s assistance organizations have focused on accomplishing both economic and social improvements, which, as recent researchers have illustrated, can be obtained through female education (Hadden & London, 1996; Hill & King, 1993). The WB’s investment in education began in Tunisia in 1963 and, by 1995, had amounted to nearly $20 billion for more than 500 projects in some 100 countries (Torres, 1999). Traditionally, the WB tended to fund vocational education projects offered at the secondary or postsecondary levels, lasting at least 1 year, and providing certification upon successful completion of training. More recently, however, VET funding priorities of the WB seem to have shifted from backing formal, long-term projects to short-term, basic, and specialized training courses and internship programs that “decentralize and privatize much of the actual training services” in an effort to more quickly and efficiently respond to local labor and market needs (Fawcett & Howden, 1998, p. 10). The UN began reports on gender disparity enrollments in the late 1960s. Since that time several of its subgroups—United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), UNICEF, UN Voluntary Fund for Women (now UNIFEM) have advocated the schooling of women and girls as a central part of their mission. In conjunction with other funding agencies, governmental and NGOs, the UN has convened international conferences on women at regular intervals since 1975. These meetings


7

establish policies for the treatment of women in many aspects of social, cultural, political, and legal environments, including life-long opportunities for education. In 1981, the UN “Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women” developed an international treaty by which all signatories agreed to grant women the same human rights and freedoms as men including education (Erskine & Wilson, 1999). The UN’s Beijing conference in 1995 identified the education and training of women as a critical area of concern and named six strategies to ensure equal access to schooling. Among these were improved admission to vocational training, science and technology, and continuing education. Types of projects funded by international development agencies for women include microenterprise, technical skills training in nontraditional occupations, gender awareness in training curricula and facilities, and performance needs (Fawcett & Howden, 1998). Although women’s VET programs were once segregated as special target programs, a more recent trend has been an integrative approach (mainstreaming) in which women are enrolled in programs alongside men, and additional support activities are offered to women to meet their special needs. These activities include special promotional and recruitment materials that clarify the intention to include female students on an equal footing with male students; pretraining programs to provide females with skills and knowledge commensurate with entering male students; and job readiness classes and outplacement activities that may include lessons on issues facing women such as occupational segregation, job stereotyping, assertiveness, managing stress, building self-confidence, interpersonal skills, and responding to child-care and family problems (Fawcett & Howden, 1998). Even so detractors complain that when it comes to identifying and correcting educational issues in developing countries “economic discourse has come to dominate the field—the dynamic of schools and the educational system as a whole…are scarcely included in the discussions” (Torres, 1999, p. 66). Stromquist (1999) pointed out: Donors by virtue of their having more power, knowledge, and expertise than national institutions they seek to support, introduce elements of power, that if unchecked, contribute to making the recipient countries “clients” rather than partners, (p. 15) Whether or not donor agencies wield an unfair advantage in determining educational policies in the developing world their prominence is underscored by several chapters in this book that place donor-funded projects or policies at the heart of VET analysis.

8


SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONS Even in countries where females approach parity with males in schooling, educational pathways and career outcomes are dissimilar, in part, due to socially constructed sex-role stereotypes and gender bias. Pointing out that women are committed to a life-long relationship with the labor force and increasingly aware of their rights and willing to act in defense of them, a 1996 UN division report on the advancement of women, noted that educational and training programs still tend to be segregated by male and female subject areas (UNDAW, 1996). In fact, enrollment patterns in VET reflect what Martin (1985) named the dichotomy of reproductive-productive processes: Gendered codes inscribed onto boys and girls as to the nature and meaning of their roles in public and private realms, at work, and in the home. That is, worker’s identities are shaped through childhood socialization and other cultural norms that insure a division of labor along gendered lines—as well as class, race, and ethnic position. Thus, one might legitimately question whether VET props up existing cultural notions that further inscribe women’s secondary status even in countries where educational access is assumed to be equal. A study of Australian Technical and Further Education (TAFE) graduates explored this question at length (Dumbrell, De Montfort, Finnegan, & Wright, 2000). Profiles of the class of 1997 showed females enrolled in the business and clerical, health, and community services areas while males remained in the more economically rewarding areas of engineering and building trades. When questioned about their choices the female graduates noted parental and peer pressure not to step outside a traditional female occupation. In addition some participants, both male and female, noted specific cases of harassment directed toward females studying in maledominated areas, such as one teacher telling his female students they should be at home. Some felt males were boisterous and disruptive in classes (Dumbrell et al., 2000). Yet, when intervention occurs to provide a gender-equity orientation, females have successfully moved into craft-related and trade-related training nontraditional for their gender. Such was the case in New South Wales, Australia, in the early 1980s, which saw a significant rise in female participation in the construction, electrical, and machine tool areas (Pocock, 1988). However, Butler and Ferrier (2000) noted an attitudinal shift in Australian VET since the early 1980s that has resulted in a reemergence of a masculine culture that prohibits sustainable equity efforts, and in which women often are marginalized by their entry into special affirmative action programs.


9

FEMALE IDENTITY: EDUCATION FOR WORK In such an environment females themselves must overcome not only a hostile climate but also their own childhood socialization. They enact transgressive behaviors in pursuing what is considered a man’s job, “learning to use tools we had never seen, [and] becoming competent in an alien and hostile world, gaining self-esteem with each new skill” (Martin, 1988, p. 11). A female student’s own expectations, reservations, and aspirations about her future have a tremendous impact on her behaviors as a student. In their ethnographic study of eight American college women, Holland and Eisenhart (1988) suggested that psychosocial conflicts about future work roles determined student choice as to courses, textbooks, effort spent on studying, and evaluation of professors and grades. Those with the greatest conflict tended to make choices that increased their marginality as workers. One factor that diminished worker identity among students was dating and romance and, as Holland and Eisenhart (1998) observed, boyfriends are “crucial to their definition of self and of more central importance to their self-definition than achievement in college” (p. 294). Since an important study by Valli (1986) on girls in clerical training in the United States, few researchers on VET and gender equity have studied the conflict between feminine self-identity and work. Among those who have, Gaskell (1995), reviewed secretarial course offerings and assessed student attitudes at a secondary school in British Columbia, Canada, and concluded that women’s work is judged less upon technical skill proficiencies and more upon essentialized notions of femininity, social competencies associated with care and support. In search of a feminist approach to job training, however, Gaskell (1995) advised: Vocational education has much to gain by expanding its understanding of what is necessary for work, what can be taught and how. Social skills can be reclaimed as real skills, ones that involve moral judgment and sophisticated emotion and intellectual work. They can be taught and learned, recognized and evaluated, (p. 67) Raissiguier (1994) found evidence of a feminist-inspired decoupling of the romance ideology and vocational education among French working-class young women, many of Algerian descent, tracked into secretarial training. Rather than appropriating a strict theory of reproduction to explain their limited mobility, the girls reshaped the promise of vocational schooling by believing that work could coexist with child rearing and marriage duties. More recently, Cho (2000) analyzed the dispute between meritocratic employability norms against a subtext of bodily regulation imposed by large

10


corporations in South Korea. Lower-class girls attending commercial high schools sometimes resisted and contested the ways gender discrimination in hiring buttressed the beauty myth. British theorist Heath (1997) questioned how visible forms of resistance or contestation go beyond girl’s accommodation to the romance ideology, She raised the point that girls have to operate within a heterosexual sphere at school and work that restricts their vocational aspirations. MALE IDENTITY: EDUCATION FOR WORK What about males in vocational education? In Australia, Kenway, Watkins, and Tregenza (1999) challenged the myth that working-class boys are at risk due to changing labor markets in the new economy necessitating adjustments in VET policy toward human capital development. Nonetheless, widespread response to the perceived feminizing of working-class labor has fostered resistant elements of what Walker (1988) termed an assertive masculinity— peer subcultures in Australian schools that exhibit homophobia, racism, sexism, and bullying. Likewise, violent, antisocial pathologies among schoolboys and increasingly resistant male subcultures imply a rise in fascist neo-Nazi White power, particularly as African Americans and other minorities of color are blamed for economic disruptions in the global economy (Weis, 1995). At the microlevel of teacher-student interactions, gendered performance consistently controls the physical space of the classroom and the attention of the teacher. In several schools in the United Kingdom, for instance, vocational shop boys continually attempt to win the approval of male teachers through stereotypical gender codes, including sexual joking and other macho behaviors (Riddell, 1989). NEW EQUITY INITIATIVES A major programmatic effort in VET and gender equity is opening pathways to training for girls and women in skilled fields once considered nontraditional by gender. In some societies all work outside the home may constitute nontraditional labor for women, In other societies where women comprise a large and growing part of the labor force, however, females tend to be segregated into fields that are deemed appropriate for their gender. These fields usually require skills viewed as similar to those used in the woman’s role as wife, mother, or homemaker. Identifying labor as either female-appropriate or male-appropriate has led, in patriarchal societies, to diminished respect, economic compensation, and security for women.


11

Gender equity policies have eroded as neo-liberal theory increasingly privileges those who find a way to mitigate labor force inequities on their own—in what Beck (1992) termed the risk society. In the neo-liberal approach the onus is on self, meaning gender balancing in job training is construed as an unnecessary intervention by the state; a mark of social engineering increasingly ignored by corporations and businesses alike. However, the degree to which neo-liberalism is enacted into policy and implemented into reality has varied widely by type of government, the stakeholders involved, changes in the local and world economy, and cultural traditions, among other reasons. “As governments lose control over various levers on their national economies and cede absolute sovereignty in foreign affairs and defence,” Green (1999, p. 56) surmised, “they frequently turn to education and training as two areas where they do still maintain control.” NATION-STATE RESPONSES State equity policies often emerge from centrist governments but adoption locally or regionally is on a laissez-faire basis. Program initiatives may coalesce in ad hoc fashion, but arise only as long as funding is available for short-term demonstration or model projects. Other forces drive the unevenness of equity advances, most notably the patchwork quilt of feminist groups, donor organizations, private foundations, and NGOs (Stromquist, 1998). Females in advanced industrial nations, as well as developing countries, may benefit from new configurations over equal opportunity, but not always. Henry (2001, p. 87) noted: “that the interests of women are generally served better when the state takes a strongly interventionist stance.” Yet policy implementation and legislative compliance is problematic, charged Erskine and Wilson (1999, p. xvii); “barriers may comprise cultural traditions, fluctuating labour market positions and shifting political climates.” For example, in the United States, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, mandated equal opportunities for women and girls in schooling. Funding or set-asides for sex equity measures to eliminate bias in VET soon followed. Feminists inside and outside the government monitored vocational education curriculum and courses of study. Despite their advocacy efforts decades later public vocational schools in the United States have been slow to enact sustainable interventions that ensure greater access to higher paying careers. Passage of the Carl D.Perkins Vocational Education Act in 1984 paved the way for a system of federally mandated programs administered by states to expand access to job training for girls as well as single parents or displaced homemakers. The impact of Perkins-funded projects offered solutions that inspired “feminist perspectives,” Burge and Culver (1990, p.

12


164) argued, because the variety of new vocational programs resonated with “issues pertinent to women’s lives, experiences, work and aspiration, career choice, self-efficacy, and economic self-reliance.” However, the progress in implementing and replicating such programs have been far less than ideal, since Perkins Act reauthorization in 1998 removed the gender equity setasides and federal funds to hire state sex equity coordinators (Annexstein, 2001). Equal opportunities criteria in the early 1980s created the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) that surfaced as a national manpower policy in Britain to stem the tide of rising unemployment and early school leaving, resulting in pilot programs for girls in nontraditional career options. Yet a decade later employers still viewed new recruits through the lens of sex-typed occupations, in homogeneous groupings of boys and girls, even though labor in the new economy was promoted extensively as gender neutral (Heath, 1997). Some European countries have expanded equal opportunities by dealing with traditional female-dominated occupations in ways that seek parity with males. Apprenticeships now are rewarding females with craft and trade certificates in the belief that it is an advantage to girls to take part of the centuries old established pattern of employer support for job training. In the health care occupations in Norway, for example, widened training opportunities in traditional female-identified job sectors have resulted in the creation of vocational programs leading to awarding of craft certificates in nursing and in childcare (Høst & Michelsen, 2001). Graduates holding certificates are more likely to find immediate employment, sustained employability, and higher income than those who leave school without them. In Switzerland, contemporary constitutional changes have led to greater equal rights for women, and new measures have led to parity in diplomas and the prospect of new apprenticeship openings (Weber, 2001). Current demonstration projects directed by the Swiss Conference of Gender Equality Delegates attempt to enhance career development for girls, integrate female immigrants into the vocational training system, and encourage more womenowned businesses (Spring, 2001). In the case of the Netherlands, due to political pressure by feminists, the government has taken a proactive approach to educational policy in equal opportunities, particularly in the sciences and technology (Wilson & Dekkers, 1999). Three policy reports by the Ministry of Education and Science between 1979 and 1985 have attempted to redress gender imbalances in school enrollments, study choices, and occupational selections. Additionally, state projects funded by the Equal Opportunities Office for Vocational Education encouraged girls to study technical subjects; the ministry created the Equal Opportunities in Management Office in 1994 to improve the climate for female pupils and staff within vocational education.


13

VET and gender equity policy formations are highly touted by the Dutch government, but due to institutional autonomy and curricular fragmentation top-down national jurisdiction has met with “mixed results, with evidence of variable support at the local level” (Wilson & Dekkers, 1999, p. 66). The failure of gender equity policies, thus far, to have a strong and lasting impact on vocational education and, in turn, on the labor force can be attributed to many factors as already noted. Most important however is the lack of a generally accepted belief that a gender-fair labor force is central to and economically rational in the new global economy (Unterhalter, 1998). As long as employers, governments, and schools choose to believe that gender equity programs are marginal to their missions or akin to doing good works and simply symbolic, it will never achieve the support necessary to make sustained change in the world’s educational and economic policies (Stromquist, 1993). The next few decades will decide which path is taken. As the local economy becomes more and more tied to international corporations who express little knowledge or concern for matters beyond the bottom line, who will monitor and advocate for women? As donor agencies are increasingly being viewed as tied to international corporations, will corporations determine the vocational curriculum? Will women’s reproductive roles continue to be seen in conflict with their productive roles? Throughout history education has been seen as a force for transformation, and in light of the sea change being currently experienced in the world economy vocational education is positioned to act either as a force of educational equity or dupe for the status quo. The latter proposition leaves women in place as a superexploitable population that will find little sustenance outside the current fractured efforts that exist today. REFERENCES Annexstein, L. (2001). Invisible again: The impact of changes in federal funding on vocational programs for women and girls. Washington DC: National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education. Basu, A. (Ed.). (1995). The challenge of local feminisms: Women’s movements in global perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview. Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage. Benavot, A. (1989). Education, gender, and economic development: A cross-national study. Sociology of Education, 62, 14–32. Burge, P.L., & Culver, S.M. (1990). Sexism, legislative power, and vocational education. In S.L. Gabriel & I.Smithson (Eds.), Gender in the classroom: Power and pedagogy (pp. 160–175). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Butler, E., & Ferrier, F. (2000). “Don’t be too polite, girls!” Women, work and vocational education and training: A critical review of the literature. Kensington Park, South Australia: Australian National Training Authority.

14


Caillods, F. (1994). Converging trends amidst diversity in vocational training systems. Labour Review, 133(2), 241–257. Carnoy, M. (1994). Efficiency and equity in vocational education and training policies. International Labor Review, 133(2), 221-240. China to train 30 million workers through vocational education. (2002, July 27). Peoples Daily (Beijing). Cho, M.K. (2000). Bodily regulation and vocational schooling. Gender and Education, 12(2), 149–164. Cockcroft, J.D. (1998, November). Gendered class analysis: Internationalizing, feminizing, and Latinizing labor’s struggles in the Americas. Latin American Perspectives, 25(6), 42–46. Conly, S.R. (1998). Educating girls: Gender gaps and gains, Washington, DC: Population Action International. Da Silva, B. (1998, May-June). The challenge to the Brazilian left. Dollars and Sense, 217, 16–19. Dumbrell, T., De Montfort, R., Finnegan, W., & Wright, P. (2000). Still not equal: A study of differences in male and female TAFE graduates ‘earnings in Australia. Kensington Park, South Australia: Australian National Training Authority. Enhanced vocational training needed to increase human resources. (2002, July 29). Peoples Daily (Beijing). Erskine, S., & Wilson, M. (1999). Introduction. In S.Erskine & M.Wilson (Eds.), Gender issues in international education: Beyond policy and practice (pp. xiii– 2). New York: Falmer Press. Fawcett, C.S., & Howden, S. (1998). Gender issues in technical and vocational education programs, Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank. Gaskell, J. (1995). Making it work: Gender and vocational education. In J.Gaskell & J.Willinsky (Eds.), Gender in/forms curriculum: From enrichment to transformation (pp. 59–76). New York: Teachers College Press. Gee, J.P., Hull, G., & Lankshear, L. (1996). The new work order: Behind the language of the new capitalism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Ghorayshi, P., & Belanger, C. (Eds.). (1996). Women, work, and gender relations in developing countries: A global perspective. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Green, A, (1999). Education and globalization in Europe and East Asia: Convergent and divergent trends. Journal of Education Policy, 14(1) 55–71. Grupta, G.R. (2001, July/August). Til technology do us part. Foreign Policy, Issue 125, 95–96. Hadden, K., & London, B. (1996). Educating girls in the third world: The demographics, basic needs, and economic benefits. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 37(1–2), 31–46. Heath, S. (1997). Preparation for life? Vocationalism and the equal opportunities challenge. Aldershot, England: Ashgate. Henry, M. (2001). Globalisation and the politics of accountability: Issues and dilemmas for gender equity in education. Gender and Education, 13(1), 87–100. Hill, M.A., & King, E.M. (1993). Women’s education in developing countries: An overview. In E.M.King & A.M.Hill (Eds.), Women’s education in developing countries (pp. 1–50). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.


15

Holland, D.C., & Eisenhart, M.A. (1988). Women’s ways of going to school: Cultural reproduction of women’s identities as workers. In L.Weis (Ed.), Class, race and gender in American education (pp. 266–301). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Høst, H., & Michelsen, S. (2001). The new careworker—Expanding the apprentice system into new fields of work. In P.Gonon, K.Haefeli, A.Heikkinen, & I. Ludwig (Eds.), Gender perspectives on vocational education: Historical cultural and policy aspects (pp. 207–226). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. Kelly, P.F., & Wolf, D. (2001). A dialogue on globalization. Signs, 26, 1243–1249. Kenway, J., Watkins, P., & Tregenza, K. (1999). Australian boys at risk? The new vocational agendas in schooling. In S.Erskine & M.Wilson (Eds.), Gender issues in international education: Beyond policy and practice (pp. 71–90). New York: Falmer Press. Lao Embassy (2000, Sept.-Oct). The rights of the Lao women. News Bulletin. [Online]. Washington, D.C. Available: http://www.laoembassy.com/news/SeptOct 2000.htm Martin, J.R. (1985). Reclaiming a conversation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Martin, M. (Ed.). (1988). Hard-hatted women: Stories of struggle and success in the trades. Seattle, WA: The Seal Press. McCleay, P. (1991). Strategies for overcoming hunger: From goals to implementation. Hearing of the United States House Select Committee on Hunger. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Mickelson, R.A., Nkomo, M., & Smith, S.S. (2001). Education, ethnicity, gender, and social transformation in Israel and South Africa. Comparative Education Review, 45(1), 1–35. Mitchell, J.D. (1998). Special features: Social features: Female education gaining ground. In L.R.Brown (Ed.), Vital signs: The environmental trends that are shaping our future (pp. 154–155). New York: Norton. Mohanty, C.T., Russo, A., & Torres, L. (Eds.). (1991). Third world women and the politics of feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Perspectives: Education Reform: Issues and trends. (1995). International Labor Review, 134(6), 753–770. Pocock, B. (1988). Demanding skill: Women and technical education in Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Raissiguier, C. (1994). Becoming women, becoming workers: Identity formation in a French vocational school. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Riddell, S. (1989). Pupils, resistance and gender codes: A study of classroom encounters. Gender and Education, 1(2), 183–197. Smith, B.G. (Ed.). (2000). Global feminisms since 1945. London: Routledge. Spring, K. (2001). 16+—Apprenticeship project of the Swiss conference of gender quality delegates: Improving the prospects of young women at the start of their professional careers. In P.Gonon, K.Haefeli, A.Heikkinen, & I.Ludwig (Eds.), Gender perspectives on vocational education: Historical, cultural and policy aspects (pp. 73–82). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. Stromquist, N.P. (1993). Sex-equity legislation in education: The state as promoter of women’s rights. Review of Educational Research, 63(4), 379–407.

16


Stromquist, N.P. (1998). The institutionalization of gender and its impact on educational policy. Comparative Education, 34(1), 85–100. Stromquist, N.P. (1999). Conceptual and empirical issues in educational innovations. In N.P.Stromquist & M.L.Basile (Eds.), Politics of educational innovations in developing countries: An analysis of knowledge and power (pp. 3–20). New York: Falmer Press. Tiedao, Z., Hui, X., Mengxia, S., & Yan, W. (2001). Disseminating new technologies through vocational education for rural change in China. Journal of Educational Change, 2(3), 223–238. Torres, R.M. (1999). Improving the quality of basic education? The strategies of the World Bank. In N.P.Stromquist & M.L.Basile (Eds.), Politics of educational innovations in developing countries: An analysis of knowledge and power (pp. 59–92). New York: Falmer Press. United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women (UNDAW). (1996). Report on the expert group meeting on vocational training and life-long learning for women, December 1999. New York: United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women Department for Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development. Unterhalter, E. (1998). Economic rationality or social justice? Gender, the National Qualifications Framework, and educational reform in South Africa, 1989–1996. Cambridge Journal of Education, 28(3), 351–368. Valli, L. (1986). Becoming clerical workers. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Vocational education crucial to China’s social development. (2002, July 10). Peoples Daily (Beijing). Walker, J.C. (1988). Louts and legends: Male youth culture in an inner city school. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Weber, A. (2001). How constitutional changes and legal reform projects foster equal opportunities in the fields of vocational education and higher education in Switzerland. In P.Gonon, K.Haefeli, A.Heikkinen, & I.Ludwig (Eds.), Gender perspectives on vocational education: Historical, cultural and policy aspects (pp. 45–56). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. Weis, L. (1995). Constructing the “other”: Discursive renditions of White workingclass males in high school In P.L.McLaren & J.M.Giarelli (Eds.), Critical theory and educational research, (pp. 203–222). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Wilson, M., & Dekkers, H. (1999). Equal opportunity initiatives: England, Wales and Netherlands compared. In S.Erskine & M.Wilson (Eds.), Gender Issues in International education: Beyond policy and practice (pp. 49–70). New York: Falmer Press.

2 Education and Work as Human Rights for Women: A Feminist Analysis Patricia A.Carter Georgia State University

Human rights, education, work, and national development have been inextricably linked with the formation of the United Nations (UN) in 1945. Since that time international development policies as well as human rights policies have increasingly echoed the conclusion that women and girls should be both active participants in and beneficiaries of the development of their states. Education and work opportunities are key factors in that participation. Yet ideas about education and work for women are deeply embedded in local cultural, religious, and family norms, which may be in conflict with governmental or international edicts. This chapter explores the constraints placed on women’s access to education and work. The first part focuses on the inclusion of gender issues in key international human rights documents and the feminist criticism of, as well as contributions, to these policies. The rest of the chapter reviews the liberal feminist assessment of constraints imposed on equal rights in education and work. Exploration of feminist theory is placed at the beginning of this book to provide a context for the multifaceted essays that follow, many focusing directly or indirectly on the constraints imposed by gender stereotyping. Constraint theory is based on the assumption that female and male children are born with identical abilities to attain similar destinies if not for limitations (e.g., economic, cultural, educational, political, and religious) that keep them from doing so. Economic constraints often involve questions of non-paid domestic labor versus compensated labor, occupational gender segregation, and gender stratification of the labor force. Cultural constraints entail socially constructed ideas about the relationship between women’s biological or psychological disposition to education, work, and family. Educational constraints, in turn, question intellectual difference, governmental or corporate control of worker destiny through educational systems, as well as the school’s role in the reproduction of gender, race,

18


ethnic, class and religious norms or values. Religion plays a factor in constructing deterministic gender concepts that can limit or open opportunities. Religion also forms the basis for a nation’s legal system and within it women’s political status. The relationship between politics and women’s citizenship revolves around of questions of human rights, workplace policies, trade policies, and economic policies (including social welfare). KEY HUMAN RIGHTS DOCUMENTS Rhetoric regarding an international standard for women’s rights is relatively recent and prompted in large part by Western antecedents. The UN Charter first attempted to standardize expectations for international women’s rights in 1945 when it called for the recognition of the innate dignity and worth of each person and the importance of equality between men and women. In 1948, the UN further delineated human rights to include the right to life, liberty, and security of person; the right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; freedom of movement; freedom of opinion and expression; and the right to work and education. Known as the International Bill of Rights, the 1948 document was deeply influenced by Western Enlightenment philosophies rising out of the American and French Revolutions as well as basic concepts of capitalism (James, 1994) that challenged monarchies and caste systems, and upheld a belief in the individual as inherently able to make reasonable choices in selfgovernance. It also took a decidedly liberal democratic approach that focused on the protection of individual citizens against the power of the government (Okin, 1998). Yet, as Fraser (1999) noted, women’s rights can only be fully formed through one additional concept. Human rights not only protects citizens from their governments but violations of rights by citizens against citizens. This point underscores the differences in rights accorded to men and women in the family unit by their governments. At the time of the American and French Revolutions women’s relationship to government was seen as indirect—through her husband or father. As head of a family, the male was expected to vote and act as the political and legal guardian of his wife and other female dependents. Feminist critics claim many problems with Western laws can be traced to this long-standing androcentric bias (Benton, 1991; Jones, 1990), Kymlicka (1990, p. 250) noted that even liberals have “generally neglected the role of the family in structuring both public and private life.” This neglect inhibits our assessment of how the family structure limits a woman’s access to education and other human rights. The treatment of the family as a private government retains patriarchy at its most fundamental, escaping scrutiny by

2. HUMAN RIGHTS FOR WOMEN

19

the larger and public government. Though women are not given the control over it, women are nevertheless held accountable for the satisfactory functioning of the family unit. The dilemma for women, as Fraser (1999, p. 855) explained, is that “women have been charged with—and often found security in—maintaining customs and tradition, thus, institutionalizing the discrimination against them through the education and socialization of children.” Though women’s rights may have expanded over time, their relationship to the family has not. Thus, human rights policies conceived around the individual male relationship to government have all but ignored the family as a source of tyranny and thief of civil liberties. Pettman (1996) noted: International law is based on male conceptualizations of security and rationalizes violent reactions, while remaining virtually mute on the internationally gendered violence of rape, torture, economic, and social repression of women, (p. 97) Furthermore, “such abuses are deemed cultural, natural, or private but not political and certainly not international” (Pettman, 1996, p. 97). Creating an artificial division between the public and private (domestic) sphere allows governments to take a hands-off attitude toward activities that take place within the family—including activities that would not be tolerated if carried out by a government against its citizens (Peters & Wolper, 1995). Human Rights Watch (Women’s Human Rights, 2001) illustrated the result when governments refuse to intervene in what is seen as family problems: In Morocco…a reformist government pledged to pursue programs to measure and respond to violence against women, but allowed proposed reforms to the country’s family code— which continues to subject female decision-making to male authority to languish. In other countries, laws that recognized men as the legal heads of households remained in place, denying women’s rights to decide for themselves, freely, whether and whom to marry, whether to work outside the home, or even when to seek medical attention. Laws requiring female obedience or subservience were often key to making women dependent on men and tied to abusive relationships, (p. 1) A government survey in Japan indicates that husbands had physically assaulted 15.4% of wives polled at least once. Police remain reluctant to

20


intervene in such cases and some women reported that police tried to dissuade them from pursuing their claims. In Khartoum, Sudan, a senior government official tried to enforce women’s familial dependency by banning them from jobs in restaurants, gas stations, and similar institutions. When women demonstrated in protest, police set upon them, using tear gas and batons, and arresting over 20 of the demonstrators. Feminists have attempted to ameliorate such conditions through the ratification of the 1979 International Treaty on the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the culmination of more than 30 years of work by the UN Commission on the Status of Women. The CEDAW constitutes an international bill of rights for women, and it sets an agenda for the achievement those rights, requiring signatories to “pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating discrimination against women” in education, employment and politics (UN, 1979, p. 6). It reaffirms the equality of human rights for women and men in all spheres of life [including the family], obliges all signatories to take action against the causes of women’s inequality, and calls for the removal of laws, stereotypes, practices, and prejudices that prevent women from achieving their rights. One important aspect of the CEDAW is Article 10 that charges countries to take “all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in order to ensure to them equal rights with men in the field of education and in particular to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women” (UN, 1979, p. 8). This would guarantee the same conditions for males and females in preschool, general, technical, professional, and higher technical education, as well as in all types of vocational training. The treaty also requires access to the “same curricula, the same examinations, teaching staff with qualifications of the same standard and school premises and equipment of the same quality,” as well as “the elimination of any stereotyped concept of the roles of men and women at all levels and in all forms of education,” the promotion of coeducation and other types of education “which will help to achieve this aim,” and “in particular, by the revision of textbooks and school programs and the adaptation of teaching methods” (UN, 1979, p. 8). Females and males should be guaranteed: The same opportunities to benefit from scholarships and other study grants; the same opportunities for access to programs of continuing education including adult and functional literacy programs, particularly those aimed at reducing, at the earliest possible time, any gap in education existing between men and women. (UN, 1979, p. 8)


21

The goals of CEDAW include the reduction of female student drop-out rates and programs for girls and women who have left school prematurely; opportunities for females to actively participate in sports and physical education; and access to health courses including information and advice on family planning. As of 10 May 2002, 169 states had signed the treaty but with the highest number of reservations ever documented for an international convention (Shalev, 1995; Tomasevski, 1993). Most reservations were attributed to concerns about perceived religious, family, or cultural conflicts. For instance, Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, France, India, Ireland, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Luxembourg, Malta, Mauritius, Korea, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, and the United Kingdom all cited problems with Article 16, which called for the elimination of discrimination against women in marriage and the family. The United States is the only industrialized country that has refused to ratify the CEDAW. Although President Carter signed it in 1980, a Republicancontrolled Congress and more specifically, Senator Jesse Helms (North Carolina), head of the Foreign Relations Committee, prevented it from coming up for vote. Objections to the treaty include both a reluctance to give the UN power over U.S. laws and a fear that it would be giving in to special interests and undermine family traditions. The UN designated 1975 as International Women’s Year and 1975 through 1985 as the Decade for Women. During this time, the UN was to create international forums for the discussion, development, and implementation of plans to promote knowledge and activity around women’s rights and status. The first of several international conferences was held in Mexico City that first year, followed by one held in Copenhagen in 1980, and then Nairobi, Kenya in 1985. What became most apparent in these conferences was how much work was yet to be done. Thus, in 1995, another conference was held in Beijing, China for the purpose of creating a platform for action, which identified 12 critical areas of priority action to achieve the advancement and empowerment of women. These included equal access to education; the eradication of illiteracy; improved access to vocational education, science and technology training, and continuing education; nondiscriminatory education and training; sufficient funds to monitor and implement educational reforms; and the promotion of life-long education for women (UN, 1995b). The conference recognized education as a human right and an essential tool for achieving the goals of equality, development and peace. Furthermore the document states “Non-discriminatory education benefits both girls and boys and thus ultimately contributes to more equal relationships between women and men” (UN, 1995b, paragraph B71). Five years later a follow-up conference referred to as Beijing Plus5 was held in part to set new targets accomplishing actions of the 1995 platform. For education these included closing the gender gap in primary and secondary

22


education by 2005, and free and compulsory and universal primary education for both girls and boys by 2015 (paragraph 67c) and the achievement of a 50% improvement in levels of adult literacy (especially for women) by 2015 (paragraph 95f). In the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (UN, 1993), the UN acknowledged the devastating impact that violence had on the suppression of women’s rights. In 1993, a World Bank (WB) report estimated that violence against women caused as much death and incapacity as cancer, and was a greater cause of ill health than traffic accidents and malaria combined. The World Health Organization (2003) estimated that 20% of the world’s women have been either sexually or physically assaulted by a man at some point in their lives. In the United States alone, businesses lost $100 million a year in lost wages, sick leave, and nonproductivity. Because so much of the violence takes place within the family unit it is often ignored or tolerated by governments believing that the private sphere of the family is outside of human rights laws. The Declaration condemns all violence against women in and outside the home and holds states accountable for preventing and penalizing it. Unfortunately, the Declaration is a nonbinding document. In 1951, the International Labour Organization (ILO) added to its Code a recommendation (to date ratified by 123 states) to promote equal pay for women and men for work of equal value. In 1958, the ILO asked nations to work to eliminate all forms of discrimination in the workplace including sexual discrimination. Since that time measures promoting harmony between a woman’s professional and family obligations, and the protection of her health and her job during pregnancy were added (ILO, 1996a). Girls’ rights are embedded in a number of pieces of legislation that pertain to children including, most recently, the Convention for the Rights of the Child (1989). The Convention obligates the 191 nation-state signatories to take measures to protect children from any activity that prevents them from enjoying their inalienable right to education. The focus is on ensuring that primary education is available to all children irrespective of their race, nationality, ethnic background, economic status, or sex; be compulsory, free and universal; take place in a safe and supportive learning environment that promotes self-esteem, dialogue and self-expression; contribute to the full development of the child’s physical, mental, and social potential; be made accessible to the marginalized children, including the poorest children, children with disabilities, working children and children in conflict with the law; prepare children for a responsible life in a free society; and give children an opportunity to experience the joys, freedom and rights of childhood. Yet, 140 million children in the world still do not attend school, and two-thirds of them are girls (UNICEF, 2001).


23

Some of the other conventions related to women and adopted by the UN include the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (1949) that is largely unenforced; the Convention of the Political Rights of Women (1952) through which signatories agreed to grant women full political rights; the Convention on the Nationality of Married Women (1957) that provides women with the same rights of men to acquire, change, or retain their nationality; and the Convention to Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage, and Registration of Marriages (1962) that protected women from forced marriage, or being married at an early age. While the international community may agree in theory that there is a need for the expansion of women’s rights, harmony is lost in the details. There are those who feel that such international contracts fail to respect cultural diversity, are Western in their presumptions, and culturally imperialistic (Charlesworth, 1994; Katzenstein, 1989; Mayer, 1995). Some countries defend wife beating, genital mutilation, marital rape, forced marriage, and honor killings as being deeply embedded in traditions and religious law. The question arises whether there is an international standard by which women’s rights can be identified. CRITICISM OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS POLICIES The question as to whether women have more in common with each other than they do with men—regardless of class, racial, religious, geographic or other difference—is one that lies at the heart of contemporary feminist dissension regarding international human rights. It is especially germane to the researcher who attempts to grapple with the effects of global market economies on gender relations. The concept of globalization departs from the post-World War II model that saw the planet divided into First World, Second World, and Third World countries or alternatively North and South, Globalization imagines a world in which economic, political, cultural, and ecological interconnections supersede nation-state divisions (Andermahr, Lovell, & Wolkowitz, 1997). The recognition of these interconnections has been heightened by recent world events including the collapse of the Soviet Union, the student uprising in China, the rise of religious-fundamentalist governments, free agent terrorism, and ecological disasters such as Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez, and Bhopal. Feminist theory began to embrace the concept of globalization through an exploration of the universality of women’s oppression. Liberal feminist theorists proposed a view of women that allowed for generalizations about women’s needs and desires across class, race, and locale. Feminist theorists writing about the intersection of race and gender (e.g., Anzaldúa, 1987; Hill

24


Collins, 1991; Lugones & Spelman, 1983; Smith, 1982; Spelman, 1988) were among the first to critique these theories as ethnocentric, and biased toward a White, Western, dominant culture. Later feminist theorists (sometimes categorized as cultural relativists) began a critique of the research on women who experienced colonization, Western intervention through foreign policies and development practices, and transnational corporate strategies. They found most of the work about non-Western women tended to essentialize them by ignoring fundamental historic, cultural, or other factors, which differed them from Western women (e.g., Bunting, 1996; Ferguson, 1998; Mohanty, 1988; Narayan, 1998). Moreover in classifying women in broad categories such as Third World women, Muslim women, or African women, researchers inadequately addressed or underdescribed the situations of the individuals within. In response to such critiques other theorists (McLeer, 1998; Nussbaum, 1999; Okin, 1998), often called universalists, (or negatively, cultural essentialists) agreed that overgeneralizations were an anathema to good research but insisted that there are basic needs all women share.1 Universalists charged cultural relativists with romanticizing traditional societies believing them to be more culturally pure and, therefore, more appropriate in their responses to the situation of women in their communities than interventionist First World feminists. This led to ongoing arguments about whether Western feminists had the right and the obligation to voice opinions on issues facing nonWestern women such as sutee (immolation of widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands), clitoridectomy, and forced veiling (see, for instance, Grewal & Kaplan, 1996). The view of Western feminist theory as a cog in the wheel of Western imperialism and colonialism is persuasive to some. European and U.S. history testifies to the damage that cultural superiority and imposition can exact on the less powerful. WESTERN FEMINIST THOUGHT Narayan (1988) noted: An important inequality between Western and non Western feminist movements is that feminist “theory” has initially predominantly emerged from the ranks of Western feminists, who were for the most part White and middleclass. At its inception, such feminist theory had a tendency to see its theoretical formulations as universally applicable to all women regardless of differences due to race, class, ethnicity or culture, (p. 8)


25

Though various forms of feminism have emerged over time, influenced by historical incidents, economic viability, and social promise, its origins are most often traced to classic liberalism. This liberal feminism has its roots in the same philosophies on which UN documents and Western governments were founded. Liberalism set the foundation for modern perceptions of democratic citizenship that protects individual rights from unnecessary interference of others including the government. Lister (1997, p. 6) claimed “citizenship is inherently woman unfriendly and exclusionary”; and forces women into “a male citizenship paradigm [which] could stunt and contort the process of self-development that is pivotal to human agency and citizenship” (p. 16). Voet (1998, p. 143) stated: “Women do not exercise their legal rights to the same degree and to the same effect that men do, because…existing oppression, gender roles and a lack of material conditions…. As long as women do not exercise their formal rights to the same degree as men do, they are not yet equal citizens.” The dilemma further reveals itself with the alternative, a genderdifferentiated citizenship, which runs the risk of essentializing women as mothers and trapping them within the domestic sphere. As Lister (1997) noted: “This could reinforce women’s economic dependence and political marginalization” (p. 16). Western countries recognize only these two types of citizenship; One that molds women into male citizenship or a differentiated status of female citizenship that is neither respected nor valued (Pateman, 1989). “Men’s relationship to citizenship…is built on their freedom from the caring responsibilities that in turn constrain women’s citizenship both as a status and a practice” (Lister, 1997, p. 18). While few would disagree that citizenship should embody the ethics of caring, seen as essential to women’s roles as mothers and caregivers, Okin (1998) claimed Western citizenship was built on individualism not altruism. For women, Western citizenship is fraught with dualities: the rights of the individual versus rights of the group; equality versus difference; and the private versus public sphere. These dilemmas are resonant in the writing of early Western feminist philosophers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to whom contemporary philosophers trace the formation of liberal feminism and the concept of Western female citizenship (Kensinger, 1997). Each developed their perspective in response to perceived shortcomings of the liberalism of the Western Enlightenment. America’s liberalist founders attacked monarchies and the privileges of aristocrats and purported the belief that “all men are created equal” with certain “inalienable rights.” Wollstonecraft responded, in 1792, that autocratic and patriarchal power relationships were just as unjust and indefensible between men and women as they were between man and government. She further argued that

26


both men and women are harmed when rights are based on irrational prejudices and artificial constraints (Sapiro, 1994). The Founding Fathers justified withholding inalienable rights from women out of the belief that women did not have political interests distinct from that of their fathers or husbands. In the “Declaration of Sentiments,” Stanton (1881) claimed that men exercised an absolute tyranny over women who were required to obey laws over which they had no hand in making. Mill pointed out the irony of men’s belief that they had to dominate women in order to bond them to their natural vocation as wife, mother, and housekeeper. A marriage, Mill felt, should be a partnership of equals analogous to a business partnership, “not a school of despotism” but a “school of the virtues of freedom” (Fraser, 1999, p. 905). WOMEN’S RIGHTS AS INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS Early international women’s rights organizations such as the International Council of Women (1888), the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA; 1904), and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (1915) contributed to the promulgation of liberal feminist philosophy around the world (Fraser, 1999; Rupp, 1996). The IWSA took a decidedly liberal feminist standpoint in its founding principles which stated, “Women and men are born equally free and independent members of the human race, equally endowed with intelligence and ability, and equally entitled to the free exercise of their individual rights and liberty” (Fraser, 1999, p. 878). Yet they labored under no false illusions about the difficulties women faced in obtaining these rights: In all lands…laws, creeds, and customs…have tended to restrict women to a position of dependence; to discourage their education; to impede the development of their natural gifts, and to subordinate their individuality, have been based on false theories, and have produced an artificial and unjust relation of the sexes, (cited in Fraser, 1999, p. 878). Sixteen years later, in 1920, the IWSA adopted a charter of women’s rights, which included political rights (suffrage and the right to serve in political office), domestic rights (including divorce, child custody, property, and income ownership), and educational, economic, and moral rights (Fraser, 1999). While liberal feminists argued for equal rights, domestic feminists argued for different rights or equal rights for different uses. Playing into common cultural beliefs that women were naturally ordained to roles as mother, care-


27

taker, and housewife, domestic feminists argued for suffrage, education, and property rights based upon their special needs in these roles. She would be a better companion to her husband, help him run his business, and teach their children the fundamentals of religion and citizenship. Later known as social feminists, domestic feminists argued that taking jobs outside the home as teacher, social worker, nurse, or librarian was simply an extension of their household roles. Thus, constraints once viewed as irrevocable, became elastic as feminists argued that the same skills they used in the home could benefit the public sphere. Class status guided the use of domestic feminist thought as did race. Poor women had little choice but to work outside the home and little or no possibility for education, Upper-class women were among the first to cross barriers of social censure about gender roles since they were provided the means to do so. Yet it has been middle-class women by virtue of their larger numbers who helped shift public opinion substantially in favor of a feminist perspective.2 Middle-class liberal feminists of the early 1970s were associated with efforts to democratize education and the workplace through the elimination of age-old structures of sex discrimination. They entered higher education and the workplace in numbers large enough to substantially broaden expectations about women’s roles. Critics, including radical feminists, have pointed out that while liberal feminism created a larger wedge for women to enter the public sphere on equal terms with men, they did little to change the fact that women are still constrained in their roles as mother, wife, and housekeeper. However, liberal feminists pushed issues such as marital rape, domestic violence, independent credit rights, child custody, and divorce rights into the Western consciousness despite their conflict with patriarchal, religious, and cultural values. These issues also surfaced as crucial to the international women’s rights agenda such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Beijing Platform for Action (established at the Fourth World Conference on Women), and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. LIBERAL FEMINIST ASSESSMENTS A recent UN (2000) report noted that the education of women is constrained by a multitude of factors including a lack of resources, insufficient political will, persisting gender discrimination and bias that includes a constant use of gender stereotypes in educational material, and rural poverty that erects economic, social, and infrastructural barriers. In many parts of the world teachers are hard to attract and retain due to the poor salaries and conditions offered, and inattention to the link between women’s enrollment in higher

28


education institutions and labor market dynamics. Gender-biased cultural practices, some of a religious origin have contributed to lower enrollment and retention rates for girls. Parents keep girls home to care for younger siblings, and perform domestic or other tasks that help sustain the family. The inappropriate design and application of structural adjustment policies (SAPs) has also had a severe impact on the education sector resulting in a decreased investment in schooling systems. The last issue, divestment in education, is receiving increased attention in the human rights community, as is the power of structural adjustment policies to negatively impact the already precarious status of the world’s women. Since the mid-1980s nongovernmental organizations have challenged the growing influence of international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the WB on women in the global economy. Ultimately, the feminist critique finds a male bias in the orthodox macroeconomic theories that guide the new world policies. The IMF and WB are charged with failing to see the potential costs of adjustment to women or the constraints that keep women benefiting from them (Elson, 2000). The Women’s International Network (WIN, 1995) considered IMF and WBinfluenced SAPs as disproportionately impacting women primarily through social service cuts that led to increased health problems, higher mortality rates, and more orphans, subsequently, fewer girls attending primary school. They observe that funding for agriculture is being funneled to large-scale agribusiness rather than family farms often headed by women. Furthermore, “Trade liberalization, wage constraint policies and deregulation designed to facilitate business activity and investment has resulted in both more exploitative labor conditions for women and constraints for women to exercise their rights as workers” (WIN, 1995, p. 13). Benería, Floro, Grown, and Macdonald (2000, p. xiii) noted that globalization has tended to “devalue non-market goods and services, including reproductive work… Thus, a significant proportion of women’s contribution to the economy is relegated little or no importance as symbolized by the underestimation of unpaid work in national and international statistics.” Little (2000, p. 4) claimed policies surrounding globalization and especially SAPs have resulted in a brain drain as “educated and skilled persons” in countries with a “weak human resource base” are attracted to other countries that promise a greater return for their labor. Thus, “the poor country’s [educational] investment accrues to the richer country” resulting in a “vicious spiral of relations” (Little, 2000, p. 4). The net result of this vicious spiral is the creation of an underclass, which is disproportionately composed of undereducated females with low and falling incomes, large families, and poor nutrition. Medel-Anonuevo (1996) viewed the consequences of economic restructuring policies in terms of decreased spending for education, lower


29

student enrollments, and in teachers’ salary freezes or cuts. She noted that these actions occur even as international organizations increasingly advocate policies to promote gender equality: “And while most countries have articulated policies to promote gender equality, in fact, achievements are often eroded by a backlash against the perceived advances of women and, more subtly, by a conjuncture of macro-economic, political and social factors” (p. 16). Even though liberal feminists have long viewed education as a precursor to improving the rights and status of women (Fraser 1999), countries are most interested in female education that will result in increased economic national productivity. The WB (1999) reinforced the latter position claiming women’s education as a positional good that will increase economic productivity. Furthermore, Currie (1999) noted that while many nations may regard feminism as a cultural intrusion, modernization and global trade is considered value-free. Educational systems are more likely to reinforce this latter perspective than that of feminism. Marshall (2000) summed up the dilemma succinctly, “Education policy directs schools, as major socialization instruments, in curriculum, testing, governance—to reinforce the hegemonic view…hegemony places gender issues at the margin, or belonging to the private sphere, where family, emotion, nurturance and relationships belong” (p. 129). The hegemonic view tended to support the belief that globalization is good for developing countries, as well as those in the First World. Though the gender gap in primary and secondary schooling is closing in many parts of the developed world it remains significant; in Africa and Southern Asia 32.2% and 39.7% of the female population receive no education at all (Ahuja & Filmer, 1995). These are countries that have been most negatively impacted by SAPs. Yet even where women are educated in proportions equal to men both the process and outcome tends to be different. Schools reproduce gender stereotypes as part of the hidden curriculum that helps to channel girls and boys into distinct career paths (Medel-Anonuevo, 1996). Stromquist (1990) noted: Little training has occurred (even in wealthy countries such as the United States) to provide teachers with new strategies to combat gender discrimination in teaching practices. Few measures have been taken to modify organizational structures and occupational patterns that persistently place women in low positions in school settings. This being the case, the expansion of schooling does not have to be equated with the questioning of gender ideologies. Hence, the State can engage in the expansion of women’s schooling as a relatively harmless extension of human rights, (p. 141)

30


The UN Fourth World Conference on Women (UN, 1995b, paragraph 71) explained that gender bias in education can be attributed to “customary attitudes, early marriages and pregnancies, inadequate and gender-biased teaching and educational materials, sexual harassment, and lack of adequate, physically and otherwise, accessible schooling facilities.” Additionally, girls are often forced to take on domestic chores that come in conflict with school assignments or even attendance “often resulting in poor scholastic performance and early drop-out from the educational system.” The report concludes, “This has long-lasting consequences for all aspects of women’s lives” (UN, 1995b, paragraph 71). Sexual violence and harassment also present barriers to young women and girls seeking an education. Governments’ inability to protect female children and failure to construct or implement legislation to prevent and punish sexual violence, also effectively disrupts the female right to education. For instance, the Human Rights Watch (2001) found that sexual abuse and harassment of girls by both teachers and other students is widespread in South Africa. Girls who do report abuse are often further victimized and stigmatized by teachers and students. Rarely do school authorities take steps to ensure that girls have a sense of security and comfort at school or to counsel and discipline boys who commit acts of harassment or violence. Many girls leave school altogether, because they feel unsafe and are unwilling to remain in an environment that cannot or will not protect them, In the United States, studies show that 81% of 8th through 11th graders, 30% of undergraduate college students, and 40% of graduate students have experienced sexual harassment (CEDAW, 2002). Recently, Dr. Thompson Tsodzo (“Ministry,” 2002), Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture for Zimbabwe, noted an increase in the number of children being sexually abused by teachers. In some cases, teachers have infected their pupils with the deadly HIV virus. In August, 2002, a 37-yearold HIV-positive Chitungwiza teacher was convicted of raping a 9-year-old girl on two occasions. Dr. Suniti Solomon (“Young girls,” 2002), director of the YRG Center for AIDS Research and Education in Chennai, India, said that in some areas, a common myth .about AIDS is that sex with a virgin cures the sexually transmitted infection. In Nairobi, girls are twice as likely to be infected with HIV/AIDS as boys in the same age group (Fleischman, 2002). Solomon said HIV/AIDS has also left many children orphaned and with fewer opportunities to pursue education. In Malawi, 30% of teachers is HIV positive, while 20% in Zambia and 12% in South Africa is thought to be positive (Siringi, 2002). Another factor impeding girls’ access to equal educational opportunities is religious antagonism. Keddie (1999) chronicled the rise of new fundamentalism around the world, finding that although most religiopolitical organizations support a return to a more patriarchal and gender-unequal view


31

of religion and society, many women are consenting participants in them. She clarified that “new religious politics may provide a respectable way [for women] to participate in education, work, politics, and other elements of the modern world, while preserving protections found in, or attributed to, older family relations” (p. 13). Keddie (1999, pp. 21–22) claimed that three salient points connect religiopolitical movements around the world. First, many issues involving the treatment of women that fundamentalists of different cultures put forth are literally life-or-death issues for women. This includes widow-burning, honor killings, and outlawing abortion. Second, most fundamentalists believe that there are unbridgeable, natural differences between males and females and insist that a patriarchal structure is in the interest of all genders and ages. Third, most fundamentalist movements “want to preserve dependent positions for women, which they see as divinely ordained.” While a few religiopolitical movements completely oppose female education (such as the Taliban in Afghanistan), the majority wants control over the delivery of that education. Religious leaders who oppose female education often do so because they perceive it to disadvantage male authority and economics. Hasan (1995) claimed that Bangladesh Islamic fundamentalists attacked adult education programs run by NGOs because the program tended to be taught by females while many male teachers in the villages were unemployed. Sultan (1994) claimed resistance of Islamic Mullahs’ to a women’s literacy class in Bangladesh stemmed from their fear that it would diminish their unquestioned power if women were allowed to contribute to decision making in the village. Noting that the literacy curriculum included topics that ranged from human rights, women’s emancipation, divorce, family laws, agriculture, health, and nutrition, Sultan (1994) saw literacy acquisition inevitably leading to a new social structure that would alter previous social frameworks. Ali (1995) traced the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in the Sudan, and especially its collaboration with the military regime, to the marginalization of female rights including education. The Sudan has the highest female illiteracy rate (88%) in the Arab region and is among the worst in terms of gender gaps in education. Pittin (1990) examined a Nigerian policy initiative that would limit the secondary education of females to boarding schools in an effort to protect females from those opposed to female education. She pointed out that the result of such a policy meant that fewer females would be able to attend school due to the expense, problems of travel, family responsibilities, and parental opposition. However, states may also use feminist rhetoric to gain Western support in their efforts to suppress the growth of religiopolitical activities. Norton, Singerman, Morris, and Moghadam (1997) saw gender being used to legitimate the policies of ruling elites in the modern Middle East. They explained:

32


The states that emerged in the twentieth century exploited gender—espousing feminism as a matter of state policy—in order to solidify their grip on power by eroding the authority of the traditional elites. Thus, in Turkey, Egypt, Iran and Iraq, for instance, energetic efforts were made to emancipate women through increased access to education and recruitment into the bureaucracy. (1997, p. 155) It is apparently a reciprocal activity as Moghadam (1997, 1999, 2001) claimed that resurgence of Islamic fundamentalist movements were partially a reaction to the increasing visibility of women in public positions and the perception of changing gender relations. By supporting education for girls and women, countries can achieve a level of respectability while suppressing other rights such as political participation, legal, employment, and reproductive freedoms. Furthermore, education can be used to convert citizens to new economic thinking, monotheistic perspectives, and other concepts promoted by governments. The ILO (1996b) reported that women’s contribution to the economy is underreported due to biases in the methods used to account for women’s role as workers. As evidence they noted: “It appears undeniable that the level of remuneration of women is incommensurate with their contributions (paid or unpaid) to the economy” (1996b, p. 1). The ILO cited four principle factors that account for the inequities in women’s income structure: persistent differences in female-male wage scales, unequal access to stable employment, job segregation, and the growth of “ghost work,” meaning “invisible work, unpaid but economically necessary, in the domestic, agricultural and informal sectors” (ILO, 1996b, p. 1). Ghost work is one reason why girls make up the majority of child workers. Girls as young as 8 years old work as domestics and contribute to family income by assisting in a variety of home-based subcontracting work and agricultural activities. Roughly 25 million children ages 5–14 are employed in part-time work and 120 million are engaged in full-time labor (ILO, 1996). Sixty-one percent of all Asian adolescents (age 10–14) are engaged in work, and 32% in Africa. Despite these large numbers little systematic research has been done about the motives for their participation. UNICEF (1999) provided anecdotal information that girls routinely care for younger siblings, wash clothes, cook, and walk distances to fetch heavy loads of water and firewood. Child domestics are often isolated, abused, ill fed, and on duty 18 hours a day. Hidden behind closed doors they are unprotected because of the sanctity of home laws in some countries that prevent proper governmental investigation. The value of this labor performed by girls is not counted in the gross nation product (GNP) nor is it even generally regarded as work. Yet the ILO estimates that if unpaid invisible work by women in subsistence agriculture,


33

in family enterprises, and in the home was fully accounted the world’s GNP would increase 10% to 20%. Even without this calculation it is clear that the work girls do makes a significant contribution to the family income, By performing domestic activities and helping in family businesses girls enable their parents and older siblings to participate in paid work, but in doing so they forfeit opportunities for their own futures. Parents’ preference for keeping girls rather than boys out of school is related to the continuing belief that an educational investment in a boy will be rewarded in increased family wealth, whereas a girl will take any additional income producing potential to her husband’s family (UNICEF, 1999). Ironically unmarried, female, adult children are seen as a burden to families because gender discrimination compromises their ability to earn a good income. The Population Council (2000, p. 15) found “a highly positive correlation between school attendance and household income, especially for girls,” In Honduras, where almost two-thirds of the population live in rural areas poverty affects 64% of households nationally and over 80% in rural areas. Among the primary reasons that keep indigenous girls from education are child labor, sexual harassment when traveling to school, pregnancy as early as age 12, and in some cases parental opposition to education. Further, in ethnic communities there is rarely access to preschool education, primary schools consist of poorly equipped multigrade classrooms with few teachers, and there are no technical or secondary schools for girls over 13 years. In Cambodia, sexual exploitation of children is a serious concern. Girls living in poverty in rural villages are often lured away to urban centers in the hope of finding good earning opportunities, but many of them end up as prostitutes. The problem is compounded by a shortage of schools and classrooms, a lack of instructional materials, and underqualified teaching staff. Only 58% of the female population is literate compared to 79% of males. In Iraq, daughters are often withdrawn from school to work in the home or in agriculture, Religious ideology restricts the movement of women and fosters the belief that their futures are limited to that of wives, mothers, and homemakers. Antipathy to coeducation limits the facilities available to girls in many communities. The UN (1995a) found that even the successful completion of secondary level education is insufficient to prepare women to enter the labor market. They call for a life-cycle approach to women’s education, noting that women’s professional lives are frequently interrupted by maternity or other family responsibilities. Yet rarely do education and training policies take these factors into consideration. As a result women do not have the same opportunities to upgrade skills and promote their career development as men, and women are often directed to a limited number of fields where opportunities for advancement are limited,

34


UNICEF (1999) suggested appropriate steps for change include: collecting information on children not in school; mobilizing local governments, school administrators, and teachers to devise strategies to free girls for school; setting and enforcing standards for invisible child work; identifying and supporting local solutions; enhancing family capacities to protect and provide for all their children; and improving the quality and relevance of school CONCLUSION: OVERCOMING RESISTANCE The dynamics related to women’s access to education and economic rights are far more multifaceted than can be fully addressed here. In fact, it is the complexities of these issues that make human rights inaccessible for so many of the world’s women. Women’s diversity, as well as the multifaceted contexts in which they exist, pose many problems for the attainment of gender justice. While globalization holds out the promise of improving women’s lives through access to income for their labor, it simultaneously maintains the potential to devastate them through shifts in structural adjustment policies. Changes in the world economy have been both at odds with some women’s human rights and, ironically, have afforded others their only means to transcend virtual slavery. It is a circular problem. Most research indicates that poverty is a consistent constraint to female schooling. Women’s poverty is, in turn, related to a lack of economic prospects and material resources, which include access to credit, inheritance rights, and a voice in the design of the laws and policies that impact their quality of life. Without an education women are constrained in their ability to maximize whatever resources may be available to them. A woman who lacks an education has no means of earning an income, escaping an abusive home, gaining control over her fertility, or sending her daughters to school, A woman’s responsibility for household work and childrearing places her at a disadvantage over men who do not have similar expectations. Her income function must conform to her household-child functions and vice versa. A mother often sacrifices her personal autonomy for the well being of her children, husband, and others. She rarely questions such sacrifices for altruism is enforced and reinforced through religious, social, legal, and educational institutions. This places a woman’s economic security in opposition to her caring functions. True equality requires both a thorough reconsideration of traditional gender roles, as well as ideologies and institutions that constrain women’s choices. Another important step is the realization of the interconnectedness of all women’s rights—to deny one is to deny all. Educational institutions are strategically placed to help women consider the dimensions of social justice but few do. Progress to gender equality in


35

education is compromised by cultural traditions, economic bottom-lines, religious essentialism, and political short sightedness; and from many levels: family, village, nation-state, and international. These same forces hinder the implementation of human rights for women. There is no doubt that a Western-oriented liberal feminist perspective has guided the development of international human rights policies pertaining to the world’s women. It is just as clear that, with the exception of small projects which are poorly funded in proportion to the need, these policies have had little impact on the vast majority of women. The UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW, 1995) noted while de jure discrimination has been addressed by the CEDAW, the larger problem remains in de facto discrimination. Most countries may assure women equality under the law, but few actually experience it. The UNCSW (1995, p. 2) explained: “One obstacle to eliminating de facto discrimination is that most women and men are not aware of women’s legal rights or do not fully understand the legal and administrative systems through which they must be implemented,” The UNCSW proposed the establishment of ombudsmen, councils, or tribunals that would hear complaints of discrimination, the necessity of nations to repeal laws or policies in conflicting with the concepts of CEDAW, and the addition of equal numbers of women jurors, judges, lawyers, and policy makers. Henry (2001, p. 97) suggested: “What is required then, as a feminist project, is to find ways of ensuring that the accountability chain for gender reform extends through the various levels of influence, including that of the nation state.” Sandier (1997, p. 2) found that implementation of international standards regarding women’s rights “requires sustained pressure, over a long period, on governments, bilateral and multilateral agencies, the private sector, the media, and other actors” since the changing cast of personnel in these agencan not be counted to maintain a consistent interest in reform or even a commitment to or an understanding of gender issues. The pressure to make substantial change has to come from both the inside by the women most directly impacted by the discrimination, and the outside by organizations, which advocate for those women. Alone neither has the power to impact change. NOTES 1

Mies and Shiva (1993, p. 13) summarized these as “subsistence knowledge” necessary for survival, “for food, shelter, clothing; for affection, care and love; for dignity and identity, for knowledge and freedom, leisure and joy.” 2 Just one example can be seen in the recent political conversations about the possibility of democracy in Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq among others. In each, the absence of democracy is measured in part by the lack of women’s rights, most notably the right to education, suffrage, and dress.

36


REFERENCES Ahuja, V., & Filmer, D. (1995). Educational attainment in developing countries: New estimates and projections disaggregated by gender (A background report for the World development report). Washington DC: World Bank. Ali, N.M. (1995, November). Politicized Islam and the status of women: The case of Sudan. Paper presented at Women’s Education Amidst Economic, Social, and Political Changes, Hamburg, Germany. Andermahr, S., Lovell, T., & Wolkowitz, C. (1997). Feminist theory. London: Arnold. Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/LaFrontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute. Benton, S. (1991). Gender, sexuality and citizenship. In G. Andrews (Ed.), Citizenship (pp. 151–162). London: Lawrence & Wishart. Benería, L., Floro, M., Grown, C., & MacDonald, M. (2000). Introduction: Globalization and gender. Feminist Economics, 6(3), vii–xviii. Bunting, A. (1996). Theorizing women’s cultural diversity in feminist international human rights strategies. Journal of Law and Society , 20(10), 6–22. Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). [On-line]. (2002). Available: http://www.us.bahai.org/extaffairs/ cedaw/cedaw_action.html. Charlesworth, H. (1994). What are “international women’s rights?” In R.Cook (Ed.), Human rights of women (pp. 58–84). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Currie, D.H. (1999). Gender analysis from the standpoint of women: The radical potential of women’s studies in development. Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, 5(3), 9–27. Elson, D. (2000). Progress of the worlds women. New York: United Nations Development Fund for Women. Ferguson, A. (1998). Resisting the veil of privilege: Building the bridge identities as an ethico-politics of global feminisms. Hypatia, 13(3), 95–113. Fleischman, J. (2002, July 10). Protect young girls from forced sex with HIV-positive men. Human Rights World Watch [On-line], Available: hrw.org/editorials/2002/aids_africal.htm Fraser, A.S. (1999). Becoming human: The origins and development of women’s human rights. Human Rights Quarterly, 21(4), 853–906. Grewal, I., & Kaplan, C. (1996). Warrior marks: Womanism’s neo-colonial discourse in a multicultural context. Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, 39, 5–34. Hasan, M. (1995, November). Women’s education and religious extreminism: The case of Bangladesh. Paper presented at Women’s Education Amidst Economic, Social, and Political Changes, Hamburg, Germany. Henry, M. (2001). Globalisation and the politics of accountability: Issues and dilemmas for gender equity in education. Gender and Education, 13(1), 87–100. Hill Collins, P. (1991). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge. Human Rights Watch (2001). Scared at school: Sexual violence against girls in South African schools. New York: Human Rights Watch.


37

International Labour Organization (ILO). (1996a). ILO conventions and recommendations: Silent revolution in the lives of women. In All women are working women (Part 4). Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Organization. International Labour Organization (ILO). (1996b). Remuneration for women’s work: A curious paradox. In All women are working women, (Part 2). Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Organization. James, S. (1994). Challenging patriarchal privilege through the development of international human rights. Women’s Studies Forum, 17(6), 563–578. Jones, K.B. (1990). Citizenship in a women-friendly polity. Signs, 15(4), 781–812. Katzenstein, M.F. (1989). Organizing against violence: Strategies of the Indian women’s movement. Pacific Affairs, 62, 53–71. Keddie, N. (1999). The new religious politics and women worldwide: A comparative study. Journal of Women’s History, 10(4), 11 -34. Kensinger, L. (1997). (In)quest of liberal feminism. Hypatia, 12(4), 178–197. Kymlicka, W. (1990) Contemporary Political Philosophy: an Introduction. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press. Lister, R. (1997). Dialetics of citizenship. Hypatia, 12(4), 6–26. Little, A.W. (2000). Globalization, qualifications and livelihoods: Towards a research agenda. Assessment in Education, 7(3), 299–312. Lugones, M.C., & Spelman, E.V. (1983). Have we got a theory for you! Feminist theory, cultural imperialism, and the demand for “The Woman’s Voice.” Women’s Studies International Forum, 6(6), 573–81. Marshall, C. (2000). Policy discourse analysis: Negotiating gender equity. Journal of Educational Policy, 15(2), 125–156.

Mayer, A.M. (1995). Cultural particularism as a bar to women’s rights: Reflections on the Middle Eastern experience. In J.Peters & A.Wolper, (Eds.). Women’s rights, human rights: International feminist perspectives (pp. 176–188). New York: Routledge. McLeer, A. (1998). Saving the victim: Recuperating the language of victim and reassessing global feminism. Hypatia, 13(1), 41–55. Medel-Anonuevo, C. (1996). Women’s educational initiatives in challenging macro structures: Possibilities and constraints. Convergence, 29(4), 14–22. Mies, M., & Shiva, V. (1993). Eco-feminism. London: Zed. Ministry to be ruthless with deviant teachers. (2002, August). The Herald (Harare). Moghadam, V.M. (1997). Women, work, and economic reform in the Middle East and North Africa. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Moghadam, V.M. (1999), Resolution, religion, and gender politics: Iran and Afghanistan compare. Journal of Women’s History, 10(4), 172–195. Moghadam, V.M. (2001). Feminism and Islamic fundamentalism: A secularist interpretation. Journal of Women’s History, 13(1), 42–45. Mohanty, C.T. (1988). Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Feminist Review, 30, 61–88. Narayan, U. (1988). Finding our own voices: The need for non-Western contributions to global feminism. Women & Language, 11(2), 8–10. Narayan, U. (1998). Essence of culture and a sense of history: A feminist critique of cultural essentialism. Hypatia, 13(2), 86–106.

38


Norton, A.R., Singerman, D., Morris, M.E., & Moghadam, V.M. (1997). Gender, politics and the state: What do Middle Eastern women want? Middle East Policy, 5(3), 155–189. Nussbaum, M. (1999). Sex and social justice. New York: Oxford University Press. Okin, S.M. (1998). Feminism, women’s rights, and cultural differences. Hypatia, 13(2), 32–52. Pateman, C. (1989). The disorder of women: Democracy, feminism and political theory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Peters, J., & Wolper, A. (Eds.). (1995). Women’s rights, human rights: International feminist perspectives. New York: Routledge. Pettman, J.J. (1996). Worlding women. New York: Routledge. Pittin, R. (1990). Selective education: Issues of gender, class and ideology in northern Nigeria. Review of African Political Economy, 17(48), 7–26. Population Council, Inc. and the International Center for Research on Women (2000). Essential questions, essential tools: A report on a workshop on adolescent girls’ livelihoods. New York: Author. Rupp, L.J. (1996). Challenging imperialism in international organizations, 1888– 1945. NWSA Journal, 8(1), 8–16. Sandier, J. (1997, May). UNIFEM’s experience in mainstreaming for gender equality [On-line]. Available: www.unifem.undp.org/resources/gender_mainstreaming/html Sapiro, V. (1994). Women in American society. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Shalev, C. (1995). Women in Israel: Fighting tradition. In J.Peters & A.Wolper (Eds.), Women’s rights, human rights: International feminist perspectives (pp. 89–95). New York: Routledge. Siringi, S. (2002, July). Grim statistics on girls schooling. Black Board (Nairobi). Smith, B. (1982). Toward a Black feminist criticism. In G.T.Hull, P.B.Scott, & B. Smith (Eds.). All the women are White, all the Blacks are men, but some of us are brave (pp. 157–175). New York: The Feminist Press. Spelman, E.V. (1988). The inessential woman: Problems of exclusion in feminist theory. Boston: Beacon Press. Stanton, E.C. (1881). Declaration of sentiments. In E.C.Stanton, S.B.Anthony, & M.J.Gage (Eds.), History of woman suffrage (pp. 67–94). Rochester, NY: Charles Mann. Stromquist, N.P. (1990). Gender inequality in education: Accounting for women’s subordination. British Journal of Sociology’ of Education, 11(1), 137–54. Sultan, M. (1994). Women’s struggle against tradition in Bangladesh. Convergence, 27(2/3), 79–86. Tomasevski, K. (1993). Women and human rights. London: Zed. United Nations (UN). (1979). Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women [On-line]. Available: www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/cedaw.htm. United Nations (UN). (1993). Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. New York: Author. United Nations (UN). (1995a, March-April). Monitoring the implementation of the Nairobi forward-looking strategies for the advancement of women: Second review and appraisal of the implementation of the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for


39

the Advancement of Women Report of the Secretary-General. Thirty-ninth session, New York, NY. United Nations (UN). (1995b). Fourth World Conference on Women Platform for Action: Education and Training of Women. New York: United Nations Department for Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development. United Nations (UN). (2000). Further actions and initiatives to implement the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action: Draft resolution II. New York: Author. United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW). (1995). Preparations for the Fourth World Conference on Women: Addendum. New York: United Nations. United Nations International Children’s and Education Fund (UNICEF). (1999). Girls at work (brochure). New York: United Nations. United Nations International Children’s and Education Fund (UNICEF). (2001). Girls’ Education: Regional Perspectives [On-line], Available: www.unicef.org/ programme/girlseducation.htm Voet, R. (1998). Feminism & Citizenship. London: Sage. Women’s Human Rights. (2001). Human Rights Watch World Report 2001 [Online]. Available; www.hrw.org/wr2kl/women Women’s International Network (WIN). (1995). World Bank: 50 Years is Enough. WIN News, 21(3): 13. World Bank (1999). World Development Report 2, knowledge for development. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. World Health Organization (WHO). (2003). Implementing the recommendation of the world report on violence and health. Report by the Secretariat. A56/24. Geneva, Switzerland: Author. Young girls more prone to HIV/AIDS. (2002, August 17). The East African Standard (Nairobi).

3 Working-Class Masculinities and Schooling: New Considerations for Vocational Education Richard D.Lakes Georgia State University

While teaching vocational carpentry in a public high school in the late 1970s, I often heard the 12th-grade schoolboys (only one female enrolled in the program during my 5-year tenure) talk about following their fathers into the shop floor production line. For these White, working-class males occupational futures in blue-collar industry seemed almost reflexive, entry-level jobs with advancement were plentiful, Their placement records during the time I was teaching appear to confirm the cheery employment picture. Each year about two-thirds of my 25 graduating seniors students reported fulltime employment (33% worked in the field for which they were trained), another half-a-dozen entered the military, and the few remaining were unemployed. A reordered political economy formed around globalized policies of the 1980s hastened the erosion of father-to-son intergenerational transfer of working-class patrimony. As a result, today’s blue-collar workers experience a heightened sense of personal risk or insecurity in finding quality-waged employment. Additionally, rising unemployment and underemployment of vast numbers of working-class men has encouraged renewed attention to schooling and the socially constructed process where creating one’s biography entails the careful and detailed cultivation of school subjects in aligning educational preparation to the marketplace (Kenway, Watkins, & Tregenza, 1999). In apprehensive and uncertain times such as these, one needs a transitional plan to ensure job-related success and mobility. Shopfloor work is increasingly controlled by managerial directives, and is disappearing; young people are shifting career trajectories into re-gendered service work. At the same time, they are constructing new cultural forms out of the conflictive meanings of masculinity and femininity within the household and the family, as consumers and producers, and at institutional

42


sites such as schools and workplaces. A new work regime requires the formation of identities far different from the laddish behaviors on the industrial shop floor. Those who were once secure in the labor market under unionized, blue-collar labor now are adrift in what Beck (1992) termed the risk society, with no safety net in place to cushion the fall. Labor market changes over the past two decades are visible in vocational school program enrollments as well (Hurst & Hudson, 2000). For example, evidence from U.S. high school transcripts in the years 1982 to 1998 revealed a pattern of below-average course taking in two occupational areas: trade and industry (production, craft, and repair) and business (secretaries and typists). However, that downturn was offset by above-average growth rates in technology and communications, food service, and health and childcare clusters. Moreover, traditional vocational course taking has given way to a trend in general academic preparation as gradually more occupations require some type of advanced educational linkages to postsecondary credentials (Levesque et al., 2000). Decoupled from traditional social structures, people become agents of their own making; planning and organizing for one’s livelihood means engaging in personal decisions about schooling, transportation, career ambitions, fashion and dress, etc. Yet individuals function in a state of dependence upon institutional structures operating within a market economy. Such is the case with vocational schooling. Due to the idea of career is built upon risk—or as Beck (1992, p. 133) noted the individual’s “susceptibility to crises”—young people’s options are regulated by conditions of uncertainty and instability. That is, individuals are directed into formal schooling (and must learn the hidden curriculum of success) as a way to gain a livelihood and to repel cultural marginality. “Denied access to either [a job or an education],” Beck (1992, p. 133) advised, one “faces social and material oblivion… Those rejected by the vocational training system fall into the social abyss.” A regimen of educational and workplace schedules police each person; state social policies and corporate practices in maintaining minimum wages, eliminating industrial hazards, offering child-care, paying unemployment, health and retirement benefits, among others, distribute people into systems of external regulation and standardization beyond their control. Consequently, Beck (1992, p. 131) recognized the contradictions and “new dependencies” required in a market economy. The thesis of risk society proffered by Beck offers a number of scholars the opportunity to frame their qualitative investigations of young people in school-to-work transitions, to name observed practices in which workingclass males attempt to minimize risk positions, and to locate places where gender and class and racial interruptions lead to new cultural practices and changing configurations of relationships in a variety of social and institutional settings.

3. MASCULINITIES AND SCHOOLING

43

WHITE RAGE Various types of masculinities are reconstituted through new hostilities and frustrations derived from class dislocations. Antisocial pathologies among adolescent boys and increasingly resistant White, male subcultures are on the rise, accompanying the unrest is a visible movement of White power enthusiasts. Today’s racist skinhead identity was created through the devolution of British-styled punk music, initially anti-political and nihilistic, later filled with ideologies of White supremacy and racial purity (Lakes, 1999), Hardcore songs now manufacture racial divides through a neo-Nazi mythology blaming non-Whites for economic decline and social decay under late capitalism. That this same brand of underground music would appeal to some American working-class youth is no surprise. Plant closings and corporate disincentives to automate or offshore manufacturing processes have in fact brought massive insecurity and uncertainty to the lives of adolescent youth. In an ethnographic study of racist young people in Detroit, for example, Ezekiel (1995) noted that the discourse of White power hopelessly subdivides the disenfranchised working-class along racial lines, and reifies the consequences of rustbelt politics: The fewer and fewer plants that remain can demand better educated and more highly skilled workers, These fatherless Nazi youths, these high-school dropouts, will find little place in the emerging economy. Enacting the charade of white struggle only buys a wasteful time-out. The current economy has little use for overt racist drama; labor is surplus; a permanently underemployed white underclass is taking its place alongside the permanent black underclass. The struggle over race merely diverts youth from confronting the real issues of their lives, (p. 33) Understandably, kids in blue-collar communities see their neighborhoods decay, and view limited futures with little sense of uplift, optimism, or hope. A number of scholars recognize the rise of brutality in the lives of working-class males, particularly as minorities of color are blamed for economic disruptions in the global economy (Connell, 1995; Ezekiel, 1995; Fine, Weis, Addelston, & Marusza, 1997; Weis, 1990, 1995). Connell (1995) sug-gested that violence has become a routine in the daily patterns of the economically marginal, and after talks with five unemployed young adults in Australia between the ages of 17 and 29 (former high school dropouts—all on the dole) he is left with an impression that coupled with sporadic work

44


history were dysfunctional family dynamics leading to a great deal of aggressive behaviors: The interviews mention bullying and outrageous caning at school, assaulting a teacher, fights with siblings and parents, brawls in playgrounds and at parties, being arrested, assaults in reform school and goal, bashing of women and gay men, individual fist fights and pulling a knife. Speeding in cars or trucks or on bikes is another form of intimidation, with at least one police chase and roadblock and one serious crash as results, (pp. 98–99) Collectively, the young men clashed with school authorities in most cases leading to their expulsion or leaving. Drug dealings were pathways for several of the males, and prison as well. None of the five unemployed had any use for the state in the way of advancing their personal biographies through schooling. The response to loss of economic power and childhood poverty and abuse among the young men is a display of protest masculinity, the socioemotional condition of peer aggression, sexual harassment and homophobic violence derived from inflated claims of gender privilege and class authority (Connell 1995, 2000). “Groups of boys engage in these practices,” Connell (2000, p. 163) offered, “not because they are driven to it by raging hormones, but in order to acquire or defend prestige, to mark difference and to gain pleasure. Rule-breaking becomes central to the making of masculinity when boys lack other resources for gaining these ends.” Fine and associates (1997) analyzed two qualitative studies of the White working class, one a group of boys in Northeastern United States in high school and another a group of poor and working-class men between the ages of 24 and 35. Of particular interest are the ways these groups looked for scapegoats to blame their eroding economic and social status in the new logic of capitalism. Although they still believe in the historic and powerful narratives of meritocracy and individualism, the researchers explain that the subjects “fetishistically only look ‘down’ to discover who stole their edge” (Fine et al., 1997, p. 53). White, working-class anger toward Blacks becomes instantiated by marking and naming privilege in a gendered construction meant to denigrate and vilify others, Yet, White women, too, become the target of oppressive practices in that they are situated on a pedestal to be protected from mythic sexual dangers and racial transgressions. The high school group of White boys, derived from an ethnographic study by Weis (1990), situated male working-class behavior within a deindustrialized city solidly divided by segregated residential patterns. Several of the boys claim fighting is necessary to protect White girls from interracial


45

dating. Threatening minorities to stick to their side of town is encoded with bitter messages that White females are chattel property to be left alone. The authors explained: The discursive construction of Black men as oversexualized enables white men to elaborate their own “appropriate” heterosexuality…. These boys assert virulently and publicly their concern with Black men, while expressing their own heterosexuality and their ability to “take care of their women.” (Fine et al., 1997, p. 58). In the second study, a group of about 80 young adults were interviewed in the same region of the country to gather life histories on White masculine constructions among the working class. Both sets of studies offer narratives that scapegoat others deemed responsible for declining social advantages. The context of critique here centers on issues of affirmative action and the welfare system. The researchers conclude that the respondents consistently portray themselves as victims. As they narrate a precarious white heteromasculinity, perhaps they speak for a narrow slice of men sitting at the white working-class nexus. More likely, they speak for a gendered and raced group whose privilege has been rattled and whose wrath is boiling over. (Fine et al., 1997, p. 66) Marusza (1997) examined the identity formations of working-class vocational high school boys in an automotive class in Buffalo, New York, where the collective masculine character of the Whites whose working futures as mechanics are tied to their fathers’ car repair businesses. True to form, the young boys see their gritty masculinity in the hard manual labor and physicality of working in a garage, to the point of vocally telling the researcher how detestable it would be to take a “sissy desk-job,” a “paperpushing job,” to “sit in front of computers all fuckin’ day,” forced to wear “a tie around my neck stopping the flow of blood to my genitals” (Marusza, 1997, p. 180). More importantly, the boys embody whiteness as a mark of moral and cultural superiority, implying that only they are “the main players on the shop floor in intellect, productivity, and manliness” (Marusza, 1997, p. 184)—the African American and Puerto Rican classmates are depicted as violent, lazy, and inferior tradesmen. Marsuza (1997) surmised that the process of racist othering provides a means by which angry White guys “are desperately trying to retain their place of privilege in a race-gender hierarchy in an economy which has devalued all workers” (p. 186).

46


In a study of vocational students in Southeastern United States (Lakes & Burns, 2001), the academic teacher of an Applied Language Arts course explained that the only way to interest the auto shop boys in his third period class was “if you challenge them to do something more mechanical or tactile, they’ll rise to it. But, if you challenge them to do something academic, then a lot of times they’ll shrink.” Of course this meant rejection of the official curriculum through oppositional behaviors leading to detentions and suspensions at school. The boys thrived on disruptive school behaviors. For example, when delivering class instructions on Beowulf, the students diverted time away from the teaching at hand with verbal quips to the teacher about senior T-shirt day, permission to visit the bathroom, questions as to whether there was to be a quiz, and when the class can have pizza again. One might interpret resistance as what little control workingclass boys gain in order to undermine the teacher’s lesson plans for the day. Certainly there are parallels in the work world with shop-floor subversions, sabotage, and slow-downs. The resulting classroom climate becomes a “pretend-school model,” a place where Finn (1999, p. x) remarked “teachers ask little of students in return for enough cooperation to maintain the appearance of conducting school.” Walker (1988) clarified, We might expect that those who reject it [authority], or “resist” the “ideology” of our educational system—that if we work hard at school we shall have the opportunity to choose from a variety of “career” options—are themselves, ironically, guaranteeing their futures at the bottom of the hierarchy, (p. 5) Teachers end up accommodating male students through a number of coping strategies “to win the consent of boys to their authority” (Riddell 1989, p. 186). Sexist comments were verbalized by some of the instructors in a study of two rural comprehensive schools in the United Kingdom. The curricular content of daily lessons was tailored to interest the boys and hold their attention from potential troublesome incidents. In addition, male teachers even engaged at times in threats of physical violence in order to police the boys. Yet some boys held the upper hand in the manipulation of exaggerated gender codes, as Riddell (1989) observed, one metalworking shop class in which the teacher sanctioning of macho behavior got out of control. She described the scene as follows: Boys showed a great deal of physical aggression to each other, and sometimes hammered each other’s work destructively. Sexual imagery was used in a less than subtle way. One boy walked around with a bit of metal tubing


47

between his legs pretending that he had an erection. Confrontation with the teacher was almost continuous, who shouted at them several times that this was a “man’s workshop, not a little kid’s workshop.” (Riddell, 1989, p. 192) Sexual imagery was replicated in the boys’ harassment of female teachers as well. In a home economic class one student fashioned a penis from a piece of dough and “followed the teacher round the room with this” (Riddell, 1989, p. 193). Dixon (1997), too, found sexual play and masturbation-penetration fantasies through workshop tools (e.g., a mallet) in a technology class among White, working-class boys, age 13, who were reacting to the boredom of the subject matter and the lack of teacher surveillance, While appearing to be radical acts of resistance, parodied gender codes and displays of bodily knowledge only reinforce masculine dominance, heterosexual privilege, and the male-female divide. BOYS AND FAILURE The research just presented focuses upon the subaltern discourses appropriated by working-class males frustrated by futures that require more schooling due to heightened educational credentials with employment opportunities. Some observers—mostly the popular media, men’s movement advocates, and conservative policymakers in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia—claim a crisis or moral panic surrounding boys. As the new population at-risk, White, working-class boys compose a uniform group of underachievers, overly emasculated in feminized schools, and victimized by equal opportunity social policies offered to women and girls (Foster, Kimmel, & Skelton, 2001; Griffen, 2000; Kenway, 1995; Raphael Reed, 1999; Skelton, 1998). For example, Pollack (1998), a clinical psychologist in the United States, claimed the traditional exhibition of bravado and braggadocio is symptomatic of a boy’s inability to connect with one’s true self. Instead of openly voicing what’s really going on in their psyches, young males rely upon false and distorted images and myths of manhood; bound to a set of circumscribed rules or performances on the field (schoolroom or playground, battlefield or boardroom) set for combative and competitive hardening of power, privilege, and domination. “We want them to be ‘new men’ in the making,” Pollack (1998, p. xxv) affirmed, “showing respect for their girl peers, sharing their feelings in emotionally charged circumstances, and shedding their ‘macho’ assumptions about male power, responsibility, and sexuality. In short we want our boys to be sensitive New Age guys and still

48


be cool dudes.” This one-size-fits-all essentialist theory of adolescent masculinity ignores class, race and ethnic subjectivities, relational and interactive male-female gendered constructions, diversity in school-based experiences, and shifting power differentials in types of masculinities (Connell, 1995). British scholars Haywood and Mac an Ghaill (1996, 2001) placed the socalled boys-at-risk or failed boys question firmly within the context of late capitalist political economy, underscoring the impact of globalization upon labor markets that change the way males (and females) view occupational futures and social roles as breadwinner. The growing alienation of workingclass males, they pointed out, is: Now part of a generation whose transition into adulthood as workers, citizens and consumers is in the process of being reconstituted as a result of high rates of unemployment, the de-regulation of youth labour markets and punitive legislative changes that have led to the withdrawal of financial state support for young people. (Haywood & Mac an Ghaill, 1996, p. 23). In particular, they refer to the abolition of wage protection for young people under age 21, the removal of restrictions on adolescent working hours and conditions, and the withdrawal of social security benefits for teens. By the mid-1990s postrecession declines in national job training programs accompanied the rise of postcompulsory schooling where young people “learn not to labour”—institutions where the working classes prolong education to avoid unemployment (Haywood & Mac an Ghaill, 1996, p. 24). Yet to be fully theorized is the relationship between subjectivities, local economies, and re-gendered work (Connell, 1991). Mac an Ghaill (1994), for instance, noted that in his research at the Parnell School in the West Midlands of England, various peer groups emerged among the mostly working-class students. The Macho Lads appropriated traditional laddish rejection of curriculum as effeminate and were linked to other friendship groups along internal hierarchies of vocational status. The Academic Achievers projected futures in professional careers; the New Enterprisers planned to enter high-tech labor markets; and the Real Englishmen valued cultural capital and advanced formal education. From this study Mac an Ghaill (1994, p. 71) surmised: “the disruption and accompanying restructuring of the students’ transitions from school to .waged work, with the collapse of the local economy’s manufacturing base, appeared to be creating a crisis in traditional white working-class forms of masculinity.” In subsequent research on male apprentices, Mac an Ghaill (1999), suggested that traditional class-based cultural forms of masculinity are


49

disappearing as young people shift postschool trajectories into job training or fur-ther (adult) education. The regendering of labor markets under deindustrialization requires sexual knowledge as new and shifting identity developments rival dominant discourses on the shop floor. Mac an Ghaill (1999) explained; I focus here upon an emerging regime of sexual skilling among a group of white heterosexual young men within the context of a Modern Apprenticeship as a key cultural arena. Sexual competency appeared to be a dominant cultural form employed by the apprentices to produce their masculinities. These sexual competencies were used, both socially and psychically by different groups of apprentices to consolidate their masculine status, through the local ordering of heterosexual masculinities within the training arena, (p. 432) For example, one group of apprentices termed “The Fashionable Heterosexuals,” exhibited a consumerist lifestyle of material display through hairstyles, clothes, music, clubbing, and the like. Another group, Mac an Ghaill (1999, p. 435) named “The Explicit Heterosexuals,” projected perverse and stylized performances both in the workshop (as sexual play with hand tools) and in the classroom (by “drawing penises on the board, attaching condoms to the trainers and searching for double entendres in comments made by trainers and apprentices”). A third group of mostly young apprentices ages 16 to 17, the “Sexual Outsiders,” with limited sexual experiences, were the object of intense and sustained forms of homophobic harassment by the other two groups who attempted to enforce their claims to hegemonic masculinity. Teasing out the tensions and complexities of heterosexual identity formations of males in apprenticeship requires continued analysis of peer group cultures in training sites. McDowell (2000) interviewed two groups of low achieving, White, English working-class males aged 15 to 16 about their future transition to service jobs several months before leaving school and then on the job. Interestingly, service sector skills require that workers manage emotions, control interpersonal communications, regulate personal attitudes, and police bodily presentations—all the while valorizing a gender regime that subordinates traditional forms of working-class masculinity. In two different locales—the deindustrialized town of Sheffield and the college town of Cambridge—study participants found part-time and causal employment in restaurants or stores, but expressed occupational aspirations for fields traditionally more gender appropriate for men, such as a mechanic or engineer, bricklayer or carpenter, retail work in a sports shop, and even tattoo artist. “They expressed no fears about finding a job,” McDowell

50


(2000, p. 411) suggested, “and had relatively little sense of the extent to which economic restructuring had transformed opportunities for men and women.” In fact, the boys “were unaware of the changed economic circumstances that awaited them,” she continued, “and they had no sense at all that they might not be able to achieve and maintain the traditional pattern of working-class family life in which they were the main breadwinner.” Surprising, most said they just wanted to settle down into what McDowell (2000, p. 413) termed a comfortable “domestic masculinity”; the boys anticipated “‘a good job, a car, a house and a wife’ (and usually in that order),” TEACHING THE BOYS? In this chapter, I presented a few important researchers in the West who deconstruct and reconceptualize working-class masculinities in ways that account for changes in the political economy of capital linked to globalization, and in local sites whereby discursive practices in schools reify gender constructions. In the realm of poststructural theorizing hegemonic masculinity is dismantled and other, newly charted paths are indicated by uncertainties, ambiguities, complexities, contradictions, contingencies and contestations (Connell, 1995; Mac an Ghaill, 1994). Despite the growing number of studies being done within the field of masculinity studies, gender scholar Skelton (2001, p. 173) pointed out, little is offered “in terms of providing schools and teachers with practical strategies and guidance.” Mac an Ghaill (1994) is one exception in that he flirted with the notion of antioppressive schooling using pedagogical techniques and strategies to teach boys and girls about sexism, but does not flesh-out curricular thinking along these lines. Connell (1996) mentioned, in passing, a few experiential school-based practices that ask boys to interrogate assumptions of masculinity. Finn (1999) rightly conveyed how critical pedagogy can be positioned to address the cultural politics of gender, race, and class, yet details a small number of accounts by teachers armed with Freirean methods who ask their working-class students to question domination and subordination, privilege and opportunity in order to examine the various meanings of power in the struggle for democratic life. “With oppositional students,” Goodman (1999, p. 36) wrote, “we have to experiment with turning their resistance into something more tolerable for both the students and teachers.” His work with atrisk kids in alternative school settings in the states of New England and California provides some level of understanding how adults could assist in healthy adolescent development. After teaching for one year in an alternative high school populated by juvenile delinquents, Grinberg (1994, p. 124) never


51

really figured out the cultural underpinnings that drove working-class kids to contest the curriculum, and he agonized over how to “foster appro-priate pedagogies and content that would not reproduce a dominant culture that alienated them but that would challenge their own glorification of marginality.” Kanpol (1999, p. 21), who taught working-class students in his native Israel, proposed that male resisters are approachable through “open and honest dialogue,” a critical pedagogy with adults “owning up to one’s past and present race, class, and gender biases.” Site-based evidence of empowering interactions is wanting. On the other hand, James (1999) provided practicable knowledge into how beginning vocational teachers in Australia examine their gendered life histories and masculine identity constructions. The action research project consisted of qualitative data gathering of three groups of 20 adult males (A,B,C) in a 3-semester class in educational psychology, a part of their 2year induction and internship process into secondary-level technology teaching. The curriculum consisted of an examination of teachers’ values, leadership styles and interpersonal communication, adolescent learning theory, stress-reduction management, and social justice issues, among others. The course activities required self-disclosure of feelings, reflective writing and group conversational styles of empathy and encouragement, as participant-observer-instructor James (1999, p. 399) noted, a style of caring, critical and humanist, feminist pedagogy that she expected would be met with silence; “on every front, I appeared to be at war with certain cultural patterns, linked to a particular masculine identity, which validated their very existence and supported self-esteem.” Storytelling of teaching problems and work-related difficulties was the primary mode of reflection among Group A participants. James tried to move those students from the masculine-defined classroom-as-battleground scenario into a case study narrative illustrating problems of entry-level vocational teaching that encouraged openness and intimacy; though with limited success given the negative peer group dynamics that ostracized a few risktakers as deviant, the majority were threatened by the symbolism that “a ‘wimpish’ subject like educational psychology—within this culture—was probably to render one’s masculinity suspect” (1999, p. 401). Greater evidence of culture change occurred in Groups B and C (and subsequent cohorts), with support from peers for the narrative assignment: “People were becoming active in interrogating aspects of the trades teachers’ culture and, with stress being managed through group support, people could maintain a positive stance towards learning and toward their students” (James, 1999, p. 405). Discussions ensued about potential conflicts with their school-age technology pupils. In several instances sexist attitudes toward teaching girls were raised, yet strategies for gender inclusiveness were explored and personal transformations unmasked. As a final point, James commented:

52


If ways can be found to assist men and boys in genuine exploration of feelings, within an atmosphere of psychological closeness and group solidarity, then this can indeed provide an environment in which new constructions of masculinity are developed and ideologies critiqued and overturned. (1999, p. 407)

CONCLUSION Poststructuralism interprets the array of masculinities and related class complexities in which subjects define identity—what it means to be a man. “I emphasize that terms such as ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and ‘marginalized masculinities,”’ Connell (1995, p. 81) clarified, “name not fixed character types but configurations of practice generated in particular situations in a changing structure of relationships,” Gendered and sexual scripts are ever shifting as men and boys confront changing schooling and workplace conditions due to globalization, technology and the state (Stromquist, 2002). Anthropological studies from abroad have contributed to notions of hegemonic masculinities in non-European perspective, in developing countries, in rural settings, in oral cultures, and in rites of passage (Almeida, 1996; Ghoussoub & Sinclair-Webb, 2000; Morrell, 1998). Several British researchers have mined knowledge constructions around hegemonic masculinity among male physical education teachers and with at-risk preadolescent boys (Benjamin, 2001; Skelton, 1993). Significantly, gender studies scholars have uncovered elements of contestation and hierarchy among adolescents. Needed are more accounts of marginalized masculinities, particularly related to school-to-work transitions. For instance, Walker’s (1988) ethnography of peer and friendship groups in Australia looked at employment paths in part to discern boy’s attitudes toward their vocational futures. McDowell (2000) found that workingclass boys in the transition to jobs faced unrealistic expectations for employment in the new service-sector economy. Further investigations at local sites may uncover new arrangements and trajectories that link educational credentials, labor markets, and mobility to class, race, and gendered constructions of alternative masculinities. REFERENCES Almeida, M.V. (1996). The hegemonic male: Masculinity in a Portuguese town. Providence, RI: Berghahn Books. Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage.


53

Benjamin, S. (2001). Challenging masculinities: Disability and achievement in testing times. Gender and Education, 13(1), 39–55. Connell, R.W. (1991). Live fast and die young: The construction of masculinity among young working-class men on the margin of the labour market. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 77(2), 141–171. Connell, R.W. (1995). Masculinities. Sidney, Australia: Allen and Unwin. Connell, R.W. (1996). Teaching the boys: New research on masculinity, and gender strategies for schools. Teachers College Record, 98(2), 206–235. Connell, R.W. (2000). The men and the boys. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Dixon, C. (1997). Pete’s tool: Identity and sex-play in the design and technology classroom. Gender and Education, 9(1), 89–104. Ezekiel, R.S. (1995). The racist mind. New York: Penguin. Fine, M., Weis, L., Addelston, J., & Marusza, J. (1997). (In)secure times: Constructing white working-class masculinity in the late 20th century. Gender and Society, 11, 52–68. Finn, P.J. (1999). Literacy with an attitude: Educating working-class children in their own self-interest. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Foster, V., Kimmel, M., & Skelton, C. (2001). “What about the boys?” An overview of the debates. In W.Martino & B.Meyenn (Eds.), What about the boys? Issues of masculinity in schools (pp. 1–23). Buckingham, England: Open University Press. Ghoussoub, M. & Sinclair-Webb, E. (2000). Imagined masculinities: Male identity and culture in the modern Middle East. London, England: Saqi Books. Goodman, G.S. (1999). Alternatives in education: Critical pedagogy for disaffected youth. New York: Peter Lang. Griffen, C. (2000). Discourses of crisis and loss: Analysing the “boys’ underachievement” debate. Journal of Youth Studies, 3(2), 167–188. Grinberg, J.A. (1994). From the margin to the center: Teachers’ emerging voices through inquiry. In R.A.Martusewicz & W.M.Reynolds (Eds.), Inside/out: Contemporary critical perspectives in education (pp. 121–138). New York: St. Martin’s Press. Haywood, C., & Mac an Ghaill, M. (1996). “What about the boys?”: Regendered local labour markets and the recomposition of working class masculinities. British Journal of Education and Work, 9(1), 19–30. Haywood, C., & Mac an Ghaill, M. (2001). The significance of teaching English boys: Exploring social change, modern schooling and the making of masculinities. In W.Martino & B.Meyenn (Eds.), What about the boys? Issues of masculinity in schools, (pp. 24–37). Buckingham, England: Open University Press. Hurst, D., & Hudson, L. (2000). Changes in high school vocational coursetaking in a larger perspective. Washington DC: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research & Improvement. James, P. (1999), Masculinities under reconstruction: classroom pedagogy and cultural change. Gender and Education, 11(4), 395–412. Kanpol, B. (1999). Critical pedagogy: An introduction (2nd ed.). Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.

54


Kenway, J. (1995). Masculinities in schools: Under seige, on the defensive, and under reconstruction? Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 16(1), 59–79. Kenway, J., Watkins, P., & Tregenza, P. (1999). Australian boys at risk? The new vocational agendas in schooling. In S.Erskine & M.Wilson (Eds.), Gender issues in international education: Beyond policy and practice (pp. 71–90). New York: Falmer. Lakes, R.D. (1999). Mosh pit politics: The subcultural style of punk rage. Journal of Thought, 34(3) 21–31. Lakes, R.D., & Burns, J. (2001). “It’s like their culture”: Resistant boys in the new vocationalism. Journal of Industrial Teacher Education, 38(4), 25–40. Levesque, K., Lauen, D., Teitelbaum, P., Alt, M., Librera, S., & MPR Associates (2000). Vocational education in the United States: Toward the year 2000. Washington DC: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research & Improvement. Mac an Ghaill, M. (1994). The making of men: Masculinities, sexualities, and schooling. Buckingham, England: Open University Press. Mac an Ghaill, M. (1999). “New” cultures of training: Emerging male (hetero)sexual identities. British Educational Research Journal 25(4), 427–443. Marusza, J. (1997). Skill school boys: Masculine identity formation among white boys in an urban high school vocational autoshop program. The Urban Review, 29(3), 175–187. McDowell, L. (2000). Learning to serve? Employment aspirations and attitudes of young working-class men in an era of labour market restructuring. Gender, Place, and Culture, 7(4), 389–416. Morrell, R. (1998). Of boys and men: Masculinity and gender in Southern African studies. Journal of Southern African Studies, 24(4), 605–630. Pollack, W. (1998). Real boys: Rescuing our sons from the myths of boyhood. New York: Henry Holt. Raphael Reed, L. (1999). Troubling boys and disturbing discourses on masculinity and schooling: A feminist exploration of current debates and interventions concerning boys in school. Gender and Education, 11(1), 93–110. Riddell, S. (1989). Pupils, resistance and gender codes: A study of classroom encounters. Gender and Education, 1(2), 183–197. Skelton, A. (1993). On becoming a male physical education teacher: The informal culture of students and the construction of hegemonic masculinity. Gender and Education, 5(3), 289–303 Skelton, C. (1998). Feminism and research into masculinities and schooling. Gender and Education, 70(2), 217–227. Skelton, C. (2001). Typical boys? Theorizing masculinity in educational settings, In B.Francis & C.Skelton (Eds.), Investigating gender: Contemporary perspectives in education (pp. 164–176). Buckingham, England: Open University Press. Stromquist, N.P. (2002). Education in a globalized world: The connectivity of economic power, technology and knowledge. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Walker, J.C. (1988). Louts and legends: Male youth culture in an inner city school. Sydney, Australia: Allen & Unwin.


55

Weis, L. (1990). Working class without work. New York: Routledge. Weis, L. (1995). Constructing the “other”; Discursive renditions of white workingclass males in high school. In P.L.McLaren & J.M.Giarelli (Eds.), Critical theory and educational research (pp. 203–222). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

4 Defying the Grip of Globalization: Brazilian Women’s Employment and Education for Work Tania Ramalho State University of New York, Oswego

While through the Old and New Worlds echoes the call— women’s emancipation—, our weak voice rises in the capital of the Empire of the Holy Cross [Brazil], claiming: educate the women! Peoples of Brazil, who call yourselves civilized! Government that calls itself liberal! Where is the most important gift of this civilization, of this liberalism? —Nísia Floresta (Opúsculo Humanitário, 1853)1 It’s said that the Church invented purgatory in order to be able to incorporate usury, one of the worst sins on its list before that, to the acceptable practices among the faithful, who would no longer need to fear eternal damnation. If it had the power to change heaven’s architecture, usury would not take long to transform the world down here as well. With the triumph of liberalism and the uncontented dominance of monetarism at the end of History, even the oldfashioned difference between industry and finance, between productive capital and speculative capital, responsible to a large degree for the creative tension that made the Western economy grow and the American even more (also because of some wars, but this too was not a sin), lost its sense; speculation prevailing, volatile capital started to determine everything, greed became our measure of morals, and usury reigns. Not bad for a regenerated mortal sin. —Veríssimo (2002, p. 7)

58


Brazil is the largest country in South American, fifth in the world, with extensions of land greater than the continental United States. Diverse in its physical and human geography, it houses a population of about 170 million inhabiting five regions with specific environmental and climatic characteristics. These have influenced socioeconomic and political history regionally since Portuguese occupation and colonization at the onset of the 16th century. To the North, lies the equatorial Amazon complex of forests and rivers, scarcely inhabited, and occupied primarily along the margins of major rivers, In the Northeast,2 the semi-deserted interior is subject to periodic drought. The plush green and fertile coastline has greater population concentration. Poverty for decades has caused internal migration from the Northeast to other regions. The Southeast and the South, the most agriculturally and industrially developed, are heavily populated, particularly the state capital cities of São Paulo, the largest metropolis in South America, followed by Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, and Porto Alegre. Lastly, the CenterWestern region houses the Federal District and the capital of Brazil, Brasilia, built to bring development to the plains. This is also a sparsely populated area where Indian reservations are found. In these diverse regions women and men live in societies historically stratified by social class and race. Among the most consequential aspects of Brazilian history are its almost 400 hundred years of slavery and widespread intermarriage between male European colonizers, Indians, and Africans. That was a necessary stratagem of the Portuguese to survive, conquer and settle such large territory. The original Brazilian people, a population of mestizos, was joined at the end of the 19th century by waves of European, Middle-Eastern, and Japanese immigrants shortly before and continuing after the liberation of the slaves in 1888. While widespread and largely accepted miscegenation has created a spectrum of colors, institutional racism and elitism remain a strong heritage of colonialism and slavery times. European descendants and light skinned people in Brazil, generally speaking, comprise the elites and the more well-to-do strata. Most working class, poor or downright marginalized Brazilians are mestizos, dark-skin Blacks, and Indians. This description provides a very broad backdrop for understanding the status and condition of Brazilian women and their experience of education, employment, and preparation for work, the relevant topics of this chapter. The circumstances and life opportunities of a Cafusa (Indian and European mestiza) who lives in a shack on the margins of the Amazon River are different from the Mulata farm worker in the sugar plantations of the Northeast coast or the fruit farms on the banks of the São Francisco River. So are the situations of a Japanese-Brazilian woman physician or physicist in São Paulo and of her light-skinned maid of African descent. Social class,

4. DEFYING THE GRIP OF GLOBALIZATION

59

race, regional, and urban-rural backgrounds interact to affect educational and employment opportunities of Brazilian women. This chapter first summarizes briefly the economic and political history of Brazil to provide an overarching framework for studying the condition of its women. I proceed to explore the meaning of globalization and its effects on employment, Discussions about women’s work and employment, and the system that prepares them for the workforce follow, coming to conclusions and recommendations in light of the impact of global capitalist expansion. A SUCCINCT PICTURE OF BRAZILIAN ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL HISTORY From 1500 until 1822 Brazil was a colony of Portugal. During this time it provided riches of wood, sugar, and gold; so much of the latter that the accounting shows it fueled the Industrial Revolution in England. Rigidly stratified, colonial society had a few masters and plenty of slaves to do backbreaking work under the tropical skies. A small White and mestizo middle class lived mostly in towns, men working in jobs necessary to help administer and defend local colonial government in the hands of the landed lesser Portuguese nobility. There was also a powerful class of Catholic ecclesiastics, mainly Jesuits who came to the new world as missionaries. Working women were Indians and African slaves who engaged in agricultural and domestic labor in large sugar and, later, coffee plantations. In towns, slave women also worked as peddlers for their masters, selling all manner of products, including themselves as prostitutes. Elite wives, daughters, and other relatives of plantation owners, in the absence of their masters, on occasion managed business, agricultural, and household affairs. Brazil declared its independence in 1822. The grandson of Portugal’s king D.Joao VI, Brazilian by birth remained in power with the support of the country’s landed nobility. The second half of the 19th century brought great expansion to coffee production and commerce, the first railroads and a small surge in industry. Change in the relative importance of the urban middle class led to the abolition of slavery in 1888, the removal of the monarchy, and beginnings of the Federative Republic of Brazil in 1889. Despite political changes, until the 1930s the economy remained structurally the same, based on export of tropical agricultural products, particularly coffee, sugar, and cocoa, and of extractive minerals such as iron and manganese. Light industry was primarily for internal consumption. This pattern of dependency on exports, and thus dependency on foreign markets has not been broken since colonial times.

60


After World War II, capital surpluses and international loans paid for increased works of infrastructure like roads and electric plants, facilitating greater industrial development with the opening of plants by foreign corporations. In the late 1970s, Brazilian industry declined, aggravating the state of economics and creating a political crisis in the country that has continued since. THE INTERNATIONAL DIVISION OF LABOR Discussions about globalization focus both economic and cultural processes of transnational reach. Defenders of the status quo expectedly emphasize the potential worldwide benefits of this attractive, hopeful, even inspiring social, political and economic trend (Freedman, 2000), Critics, however, contend that globalization disguises the path of aggressive global capitalist development and a conservative neo-liberal political and economic ideology that has already brought forth much damage (Soros, 2002; Stiglitz, 2002). Organizing production internationally through the operation of transnational corporations in many countries has caused “undeveloped economies to become a wide world market competing for the least costs of work possible that the buyers of the workforce will visit” (Pochmann, 2001, p. 8). As suggested by Marxian political economy, the impact of global capitalism expands the rift between nations in the center and those in the semi-periphery and periphery. It unremittingly concentrates wealth in the hands of a relative few; and has funneled political upheaval, the widespread weakening of state functions, environmental degradation, and social, environmental, and spiritual dehumanization of masses of humans everywhere on the planet. In the name of globalization, new macroeconomic policies segregate less developed countries into passive and subordinate positions within world economy principally through capital lending mechanisms of international private banks and agencies such as the World Bank (WB) and the InterAmerican Development Bank. Lenders impose stringent economic terms as a condition of lending, including neo-liberal policy requirements such as liberalization of markets, financial deregulation, trimming of government budgets (particularly with respect to social programs), privatization of public enterprises, and economic specialization of the country according to an external order and commands (Pochmann, 2001). Neo-liberalism is a political and economic conservative ideology that acquired hegemonic status during Reagan and Thatcher’s governments in the United States and Britain. George (1999) described the ascent of neoliberalism:


61

Starting from a tiny embryo at the University of Chicago with the philosopher-economist Friedrich von Hayek and his students like Milton Friedman at its nucleus, the neo-liberals and their funders have created a huge international network of foundations, institutes, research centers, publications, scholars, writers and public relations hacks to develop, pack and push their ideas and doctrine relentlessly, (p. 2) George (1999) compared neo-liberal doctrine to a religion. The market is its sacred institution and competition its modus operandi. In a heartless (but, perhaps, compassionate) application of competition to economic and social relations, a neo-liberal may be described as a social Darwinist who believes in the survival of the fittest. According to the logic of neo-liberal policy “the public sector must be brutally downsized because it does not and cannot obey the law of competing for profits or for market share” (George, 1999, pp. 3–4). Governmental deregulation and privatization of previously publicly owned industries, particularly in developing nations, is one of the major economic trends of the turn of the 21st century. From a liberal point of view, neo-liberalism jeopardizes ideals concerning community, citizenship, and the public good. Noted economist Furtado (1998) traced the evolution of these policies first and foremost to the U.S. internal low rate of savings, great budget deficits and frantic borrowing behavior in the 1980s that led the nation to become the world’s largest debtor. This state of affairs contributed to dual trends, a decrease in capital available to dependent countries, and massive transfer of capital back to the United States; both trends increased inequality internationally. Furtado believed that inequality is the most important attribute of global capitalist development as it stands now. Furtado sided with those who believe that globalization increases income inequality between countries, among others, World Bank economist Milanovic (2002). On the other side of the debate are those affirming the reduction of inequality, for example, economists Sala-i-Martin (2002) and Dollar and Kraay (2001). Ravallion (2003) blamed the disagreements on economics research methods and data: Who should we believe? To answer that question, we need to probe more deeply into the sources of the differences between the conflicting assessments. This calls for closer scrutiny of the concepts being used, which are not always in agreement between the two sides of the debate. It also requires closer inspection of the data sources and methods of analysis, even when there is agreement on the concept one is trying to measure. Only then can one form a judgment as to

62


what the available data can really tell us about progress against poverty and inequality in the new era of globalization, (p.3) Sen (2002), however, suggested another perspective: Even if the poor were to get just a little richer, this would not necessarily imply that the poor were getting a fair share [my emphasis] of the potentially vast benefits of global economic interrelations. It is not adequate to ask whether international inequality is getting marginally larger or smaller, (p. 5) Furtado supported the notion that the poor, at least in Brazil, have not attained fair gains in economic well-being. Among other factors that contribute to cross-national inequality is the competition for capital between Eastern Europe and Third World countries, with resulting high rates of interest. In this match, the newly capitalist nations have a distinct lead because of their human resources advantage. Technological innovation and, chiefly, information technology that originates in advanced capitalist countries also represent an advantage that realizes greater economic disparity between First and Third Worlds (Furtado, 1998). Shedding light on how this global state of affairs progressed, Pochmann (2001) reviewed three phases in the history of the international division of labor. The emergence of large industry made the first international division of labor possible. As Marx pointed out, this division is characterized by economic role definition for the capitalist center and for peripheral nations. Those in the periphery become responsible for the extraction of raw materials and agricultural production, with differing levels of technology; those at the center are occupied in manufacturing. England, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, became the economically and politically hegemonic nation in the 19th century, the world’s financial center, and international investor. The United States and Germany, in the beginning of the 19th century, and Japan and Russia after the 1870s, successfully adopted the British model of production and consumption, relatively technologically simple (steam, rail, and loom), and requiring comparatively fewer investment resources. At the turn of the 20th century, however, more complex technologies (electricity, automobile, chemical, oil, and steel) required a larger scale of production and greater and more concentrated capital, governmental intervention and investment banks. This model was developed in the United States where “the appearance of large enterprises through mergers and cartels, and the union of industrial and financial capitals made it viable for


63

some businessmen the production and diffusion of a new wave of technological innovation” (Pochman, 2001, p. 20). Between 1890 and 1940, industrial production was concentrated in five countries that made up the capitalist center (England, United States, France, Japan, and Germany), and thus in the hands of their industrial workforces, while 75% of workers in peripheral nations labored in agricultural and extractive sectors (Pochmann 2000). The second international division of labor evolved in the 20th century in the wake of the American industrial model, two World Wars, the Depression, the rise of centrally planned economies and the Soviet Block, the Cold War, and the decolonization and independence of African and Asian nations. American capitalist hegemony displaced the British after World War II. Competition between American capitalism and communism of the Soviet Union favored an alignment of a few peripheral Third World countries (e.g., Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, and Chile in Latin America; South Africa; and Singapore, Korea and Taiwan in East Asia) where elites used the state apparatus to support the implantation of American-style industrial development (Pochmann, 2001). In Brazil, industrial growth became progressively more robust after the 1930 Revolution, and even more prominent after World War II with the opening of many subsidiaries of American, Japanese, German, Swedish, and French corporations. The ongoing third international division of labor, the period now referred as globalization, slowly emerged from its roots in the late 1960s. The American industrial model fizzled out within the wider political context of the Vietnam War, increased budget deficits and low rates of savings in the United States, efforts to facilitate the eventual implosion of the Soviet Union, and the oil crisis. In the 1980s, conditions were ripe for discarding Keynesian economic policies that privileged a greater valorization of productive capital, commitment to labor and full employment, and of the conditions established in the Bretton Woods agreements that regulated the international financial system. The resulting picture strengthens the supremacy of the dollar, gives greater predominance to financial capital, inhibiting the expansion of the productive cycle. Pochmann (2001) noted: Financialization results in both the fictitious valorization of wealth…and the subordination of the economic dynamics to reduced rates of productive expansion. Countries with superproduction of capital export capitals to other nations, conditioning production and occupation…. In the reign of financial globalization the scenario of contained productive investments predominates, (pp. 26–27)3

64


Following the introduction and advancement of new information technology, the neo-liberal shift in economic policy led to an extensive restructuring of corporations, and the necessity of rationalizing labor. The greater centralization and concentration of capital and increased power of restructured transnational corporations made possible investment decisions often beyond national jurisdictions. Pochmann (2001) explained: During the 1990s decade, the most marked strategy of the transnational corporations was to try to be free as most as possible of long term investments, with the objective of exploring fast opportunities for profit and opening and closing as many productive plants as necessary, (p. 30) Under these new-and bleak-global capitalist methods of operating economies, workers in the center or on the periphery have lost ground in pay, benefits, welfare support, rights and conditions for organized action, training, and in employment itself. In this picture, women, traditionally a more exploited group of workers, have experienced the brunt of the neoliberal economic shifts globally. In the following section, I examine the historical role of women in the Brazilian labor force, and the recent impact of globalization on their employment opportunities. BRAZILIAN WOMEN’S WORK AND EMPLOYMENT The first Brazilian women workers were Indian, and, with increased slave trade over time, African. Female slaves performed agricultural, domestic, trade, and sexual-reproductive labor. After abolition, many ex-slaves remained on the plantations and houses of their masters, the patrões. Others immigrated to cities where they would make up a marginalized surplus labor force that supplied domestic and other forms of cheap labor to the more privileged classes. The older favelas, shantytowns that house large numbers of people in crowded small dwellings, still subsist in larger cities, and are identifiable landmarks in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Their inception can be traced to the postabolition period. With publicly and privately sponsored immigration from Europe, the Middle East, and Japan starting in 1875, many immigrants, including women, replaced slave labor in established plantations. Some families, particularly in the Southern states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Paraná, had access to their own plots of land, instead. Generally speaking, only fate upon arrival, not necessarily policy, determined the final destination of immigrants, and if they had to work for others or independently.


65

Women from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Rumania, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, and Syria who came to Brazil were hired in textile and other factories that opened at the turn of the century (Rago, 1997). In 1901, 72% of textile workers in São Paulo were females (50% adults and 22% children). The appalling conditions of factory work included long 12–16 hour workdays, small pay comparative to men, and labor in unhealthy physical and psychological environments under the command of male supervisors. In fact, women’s work in a patriarchal capitalist society historically, perhaps with some exceptions made for professional work, exhibits certain enduring characteristics. These are occupational segregation; repetitiveness and boredom; less specialization; subordination to men’s work; intimidation; sexual harassment and even sexual assault on the job; fewer avenues for advancement or for career paths; lower levels of qualification; intellectual subordination; and lower levels of pay than men’s, even for the same work (Rago, 1997). Brazilian social customs dictate that the place of women is at home, an elite ideal. Fathers and husbands from more privileged backgrounds used to brag, and perhaps continue to do so proudly, “Minha mulher não trabalha!” [“My wife does not work!”]. This expression depicts the legal right of men, finally struck down in 1943, to impede their women from seeking employment (Melo, 1978). The expression also maintains the tradition of invisibility associated with women’s domestic and maternal work. The work performed by wives and mothers is considered real women’s work but because it is an indispensable part of these roles and identities, and unpaid, it is not considered work. Work fora de casa [outside of the home], particularly for a mulher de boa familia [a woman from a family of good moral standing] always carried a stigma and created opportunity for expressions of classism. Rago (1997) described the interplay of class and gender in relation to work: The poorer workers were considered profoundly ignorant, irresponsible and incapable, taken as more irrational than the women from middle and higher classes who, in turn, were considered less rational than men. In the elite’s imaginary, hard labor, performed mostly by slaves before, was associated with the personal incapacity to develop any type of intellectual or artistic ability, and to moral degeneration. From the notorious “little seamstress,” the factory worker, the washwoman, the candy maker and the maid, to the florist and the artist, the various female occupations were stigmatized and associated to images of moral decay, degradation and prostitution, (p. 589)

66


Rabelo (1969), investigating conditions of women’s work during the 1960s in Recife, capital of the northeastern state of Pernambuco, commented on other equally elitist social perceptions concerning women’s work outside of the home. He also provided an explanation for change over time. “Prejudice, which made a female who worked a ‘needy’ and ‘not looked after’ woman, disappears to the extent that the [female] workforce increases in size, not only in qualification” (Rabelo, 1969, p. 14). Over time women remained active and increased their participation in the labor force, in spite of the ongoing elitist and sexist stigma. In the first decades of the 20th century women participated in labor movements— socialist, anarchist, and feminist, arguing for better working conditions, workers’ and women’s rights, and nothing short of social revolution. Activists were strongly repressed by the police. Their schools were closed, publications stopped, and leaders purged (Melo, 1978; Rago, 1997). Notwithstanding, women’s work became a defining issue in the 20th century. Women competed with men for positions in industry, as most industrial jobs eventually became men’s jobs, except in traditional sectors such as textiles. They filled new jobs in the developing governmental bureaucracies, in teaching, in hospitals, in stores, in restaurants and many other service establishments. They created their own livelihoods by joining an army of biscateiros [all manner of peddlers], in city streets and alongside roads. Between 1950 and 2000, the number of women participating in the labor force grew approximately 15 times in Brazil, from 2.7 million to about 30 million, while men’s participation rose from 15 to 45 million, approximately three times. Several coalescing factors afforded the entrance of women in the labor market. Particularly after World War II, the expansion and diversification of the Brazilian economy generally speaking, including the surge in Americanmodel industry, provided opportunities for employment. Women’s access to employment increased due to the expansion of educational opportunities, modern ideas that allowed for women to be self-supporting and independent, and the introduction of contraceptives and knowledge about how to use them. Given this picture of growth, what happened to women’s employment as the effects of globalization reached Brazil in the 1980s? Bruschini (2000) studied women’s labor market participation during the crucial decade 1985–1995, the period of marked changes in global capitalism that reverberated in Brazil as elsewhere in the Third World. Analyzing statistical data collected from the National Surveys of Residence Samples, the Brazilian Geography and Statistics Institute, and the Demographic Census of the Labor Force, Bruschini (2000) underscored the intensity and constancy of the growth of the female labor force, and the need of women to balance the demands of family and employment, the core of the


67

equation of women’s labor force participation. Participation in the workforce for women, she wrote: Depends on a complex combination of personal and familial characteristics such as married status and presence of children, associated to age and schooling of the woman worker, and the characteristics of the family group, such as life cycle and family structure, (p. 17) Bruschini (2000) also noticed the presence in the labor force of older women workers as opposed to younger cohorts in the past. Participation rates are the highest historically for women between the ages 30–39 (66%) and 40–49 (63%). Despite the burden of the double shift, wives who work inside and outside the home take on the primary responsibility for housework and childcare. The Brazilian economy faced many challenges during the critical decade of globalization under investigation. Bruschini (2000) claimed: The country went through acute political, economic and social transformations. The economic environment was particularly disturbing between 1986 and 1994, the period in which Brazil lived through no less than six plans for [monetary] stabilization…. Each, trying first to stop the inflationary crisis, promoted a series of price freezes followed by difficult processes of de-indexation, thus provoking five alterations in the national currency, (p. 23) The prolonged crisis witnesses increased unemployment with decreased industrial employment and transfer of workers to the informal sector. This meant more precarious conditions of work—and of living—and loss of protection by labor laws and of benefits, however meagre. Table 4.1, the distribution of occupational groups by gender, indicates the decrease of women in technical and scientific fields, administrative occupations, and construction. The table also displays areas of occupational segregation, as women are concentrated in services, and men in construction and transport. Agricultural and extractive occupations are relatively gender balanced. The noticeable jump between 1990 and 1993 in women’s participation in the agricultural sector may be explained by the inclusion of production for consumption as a statistical category of work never considered before. (This may explain the data that indicates that many agricultural women workers do not receive any pay.)

68


TABLE 4.1 Brazil: Men and Women by Occupational Groups in 1990, 1993, and 1995 Occupational groups Technical and scientific

1990

1993

1995

Men Women Men Women Men Women 4.4

13.3 4.41

Administrative

14.7

Agricultural and extractive Industry and construction

1.6

4.6

12.0

14.9 12.4

12.2 12.0

12.4

25.5

13.2 27.9

23.8 26.7

22.1

23.5

12.7 23.7

10.0 24.1

9.7

Commerce and related activity

9.9

12.2 10.8

11.8 11.4

12.8

Transport and communications

5.9

.7

5.5

.7

5.9

.6

Services

2.6

24.1

2.3

23.0

2.5

23.8

Not well-defined and non declared

13.6

8.9 13.0

6.9 12.0

6.6

Total

40.0

22.0 40.5

25.9 41.9

27.8

Note. Values are in millions. Adapted from Bruschini (2000, p. 27).

The least remunerative occupations for women are domestic work, nonpaid work, and production for consumption. Half of domestics are under the age of 19, and comprise no less than 17% of economically active women. Of the women who do not get paid for work, 13% of all workers, 41% labor in agriculture, 70% are less than 19 years old, and 16% over age 60. This shows a pattern of exploitation of adolescent and women. Of women who work to eat, 70% live on farms, 41% engage in agricultural work, and 37% are older than 60 years old, an indication of rural poverty (Bruschini, 2000). Concerning the pay differential between men and women, women on the average made 64% of men’s salary. After discussing many possible explanations, Bruschini supported the thesis of discrimination, as “even women who are able to ascend in the hierarchical structure of the enterprise or public administration, are subject to making less money than her [male] colleagues” (2000, p. 48). Guimarães (2001) illustrated this with an example of the restructuring of the petrochemical industry that showed how women and young people who had more education were most likely to experience loss of positions. Moreover, in occupations held by less schooled men that were subsequently filled by more educated women, the pay of the new female employees was relatively inferior to those of the men, even though they were more highly qualified (Guimarães, 2001). In conclusion, in Brazil, after little more than one century of wage labor, women’s pay is still two-thirds of men’s. Many women’s job are considered


69

precarious, low-paid service jobs like that of domestic workers, or jobs that do not pay at all. While the impact of industrial capitalist development led Brazil to become the ninth largest economy in the world, it also created the path to dependence on foreign corporations and markets. Under globalization, financing development through international loans has created an insurmountable external debt. In the grip of globalization, the restructuring and flexibilization of work, men and women (with women standing in less advantageous positions in most economic sectors) have lost jobs. They have moved into lower paying occupations in the service and in informal sectors, thus losing the protection of time-honored labor laws. For workers, the impact of globalization has brought instability, loss of power, and marginalization, and multiple conditions of oppression. The following section addresses the question of preparation for the workforce, women’s education and training for employment, with a focus on policies available to empower women workers under the present global capitalist, neo-liberal-inspired circumstances. WOMEN’S PREPARATION FOR THE WORKFORCE Historically, in Brazil, a worker acquired skills for the labor force from any combination of four sources. The most basic was simply socialization at home, youth learning from adults how to perform tasks needed for daily living. Schools, when available, added some useful literacy skill. Some children, however, could not be admitted—girls, for example—or could not afford attending for a variety of reasons related to access, lack of funds and rural background to name two. A third source, on-the-job training has always been an important stage of learning to work. Lastly, gaining knowledge of specialized and regulated skills, first in guilds and later in trade and technical-vocational schools, helped to prepare workers for industry-related jobs. This process of induction into working life was true for slaves (except for literacy and schooling) as well as for wageworkers. For Brazilian women, growing up female meant learning skills that could become profitable when needed, such as cooking, candy making, embroidery, lace making, and sewing. Those from more fortunate classes added knowledge of music that could be taught to children in private lessons. In late 19th century, with abolition, European immigration, and, particularly, with the founding of the Republic, the Ministry of Instruction established in 1890 undertook widespread educational reform. Larger cities and towns in Brazil then experienced expansion in the number of elementary schools for both boys and girls, which in turn required growing numbers of teachers. During the Empire, a smattering of schools had served the male elites, some institutions at the higher education level preparing for medical

70


and legal professions, and the famous secondary school in Rio de Janeiro named after the Emperor D.Pedro II for liberal education. Lycée for the study of commerce, and some trade schools also operated in major urban centers. The new regime brought expansion, in all Brazilian states, of normal schools that prepared women elementary teachers. Foremost Brazilian sociologist, Azevedo (1943), wrote about avenues and barriers to women’s education in his monumental text, A Cultura Brasileira [Brazilian Culture]: If the doors of normal schools were entirely opened to women, who became dominant in primary education as their own element, and started to appear, though in extremely reduced percentages until 1930 in secondary schools, [the doors] of higher education remained practically closed to them. [College] preparatory courses and gymnasia [secondary schools], disconnected from primary schooling, in their utilitarian goal continued to serve higher education schools in terms of preparation of candidates to liberal professions, until then reserved exclusively for men, where they recruited the cultural elites of the country, (p. 381) The 1930 Revolution was a turning point in securing gradual access of larger segments of Brazilian youth, including women, to general, vocational, and higher education. Capitalist depression started in Brazil with the 1929 crisis in coffee prices internationally. This crisis diminished the rule of coffee plantation owners and created the opportunity for the Brazilian bourgeoisie, supported by its military, to take control. In a series of political upheavals, under the leadership of gaúcho Getúlio Vargas, the state was reorganized at various levels. (A coup in 1937 centralized power further in the executive branch and in Vargas’s hands.) One of the most important acts of the new class was the immediate founding in 1930 of the Ministry of Education and Health (as opposed to simply Instruction, as in the old republican regime). Along with a new progressively stronger industrial rush, education became an even more important responsibility of the Brazilian federal government, motivated by inspiring educational thinkers and practices established through the work of progressive educators, Leaders of the new school movement, largely inspired by the pedagogical thought of Dewey, pragmatism, and also by the example of education reforms in European countries such as France, Germany, and Switzerland, restructured the Brazilian educational system, starting in the Federal District and the then capital, Rio de Janeiro. Azevedo (1943) underscored the emergence of a technophillic paradigm that connected education and modern educational development in Brazil:


71

In these new ideals of education one searches the fundamental principles presiding the organization of the school system, adjusted as a technical apparatus, in its systematic set of measures and institutions (schooling, preand post-schooling) to the pedagogical and social ends clearly formulated that they proposed to serve. The radical transformation of processes that became the reform, came from the new aims (social, democratic, national) given to the system of education and, therefore, to the philosophy from which it sprung forth. It was not a “superficial” reform, of administrative character or of pure renewal of techniques, but a radical reform, in depth, and put together for an industrial civilization, in which taking the sense of modern life and national needs, it attempted to solve the technical questions as a function of a new conception of life and of culture and, thus, of new principles and directives for education. (Emphasis added; p. 387) The aspirations of the new class governing Brazil regarded industrialization and modernization as paths to revamping society and culture. Education was conceived as a central instrument for this ambitious social engineering project. Azevedo wrote further about the attention to industry and industrial education: The 1937 Constitution…establishing as the State’s responsibility to found [institutes of vocational education] and subsidize those operating under the initiative of states, municipalities and private associations, inaugurates the regime of cooperation between industry and the State, instituting in (Article 129) that “it is an obligation of industries and unions to create, in the sphere of their specialties, schools of apprenticeship destined to the sons of workers or their associates.” (p. 412) In order to carry out this legislation, the Vargas’ government reorganized vocational education to attend to the needs of agriculture, commerce and industry, and established schools for youth and adults. For the first federal technical school, 44 specialists from Switzerland and 25 from the United States were hired to “guide industrial education in the industry itself, and direct or teach courses” (Azevedo, 1943, p. 445). Following the legislative mandate referring to the participation of industries and unions, in 1942, the System of the National Confederation of Industry founded the technical vocational institution entitled SENAI, the Serviço Nacional de

72


Aprendizagem Industrial [National Service for Industrial Learning], to “provide support to 28 economic sectors through the formation of human resources and the provision of services like the assistance to the productive process, laboratory services, applied research and technological information” (SENAI, n.d.). In 1946, SENAC, the Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Comercial [National Service of Commercial Learning], was founded to “develop people and organizations for the world of work through educational activities and dissemination of knowledge about commerce and services to contribute to the development of the country” (SENAC, n.d.). SENAC and SENAI constitute the foremost vocational education institutions in Brazil, along with a diverse system of federally supported technical vocational schools. The late 1930s also witnessed the establishment of the first Brazilian universities in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Higher education schools inherited from the imperial period had specific professional goals, and these continued to guide the new system. The new universities coordinated the formerly separate schools of Law, Medicine, and Engineering, and established new schools of Philosophy, Science, Letters, and Pedagogy offering liberal education curricula and certifying secondary education teachers. The hard work of 1930s school reform was successful in articulating all levels of education, from primary to secondary, vocationaltechnical, and higher education. These concerted efforts to change Brazilian education, culture, and society, and the new learning institutions and opportunities opened, enabled girls and women of the better-off classes, chiefly in urban centers, to flock to schools. Six decades later, the picture of women’s education in Brazil has turned out brighter than men’s. By 2001, women’s average level of schooling was greater than men’s, with 27% of women attaining an average of 9 years of schooling to 23% of men. Among those with 9 or more years of schooling, 55% were women and 45% were men (Fundação Carlos Chagas, 2002). Women also tend to graduate from secondary education more often than their male counterparts. However, men have a greater advantage in technical-vocational education, holding two-thirds of the enrollment in the primary level and 60% in the secondary level (Fundação Carlos Chagas, n.d.). Moreover, women are segregated in curricular areas, a fact reflected in gender segregation in the labor market as well. In higher education, for example, the 1997 distribution of graduates in higher education by area of study is indicated in Table 4.2. While the numbers of women in exact and earth sciences are just slightly above the men’s, there are almost four times more men in engineering and technology fields that lead to the better paid jobs in the market. Women are


73

TABLE 4.2 Brazil: Graduates in Higher Education by Gender, 1997 Area of study Exact & Earth Sciences

Total

Women

Men

27, 192

14,312 (52.6%)

12,880 (47.5%)

Biological Sciences

5, 123

3,788 (73.9%)

1,335 (26.0%)

Engineering & Techical

17,243

3,863 (22.4%)

13,380 (77.5%)

Health Sciences

38,974

26,334 (67.5%)

12,640 (32.5%)

5,938

2,297 (38.6%)

3,641 (61.3%)

104,849

56,135 (53.5%)

48,714 (46.4%)

Human Sciences

54,203

44,406 (81.9%)

9,797 (18.0%)

Linguistics, Literature & Art

20,862

17,377 (83.2%)

3,485 (16.7%)

274, 384

168, 512 (61.4%)

105,872 (38.5%)

Agricultural Sciences Applied Social Sciences

All areas

Note. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding to the nearest tenth. Adapted from Fundação Carlos Chagas (2002).

largely concentrated in the social sciences and the humanities, and they comprise over twice the number of men in health sciences. The picture for vocational educational in terms of occupational segregation is similarly gendered (Fundação Carlos Chagas, 2002). As expected, women in vocational education in Brazil are enrolled primarily in fields that are preparing them for work in the service sector of the economy, making up greater proportions than men in courses on tourism, health, social development and leisure, personal image (almost all women), and environment. The historical trend of men occupying positions in industry is reflected in the small percentage of women in industrial education; here, the majority of female students gather in the areas of chemical industry, in mining, and civil construction, though they do not make up more than 45% of enrollment in the diverse modalities of course offerings. In São Paulo, SENAI surveyed its female students in the only specific study investigating women’s enrollment in industrial vocational education found in the process of reviewing the literature for this chapter. The study concludes that women represent a small percentage of enrollments (7.9% of students in 1980 and 13.3% in 1991), though their rate of enrollment is greater than that of the total rate of enrollment in technical courses (15.3% against 27% for the total between 1980 and 1991; SENALDN.PPEA, 1992, p. 105). Most of these enrollments were in textiles, an area that traditionally attracted women students, and, more recently, in graphic arts, in nonmetallic minerals, and chemistry. Students in these subjects anticipated finding good

74


jobs in related fields; many came from families employed in similar occupations. Women students regarded the image of SENAI as masculine, and believed that SENAI favored young men in its admission process. They projected uneasiness in attending a masculine world. Yet, the young women also believed that attending SENAI was a worthwhile endeavor because it afforded greater future employment opportunities (SENAI.DN.DPEA, 1992, pp. 105–106). The SENAI study also interviewed employers concerning the position of women in their corporations. Findings demonstrate great inequality between women and men at every level. Women workers are more represented in production, administrative and service than in high level technical and managerial positions. Only 1 woman was found among 11 men exercising a technical managerial function (SENAI.DN.DPEA, 1992, p. 108). The SENAI study confirmed the picture of women’s segregation in lower paid, less skilled jobs. Inequality of opportunity and discrimination of women in the formal labor market, made even more evident by globalization, led the Brazilian government, under the leadership of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and pressure by feminists who advanced policy positions of the United Nations conference on women in Beijing, to develop a gender sensitive National Plan for Worker’s Qualification (NPWQ). Cardoso’s NPWQ plan (OIT/CINTERFOR, 2002a), initiated in 1996, suggested: The optimism of the data concerning the increased schooling of women becomes relative when the insertion of women in the labor market and their income are observed. For women, the improvement in educational indicators is reflected in their employability; however, the impact is not enough to reduce pay differentials between women and men. That is, everything indicates that for women, in terms of income, the rate of return of investment in education is low. (personal communication) In order to promote its equality agenda, a protocol was signed on March 3, 1996, entitled Women, Education, and Work, establishing an agreement between the Ministry of Labor and Employment, and the Ministry of Justice, represented by the National Council of Women. The protocol aims to guarantee effective participation of women who should make up at least 30% of trainees in programs of vocational qualification. Priority is given to poor women, to women in the lower levels of the educational ladder, particularly illiterate women, to women heads of household, to youth at risk—especially those exploited sexually who are between the ages of 16–24, and entering the labor market for the first time, to Afro-Brazilians, indigenous groups and


75

other ethnic minorities, to residents in peripheral urban zones (shantytowns) and, to people with disabilities. A partner program, Program to Generate Employment and Income, was designed to help workers in the informal sector, in small family business, microenterprises and microcooperatives. About 48% of program loans were awarded to women. Besides the work of the federal and state governments, Brazilian labor unions—CUT, the Central Única dos Trabalhadores [Workers’ Central]; CGT, the Confederação Geral dos Trabalhadores [General Confederation of Workers]; SDS, Social Democracia Sindical [Social Democracy Union]; and Força Sindical [Strength Union]—are progressively engaging in discussions and actions to promote gender equality (OIT/CINTERFOR, 2002a). Since its inception, the NPWQ has capacitated 8.3 million people in most of the poorest municipalities of the country. A number of creative programs for the qualification of women workers have been implemented, including sewing and midwifery skills taught to indigenous women’s groups; women taxi drivers trained in Ceará state; 2,000 women heads of household in Goiania taught literacy and citizenship skills; women soccer coaches trained in Belo Horizonte; construction skills taught to 580 families in Contagem; and training of officers in police stations specifically for attending cases of violence against women. Another program of the Ministry of Labor and Employment, the Program Brazil, Gender and Race, has followed since 1995 the directives of the International Labor Organization’s Convention 111 concerning employment discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion, political opinion, and national and social origin, The Ministry established Centers for the Promotion of Equality of Opportunity and Combat to Employment and Occupational Discrimination that function in its Regional Labor Offices. The centers promote the dissemination of anti-discriminatory practices and investigate discrimination occurrences (OIT/CINTERFOR, 2002b). The Ministry of Education, in collaboration with the Ministry of Labor and Employment, also has established a Program of Expansion of Vocational Education, It aims at increasing enrollments, developing curricula, training male and female workers, and providing secondary technical and higher education in technological fields to youth and adults (Ministério da Educação, 2002). While this program is very ambitious, attempting no less than to modernize and revamp the entire national system of technical vocational education, it does not seem to address specifically the impact of gender. Foundations of education professor Ramon de Oliveira, of the Federal University of Pernambuco, has written extensively criticizing federal technical vocational programs. He identified the connections between neoliberalism, which dictates the very policies that determine the type of

76


globalization that nations presently experience, and the new directives for vocational education in Brazil. Oliveira’s (2001) thesis was: The Brazilian government…influenced by the multilateral agencies and by big business, instead of seeking to assure a model of professional training directed at making a more autonomous and critical worker, has established a division of tasks between the Ministries of Education and Labor, which reinforces the dichotomy between vocational education and general education, (p. 185) In his analysis, Oliveira (2001) examined globalization, understanding that it favors the economy, not working people. He pointed out that the market becomes the only acceptable model of social organization, thought to have the power of rescuing humans from mistakes. With the main objective of extracting surplus value, global capitalism, to maintain hegemony impedes workers from controlling any aspect of the productive process. Practices of flexible production allow capital to establish new mechanisms for its reproduction while generating unemployment that contributes to the weakening and eventual break of worker’s solidarity movements. Oliveira (2001) contended that the Ministry of Education’s efforts are focused on post-secondary technical vocational education. It has also removed humanities curriculum components from secondary technical vocational education. The Ministry of Labor, in turn, concentrates its efforts on marginalized sectors of the population and offers them limited vocational training for immediate inclusion in the labor market without any citizenship educational aspect. The Brazilian government heeds the dictates of lending institutions such as the WB and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), for whom human capital theory frames education policy suggested to borrowers, contended Oliveira (2001). He concluded at length: Today, regarding the movement established in the politics of vocational education, it is clear that schooling for popular sectors in Brazil is not organized as an element in the construction of citizenship from a perspective that envisions its exercise in many dimensions. Vocational education takes a compensatory role, or becomes an ideological artifice that assigns to the individual the responsibility to achieve a better standard of living…. We must search in the very structure of capitalist relations the motive that generates the distortions in the educational system. Only departing from this understanding is that we can collect efforts to construct an educational project that serves the needs of workers, (p. 200)


77

Oliveira’s (2001) points were well taken, and he supported a progressive stance that reinstates the civilizing—humanizing, as Paulo Freire (1972) would put it—potential of liberatory education.4 However, while calling his readers’ attention to the power of the grip of neo-liberal globalization, he did not entertain the potential of the contradictions embedded in these very economic, social, political, and educational processes to bring about change; this point is discussed in the following. CONCLUSIONS: ESCAPING THE GRIP OF GLOBALIZATION When the first Brazilian feminist, Nísia Floresta, identified education as central to women’s emancipation in the quote at the opening of this chapter, she assumed, and saw clearly, education’s potential to liberate and civilize. From her perspective in the middle of the 19th century, however, Floresta was not able to anticipate the trend in the increased importance usury has taken in civilized society. Veríssimo, as he demonstrates in the second quote, is quite able to perceive the consequences of usury out of control. He named the dis-ease afflicting globalization, neo-liberal capitalist ideology and policy practice, a fruit of the patriarchal tree that cannot distinguish between productive and speculative capital investments, between commitment to and flight from development that matters, and between care, abuse, and neglect of the people. The colonial economy of Brazil helped to feed European capital accumulation and financed the British industrial revolution with the profits of sugar cane, gold and the slave trade. Another way to put this is, European capitalist wealth was created on the backs of Indians and African slaves in America, and women had triple unpaid shifts by performing agricultural, domestic, and sexual-reproductive work. The colonial economic relationship did not end with Brazilian independence, when the country became an empire in its own right. It did not end when the monarchy was deposed and the bourgeoisie rose to power. It was unchanged when representatives of the most progressive and nationalist sectors of society came to power during the Depression years. Because of important resources, including iron and other minerals, coffee and, now, even genetic-engineered soybeans (not to speak of the Amazon), Brazil stands in the semi-periphery of capitalism, chained to colonial relations with changing partners and changing rules. First it was Portugal, then England and advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe; then the United States, the same Western European countries, and Japan. Today, under the rule of globalization, partners are ghostly. More and more independent from their countries of origin, often encompassing holdings and decision-making centers that cross borders, the ever-strong new colonial

78


powers may as well lie in corporate rules established in virtual space and be implemented by speakers of many languages with a common knowledge of hegemonic business English. In patriarchal societies like Brazil, women are the weakest link in the generalized system of colonial relations that starts with the man-woman dyad. Women from minority backgrounds are doubly oppressed because of race or ethnicity. When wage labor became institutionalized after the liberation of slaves, and the Brazilian economy grew—aos trancos e barrancas [through pushes and shoves]—because of and in spite of colonialism during the 20th century, Brazilian women of all colors progressively joined the labor market and sought educational opportunities open to them in basic, secondary, technical-vocational, and higher education. Light skin and white women, many descendants of European immigrants, in general more educated, have held the best employment positions requiring higher levels of training and education. Domestic service labor and the worst agricultural and informal market jobs, paid and nonpaid, are still in the hands of dark-skinned women descendants of Africans and Indians. This picture of inequality resulting from colonialism, racism, elitism and sexism, only gets worse with the haunting new tricks of global capitalism. For example, employing women workers where the feminine touch is deemed a requirement (attention to detail and manual dexterity in grape cultivation, assembly of diminutive electronic components, sewing, and the like); unexpectedly eliminating plants and thus jobs for the sake of technical efficiency and greater rates of profit, with greater impact on women’s employment; and creating an overall climate for managerial practices that foster corruption and breach of ethics, so evident in incidences of corporate crime that affect the lives of workers. Resulting from these and other economic dysfunctions, life has become more difficult in urban centers as well as in the countryside. Jobs are fewer and thus difficult to obtain. Worse, the mark of employment (and of underemployment and unemployment) is instability. This pushes upward the job requirements for education, adding to the disadvantages of the poor and less educated. Pay is lower, and the pay differential, a woman making twothirds of what a man makes, is not only unfair but humiliating as well. In addition, the cost of living is higher, and the cost of education higher still. A trimmed state not only has to juggle fewer resources to attend the diverse demands of a developing country and a growing population, but a steady stream of international debt payment as well; that leaves fewer social programs that can effectively support health, education, childcare, housing and employment—real needs of the people. Fortunately, social processes harbor contradictions, and with contradictions, hope. The benefits of education go much beyond measured rates of return. They include greater opportunities for people to understand


79

the forces that affect their lives and motivation for undertaking political action to bring about change. Since the end of 20 years of military dictatorship (approximately 1964 to 1984), Brazilians have organized themselves in political parties and in many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that are invested in social projects. In particular, the power of the young PT—Partido dos Trabalhadores [Workers’ Party of Brazil]—has grown steadily. The PT has elected officials to all levels of government, including a President, Luiz Inácio da Silva, Lula, a nordestino [Northeasterner] and former union activist. PT-elected representatives run consistently on anti neoliberal economic policy platform, and favor economic democratization. A still small but significant number of women in Brazil are active members of the PT and of other parties. They are elected representatives and run NGOs. Feminists have influenced the federal government’s agenda to the extent that anti-discriminatory laws are in existence; employment and vocational education programs have been implemented on behalf of women and minorities. Females teach in these programs that train and educate others for work and citizenship, as well in elementary, secondary, and higher education schools throughout the country. With daily actions for survival and for advancement, women create contradictions that negate global capitalism and its ideological practices, Women, minorities, and the poor thus push away globalization forces that want to place themselves at the center of what matters to life. Their work may have little exchange value. However, women’s power creates use value that is concrete, present, indispensable, and central to living. How to amass this power to bring forth revolutionary change at the turn of the 21st century is a question for which the amazingly vibrant, paradoxical, Brazilian culture and society may well provide other answers to the world. NOTES 1

Nísia Floresta (1810–1885) is considered the first Brazilian feminist. She wrote about women’s issues and translated Mary Wollstonecraft to Portuguese. Quoted in Louro(1997). 2 Well-known Brazilian philosopher of education, Paulo Freire, developed his literacy method while working with sugar plantation laborers in his native state of Pernambuco in Brazil’s Northeastern region. 3 Pochmann’s (2001) words explain and reflect those of ironic social commentator Veríssimo in Rio’s newspaper O Globo quoted in the opening of this paper. 4 In the opening of his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire (1972, p. 2) established the central quest of liberatory education: “While the problem of humanization…. has always been man’s [sic] central problem, it now takes on the character of an inescapable concern.”

80


REFERENCES Azevedo, F. (1943). A cultura brasileira: Introdução ao estudo da cultura no Brasil [Brazilian culture: An introduction to the study of culture in Brazil]. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Serviç0 Gráfico do IBGE. Bruschini, C. (2000). Gênero e trabalho no BrasiL: Novas conquistas ou persistência da discriminação? (Brasil, 1985/95) [Gender and work in Brazil: New conquests or persistence of discrimination?] (Brazil, 1985/95). In M.I.B.da Rocha (Ed.), Trabalho e gênero: Mudanças, permanências e desafios [Work and gender: Change, permanence and challenge](pp. 13–58). São Paulo, Brazil: Editora 34 Ltda. Dollar, D., & Kraay, A. (2001). Trade, Growth and Poverty. Finance and Development. Vol. 38, No. 3 [On-line]. Available: www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2001/09/dollar.htm Freedman, T. (2000). The lexus and the olive tree. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin, Fundação Carlos Chagas. (2002). Mulheres brasileiras, educação e trabalho [Brazilian women, education and work] [On-line]. Available: fcc.org.br/servlets/mulher/seriesjiistoricas?pg=mbe.html Furtado, C. (1998). O Capitalismo global [Global capitalism]. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Colecão Afrânio Peixoto da Academia Brasileira de Letras. George, S. (1999). A Short history of neo-liberalism. Twenty-years of elite economics and emerging opportunities for structural change. Conference on Economic Sovereignty in a Globalizing World. Bangkok, 24–26 March 1999 [On-line]. Available: www.globalexchange.org/economy/econ101/neoliberalism.html Guimarães, N.A. (2001). Laboriosas mas redundantes: Gênero e mobilidade no trabalho no Brasil dos 90 [Hard-working but redundant female workers: Gender and mobility in work in Brazil of the 90’s]. Estudos Feministas, Ano 9, (primeiro trimestre) 82–102. Louro, G.L. (1997). Mulheres na sola de aula [Women in the Classroom]. In M.D. Priore & C.Bassanezi (Eds.), História das mulheres no Brasil [History of women in Brazil] (pp. 443–479). São Paulo, Brazil :Editora Fundação UNESP. Melo, F. de A. (1978). O Trabalho da mulher na história [Women’s work in history]. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Editora Gráfica Luna Ltda. Milanovic, B. (2002). The two faces of globalization: Against globalization as we know it. Second Draft [On-line]. Available: www.worldbank.org/research/inequality/pdf/naiveglobl.pdf Ministério da Educação. (2002). PROEP—Programa de Expansão da Educação Profissional [PROEP—Program of Expansion of Vocational Education] [Online]. Available: http://www.mec.gov.br/semtec/proep/oproep.shtm OIT/CINTERFOR. (2002a). Diversidade e perspective! de gênero: Plano nacional de qualificação do trabalhador [Diversity and gender perspectives: National plan for workers qualification] [On-line]. Available: http://www.cinterfor.org.uy/public/spanish/region/ampro/cinterfor/temas/gender/doc/noticias/diversi/iii.h tm OIT/CINTERFOR. (2002b). Programa Brasil, gênero e raça combate ‘a discriminação em matéria de emprego e ocupação. Ministério do Trabalho e Emprego: Assessoria Internacional-BraziL Implementação no Brasil da


81

Convenção no. III da OIT [Program Brazil, gender and race combating discrimination in employment and occupation. Ministry of Work and Employment: International Office-Brazil. Implementation in Brazil of the Convention no. III of ILO] [Online]. Available: http://www.cinterfor.org.uy/public/Spanish/region/ampro/cinterfor/temas/gender/nov/p_brasil.htm. Oliveira, R. de. (2001). A divisão de tarefas na educação profissional Brasileira [Division of tasks in Brazilian vocational education]. Cadernos de Pesquisas, 112, 185–203. Pochmann, M. (2001). O emprego na globalização: A nova divisão international do trabalho e os caminhos que o Brasil escolheu [Employment under globalization: The new international division of labor and the paths that Brazil has chosen]. São Paulo, Brazil: Boitempo Editorial. Rabelo, S. (1969). Participação da mulher no mercado de trabalho [Women’s participation in the labor market], Recife, Brazil: Institute Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais. Rago, M. (1997). Trabalho feminine e sexualidade [Feminine work and sexuality]. In M.D.Priore & C.Bassanezi (Eds.), História das mulheres no Brasil [History of women in Brazil] (pp. 578–606). São Paulo, Brazil: Editora Fundação UNESP. Ravallion, M. (2003). The debate on globalization, poverty and inequality: Why measurements matters. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3038 [Online]. Available: http//econ.worldbank.org/files/26010_wps3038.pdf Sala-i-Martin, X. (2002). The disturbing “rise” of global inequality. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 8904 [On-line]. Available: http://www.nber.org/papers/w8904 Sen, A. (2002, January). How to judge globalism. The American Prospect [On-line]. Available: http://www.arab2.com/articles/a/globalism.htm Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Comercial (SENAC). (n.d.). Conheça o Senac [Get to know Senac] [On-line]. Available: http:www/senac.br/conheca/index.html Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Industrial (SENAI). (n.d.). Quem somos [Who we are] [On-line]. Available: http://www.dn.senai.br/htm/index-conhecaosenai.htm SENAI.DN.PPEA. (1992). Promoção da participação da mulher na formação técnica e profissional [Promoting women’s participation in technical and professional education]. São Paulo, Brazil: OIT/CINTERFOR/SENAI. Soros, G. (2002). On globalization. New York: Public Affairs. Stiglitz, J.E. (2002). Globalization and its discontents. New York: WW Norton. Veríssimo, L.F. (2002, July 24). Fundamentos sólidos [Solid foundations]. O Globo, 7.

5 Preparation for (In)equality: Women in South Korean Vocational Education Hye K.Pae and Richard D.Lakes Georgia State University

Women are essential to the growth of an increasingly industrialized, economically viable, and democratic Korea. It had a competitive edge in the recent Asian economic miracle of the 1980s and 1990s, in which East and Southeast Asia achieved a record level of economic growth, made possible only because of the cheap labor of women. This is particularly true in manufacturing where women accounted for 98.3% of workers (in 1994). Their low wages and long hours allowed the country to keep production high and contain costs in the global export market (Lee, 1994). South Korea’s exportoriented path to economic development has exacerbated gender wage inequalities since future growth depends on the continued exploitation of women’s labor. This exploitation is made possible by a dual wage system that pays women as little as half that of men in the same industries, as well as a clustering of women into specific female-identified jobs. In this chapter, we argue that the vocational educational system also contributes to the suppression of women’s wages and opportunities in the labor market. Despite efforts, since 1993, to expand educational opportunities for Korean women, the needs of industry have mitigated acceptable outcomes. The country is resonant with tensions between such competing needs. The political movement toward democracy competes with venerable Confucian ethics. Ancient conceptions of the women’s esteemed role as wife and mother vies with modern sentiments embodied in new legislative changes such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Act established in 1988. Labor unions and individual workers struggle against the authority of the State. The Korean vocational educational system is obligated to confirm traditional values and illuminate modern ones, while instilling students with industry’s increasing commitment to globalized economic activities and

84


dependence on the computer and information technology revolutions. We consider the meanings that such competing demands have for the education and work of Korean women. The first part investigates the status of women in vocational education. The second examines the recent changes to the roles of women, and the third highlights several of the more egregious conditions faced by women in job training, particularly discriminatory practices in clerical and office occupations. KOREAN EDUCATION Confucian culture highly values learning and holds great respect for educated people. As a result parents willingly sacrifice so that their children get an education, driving them to attain higher and higher levels. The Korean educational system can be broken down into three parts: a 6-year elementary school, a 3-year middle school, and a 3-year high school. The rate of students graduating from high school has increased significantly since 1970 (when 10.2% graduated) to 1995 (with 37.5% graduates). In 1995, the average years of schooling totaled 11.09 years for males and 9.26 for females (UNDP, 1998, p. 64). Over 90% of Korean children who graduate middle school attend secondary-level education. Of those who enroll in high school, 68% go into general studies (called academic, which includes arts, sciences, and foreign languages) and 32% enroll in a vocational program (Ministry of Education, 2000). While the general high schools prepare students for colleges, vocational high schools ready students to enter the work force immediately after graduation. If parents have limited resources to send all their children to college, it is the boys who take precedence, regardless of whether girls are more qualified. Many gifted female students can be found in vocational tracks in part because parents believe that marriage is a more direct route to upward social mobility. Although this attitude is declining, over 25% of parents surveyed in 1993 gave “advantage for marriage and connections” as their reason for sending their daughters to high school, compared with 11.6% who felt schooling would better her earning potential with a good job (UNDP, 1998, p. 68). Of the 741 vocational schools in Korea 66% are coeducational, 24% are all-female, and 10% all-male. The two types of vocational schools with the largest enrollments are technical schools and commercial schools that enrolled 11.5% and 11.2%, respectively of the high school age population. Women compose 13.2% of the technical school population and 76.7% of the commercial school population (Ministry of Education, 2002). Technical schools are highly male-identified as are the majority of their courses such as metal engineering, machinery, and electricity. Females

5. PREPARATION FOR (IN)EQUALITY

85

usually take courses in computer equipment, electronic calculation, and industrial design. Chung’s (2000) study of 18 coeducational technical schools found that while 10 schools allowed female students access to all courses, 8 denied females enrollment in as many as 4 out of the 6 subject areas provided. Taboo subjects may vary from school to school but are generally regarded as male-defined, such as automobile mechanics and construction. Gender segregation by occupational training is quite prevalent in Korean vocational high schools. Female students make up a majority of the enrollees in commerce, housekeeping and practical business, and humanities and arts—all traditionally viewed as female domains (Ministry of Education, 2000). Although the aim of vocational education in Korea is to prepare students to enter the workforce after graduation, only 52% of the male population of 128,608 vocational high school graduates in 2000 immediately sought an occupational position, while about 62% of the female pool of 131, 018 entered the workforce directly (Ministry of Education, 2000). THE CHANGING ROLE OF KOREAN WOMEN The origins of a gender split in vocational study can be traced to traditional Confucian prohibitions against wives working outside the home (Park, 1995; Weiming, Hejtmanek, & Wachman, 1992). One of the three central doctrines of Confucianism requires the wife’s unconditional service to the husband while one of its five ethical principles necessitates differences between husband and wife roles. Confucian religious foundations have been translated into defined gender roles in private and public realms. Women’s work was lodged within the private family sphere while men moved freely about the public world of work, politics, and culture. The Eastern world maintained these traditions far longer than the West and, as a result, has been faced with modern conceptual changes about the public role of women only recently and within a very compressed period of time. The Confucian legacy now embodied in the patriarchal-hierarchical nation, according to Kim (2001), is the notion of the public sector as hypermasculinized. The historical metaphor operating here is the family: “The state as father or husband, corporations as its first son, and society as mother or wife and factory workers as filial daughters” (Kim, 2001, p. 57). The family plays a central role in social and cultural life in Korea, and by extension the state is accorded filial piety from its citizens. Longstanding management practices unique to South Korean rely upon marriage and kinship networks that maintain power and control in ownership—termed chaebol corporations. The exclusive networks comprise an endogamy of interlocking directorates linked to the “exogamy with state elites,” so as to

86


afford family protection and security in business matters (Chang, 1997, p. 57). Korean society is a collectivistic culture that values group harmony rather than individual merit. For example, college alumni associations play powerful roles in politics, business divisions, and even educational policy making. Likewise, former graduates of prestigious universities become a barometer or a key determinant of income and wealth distribution in the business sector, influencing promotion and advancement in workplaces. Recently, the Ministry of Education formulated a reform agenda that attempts to circumvent the power and prestige of university alumnus (Chosun Ilbo, 2002). Influenced by concepts of meritocracy the change entails modifying employment forms so that applicants no longer are asked about college affiliations, thus effectively blocking status considerations. The reformist government is hoping to break elitist coalitions among employers, but faces strong opposition from the more affluent in society. Korean women’s employment conditions have improved due to enactment of the Labor Standards Act of 1963 and the Sex Equality Act of 1987, and female workers are becoming much more visible in the public realm (Cho & Chang, 1994). Yet women’s participation in political decision making is very weak. Recent studies on workplace organizing in Korea, for instance, reveal that union protests revolve around male-based issues related to heavy industrial labor—not about the shop-floor struggles of yogong [female factory workers] in light manufacturing (Kim, 2001). “Whenever women’s specific concerns are expressed,” Kim (2001, p. 61) explained, “they are ignored, faced with adamant male resistance, and received with the strong suspicion that they will lead to disruption of the working class solidarity.” Married women workers compelled to work due to financial needs often are caught in conflicting demands between their families and workplaces that become magnified when faced with labor militancy (Kim, 1996). Problems in modernization have been compounded by the apparent inability to think of women as anything other than maternal. For example, the first national law to define the concept of labor discrimination, the 1988 Equal Employment Act, hinges female rights partially on their biological roles in maternity. The directive guarantees equal pay for equal work, protects workers from discrimination due to marital status, pregnancy, and childbirth, and encourages employers to provide childcare facilities in the workplace, It authorizes fines up to 5 million won and 2 years in jail for employers found in violation (Monk-Turner & Turner, 2001). Revised in 1995 and 1998, it also provides paternity leaves and disallows discrimination against women based on physical characteristics not relevant to the job, and includes provisions and punishments on sexual harassment.


87

Nonetheless, labor force participation rates are lowest for women ages 24–34 in their primary childbearing years—a disparity often attributed to lack of childcare (Korean National Statistical Office, 2002). In 1998, some 17, 127 childcare facilities cared for 546,477 children. The government pays 50% of the staff’s wages for in-house daycare centers of the companies for which the women work. In addition, since 1997 government subsidies from the employment insurance fund are paid to employers to compensate when female employees take a maternity leave (KWDI, 1999). As women have entered the job market, the number of children they have has decreased drastically. In 1970 the average woman had 4.5 children, decreasing to 1.5 in 2001. This is below the natural population replacement rate, and if it continues to decline Korea eventually will have to draw workers from other countries (Yuh & Suh, 1995). The trend is for women to marry later. In 1997, the average age of first marriage was 25.9 years (up 1.4 years from 1987). The population of single women (30 years and older) grew by 2.7 times (3.4% in 1975 to 9.2% in 1995). Divorce doubled within 7 years (1990–1997) with the advent of longterm marriage breakups (after more than 20 years)—increasing from 4.7% in 1985 to 9.6% in 1996. Women also account for a larger share of the temporary and daily workers resulting in greater job insecurity. As of September 1998, women comprised 24% of total full-time workers, 55.4% of temporary workers and 49.8% of daily workers (KDWI, 1999). On average female high school graduates earn 58.1% of male high school graduates (Monk-Turner & Turner, 2001), Yet even when men and women enter the same fields the wage gaps remain. In 1988, the percentage of female wages to men’s was as follows: production (54.1%), clerical work (54.9%), sales (56.8%), service work (71.9%), and professional and technical (74.8%). The only exception to this trend is administration and management where females earned 110.6% of men’s average wages (MonkTurner & Turner, 2001). Women are 23% of those employed in manufacturing, about 80% in textile and electronic manufacturing, 16% in sales, 16% in services, 15% in clerical, and 7.3% professions (Monk-Turner & Turner, 2001). The wage gap between males and females is wider for those with lower educational attainment than with a 4-year college (or higher) degree (Korean National Statistical Office, 2002). For decades, the state has failed to solve the problem of gender disparities in wage differentials, and the gulf between the vocational education provided to male and female students continues today.

88


FEMALE STUDENTS IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION Korea’s economy increasingly is reliant upon high technologies and knowledge-based industries such as semi-conductor, communication, and information technology. Jobs for the unskilled have been outsourced from Korea and, as a result, prospects for youths without vocational education and training are grim. Female graduates from commercial vocational high schools continue to study traditional clerical skills, and in more advanced programs are offered training in computer technology, office automation, and information processing—fields that reflect greater employability and pay in Korea’s new growth industries (Chung & Jung, 1997). Chung (2000) noted that most female technical students (57.7%) found their first job through their schools’ recommendation compared to 45.5% males who became employed as the result of an internship. Only 29.5% of females achieved employment via internships. This means that women had a higher dependency upon their school to secure a position. It may also mean that females had less access to work-based training or industries that provided internships preferred males (Chung, 2000). Due to policy initiatives in the Women’s Section of the 7th 5-Year Economic and Social Development Plan, beginning in 1992, the government began to open doors for the technical training of females into occupations nontraditional for their gender, such as in science and in engineering (Chung, 2000). In 1996, the first engineering college was opened at a women’s university to aide in the training of females in technical fields; 2 years later about 20% of students at seven women’s universities declared majors in the hard sciences (KWDI, 1999). In that same year, school-based reforms depicting gender equality in curricular resources and textbooks were implemented; and middle schools were required to desegregate sextyped programs in home economics and shop (Ministry of Political Affairs, 1998). Systematic career education arose in national Ministry of Education reform circles in the 1980s to help females and males develop selfconsciousness about their futures (Chang, 1990; Kim, 1989). Yet Cho and Apple (1998) argued that the state imposed this design as an ideological shift to draw attention away from failed manpower planning indicated by labor shortages. Career education, they say, offered false promises of free choice to parents and students when in fact the reality was young people did not want to work at manual laboring jobs. “For the vast majority of teachers, parents, and students, factory work was anything but desirable” (Cho & Apple, 1998, p. 282). Ihm (1999) noted that a number of studies showed high turnover in first jobs among vocational graduates: “This seems to be a result of poor working conditions, lack of promotion opportunities and a distaste for menial and repetitive tasks, which do not necessarily require 3 years of technical education at high schools” (p. 312). The mission of


89

vocational education in Korea is contravened by additional cultural factors, including the high public demand for a university education and the favorable status accorded those who pass the very competitive college entrance exams (Kim, 1999). Female students in Korean vocational high schools still are taught feminine-styled comportment and beauty. Physical appearance becomes the significant factor for job obtainment because Korean businessmen specify attractiveness in their employment advertisements. In some cases, they even spell out preferable height and weight measurements. Cho (2000) described how Korean female subjectivity is shaped by the reality of physical requirements when applying for low-status clerical and office positions, particularly in larger corporations. She revealed that some of the girls even have cosmetic surgery during the school break in order to increase their employment opportunities. Others attempt to alter their appearance through dieting and exercise. As a form of resistance to the oppressive standards of beauty, conversely, other girls choose factory work to avoid the dictates of sexist employers. One vocational student, Hae-Kung, remarked (Cho, 2000): I am not office material. If I even imagine serving tea with a smile, it gives me goose bumps. I don’t want to please a boss or male colleagues by always dressing up. I hate it, Rather than being a flatterer, I want to be myself by working in a factory. There, I don’t need to wear a tight skirt and high heels which hurt. I don’t need to wear make-up and I don’t need to be somebody who is not me. (p. 157) “By choosing to enter factories,” Cho (2000, p. 157) continued, “such young women intentionally failed to identify with the dominant ideologies of femininity emphasized by schools and companies.” The cultural climate in Korean vocational high schools reproduces gender and class oppression, as illustrated by a teacher’s remarks made to female students. “You are going to be the lowest worker when you enter a company. You should arrive earlier than others and clean up the table of bosses and the office”(Cho & Apple, 1998, p. 278). Another student noted with anger (Cho & Apple, 1998): Some teachers even overtly say to us, “You are just goods. You have to do your best in order to be sold well To be sold out quickly, you have to get qualifications and wrap yourself up very well.” They say so, right in front of us. How dare they speak us that way? Why are we goods? We are human, (p. 279)

90


Vocational students faced the totalizing discourses of feminine subservience with a sense of outrage coupled with insecurity and doubt about how they will fare as future employees in workplace settings. CONCLUSION The aim of vocational education in Korea is to produce enough knowledgeable workers to fulfill the demands of a rapidly industrialized economy. Korean education has been controlled nationally, and long-rooted Confucian ideals reify patriarchy resulting in educational segregation and poor working conditions for females, as well as vocational high school students’ educational choices. It is difficult to move the issue of gender equality in vocational education and training (VET) on to center stage in official policymaking circles, especially in countries so strongly implanted with masculine values. The most recent ranking on the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) shows that among the 40 advanced industrialized countries with a high level of attention to human capital development, Korea is ranked 27th but its GEM rating is 61st, placing it among a number of traditional patriarchal nationstates in the Middle East (e.g., Turkey, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh) and Latin America (e.g., Bolivia, Honduras, Paraguay: Human Development Report, 2002). Labor-intensive industries relocating to the Pacific Rim only magnify the problems of women’s inequity (Jayaweera, 1999). Employer demands for a source of cheap labor are stimulated by the creation of export-processing zones that hire mostly unskilled females in garment and electronic firms; workers there have few hopes of gaining more job training and little opportunity for career mobility. A study of South Korean electronic assembly workers engaged in manufacturing silicon chips, for instance, found that within one year the largely female employees developed eyerelated problems, including conjunctivitis and nearsightedness, due to long hours of viewing their work through microscopes (Fuentes & Ehrenreich, 1989). Employees in the global factory are generally unable to do anything about industrial hazards in their own places of employment (especially if they work and live in free-trade zones that, under martial law, outlaw worker organizing activities). Globalization does not automatically guarantee meaningful work or democratic employment practices for females. Postindustrial manufacturing does not ensure Fordist, sweated labor is barred from assembly-line work (Stromquist, 2002, p. 139). The source of Asian women’s misery created by globalization, nationstate neo-liberal policies, family dynamics, cultural attitudes, and labor market segregations are multifaceted and complex, and not necessarily amenable and responsive to shifting VET system policy reforms, Yet, in 1995, the


91

Presidential Commission on Education Reform in Korea stated that globalization policies required sweeping reforms in the schooling of children and adolescents (Ihm, 1999; Kim, 1999). When “economic analysis is applied to educational problems,” Spring (1998, p. 185) clarified, “solutions are couched in the language of decision making in a free market.” Thus, amplifying the VET delivery system became a priority for the Korean Ministry of Education, and resulting changes impacted technical high schools and vocational colleges, mainly for the credentialing of mid-skilled and middle-management positions. Clearly the rhetoric of the Commission—steeped in neo-liberal, market-driven terms— touted the information revolution and the knowledge society with breaking down borders, collapsing “ideological walls,” and “eliminating national boundaries” (Kim, 1999, p. 62). Of particular interest are two items raised in the report, perplexing and contradictory rhetorical messages when contemplating the future of VET and gender equity. On the one hand, globalization’s challenge for the country means strengthening the educational infrastructure “to preserve our traditional culture…without losing our own identity.” On the other, “our education needs to build leadership qualities so that our students can participate as world citizens” (Kim, 1999, p. 62). In other words, while globalization may benefit women’s educational capital and civic participation over time, there is no certainty that traditional gender ideology and patriarchal social practices will be overthrown in the near future. South Korean women may gain economic and educational advantage through equity initiatives at school and work, but their lower wages confirm “they are not in a position to bargain with their husbands for a more egalitarian division of labor in the home” (Stromquist, 2002, p. 140). What will become of girls and women in the new economy of the 21st century? “The rise of women’s status is a necessity for social development and for family happiness,” declared a report on women’s issues authored by the Korean Ministry of Political Affairs (1998, p. 1). By the mid- to late1990s, the government not only heightened awareness of the role of women in the formulation of a national agenda to deal with the goals of globalization but set forth as well a 5-year basic plan (1998–2002) on female equality, civic participation, and social welfare. The Presidential Commission on Women’s Affairs was created in 1998 to identify and coordinate gender equity issues and, in January of 2001, centralized into one administrative agency titled the Ministry of Gender Equality to monitor discriminatory practices in employment and education. On the horizon looming large is “a new feminine culture based on the development of women’s awareness and potential” (Ministry of Political Affairs, 1998, p. 4). Female voices in South Korea now will be heard in the designs of public policy.

92


REFERENCES Chang, K.S. (1997). Modernity through the family: Familial foundations of Korean society. International Review of Sociology, 7(1), 51–63. Chang, S.J. (1990, December 31). A study of the development of girls’ career education program. Women’s Studies Forum, 221–238. Cho, H., & Chang, P. (1994). Gender division of labor in Korea. Seoul, Korea: Ewha Women’s University Press. Cho, M.K. (2000). Bodily regulation and vocational schooling. Gender and Education, 12(2), 149–164. Cho, M.K., & Apple, M.W. (1998). Schooling, work and subjectivity. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 19(3), 269–290. Chosun Ilbo [Chosun Daily]. (2002, Janaury 22). IbSa seoRyu hakRyukNan pyeoJi [Abolition of a slot for school attended on job applications] [On-line]. Available: www.chosun.com Chung, H. (2000). A study of female students’ vocational education in technical high schools. Women’s Studies Forum, 16, 101–127. Chung, H., & Jung, K. (1997, December 31). Women’s vocational education in commercial high schools. Women’s Studies Forum, 13, 149–158. Fuentes, A., & Ehrenreich, B. (1989). Women in the global factory. Boston: South End Press. Human Development Report. (2002). Gender empowerment measure [On-line]. Available: www.undp.org/hdr2002/presskit/HDR%20PR_GEM.pdf Ihm, C.S. (1999). The dynamics of implementing VET reform and lifelong learning in Korea. Journal of Work and Education, 12(3), 309–321. Jayaweera, S. (1999). Education and gender equality in Asia. In S.Erskine & M. Wilson (Eds.), Gender issues in international education: Beyond policy and practice (pp. 149–171). New York: Falmer Press. Kim, H.M. (2001). Work, nation and hypermasculinity: The “woman” question in the economic miracle and crisis in South Korea. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 2(1), 53–68. Kim, J.I. (1989, December 31). An analysis of career education for schoolgirls. Women’s Studies Forum, 171–188. Kim, S.K. (1996). “Big companies don’t hire us, married women”: Exploitation and empowerment among women workers in South Korea. Feminist Studies, 22(3), 555–572. Kim, Y.H. (1999). Recent developments in Korean school education. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 10(1), 55–71. Korean National Statistical Office. (2002). Wages by education and sex [On-line]. Available: Kosis.nse.go.kr/cgi-bin/sws Korean Women’s Development Institute (KWDI). (1999). Korean Women Now [Online]. Available: www2.kwdi.re.kr:6060/userweb/? Lee, J.H. (1994). Employment and human resource policy: An institutional approach. Seoul, Korea: Korean Development Institute. Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development of Korea & Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education & Training. (2000). 2000 silUpGye goDungHakGyo hyunHwang [Demographics of vocational high school in 2000].


93

Seoul, Korea: Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education & Training Press. Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development of Korea. (2002). Public school demographics [On-line]. Available: www.moe.go.kr Ministry of Political Affairs (II). (1998). 50 years development of women of Korea. Seoul: Author. Monk-Turner, E., & Turner, C.G. (2001). Sex differentials in earnings in the South Korean labor market. Feminist Economics, 7(1), 63–78. Park, I.H. (1995). Confucianism and the Korean family. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 26(1), 117–126. Spring, J. (1998). Education and the rise of the global economy. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Stromquist, N.P. (2002). Education in a globalized world: The connectivity of economic power, technology, and knowledge. Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefleld. United Nations Development Program (UNDP). (1998). Korean Human Development Report, 1998 [On-line]. Available: www.undp.or.kr/html/undp_phuman_contents.html Weiming, T., Hejtmanek, M., & Wachman, A. (1992). The Confucian world observed: A contemporary discussion of Confucian humanism in East Asia. Honolulu, HI: The University of Hawaii Press. Yuh, Y.S. & Suh, M.S. (1995, December). Cost-sharing methods for maternity leave and child-rearing provisions for working women. In Women’s Studies Forum, vol. 11, pp. 143–164 (Report 200–14). Seoul, Korea: Korean Women’s Development Institute.

6 Poverty and Powerlessness in Ethiopia: Shaping Gender Equity Through Technical, Vocational Education, and Training Johanna Lasonen University of Jyväskylä

If a school is to be opened here we would attend it and also send our children to class. If adult education is given here, everyone will learn and there will be no one who won’t know how to read and write. —Yekaba, Ethiopian farmer/female head of household (Mountain Voices, 1996, p. 7)

The connections between poverty, illiteracy, powerlessness, and gender are aptly illustrated in Ethiopia where over 73% of the country’s women are illiterate and the vast majority earn an annual income of less than $100 (U.S.)(FDRE & UNICEF, 2001). Schools are few and far between, and often lack even the basics of water, toilets, books, chairs, and tables, Girls often are kept out of school by parents who need their income producing labor, or out of fear that their daughters will be assaulted going to and from school or even within the school itself. The inaccessibility of basic education keeps women caught in a poverty trap. Though technical, vocational education, and training (TVET) provides one means for escaping that trap, only 20% of TVET students are female (FDRE & UNICEF, 2001). This chapter analyzes TVET as a means of increasing the health of Ethiopia’s economy and improving the status of women. The first part provides demographic information about Ethiopia. The second discusses the current status of women in the country and is followed by a section on women’s relationship to the government. The fourth part provides a summary of Ethiopian education and its problems. Next is an overview of the development of

96


TVET in Ethiopia followed by a discussion of problems in achieving accessible, gender-fair, and useful vocational and technical learning opportunities. The conclusion discusses some of the policy issues surrounding gender and TVET that merit further discussion. ETHIOPIAN DEMOGRAPHICS Ethiopia is the third most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa. The population is estimated at about 64 million, which could reach 90 million by 2015. However, AIDS is likely to slow growth as the rate of infection in Ethiopia affects an alarming 10.6% of adults (ages 15 to 49), and rising (FDRE, 2000a). Ethiopia is young; around 30 million people are under 16 years of age (45.2% of population are under 15 years old and 3% over 65 years old). Life expectancy is 43.9 years, compared with 49 years for the population of the whole sub-Saharan Africa. About 85% of the population lives in rural communities. Ethiopia is divided into nine regional states along predominantly ethnic lines: Tigray, Afar, Amhara, Oromiya, Somali, Benishangul-Gumuz, the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR), Gambella, and Harar. The municipalities of Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa have a special status as regions. Regional authorities have increasingly wide-ranging financial powers. Under regions there are zones and districts, woredas, which again are divided into villages, kebeles. Ethiopia is ethnically and linguistically very diverse. The transitional legislature formally recognized 64 major ethnic groups, and more than 80 distinct languages are known to be spoken in the country including 10 main languages. The main ethnic groups are the Oromo (40%) and the Amhara (30%). Amharic is the traditional language and English is the second most frequently used language by the state, used also in secondary and in postsecondary and higher education. The population is split between Christians (45%, mainly members of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church) and Muslims (35%); approximately another 12% are animists and 8% are Protestants or Roman Catholic. Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world (World Bank, 2000). Poverty is widespread and multifaceted, both in rural (47%) and in urban (33%) areas. Measured mainly in terms of food consumption, about half the population lives below the poverty line. Poverty is linked with low growth and productivity in agriculture, practiced mainly at subsistence level. Low productivity leads, further, to fragile food security. Agriculture and forestry (44.8%), industry (11.7%), manufacturing (4.6%), and services (43.5%) constitute the gross domestic product (1998– 99). The three largest export earners in 1998–99 were coffee 60%, oats

6. POVERTY AND POWERLESSNESS IN ETHIOPIA

97

12.6%, and hides and skins 7.0%. Only 15% of the workforce is employed in the so-called formal sector, while the rest earn their living in the informal economy. WOMEN IN ETHIOPIA Women bear a disproportionate share of the burden of poverty in Ethiopia. They are responsible for all household chores in addition to working in agriculture and livestock production. Women spend a large part of their day collecting water and searching for firewood along with other laborious house-hold tasks; resulting in 15–18 hour workdays. Few can benefit from training and technical assistance, or credit, making them often unable to increase their earnings beyond a subsistence level. To assist them in their arduous tasks, women keep their children, especially girls, from school, thus perpetuating the vicious cycle of female poverty (Tervo, Kirjavainen, Lasonen, Ovaskainen, & Poutiainen, 2002). A lack of health services further disadvantage Ethiopian women. Maternal mortality rate is 560–850 per 100,000 live births (UNICEF, 2001). More than half of women’s health problems are obstetric most probably stemming from the high percentage (73% according to National Committee on Traditional Practices of Ethiopia 1998) of women who have gone through female genital mutilation (FGM; FDRE, 2000c). The spread of the HIV epidemic is linked with several economic, sociological, and cultural variables including low life expectancy, lack of human capital, income inequality, gender inequality, and labor migration (FDRE, 2000a). A number of factors contribute to women’s vulnerability to the epidemic. Culture and tradition allow married men to have extramarital sexual relationships, sexual partners do not discuss potential health issues, and men and women participate in common but harmful traditional practices (HTP). The National Committee on Traditional Practices of Ethiopia (NCTPE, 1998) has made a list of 88 HTPs observed in the country. Those related to women or female children include FGM, early marriage, marriage by abduction, isolation during menstruation and delivery, not allowing pregnant women to eat nutritious food, and suturing the vagina after delivery. The country’s constitution promotes the eradication of these harmful practices by prohibiting them, and the National Policy on Ethiopian Women outlines objectives and strategies for combating them. Yet, the high prevalence of illiteracy among women makes it difficult for them to resist such practices. The World Bank and the Women’s Affairs Office (FDRE & the World Bank, 1998) noted that women do not participate in development interventions for a number of social, economic, and technical reasons.

98


Traditionally, women are not usually members of formal groups such as cooperatives and associations through which they could be educated. If at all, they tend to belong to informal and traditional groups where customary beliefs are reinforced. Women’s absence from formal groups is also seen in the low representation of women in the Parliament, 7.7%, which is only slightly more than half the regional average, 12.4% (FDRE, 2000c). Poverty and financial difficulties have driven numerous women to migrate in search of employment opportunities. The destination countries are usually in the Middle East, Lebanon being the most common one. Tekle and Belayneh (2000) estimated that between 12,000 to 20,000 Ethiopian women are working in Beirut. Illegal immigration often lands people in miserable conditions. As a result the Women’s Affairs Office of the Prime Minister’s Office is working to identify strategies to bring migrant women home and reintegrate them in Ethiopian society. WOMEN’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE STATE Article 35 of the Ethiopian constitution (August 1995) defines the equity of women and men, recognizes the right to affirmative measures for women, and provides special attention to women to enable them to compete and participate in political, social and economic life in public and private institutions (FDRE, 2001; Transitional Government of Ethiopia, 1993). Additionally, the 1975 land reform (Public Ownership of Rural Lands, Proclamation 31 of 1975) declares the land as a public property, the right to which is extended to heads of households irrespective of their gender. Ethiopian women’s participation in the Beijing Fourth World Women’s Conference contributed to the formulation of the African Women Platform of Action. The Plan seeks to guarantee women’s equal rights with men; amend laws adversely affecting women’s social, cultural and economic conditions; eliminate prejudices and customary harmful practices; improve employment opportunities of women; identify the ways and means of lightening women’s workload; and facilitate women’s success to basic services such as health care and education (FDRE, 2000c, 2001), A national Women’s Affairs Office has been established under the Prime Minister’s Office to design strategies to allow women to contribute to and benefit from the country’s on-going democratization, judicial reform, and economic reconstruction processes. Regional women’s affairs offices implement gender-specific policies (FDRE & UNICEF, 2001). In 1993, the government established the National Policy for Women, which aims to institutionalize the political and socioeconomic rights of women by creating appropriate structures in government institutions so that public policies and interventions are gender-sensitive and geared toward ensuring equitable development for all Ethiopians.


99

ETHIOPIAN EDUCATION Ethiopian primary education has high dropout and repetition rates, indicating that resources are being wasted. The overall dropout rate for the primary level (grades 1–8) was 19% in 1999–2000 and 18% in 2000–01 (Ministry of Education, 1999, 200 1b). The risk of dropping out is particularly high for first-grade students. More than a quarter (27.9%) of the children in the first grade dropped out in 2000–01. The survival rate to grade 5 was 35% in 1999–2000 (38% for girls and 33% for boys). About 1 out of 10 students repeat grade 1, girls more often than boys. The repetition rate increases in grades 5, 7, and 8. Repetition and dropping-out seem to correlate. Students remained, on average, in school for only 4.6 years. Rather than enhancing the attractiveness of education by increasing material and qualitative resources or by preventing the attrition of teachers, school assessment strategies seem to be used to classify and weed out the poorest performing students. Although the number of schools has steadily increased, there are still not enough schools to deliver primary education to the population. There is also a shortage of teachers, particularly in rural and remote areas, and teacher quality varies between regions. The shortage of teachers is likely to grow as primary education enrollment rates continue to rise and as HIV/AIDS creates casualties among teachers. Moreover, Ethiopian schools operate with very modest facilities. Academic counseling and health clinics are a rarity. Many schools fail to respond to the educational needs of girls and disregard women’s desire to become teachers. Girls have too few female teachers to serve as role models. Only 3 out of 10 primary school teachers and hardly 1 out of 10 vocational teachers are women (Ministry of Education, 2001 b). One problem in Ethiopian education lies in providing young people, both those who have dropped out of primary school and those who have completed it, with entry to further studies, a place in society, or both. Currently education neither shapes nor corresponds to labor force needs or the requirements of industry and trade. On all levels of the educational system, education and training has little relevance to practice and context and to preparation for the workforce and employability. Ethiopians’ access to education is among the most limited in all of Africa. In 2001, only 48.8% of the appropriate age population was enrolled in primary school (grade 1), including 42.7% of girls and 55.6% of boys. This means that more than half of the nation’s 7.1 million children do not go to school (Ministry of Education, 1998, 200 1b), Only 1 out of 10 children, who enter primary school, complete grade 12 of general education. In 1998–99, there was a total enrollment of 521, 728 students in less than 400 upper secondary schools. Enrollment levels vary remarkably from region to region. Primary school enrollment is 100% in

100


Addis Ababa, but only 11.5% for the Afar region. Similarly, 3.3% of the Afar people are in secondary level education compared with 60.7% in Addis Ababa. This is not surprising given that only two secondary schools exist in Afar and are both oversubscribed despite the fact that neither the primary or secondary curriculum is offered in the native Afar language. The average enrollment in Ethiopia primary and secondary schools is respectively 57.4% and 12.9% (Ministry of Education, 200 1b). Enrollments are constrained by the poverty of the school facilities, which also varies from region to region. For instance, Addis Ababa offers latrines in all of it schools, water in 96%, and clinics in 23.3%. At the other end of the spectrum, only 30.2% of Somali schools have latrines, 7% have water, and only 1.6% clinics (Ministry of Education, 200 1b). The recent expansion of the educational system has created a serious shortage of teachers. However, according to estimates, about 96.6% of the first-cycle (grades 1–4) and 23.9% of the second-cycle (grades 5–8) primaryschool teachers were qualified in 2000–01. National standards require firstcycle primary teachers to have at minimum a certificate from a teachertraining institute, while a second-cycle primary education teacher must have a diploma from a teacher training college. Teacher attrition is high in many areas (ESDP, 2001). In one zone, 44% of new teachers failed to take up their posts. Qualified staff in second-cycle primary and secondary education is particularly lacking (FORE & UNICEF, 2001). In order to improve the quality of education and gain the objectives of universal primary education and increasing female schooling Ethiopia must engage a great number of new teachers annually. Yet as Poluha (2001) revealed teacher attrition is affected by problems that the government cannot afford to remedy, including poor facilities, a lack of textbooks and other teaching aids, and overcrowded schools. The average class size is 66.4 children in primary education and 74.9 children in secondary education per teacher (Mid-Term Review Mission, 2001). In reality there are often 100 children in a school class. Moreover, the same teachers often teach both evening and morning shifts. Only a small proportion of secondary education graduates continue into tertiary education. In 1996–97, 38.1% of those taking the Ethiopian School Leaving Certificate Examination at the end of their secondary education passed the exam, and only about a half of these were placed in tertiary education institutions (Workineh, Teferra, Shibeshi, & Mercer, 1999), This leaves few potential candidates for the many teaching vacancies. Gender disparity is bigger in tertiary education than in primary and secondary education. In 1995–96 females accounted for only 10.7% of total tertiary enrollments, most of who attended teacher training colleges, the country’s one health sciences college, or studied business, economics, or social sciences (Workineh et al., 1999).


101

EDUCATIONAL POLICY AND REFORMS Education has been a development priority on the national agenda since the formation of the transitional government that was in power until 1995, when the Democratic Federal Republic of Ethiopia was established. In 1994, the Government developed an Education and Training Policy (ETP) and an Education Sector Strategy (ESDP; Transitional Government of Ethiopia, 1994). ETP aims to achieve universal primary enrollment by 2015. The objectives for the first phase of the ESDP are to expand primary education enrollments from 3.1 million to 7 million; increase the proportion of girl students from 38% to 45%; provide each child with a textbook in every core subject; improve teacher training; reduce drop-out and repetition rates; and increase educational financing to 19% of the national budget while encouraging concurrent private-sector and community financing (ESDP, 1999). The educational reforms are reshaping the structure of the school system. Primary education now lasts 8 years (age group 7–14); it is divided into 2 cycles, a first cycle (grades 1–4) and a second cycle (grades 5–8). The goal of the first cycle is functional literacy, while the second cycle prepares students for further studies. General education consists of 8 years of primary education and 2 years of general secondary education (grades 9 and 10), followed by 2 years of upper-secondary education. The first cycle of secondary education is intended to enable students to identify areas of interest for further education and training. The second cycle (grades 11 and 12) prepares students for continuing their studies at the higher education (tertiary) level or for choosing a career. TVET is institutionally separate from the regular educational system, forming a parallel track. TVET is offered at the exit points of the academic system (grades 4, 8, and 10). Higher education institutions comprise 2 universities, 13 colleges (including teacher training establishments) and 3 institutes (a polytechnic, a health sciences, and a water technology institute). Diploma programs generally last 2 years. First-degree courses take 4 to 5 years of university or college studies to complete TVET has particular significance for the reduction of poverty and for strategies of gender equity. Recent policy documents such as Agriculture Development Led Industrialization Strategy (ADLI), Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, Development Framework and Plan for Action 2001–2010, ETP and ESDP emphasize the important role of education and training in promoting gender equality and to reducing poverty (FDRE, 2000b; MEDC, 2001; Ministry of Education, 1998; Transitional Government of Ethiopia, 1994). The ETP document presented specific objectives and strategic measures on TVET (Transitional Government of Ethiopia, 1994) including providing diversified technical and vocational training to those

102


who leave school from any level of education. Training would be provided in agriculture, crafts, construction, and basic bookkeeping in the form of apprenticeship for those with the appropriate age and primary education. Technical and vocational training in agriculture, industrial arts, construction, commerce, and home science would be provided to those not continuing general education after primary school. The government would also facilitate the education of potential TVET researchers and teachers. A coordinated curriculum would ensure students and trainees acquire the necessary entrepreneurial and productive attitudes and skills. THE DEVELOPMENT OF TVET IN ETHIOPIA In the past, development of TVET has been supported by the aid of, among others, the United States, the Soviet Union, Italy, many national nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and recently by Japan and Germany. The comprehensive high school model was introduced in Ethiopia 40 years ago with support from USAID (Froyland, 2001; Tesfaye, 1995). Also, during the 1960s practical modules were introduced in secondary schools in four areas: Industrial Arts, Home Economics, Commercial, and Agricultural. The practical streams were meant to foster the value of all labor and the promotion of standards of efficiency and workmanship. Yet only about 20% of the 160-hour study programs were dedicated to practical subjects. Most of the attention went to academic programs preparing students for the national academic examination. A polytechnic program was introduced and developed in Ethiopia from the 1970s with Russian support. Students were offered general polytechnic courses at the ninth and tenth grades, followed by 3-year advanced technicalvocational programs. The programs prepared mid-level skilled workers and staff for technical, managerial, or administrative positions at paraprofessional levels. College diplomas and bachelor degrees are required of teachers assigned to the junior and senior secondary schools. In the mid-1970s the Derg regime established Community Skill Training Centers (CSTCs) as a part of a Nonformal Education (NFE) system. The centers were designed to promote indigenous skills and increase productivity in the community. Training courses were offered in trades and fields such as weaving, sewing and embroidery, wood work, pottery, fuel-saving stoves, candle and soap making, dying, basket and mat making, metal work, agriculture, home economics, carpentry, and construction (Alemu, 2000). The number of trainees doubled over the last 6 years and slightly more females than males were involved in 2001 (Froyland, 2001). On request of the Ethiopian Government, an Ethio-German TVET program started in March 1999. It provides technical assistance in


103

developing consistent TVET policies and appropriate TVET structures at the federal level and in four regional states (Amhara, Oromiya, SNNPR, and Tigray). It also strengthens preservice and in-service vocational teacher training at Nazareth College of Technical Teacher Education, which is the national TVET teachers’ training college. Finally it supports 25 skill development centers (SDCs) in the four regions (GTZ, 2001). The WB financed Nazareth College’s first group of students in a 4-year program for TVET teachers and to a 2-year program for training technicians in 1994. By November 2001, the college had 768 full-time, boarding students and another 1,050 students in evening classes. About 320 TVET ers participated in the 10-week summer courses to upgrade their competencies. Nazareth College has 112 teaching staff, 12 management staff, and 260 supportive staff (Froyland, 2001). The college has departments in technical teacher education, manufacturing technology, automotive technology, construction technology, electrical-electronics technology, drafting technology, surveying technology, natural and applied sciences, and language and social sciences, Few Nazareth college students aspire to become TVET teachers (Froyland, 2001). They see Nazareth as a vehicle for advancing their technological competence and spurn educational opportunities for careers in private industry. Currently, there are 23 technical and vocational education training schools in Ethiopia with a maximum intake of 6,000 students representing 0.62% of one age cohort. In 2000–01 students in state-owned schools were 23.4% female and 76.6% male. In the nongovernment TVETS the enrollment was 91.5% male and 8.5% female (Ministry of Education, 200 1b). Future plans call for the addition of middle technical education programs (10+1 and 10+2) in almost 130 schools (SDCs, TVET-schools, and former comprehensive secondary schools). The 10+1 and 10+2 reform is more similar to the structure of school-based vocational education found in some European countries such as Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The curriculum is based on the concept of Modules for Employable Skills (MES) developed by the International Labor Office (ILO; Ministry of Education, 1999). The training is broken down into small units with defined behavioral outcomes. The shift to 10+1 and 10+2 will necessitate the addition of some 2,000 TVET teachers. A number of problems exist in the supply and quality of TVET teachers (ESDP, 1999). Too few of the students who make it into tertiary education are willing to become teachers resulting in a perpetual teacher shortage that will only increase with school expansion. Programs must be developed to train current and prospective teachers in the new TVET curriculum but current training institutes-colleges do not have the capacity. Nor can they provide adequate on-going support and resources needed by in-service teachers. Female TVET teachers are in very low supply given that women

104


represent less than 11% of all tertiary students. The shortage of TVET teachers has led the Ethiopian Ministry of Education to contract many TVET instructors from abroad, most notably from Germany, India, China, Nigeria and Cuba (Wood et al., 2001). The Ministry of Education (200la) took several measures to increase the number of qualified TVET teachers. Extensive summer in-service training courses are provided as well as parttime degree programs. Other problems facing TVET in Ethiopia include a limited range of occupational training for trades, skills, and knowledge. Girls and women are underrepresented in the training programs, which is due, in part, to the fact that existing TVET typically addresses only traditional male identified occupations. Further little training exists for micro and small entrepreneurs where women predominate. CONCLUSIONS Overall access to education is low in Ethiopia. In terms of one age cohort, less than a half of children (48.8%) enter the first grade, about 28.8% moves to the third grade, about 10% go to the upper-secondary education, and only 1% continues to the university. Enrollment in formal vocational education involves even fewer. Female students are underrepresented at each level of formal education. Ethiopian educational policy has a strong focus on girls’ education. However, while girls’ education is well embedded as an operational focus at policy levels, the more long-term objective, mainstreaming (as opposed to the specific target of female enrollment-access), is not quite so clearly articulated as a goal. There should be a study of both gendered access and quality issues. In Ethiopia, gender mainstreaming in education has had two elements: incorporating a gender focus into planning, design, and implementation, and moving toward equitable participation in decision-making processes around the reform program. The first element has received much attention. However, clearly less emphasis has been placed on the second aspect, which involves issues of representation and political power within key government structures and institutions. The distinction between gender mainstreaming and gender targeting can be mutually supporting and complementary particularly in TVET. However, a mainstreaming strategy does not preclude initiatives specifically directed towards women. Similarly, initiatives targeted directly at men are necessary and complementary as long as they promote gender equity. Yet there is also the potential for an element of tension here in that gender mainstreaming is a concept that is arguably closer to a desired ideal. Whereas gender targeting


105

can be a valid means of moving closer to that ideal, it is less of an ideal in itself. If there was no systematic policy commitment to women’s participation in the planning and implementation cycle, the tendency is to stop at a mechanical addition of a female component. It seems that very often girls’ education is subsumed under a wider goal of improving access and achievement rather than being seen as an end unto itself. That is to say, educating girls is linked to the aim of improving productivity and promoting other development goals as opposed to being related to wider gender issues in a national context. Secondly, while a strategic focus on girls’ education may be the only realistic way forward, given the huge gender disparities evident in Ethiopia, the danger is that such a focus on girls obscures and distracts attention from a long-term vision based on changing the complex power structures that are the ultimate cause of the constraints on and barriers to girls’ full participation in education. For instance, a gendered understanding of nonformal education is essential. The problem is that nonformal education, while useful for providing learning opportunities to females and other educationally marginalized groups, risks creating a “two-track” system, where boys, whose education is prioritized, are sent to formal schools while girls are sent to nonformal schools. In comparison with formal schools, alternative schooling centers tend to have fewer resources, are taken less seriously, and offer a lower quality of education. The teaching staff work for lower salaries, or even as volunteers, and have only a part or none of the rights accorded to their colleagues in the formal system. This is not to deny the success and utility of alternative schooling centers in terms of reaching difficult nonattending students. However, it is clear that an awareness of the potential pitfalls, and close monitoring and research are needed. Nonformal education may be used as a low-cost means of boosting enrollment figures while paying little attention to quality and gender implications. More attention must also be given to the barriers that militate against girls feeling comfortable in the school. One factor that seems to be implicated is a lack of adequate toilet facilities. Planning and constructing appropriate school buildings that make the most of their potential as learning environments is a priority. To what extent the school area is a gendered space with a differential influence on the learning and development of girls and boys is a question that must be addressed in future development work. Policy decisions affecting the establishment of village schools must also have women representatives on education committees. Gender should be a factor in the recruitment targets for teachers and paraprofessionals. A review of textbooks and curricula with a view to promoting positive gender messages and images would help avoid marginalizing and stereotyping that is present in current educational practices,

106


REFERENCES Alemu, Y. (2000). A comparative analysis of vocational and employment and nongovernment schools/training centres in Ethiopia. Unpublished Master thesis. Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. ESDP. (1999). Ethiopian Education Sector Development Programme 1997–98/2001– 02. Second Joint Review Mission November 22-December 9, 1999. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Central Joint Steering Committee. ESDP. (2001). Ethiopian Education Sector Development Programme 1997–98/2001– 02. Midterm Review Mission February 13-March 3, 2001. Volume 1. Main Report. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Central Joint Steering Committee. Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE). (2000a). AIDS in Ethiopia. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Disease Prevention & Control Department Ministry of Health. Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE). (2000b). Interim poverty reduction strategy paper 2000–01/2002–03 November 2000. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Author. Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE). (2000c). National report on the implementation of the Beijing platform for action. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Office of the Prime Minister, Women’s Affairs Section. Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE). (2001). Gender perspective guideline, checklist for program/project planning in Ethiopia. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Women’s Affairs Office. FDRE & UNICEF. (2001), UNICEF Fifth Country Programme of Cooperation 2002–2006. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: UNICEF. FDRE & The World Bank. (1998). Implementing the Ethiopian national policy for women: Institutional and regulatory issues. Washington, D.C: The World Bank. Froyland, E. (2001). Training for survival and growth in Ethiopia. An explanatory working paper on policy frameworks, productive capacity building and internationat co-operation. Teacher Education Development Study Mission, 5–30 November, 2001, Ethiopia. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: SIDA and Ireland Aid. GTZ. (2001). Deutsche Geselleschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit [EthioGerman technical and vocational education and training programme]. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Ministry of Education. Ministry of Economic Development and Cooperation (MEDC). (2001). Ethiopia: Development framework and plan of action 2001–2010. The Third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries. 14–20 May, 2001 in Brussels [Online]. Available: www.unctad.org/en/docs/aconf191cp24eth.en.pdf Mid-Term Review Mission. (2001, March). Main report. Volume 1. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education. (1998). Ethiopia’s Education Sector Development Program. Five year plan (1997–98/2001–02). Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Author. Ministry of Education. (1999). General guidelines for the preparation of Modules of Employable Skills (MES). Curriculum guide for Medium Technical Vocational Training Programme (10+I and 10+2). Institute for Curriculum Development & Research (ICDR), TVT Curriculum Panel. Addis Ababa: ICDR. Ministry of Education (2001a). Conceptual framework for planning of vocational teacher trainer further-training in the regional national states of Ethiopia. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Author.


107

Ministry of Education. (2001b). Education statistics annual abstracts 1993 E.C./2000-O1 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Education Management Information Systems. Mountain Voices (1996, December). Yekaba [farmer/female head of household, Ethiopia]. Mountain Voices: Ethiopia, North [On-line]. Available: www.mountainvoices.org/Summary.asp?id=152 National Committee on Traditional Practices of Ethiopia (NCTPE). (1998). Baseline survey on harmful traditional practices in Ethiopia. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: UNICEF. Poluha, E. (2001). Teachers’ recruitment and employment conditions in Ethiopia. Draft report for SIDA. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: SIDA and Ireland Aid. Tekle, A., & Belayneh, T. (2000). Trafficking of women from Ethiopia. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Prime Minister’s Office, Women’s Affairs Sub-Sector. Tervo, L., Kirjavainen, L., Lasonen, J., Ovaskainen, E., & Poutiainen, E. (2002). Evaluation of the bilateral development cooperation between Ethiopia and Finland. Country evaluation report. Helsinki, Finland: Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, Department for International Development, Cooperation Evaluation Unit. Tesfaye, H.Z. (1995). Comprehensive secondary education in Ethiopia: Case study in four schools 1961–1986. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: University of Addis Ababa, Institute of Educational Research. Transitional Government of Ethiopia. (1993). National policy on Ethiopian women. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Office of the Prime Minister. Transitional Government of Ethiopia. (1994). Education and training policy. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Author. UNICEF. (2001, August). UNICEF supported GAD programme of action (2001– 2006). Addis Ababa: Office of the Prime Minister. Wood, E., Avenstrup, R., Bekele, A., Froyland, E., Workineh, T., Higgins, C., Poluha, E., & Kelemu, M. (2001). An assessment of government teacher education in Ethiopia. Draft report of Teacher Education Development Study Mission. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: SIDA and Ireland Aid. Workineh, T., Teferra, T., Shibeshi, A., & Mercer, M. (1999). Studies of education in Ethiopia: An inventory and overview of education sector studies in Ethiopia 1994–1997. European Union Horizon 2000 Initiative. Paris: UNESCO. World Bank. (2000). Project appraisal document for proposed credits in support of the first phase of the Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Program for the Africa Region. Washington, D.C.: Author.

7 Changing Work, Changing Households: New Challenges to Masculinity and Femininity in Norwegian Vocational Education Liv Mjelde Akershus University College

In the Nordic countries today, almost everybody is in favor of gender equality. It is seen as part of “the natural order” to use an expression from Gramsci (1957). Yet many different interpretations and expectations lie hidden behind the concept of gender equality. “The women’s place” is a theme that has been on the agenda in bourgeois society in relation to specific family roles since the industrial revolution, and is eloquently described in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House written in 1879. Women’s participation in the workforce has been marked by a great variety of opinions as to women’s positions, both in the home and in working life, since the eve of modern society. In the time of Ibsen, for instance, a group of male social scientists called domestic scientists looked upon women primarily as sexual beings whose destiny was biological in nature. They held that women could improve their status and increase their worth to society by becoming more competent within their traditional spheres (Strauss, 1982). At the same time, women of the bourgeoisie were engaged in developing a housewife ideology and home economics as school subjects for the emerging working class in Norway. Home economics classes for girls were part of the expansion of the vocational school system after World War II (Mjelde, 1996). The ideological baggage of a hundred years ago is still alive and well within sociobiological research traditions and the rhetoric of conservative political parties.1 When the “Act of Equality between the Sexes” was debated in the Norwegian Parliament 25 years ago, the Conservative Party had very strong hesitations. The Labour Party press shows a clear and

110


persistent division between the different political parties in their outlook on family models and motherhood from the 1970s until today (Håland, 2001). The bourgeois parties have traditionally supported a male breadwinner family with a homebound wife, while the socialist parties have promoted the transfer of certain family duties to the public sector, and in that way supported working women. In spite of these fundamental distinctions between the conservative versus socialist blocs, there has been a consensus to support parental leave policies and the construction of public kindergartens. Today, the Conservative Party’s Minister of Industry and Commerce is concerned with getting women into leadership and into the boardrooms.2 During this period, we have also seen big changes in the national educational system. Norway has undergone a qualitative expansion of the educational system at all levels, while at the same time the old form of schooling, which tended to preserve class distinctions in society, has been undergoing significant change. In accordance with a law that came into effect on January 1, 1976, vocational schools, schools of commerce, and the old gymnasia were united into one entity.3 Equality of opportunity was the ideal and one of the expressed goals of this reform, both in relation to class and gender questions, as well as equality between practical (vocational) and general (academic preparatory) curricula (Mjelde, 1993, 2001). Research in Scandinavia and other parts of the Western world has shown how complex processes perpetuate the reproduction of inequality in education, the division between vocational and general education, as well as the division between male and female occupational spheres (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Chariot, 1987; Gaskell, 1992, 1995; Hernes & Knudsen, 1976; Livingstone, 1987; Mjelde, 1987, 1990, 1993, 2001; Tanguy, 1985). Both general and vocational education programs prepare youth for the labor market. However, traditional gymnasium education has a liberal academic content that does not refer directly to the labor market, but rather it opens the way to university and college studies and, subsequently, to a more prestigious sector of the labor market. The old vocational school for crafts and industries was traditionally a working-class school, preparing students directly for the manual labor market and family life (Mjelde, 2001). Fifty percent of girls and boys aged 16 begin the vocational programs in secondary schools before proceeding into cohabitation, childrearing, and work in the manual labor market. Specific and rather rigid gender divisions have characterized vocational education in the school system—boys in the hard trades and girls in the care sector (Mjelde, 1975, 1984, 2001). Recent developments in the manual labor market and in family ideology have led to considerable challenges to the form and content of vocational education, How have these challenges affected the everyday life of vocational students

7. CHANGING WORK, CHANGING HOUSEHOLDS

111

and apprentices? What about changes in the family roles? In this chapter I explore the problems connected with changes in the manual labor market and in the dominant value system. I approach these themes in relation to my research on women and printing apprenticeships (Mjelde, in press). First, by way of introduction, I describe gender traditions in Norwegian vocational education as they have developed over the past century. GENDER TRADITIONS IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION From its inception following World War II, vocational studies in the secondary school system have suffered from an incipient traditional gender role division which corresponded to the sex-typed patterns of the manual labor market of the time, and the traditional view of women’s dominant role in the family.4 The social organization of masculinity and femininity have their particular forms and historical trajectories in Norway. They are especially conspicuous in the vocational training programs, where the traditional gender roles still stand out as part of the natural order. The boys are found predominantly in areas such as the mechanical, electrical, and the building trades. In these fields, it has been possible to obtain apprenticeship contracts, craft certificates, and well-paid skilled jobs. Some trades in the vocational school programs recruited both genders, such as hairdressers, cooks, waiters-waitresses, tailors, photographers, and dental technicians. Most girls, however, were to be found in fields traditional for their gender, often in briefer courses such as home economics, health, and the social services, and in aesthetic and handicraft subjects. These female study programs have been geared to the family sphere and lower-paid jobs in the service sector. We find the same pattern, with certain variations, persisting in the expanded and developed vocational education sector in other Nordic countries (Aarebrot, 1991; Grønbeck Hansen, 1993; Karninen, 1994). Another feature of positioning of women in vocational education is connected to their place in production. One of the characteristic features of female labor in the industrial sector has been that women have been concentrated in particular industries at particular levels, where they have systematically been subjected to lower pay and poorer working conditions than men. The skills or competency question also has its specific gendered history. Men have found their place in the skilled manual labor market while most women have occupied the unskilled or semiskilled positions. In those trades with a division between skilled and semiskilled labor, as in the printing trades, men have traditionally held the skilled positions. In Norway, the field of bookbinding consisted of male bookbinders with 4 years of apprenticeship and female assistant bookbinders with 2 years of apprenticeship. The apprentices entered directly into apprenticeship in a

112


work place and came to the vocational school for practical and theoretical courses. Training took place in a shared workshop in the apprenticeship school, with an actual glass wall separating boys and girls. The male bookbinder apprentice learned more craft-oriented operations, while the girls learned to operate the folding machines. Bookbinders constituted more high cost labor, assistants with only 2 years of training received lower pay. Consequently, the majority of workers on the bookbinding shop floor have been women (Mjelde, 1992, in press). NEW CHALLENGES In Scandinavia, the long-established division of labor by gender in the manual labor market and vocational training has been challenged in many ways. In the past 30 years, women have moved progressively into trades traditionally reserved for skilled males (Mjelde, 2001). Since the 1970s, the women’s movement has been a major impetus in many countries in the Western industrialized world for equal opportunity policies in the skilled trades. Women who entered the hard trades in Norway in the 1970s formed an organization: KIM (Kvinner I Manmyrker, meaning Women in Male Occupations). This was at the initiative of veterans of female incursion into the crafts and industry sector who were carpenters, electricians, welders, auto mechanics, and engine drivers at the time (Møller, 2000). KIM was primarily a support and information network aimed at the gendered manual labor market in Norway. Their slogan is: “Jenter har kraft og tœl. Vi vil tjene penga sjœl” [“Girls have strength and guts. We demand the right to earn our own money”]. The women’s organizational work focused on the issues of their rights and on liberation from the straightjacket of old traditional gender patterns. For the last 20 years the organization has worked toward two main goals: (a) to assist females freely to choose education and training that prepares them for the skilled labor market of crafts, industry and transport; and (b) to provide support for those women who have chosen non-traditional occupations. In the 1980s, the integration of women into male-dominated spheres became a public question of national educational policy. A series of public projects were directed toward breaking up the traditional gender patterns for the hard trades in vocational education, and at the same time we saw an expansion of the health and social service training programs. The reforms brought about the development of new educational courses of study within care giving, social welfare and child welfare. This education provides craft certificates in two fields, in care work and child and youth welfare work. The programs combine 2 years of schooling and training on the job through apprenticeship5—and almost exclusively female-dominated (Høst & Michelsen, 2001).


113

Other female-dominated areas of study in secondary school (Table 7.1), in the year 2001, include health and social studies (89%), design (84.7%), and music, dance, and drama (74.6%). Women in the male trades such as construction, electrical, and mechanical fields are correspondingly 2%, 3.6%, and 4.9%. Media and communication and sales and service are new trade areas where the proportion of girls and boys are about equally divided. Also, in conjunction with statistics covering the years from 1980 to 1995, there is great stability in traditional career choices along gender lines (Mjelde, 2001). TABLE 7.1 Girls in Secondary Studies, According to Streams of Study (Autumn 1997, 1998, 1999, and Spring 2001) Stream of study

1997

1998

1999

2001

General, Economics, Administration subjects

55.4

54.0

52.9

52.7

Music, Dance, Drama

67.7

69.1

73.0

74.6

Sports

38.6

40.5

37J

34.5

Health and Social Studies

89.6

90.8

89.5

89.0

Environmental Studies

40.2

41.7

46.2

49.0

Design

81.5

81.3

81.8

84.7

Hotel and catering

52.3

53.2

52.2

56.4

Construction

2.1

2.2

1.9

2.0

Technical Construction

9.7

9.7

8.7

6.3

Electrical

3.7

4.4

3.9

3.6

Mechanical

5.9

6.0

5.0

4.9

Chemistry and Processing

40.4

393

33.4

33.9

Woodworking

26.4

21.1

20.5

19.9

Media and Communication

–

–

–

49.7

Sales and Service

–

–

–

54.5

49.8

49.3

48.7

48.5

Total:

Note. Values are in percentages. Adapted from Statistisk Sentralbyrå, the Norwegian Central Bureau of Statistics (Statistics Norway, 2001, p. 5).

114


With this problem in mind the Ministry of Education initiated the project “Conscious Educational Choices” conducted from 1998 to 2000 in four counties in Norway. The project was started as an attempt to develop more gender independent education and occupational choices. In addition, there was a desire to create and develop ways to protect and encourage young people who make nontraditional choices. The programs are now also aimed at encouraging boys to choose the care professions. The Ministry has taken the initiative to strengthen vocational and educational counseling so that young males become better informed and prepared to make conscious vocational choices in accordance with the individual’s needs and wishes, to the greatest degree possible, independent of traditional gender roles. The goal has also been to develop cooperation between school and business in order to ensure that those who have chosen a nontraditional education will be employed in the occupation of their choice. The results, when the project was terminated at the end of 2000, indicated that few changes occurred. Boys were found to be particularly difficult to influence in their choice of occupation. We find the same trends and questions being posed in other Nordic countries. In 1986, the Nordic Council of Ministers started a common project, the BRYT Project (The Break-Up Project) in order to recruit women and facilitate their entry into nontraditional occupations. The project took different forms in the different Nordic countries. For example, in Denmark it was primarily directed toward apprenticeship, while in Norway a school project was focused on recruiting girls into the hard male trades in the vocational schools, These different directions have a natural explanation in various traditions in the development of vocational education in the Nordic countries. Denmark has a long tradition with apprenticeships, while Norway has invested strongly in the expansion of vocational education in schools. The BRYT Project lasted for 3 years. An evaluation of the Danish portion of the project found that the strategy of women into male occupations was a wrong move. It concluded that the most important thing was not to get women into male occupations, but to upgrade the traditional female occupations. It was argued that more women than males were the first to be dismissed when production crises led to unemployment. Many of the pioneer women of the 1970s in Norway did not stay in the trades, but went on to become teachers and counselors.6 There has been one exception. Women are now a big part of the skilled labor force in certain sectors of the printing industry—both in Norway and Denmark (Stig, 1989). In 1972, 2% of the students entering the graphics classes in vocational schools in Norway were women; in 1979–80, 33% were women, and this increased to 80% in 1986–87.7 In 1996, one-half of the apprentices who received their craft certificate in printing were women (Mjelde, 1992, in press).


115

WOMEN IN PRINTING APPRENTICESHIPS In my research project on women and the printing trades, I visited 25 different workplaces in Oslo and Bergen, and collected data using a semistructured questionnaire while interviewing 60 women apprentices and 12 male apprentices (Mjelde 1992). The women were also asked to reply to certain questions in written essay forms. I also interviewed shop stewards and representatives of employers.8 Some of the workplaces were old traditional printing houses with many employees; some were newer, smaller industries and newspapers. The biggest workplace had 800 employees, with 20 male and 15 female apprentices. They had the contract for the telephone directories of Norway. Two brothers ran the smallest firm I visited. They had hired two female apprentices and an office-clerical worker. Their products ranged from visiting cards to bibles. Eleven of the women were apprentices on a newspaper, 49 were in the printing industry. Forty-five were composition apprentices, 10 in lithography-copying, 3 in repro technique, and 2 trained as printing press operators. Some of the workplaces had employed women as unskilled and semiskilled labor, but the barriers against women as skilled labor had been strong. The owner of the small family-run printing firm previously mentioned explained their resistance to hiring females: We have never had women in production before these two apprentices. We considered taking in boys, but the women were better qualified. We were concerned about who was going to shovel snow, change the fuses, and we wanted boys. People my age looked upon it as strange—to get girls. We did not see that we could gain anything by changing the gender composition, (personal interview, January 14, 1987) One feature that has facilitated women’s entry into the printing industry is the development of more vocational education within the school system. The girls do better than the boys in school and, as this director said, “the women were better qualified” in the strong competition for apprenticeship places. Thirty years ago, when it was common to go directly from grammar school into apprenticeships in a factory, employers had full control over the intake to the trades. In the graphics branch it was argued that the trades were too tough for girls, long after technological developments had fundamentally changed the tools, equipment, and work processes. Yet, historically, the women paper loaders in the printing houses had one of the toughest jobs on the shop floor. They lifted huge loads of paper onto the printing presses, after which the men carried out the skilled printing production.

116


The owner of this small printing place also talked about economic support from the state for recruiting girls into the hard trades (and now for recruiting boys into the soft fields). The state gives a bonus of 20,000 Norwegian kroner per annum (3,000 U.S. dollars) to companies who take in a minority gender apprentice. The personnel director of another old traditional family printing firm, who had had experience with women apprentices since the beginning of the 1980s, said: When we advertised for apprentices earlier we were thinking in an old fashioned way. We advertised for boys. Now, according to the law, we have to advertise for both genders. Now we evaluate the applicants on an equal basis. We think it is just as O.K. to take in a girl as it is to take in a boy. There was resistance among the intermediate leaders on the shop floor. It has been a maturing process, this thing with women as skilled labor, (personal interview, February 2, 1987) This personnel director refers to the law that no longer permits advertising for boys only. The Gender Equality Act came into force in 1979, The purpose of the Act was to prevent discrimination against women in working life with respect to both job acquisition and wages. These are still key elements of the Act today. In terms of job advertisements, the law requires that as long as there is no obvious reason for it, a position cannot be advertised only for the one gender. The text must not give the impression that the employer will prefer one gender to the other. An employer cannot today advertise for a woman telephone operator or a male carpenter. The Gender Equality Ombudsman enforces the act. The Law of Gender Equality has been a strong force in opening up new possibilities for women when it comes to access to the skilled labor market in the printing industries. Another point he makes is the resistance of the intermediate leaders against women apprentices (Mjelde, in press). This point was mentioned as a problem for the apprentices in answers to the essay question: “How do you experience your male fellow workers’ acceptance of you as part of the skilled labor force?” The comments explored the complexity of their experiences of everyday life on the shop floor. One interviewee, Siri, emphasized that conflicts exist between the men as skilled workers and the women as apprentices. There are long traditions on the manual labor market where eld-ers are given the right to push around apprentices. New workers were given the dirty jobs and sent to run the errands, as well as endure various initiation rites (Mjelde, 1990). Kari, another interviewee, emphasized the competitive aspects of the relationships, and that the men viewed them as temporary labor. Berit also talked about the competitive aspect, from the


117

point of view of the number of women. When the women became a majority in their work section, the men worried that the women are taking over. She also emphasized the variable of age, saying that younger male workers are more positive than older. Berit, Bibbi, and Tone all agreed that their fellow workers were O.K., but the work leaders and the division of labor were problematic. Berit also stated that all the leaders were men, and that these leaders picked the women for the lousy jobs. The leader of a small printing press said: We were terribly conservative, but we have changed. I am on the final examination board for printing press operators and we have just examined a female printing press operator. She likes to work with machinery, (personal interview, May 10, 1988) This director expresses surprise that women like machinery and are good with it. Yet as we saw, there were only two women apprentices as printing press operators. Women entered mainly the preprinting sector during the 1980s. This is a pattern that has continued (Høst & Skarpenes, 2000).9 The union representative, a 35-year-old printing press operator felt things had improved: The milieu is better with women. The work has also become easier. We have got rid of lead and chemicals. We are also well organized and highly paid. The girls are better at unionizing than we were as apprentices, (personal interview, August 3, 1989) Changes in technology have fundamentally changed the labor processes in the printing industry with the transfer from lead to bytes. He also brought up the notion of union memberships because 75% of the female apprentices were unionized. In the bigger factories and in the newspapers one automatically became a member of the union when one started working. The workers’ collective did not and does not accept anything else (Mjelde, 1993). There was one exception. Of the nonunionized women, 8 out of 12 were in the same printing house. This was an old family firm and the production was run with a majority of unskilled workers and apprentices. The norms in this place seemed to be strongly against unionizing. The Norwegian Union of Graphical Workers also had its own female organizations during different periods of the past hundred years. Yet the issue of female-only organizations has been contested terrain between men and women in times of upheaval and crisis. In the last 30 years, it has been

118


more accepted and women have created strong organizations that have been very forceful in promoting equal rights and equal treatment in the printing industry. An example of one group of workers who gained from union pressures are the teletype operators, mainly women and students. In the technological process of change from lead type to computer bytes, teletype labor disappeared and teletype operators lost their jobs. One of the demands the union made in the early 1970s on behalf of the teletype operators was that the women should be given the opportunity to get a craft certificate in preprinting, and start to work with computers. The biggest newspaper in Bergen, for example, had 27 unskilled teletype operators. They were all offered apprenticeships.10 One of the women, 28-years-old, said; I worked five and a half years as a teletype operator before I started the apprenticeship. I did not choose. I was just told: “Now it is your turn.” I would get lower wages in the nine weeks I was on a course, and I discussed it with my live-inpartner. Could we afford it? But I was not aware that I was going to gain the double of what I had as a teletype operator. I earn twice what my partner earns, (personal interview, May 8, 1989) Women’s right to education and to work side by side with men in the labor market has also been followed up with a Norwegian family policy focusing on men’s duties in relation to housework and childcare. In part of my research project, I focused on how this policy was experienced in the everyday life of the apprentices. If they lived together with a partner, how did they cope? What was their outlook on the future? Did they see themselves as future mothers or as future workers? How did they perceive the possibility of combining work life and family life? How do they look upon sharing childcare and housework with their partners? SHARING AND CARING Thirty years ago, the typical recruit to the printing industry was the 15-yearold lad who often had a family background in the printing industry. He would finish compulsory grammar school and a half-year course in the vocational school before starting on an apprenticeship contract with a factory. He would marry at the average age of 22, possibly a girl he had met in vocational school where she attended a home economics class. Norway’s home economics colleges have a strong traditional view of men and women as belonging in different spheres of work.11 The hegemonic ideology of the


119

times was that skilled workers in the printing industry were men who earned enough to support a full-time homemaker (Mjelde, 1996, 2001). Sons inherited skilled positions in the printing shop from their fathers. Daughters were not invited into their fathers’ domain. Today it might be different (see Lindgren, 2001). Sixty-five percent of the 60 women surveyed had a working-class background, 25% had fathers in the skilled working class, and 25% had fathers in the printing industry. When asked who influenced their decisions to enter the printing industry, 6% said it was their mother, and 30% said it was their father.12 The majority of women interviewed had a lot of educational and work experience before they entered their apprenticeship. Seventy-three percent were over 20 years of age; the oldest was 38.13 Seventy percent of the women in the project had their baccalaureate degree, that is, 3 years of general education after compulsory school (the gymnasium or academic high school). Twenty percent had finished further education, such as training to be schoolteachers, kindergarten teachers, child welfare workers, or hairdressers. One of the questions I posed was whether they would want to continue to work if they had children.14 Eighty percent said they wanted to continue their work, while 14% wanted to stay at home. Forty-three percent of the women had a partner, but they were not living together. Fifteen percent were cohabitants outside marriage, and 12% were married; 30% did not have a relationship. The majority of the women’s partners were skilled workers (49%), 10% were self-employed in crafts or industry, and two of the men were office workers, two had higher administrative positions, and five were academics or in higher education. For the past 20 years, the Nordic countries have promoted a family and labor market policy aimed at easing women’s participation in the labor market, while at the same time enabling them to raise a family. Fifty-two weeks of maternity leave, a compulsory 4 weeks of paternity leave and a 35hour workweek have been established. This has been undertaken in order to give women equal opportunities in the workforce as well as to ease men more and more into participating in housework and childrearing. Norway and Sweden have had officially appointed commissions to evaluate the male role (Tallaksen, 2001). The Norwegian “Commission on the Male Role,” in 1991, published its final report that contains the following (cited in Tallaksen, 2001): Gender equality work, insofar as it has unilaterally changed girls and women’s choices of education and work, represents a beacon in the nurturing and welfare of society. This includes the welfare that is created through fam-ily and social networks, and that which is established through public

120


institutions. It is a great challenge for gender equality to focus on men’s responsibility for care and welfare, both in terms of recruiting for various types of socially necessary care-giving careers, and to putting and eliminating the practice of work allotment by gender, (p. 230) Parental leave of absence in connection with childbirth was significantly extended in the 1980s and 1990s (Ellingsæter, 2000). Currently the leave consists of 52 weeks with 80% compensation, or 42 weeks with 100% compensation. The leave has a mother quota, which is directed at protecting biological motherhood: altogether 3 weeks before and 6 weeks after birth. There is a father quota, of 4 weeks, which is lost to the parents if not taken by the father. The parents may share the rest of the leave, as they prefer. One of the guiding concepts of Nordic gender equality politics during the past 20 years has been that fathers should take parental leave. Research in the 1980s showed huge variations between the Nordic countries. In 1986, every seventh father had the opportunity to establish close contact with his newborn child in Finland; while in Denmark and Iceland every 33rd father did. In Sweden every fifth child had a home caring father for a period of time. It was an exception for men in Norway to take out parental leave at that time. Today it has become part of the natural order for most men. Eighty percent of new fathers take out their quota in order to care for their newborn infants.15 It has become customary to share the right of staying home with a newborn child, 50% for women and 50% for the men. Many of the women in the apprenticeship project stated their intention of sharing half and half even as early as 1987. The women put economic arguments forward. Anne, an interviewee, said: “I earn twice what he earns. The person who earns the least must stay at home if we have a child. I will never stop working. His suggestion is that he can stay at home. I am sure he will manage” (personal interview, May 8, 1987). Fatherhood is put on the political agenda in Norway in a new way. There are more ways to be a father today than there were 20 years ago (Løkke, 2000). It has become a guiding idea of Nordic gender equality politics that fathers taking parental leave will promote gender equality generally in the family. While employment for women was the main policy issue in the 1980s, the caring father, and thus the domestication of men is now one of the main concerns. The father quota is based on the assumption that, in order for men to share in practical care, they have to be subjected to mild structural coercion (Ellingsæter, 1999). However, the results of this research project shows that many of the cohabitating partners of the women apprentices appear to be willing to take the opportunity for time off their labor situation in order to take care of children and housework.16


121

On the question of division of labor on the home front, I found that 53 of the women printing apprentices felt that the housework should be shared equally between men and women. Five of the young women felt that the main responsibility was theirs. The unmarried cohabitants were all in favor of equal sharing, but what they really meant by this: “who was sharing what” seemed full of complexities. Different arrangements were presented in the interviews. Tone, who cohabited with a chimney sweep, is a 25-yearold apprentice in preprinting in a small firm. She said: “He comes home early so he cleans the house and makes dinner. He is a chimney sweep and he is at home at 1:30 p.m. I come home to a ready made dinner every day” (personal interview, May 8, 1987). Inger Lise (28-years-old) had been cohabitating for 9 years with a social science student, She said: “In our home it is I who have the main responsibility. I make the dinner, for example: I make it in the morning when I work the afternoon shift. He puts it in the microwave when he comes home. But I do not feel it should be that way. It has just happened” (personal interview, May 8, 1987). Another important public policy measure in Norway, as elsewhere, is access to high-quality public childcare. Public daycare plays an important part in the everyday life of parents. There have been heated public discussions in Norway about what is best for the child, home care or kindergarten. I asked the women what they thought would be best for their children: to be home with their child or kindergarten? Fifty percent felt that a combination of kindergarten and homecare was the best, 37% kindergarten, while 8% felt it was the best for one parent to be at home. One big political controversy in Norway has been the provision of a sufficient amount of public daycare facilities. Kindergarten places have been difficult to obtain. Some of the apprentices had children, and Anne said: We are lucky to have daycare. We are both apprentices and we got a place because of that The father starts work at 8:15 a.m., so he takes the child to the kindergarten. He has been in the same kindergarten since he was 3 years old. We are lucky, (personal interview, May 8, 1987) Anne starts work at 7 a.m. but the daycare does not open till 8 a.m. Her cohabitant does not start till 8:15 a.m., so he takes care of this task. She also describes the sharing of everyday chores between them: “I write the shopping lists and he shops. He does everything connected with the washing clothes, dishwashing and cleaning the house. We manage very well. We do not fight much. I do not like housework” (personal interview, May 8, 1987).

122


CONCLUSION Advanced capitalist societies have experienced profound reorganizations in both work and family life during past decades. Yet women’s participation in the labor market and the adherence to the ideology of women’s place differ from country to country. It also changes according to supply and demand of labor power during varying periods of prosperity and depression, In times of depression the competition for labor intensifies, and arguments concerning women’s place and Kinder, Kirche, Kuche intensifies. The former Prime Minister of West Germany, Helmut Kohl, argued in 1990 that one way to solve the unemployment question in a united Germany was to get the women back to the kitchen. Ninety-five percent of the women in the former German Democratic Republic had been on the labor market, compared to only 45% in West Germany. Fukuyama(1997) in The End of Order said that women in control of their bodies and their finances have led to the great disruption of the nuclear family. Still the Nordic countries have taken considerable strides away from a traditional male breadwinner ideology and toward dual breadwinning. The new challenges are posing new questions about the form and content of vocational education in this time of transition and change. Traditional masculinity and femininity are challenged, both in work and school and family life. During the last 30 years, an entire new body of knowledge in the area of gender-based division of labor, masculinity and femininity emphasizes new questions critical of traditional science.17 Gender research has contributed new perspectives, and new research on males and masculinity has revealed new insights. Glucksmann (1995), for instance, shows a way of analyzing gender and class in relation to the total social organization of labor in society. Research on women and gender has passed through various phases during this time. In Norway, gender researchers state that the present situation of both breadwinning and domestic and sharing tasks has constituted a revolution for middle-class women; but, to a certain degree, they have overlooked the plight of working-class women in vocational education and their position on the manual labor market. The gender revolution has led to new questions being posed and the promotion of a policy of gender equality in family and working life both in the middle and working classes. Efforts toward equal sharing in caring are now part of the natural order. The printing apprentices seem to have taken to this policy like ducks to water. One of my questions to them explored their interests in the issue of gender equality. The 60 women had various comments. They said they were interested in some aspects of women’s liberation, but many did not feel oppressed. Pia stated:


123

I am concerned with gender equality where it really counts. I don’t jump up and demonstrate because a rooster instead of a hen is sitting atop of the church spire. It seems to me that some of the traditional division of labor is O.K. I think equality is just fine—equal pay for equal work. I refuse to believe that we are weaker than the boys, (personal interview, April 25, 1989) I am ending this chapter in support of Pia. NOTES 1

National socialism in Germany exemplifies this in its most simplistic form, with its insistence on women’s place being Kinder, Kirche, Kuche [Children, Church, Kitchen], built on the sociobiological thinking of the times (Mjelde 2001; see also Ellingsæter, 2000). 2 Norway for the time being is in strong need of labor power due to the oil economy. 3 Laws and policies governing the educational system in Norway are created by parliamentary decisions. Education is public and free of charge. Few private schools exist. 4 The ideal of the nuclear family was in ascendancy in Norway in the period from 1945–1965—a middle-class notion that promoted father-as-breadwinner rhetoric. 5 The pattern of vocational education in Norway today is 2 years in uppersecondary school and 2 years of apprenticeship in most trades. 6 This should perhaps not be very surprising. There are a huge variety of specific conditions between different trades. Yet many trades are physically hard and can also be tough male working-class bastions with their special norms and values built up over the past hundred years. If one has another option, it might be tempting. Even males in the auto mechanic industry and the building trades do not often maintain the necessary physical energy and stamina for an entire lifetime of labor. 7 Competition has been strong for the available places in the printing classes in the vocational fields in Norway. In the school year of 1986, there were 550 applicants for the 110 available places. The girls were better qualified than their male counterparts. 8 The main data gathering took place from 1987 to 1989 in 25 factories in Oslo and Bergen. I used a semi-structured questionnaire for the interviews with 60 female apprentices, as well as 25 owners and 25 shop stewards. I also had close connections with the Norwegian Union of Graphical Workers. Both the Union and the Employers Union helped me to get access to the workplaces and helped

124


with obtaining permission to conduct the interviews during working hours. I conducted new interviews with the deputy chairman of the Union, Anders Skattkjær, in 2001. 9 Mayer and Schutte (1983) showed that the same thing happened in Germany in the 1980s. 10 Paragraph 20 of The Act of Apprenticeship permits workers who have been in certain preapprenticeship fields for 5 years to get additional training and present themselves for the craft examination. 11 Annfelt (1989) showed in an interesting thesis that the Norwegian Home Economics College was no longer in line with the gender equality promotion in society. It still promoted a traditional female and male sphere. That might have changed during the last decade. 12 Eighty-five percent of the mothers were working outside the home; 25% were skilled workers, 65% were in the unskilled labor force, such as homehelpers, shop assistants, and factory workers. None of the skilled workers were in printing. 13 Apprenticeship in Norway has traditionally been developed for youngsters between 15 and 20 years old. 14 Three of the respondents said that they did not want children. 15 The present government has proposed to increase the father quota to 12 weeks. 16 These issues were also on the agenda in Norway in the 1970s. The pioneer in this field is the Norwegian sociologist Grønseth (1975). He led a project: “The Man also as a part-time Participant in Working Life” arguing for women’s and men’s equal share in working life and care-work. 17 Even Bourdieu (1998) entered this arena with his book, La Domination Masculine.

REFERENCES Aarebrot, R. (1991). Finsk skolereform fra Koskenniemi til i dag med sœrlig henblikk på de praktiske fag [Finnish school reforms from Koskenniemi till today, especially related to the practical subjects]. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Annfelt, T. (1989), Utdanning, normer og verdier. En analyse av verdiformidlingen i husstellfaglig lœrerutdanning [Education, norms and values: An analysis of the value of mediation in home economics teacher education]. Unpublished masters thesis, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. Bourdieu, P. (1998). La domination masculine. Paris: Editions de Seuil. Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.C. (1977). Reproduction in education, society and culture. Beverley Hills, CA: Sage.


125

Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America. New York: Basic Books. Chariot, B. (1987). L’école en mutation. Crise de l’école et mutations sociales. Paris: Payot. Ellingsæter, A.L. (1999). Dual breadwinners between state and market. In R. Crompton (Ed.), Restructuring gender relations and employment: The decline of the male breadwinner (pp. 40–59). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Ellingsæter, A.L. (2000). Modernitet og forståelser av kjønn. Problemet med mange navn [Modernity and understandings of gender: A problem with many names]. In F.Engelstad (Ed.), Kunnskap og Refleksjon. 50 års Samfunnsforskning [Knowledge and reflection: 50 years of social research] (pp. 149–172). Oslo, Norway: Institutt for satnfunnsforskning. Fukuyama, F. (1997). The end of order. London: The Social Market Foundation. Gaskell, J. (1992). Gender matters from school to work. Toronto, Canada: OISEPress. Gaskell, J. (1995). Making it work: Gender and vocational education. In J.Gaskell & J.Willinsky (Eds.), Gender in/forms curriculum: From enrichment to transformation (pp. 59–76). Toronto, Canada: OISE Press. Glucksmann, M. (1995). Gender and the “total social organization of labor.” Gender, Work and Organization, 2, 275–294. Gramsci, A. (1957). The modern prince & other writings. New York: International Publishers. Grønbeck Hansen, K. (1993). Kvalifisering til maskulinitet og underordning. De maskuline bastioner i erhvervs-uddannelserne [Qualification to masculinity and subordination: The bastions of masculinity in vocational education]. In A.M. Nielsen, C.Stormhøj, D.M.Søndergaard, I.Frimodt-Møller, K.Grønbeck Hansen, & T.R.Eriksen (Eds.), Køn i forandring [Gender in change]. 213–224). Copenhagen, Denmark: Forlaget Hyldespjæt. Grønseth, E. (1975). Work-sharing families: Adaptation of pioneering families with husband and wife in part-time employment. Acta Sociologica, 18(2), 202–221. Håland, K. (2001). Kontantstøtten. Et veiskille i norskfamiliepolitikk [The cash benefit scheme: Norwegian family policy at a crossroad]. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Trondheim, Trondheim, Norway. Hernes, G., & Knudsen, K. (1976). Om utdanning og ulikhet [On education and inequality]. Oslo, Norway: NOU (Norwegian Official Report) No. 46. Høst, H., & Michelsen, S. (2001). The new careworker—Expanding the apprenticeship system into new fields of work. In P.Gonon, K.Haefli, A.Heikkinen, & I.Ludwig (Eds.), Gender perspectives on vocational education: Historical, cultural and policy aspects (pp. 207–225). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. Høst, H., & Skarpenes, O. (2000). Fagopplœring i småbedrifter under nye vilkår [Vocational education in small enterprises under new conditions]. Bergen, Switzerland: AHS Serie B. Karninen, M. (1994). The vocational education of girls in Finland 1917–1939. In A. Heikkinen (Ed.), Vocational education and culture: European prospects from history and life history (pp. 177–188). Hæmeenlina, Finland: University of Tampere Press.

126


Lindgren, A. (2001). Male and female identities in higher vocational education in Sweden. In P.Gonon, K.Haefeli, A.Heikkinen, & I.Ludwig (Eds.), Gender perspectives on vocational education: Historical, cultural and policy aspects, (pp. 253–278). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. Livingstone, D.W. (1987). Upgrading and opportunities. In D.W.Livingstone (Ed.), Critical pedagogy and cultural power (pp. 125–136). Cambridge, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers. Løkke, P.A. (2000). Farsrevolusjonen. Fedre og maskulinitet i en ny tid [The Fatherrevolution: Fathers and masculinity in a new age]. Oslo, Norway: Pax. Mayer, C., & Schutte, I. (1983). Zur Situation von Mœdchen in der Berufsausbildung. In C.Mayer, H.Kruger, U.Rabe Kleberg, & I.Schutte (Eds.), Mœdchen und Frauen. Beruf und Biographic (pp. 53–84). Munich, Germany: Verlag Deutsches Jugendinstitut. Mjelde, L. (1975). Bygningsarbeid, mannfolkyrke eller? [Building worker, male occupation or not?]. Kvinnens Årbok [Women’s Yearbook] (pp. 106–112). Oslo, Norway: Pax. Mjelde, L. (1984). Between schooling and work: Women and vocational training in Scandinavia. Resources for Feminist Research (Toronto: OISE), 13(1), 15–16. Mjelde, L. (1987). From hand to mind. In D.Livingstone (Ed.), Critical pedagogy and cultural power (pp. 205–222). Cambridge, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Mjelde, L. (1990). Labor and learning: The apprenticeship project 1982–85. Interchange, 22(4), 34–48. Mjelde, L. (1992). Kjønn, arbeidsdeling og forandring i den grafiske bedriften [Gender, division of labour and change in the printing industry]. In L.Mjelde & A.L.Tarrou (Eds.), Arbeidsdeling I en brytningstid. Yrkespedagogiske utfordringer i skole og arbeidsliv [Division of labour in times of upheaval: Vocational pedagogical challenges in school and working life] (pp. 27–40). Oslo, Norway: Ad Notam Gyldendal. Mjelde, L. (1993). Apprenticeship: From practice to theory and back again. Joensuu, Finland: University of Joensuu Press. Mjelde, L. (1996). Dinner through text: The advent of domestic science and housewife ideology in Norwegian education. In A. Heikkinen (Ed.), Gendered history of vocational education: European comparisons (pp. 135–149). Hæmeenlinna, Finland: University of Tampere Press. Mjelde, L. (2001). From factory and housework to oil and caring: Changes in girls’ education in the vocational fields during the years of Reform 94. In P.Gonon, K. Haefeli, A.Heikkinen, & I.Ludwig (Eds.), Gender perspectives on vocational education: Historical, cultural and policy aspects (pp. 235–252). Bern. Switzerland: Peter Lang. Mjelde L. (in press). Women and apprenticeship: Industrial, technical, skilling, and gendering changes in the printing industry in Norway. In A.Lindgren (Ed,), Vocational education in transition. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. Møller, E. (2000). Et eksempel på etablering og utvikling av veiledning med klassesfyrere, for a synliggjøre og ivareta jenter som minoritet i klassen på tradisjonelle guttefag [An example of establishing and developing counselling for form masters, in order to make visible and take care of girls as minorities in classes in traditonal male occupations]. Unpublished thesis. Akershus, Norway: Akershus University College.


127

Statistisk Sentralbyrå (Statistics Norway). (2001). Aktuell utdanningsstatistikk, Videregående opplœring Nøkkeltall 2000 [Current educational statistics. Further education. Key numbers 2000] (p.5). Oslo, Norway: Statistisk Sentral byrå. Stig, B. (1989). Glade for grafiske job [Happy with jobs in printing]. Grafiske arbeidere, 5, 24–25. Strauss, S. (1982). Traitors to the masculine cause: The men’s campaign for women’s rights. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Tallaksen, D.W. (2001). From housework and factory to oil and caring: Men in nursing? In P.Gonon, K.Haefeli, A.Heikkinen, & I.Ludwig (Eds.), Gender perspectives on vocational education: Historical, cultural and policy aspects (pp. 227–234). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. Tanguy, L. (1985). Academic studies and technical education: New dimensions of an old struggle in the division of knowledge. Sociology of Education, 58, 20–33.

8 Gender and the New Economy— Enterprise Discourses in Canada: Implications for Workplace Learning and Education Tara Fenwick University of Alberta, Canada

Contemporary analyses of gender in work, vocational education, and workplace learning in Canada should be framed within discourses of the socalled New Economy, which have become pervasive in policy and programs addressing labor and learning. While contested and multifaceted, these discourses generally celebrate the gradual shift from Canada’s heavily resource-based economy in agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and mining with some heavy industry, to technology development, knowledge production, and information management. The New Economy discourses (Beck, 1995) embed other beliefs, by now familiar, in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries: human capital approaches to education and development; the so-called inevitability of globalized competition and accelerated change; time-space compression in work activity; flexibility in work structures and employment relationships; and a supposed need for continuous innovation and adaptation. In Canada, the liberal federal government’s celebration of entrepreneurial enterprise as an attractive employment form for turbulent times also became prominent in the 1990s (Industry Canada, 1999). Consequently, continuous (vocational) learning and training are promoted for everyone as critical to survival in the New Economy (HRDC, 2002). Despite some evidence disputing the premises of the continuous learning discourse,1 higher educational levels and participation in training are frequently linked to higher income, job satisfaction and overall satisfaction with work-life balance in Canada (Duxbury & Higgins, 2001). A closer look at the current emphasis on promoting workplace learning through wider access and more holistic approaches reveals that gendered inequity persists both in access to and experience of these learning

130


opportunities. Gender is second only to class as a key dimension of inequities in workplace learning (Field, 2000). In Canada these are related partly to persistent gendered work conditions affecting women in selfemployed enterprise, so-called post-Fordist workplaces, and traditional organizations alike. They are also influenced by inequities that Probert (1999) and others argued are built into human capital ideology and knowledge economy discourses, in gendered determinations of skill and overall work intensification for women. Yet these structural inequities can be masked in the current neo-liberal2 political economy of Canada, where ideals of self-reliance and individualist pursuit of unlimited choice tend to frame equity issues as barriers experienced by individuals generally; the implication is that individuals simply need to be empowered to take responsibility for creating their own economic opportunity. Eyre, Lovell, and Smith (2003) showed how a feminist critique of gender politics in education has been driven to the backbenches in the current sociocultural climate of Canada. If this is a valid claim, and the following discussion provides further evidence that it is, arguably there may be some urgency to arrest this erosion of feminist voices that challenge women’s segregation and oppression in paid work and work-related learning and education. This chapter explores women’s participation in work-related education through the lens of the New Economy, including entrepreneurial enterprise. What gender-based issues related to work and training have emerged in Canada’s changing economy? What are the current provisions for girls’ vocational education and women’s training and development, and to what extent are these satisfactory? What further particular needs for vocational education can be identified for girls entering the labor market of the New Economy with some emphasis on enterprise? Following a brief description of the changing nature of work in Canada’s pursuit of the New Economy, these three questions are addressed in turn, drawing largely but not exclusively from Canadian examples. THE NEW ECONOMY AND ENTERPRISE IN CANADA As a large landmass with relatively low population density, Canada’s 10 provinces and 3 territories each have distinct cultural and social histories shaped in part by their economic bases, geography, and political struggles. For example, the 1990s closure of the fisheries in the easternmost province of Newfoundland entailed out-migration, the forced moving of coastal villages and a subsequent series of government-sponsored retraining programs for men and women. These conditions have invoked a very different economic history than that enjoyed in oil-rich Alberta, where world

8. ENTERPRISE DISCOURSES IN CANADA

131

oil prices and a flood of immigrants turned a conservative agricultural-based society into a highly diverse and entrepreneurial volatile boom-bust economy in the latter half of the 20th century. Gender issues are entangled in changing family structures and gender roles, disrupted social fabric, and new opportunities linked to these changes. When determining how to view and analyze these issues, vigilance to the blindness of White liberal feminism is essential. For example, in Canada’s Northwest Territories, where indigenous cultures were assaulted by White colonization and forced residential schooling, tribal women are focused on healing broken communities—not gender equity and schooling (Eyre et. al., 2003). The First Nation question looms large in discussion of racialized labor and vocational training, for native peoples in Canada struggle against a colonized heritage, cultural and physical abuse that have grossly marginalized their participation in both the economy and public education system. Furthermore, despite Canada’s liberal multicultural policies promoting tolerance of difference, and Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms preventing explicit discrimination on the basis of race, gender, or religion, immigrant and visible minority workers continue to be exploited and excluded from full equity in economic and educational opportunity (Bannerji, 1997). In the 1990s, Canada’s economy and its workers were assaulted by high interest rates, a low exchange rate for the Canadian dollar relative to the U.S. dollar, a slowdown in the U.S. economy, the introduction of the hated General Sales Tax, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and accelerated global competition. A record high level of bankruptcies resulted, and unemployment levels remained above 10% for the first half of the decade (1990s), finally declining by the end of 1999 (Statistics Canada, 2000b). The recession of the early 1990s was followed by a jobless recovery of organizational cost-cutting measures, downsizing, and restructuring (Lowe, 2000). Dramatic government cutbacks in most provinces targeted all public sectors, including education at all levels (Lowe, 2000). For employees, these conditions meant declining living standards as after-tax incomes (taking inflation into account) dropped, generating a greater need for both parents in a family to work to maintain a decent standard of living. Accelerated technological change has helped polarize the Canadian labor force into those with good jobs, those with bad jobs and those with no jobs at all (and little hope of getting one; Lowe, 2000). Lowe and Schellenberg (2001) contended that a general decline in secure, lifelong career employment in Canada led to decreased morale and increased job insecurity and stress during the 1980s and 1990s. Duxbury and Higgins (2001) suggested that employees who are worried about finding and keeping a job (i.e., those in low-paid and low-skilled jobs, those without the education and skills to compete in the New Economy, those whose family situation makes it difficult to relocate, and those whose families are highly dependent on

132


their incomes) may be more likely to accept nonsupportive, unhealthy, and abusive working conditions. The federal policy priorities at the end of the 1990s were twofold: to promote workplace productivity especially through innovation, including improved human resource management and investment in people; and to improve quality of working life, enabling better work-family balance and a greater sense of economic security (Lowe, 2000). A neo-liberal approach to education and learning pervades government policy and programs at federal and provincial levels, as shown in various analyses of market-oriented education spreading throughout Canada in the 1990s (Kachur & Harrison, 1999; Smith, 1999; Spencer, 2001; Taylor, 2001). The Conference Board of Canada is one of several right-wing agencies declaring periodic crises in vocational training, such as Canada’s so-called slide in productivity, lagging skills in technology, brain drain to the United States, and lower scores in international math and science tests. In 1992, the Conference Board released a list of desirable employability skills (McLaughlin, 1992), which has been widely circulated in educational curriculum and training documents despite critical challenge to its broad-based, gender-biased, Anglocentric, managerial-professional orientation (Taylor, 1998). A special focus on enterprise development has emerged in Canadian policy alongside general enthusiasm for the New Economy. As Hughes (1999) showed, federal initiatives have directed funds at research, enterprise seed funding, training, and employment insurance provisions for the selfemployed. These programs promote an enterprise culture with its neoliberal ideals of self-reliance, economic individualism, and innovative selfinitiative. Entrepreneurship also has been perceived as one solution to persistently high unemployment (which remained around 10% in the 1990s). Support has particularly been extended to women’s enterprise development, as well as to youth and aboriginal peoples. While self-employed women represented only 13.9% of all employed women in Canada by 1999, the acceleration of women’s entry into entrepreneurship has been significant in the mid to late 1990s. Statistics collected in 1997–98 found that women were starting businesses in Canada at two to five times the rate of men (Industry Canada, 1999), and five times as many women as men were entering homebased business (Soldressen, Fiorito, & He, 1998). Industry Canada claimed: “Canada ranks first in the OECD in terms of female representation in unincorporated self-employment” (1999, L3). The government views this trend as positive in terms of economic and personal opportunity for women. The federal report, entitled Shattering the Glass Box (1999), portrayed entrepreneurship as a vehicle for women’s emancipation from gendered segregation and discrimination in work organizations and the labor market.


133

New Economy discourses of employability, enterprise, and human capital are clearly evident in Canada’s new Innovation Strategy (HRDC, 2002), premised on the belief: Increasingly, success in the knowledge-based economy requires individuals who are creative and who have highly developed problem-solving and communication skills…. By providing opportunities for all Canadians to learn and to develop their skills and abilities, we can achieve our commitment to economic growth and prosperity and demonstrate our social values of inclusion and equality, (p. 6) The perceived challenges in Canada’s vocational education that have catalyzed this call to action for better-developed workers are conceptualized from employers’ perspectives, whereby useful skills and skill shortages are defined by jobs with the greatest status and market yield in a New Economy of technology and information. These challenges are described as shortages of people in the highly skilled trades (HRDC, 2002, p. 8), a “looming demographic crunch that will exacerbate these skill shortages” (p. 8); Canadian children lacking the skills “to live and work to their full potential” (p. 13); youth “disadvantaged” by low literacy, behavioral problems and low skills; and persistent “concerns about schooling quality” (HRDC, 2002, p. 17). The word gender never occurs in this document, and women as a group with particular concerns are referred to only once. Work-family conflict is portrayed as harmful to family income, and therefore to children’s skill development. This gender-biased, market-based individualist approach to vocational education, framing economic solutions as increased participation in lifelong learning, is a familiar tenet of neo-liberal ideology. GENDER-BASED ISSUES IN WORK AND TRAINING What have these currents meant for girls and women’s employment and training? Canada’s new Innovation Strategy represents a dramatic change from the 1970s, when a Royal Commission led to the establishment of the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women (CACSW) and provincial status of women groups. Although the Royal Commission did not lead to many hoped-for changes, specifically in aboriginal women’s rights, daycare, and abortion, women’s rights specifically did become enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms ratified in 1982 (Eyre et al., 2003). Since then, federal governments have made commitments to women’s equality at three UN world conferences by adopting the conventions. Yet with funding cuts, increased trade liberalization, and privatization of government services,

134


women’s issues gradually slipped out of the national agenda. By the 1990s, federal and provincial women’s advisory councils that voiced gender inequities in the workplace and advocated for policies and programs to address these (i.e., CACSW, 1991) were shut down or disbanded. Government programs specifically allocated to address structural inequity and support women’s training and career development, such as the Canadian Jobs Strategy initiatives of the 1980s, were almost all discontinued (McFarland, 1999). Today Canada is not unlike other developed nations in the persistence of gendered divisions in paid and unpaid labor despite decades of feminist protest. These continue to create barriers to women’s motivation and ability to participate in formal and informal learning opportunities. More fundamentally, notions of skill that pervade current training programs are gendered, and the post-Fordist workplaces of continuous learning championed by the New Economy generate gendered challenges particularly experienced by women. Finally, women in enterprise face gendered barriers in both vocational learning and business development, a limitation that somehow escapes the popular evangelism of women in entrepreneurship. All of these conditions have important ramifications for women’s vocational learning, as argued in the following sections. Gendered Division of Paid Labor Despite the dramatic increase in the number of Canadian women participating in paid labor since the 1970s, they continue to be segregated in service, banking, clerical, and hospitality-related occupations where pay and career options are lower (Statistics Canada, 2000a). Women in Canada earn an average 72.8% of men’s earnings, dropping to 67.3% for self-employed women, and 53.8% for employed minority women (Statistics Canada, 2000a). In the highest paid jobs (senior managers, lawyers, dentists, general practitioners, and so on) women earn an average 66.4% of men, and only 19.7% of women are in them. In the lowest-paid jobs (cashiers, craftspeople, food servers and preparers, laundry, and domestic and childcare workers), 78.4% are women (Thiessen & Nickerson, 1999). About 83% of Canadian women are part-time workers (Statistics Canada, 2000a). Immigrant women in Canada are decertified and often segregated as paid homecare laborers, industrial piece-workers, and cleaners of public spaces, where they experience not only social exclusion and marginalization but also frequent abuse of their rights and physical person, resistance to which would threaten their fragile work permits (Bannerji, 1997). This is why Gaskell (1995) argued that statistics representing women’s work must be disaggregated by class, occupational sector, ethnicity, race, and immigrant status, to avoid the


135

liberal feminist emphases on the needs and gains of White professional or managerial women. These labor divisions and conditions are not unfamiliar in industrialized countries, and their effects on workplace learning are well documented. As Probert (1999) showed, feminized and part-time work provides little training and promotion opportunity. Employers are not likely to invest in the development of workers whose overall human capital contributions are questioned, particularly when viewed as less committed to the organization. Full-time workers receive the most training (management receives the most of all); and Canadian women continue to be underrepresented in management ranks (Thiessen & Nickerson, 1999). Probert (1999) suggested that, therefore, men can move up within an organization while women must rely on externally developed expertise, which can expend personal time and funding more than internal training opportunities. Yet another side of the issue concerns underemployed women. Low-skill jobs are most likely to be held by women (and youth), many of who report that their skills, experience, and education exceed their job requirements (Lowe, 2000). For some members of this group, as Lowe (2000) argued, there is little incentive to participate in further training because workers perceive few opportunities for escaping their condition. Yet winning pay equity does not necessarily rectify women’s work conditions. In a longitudinal study of women in a heavily industrialized area of central Canada, Luxton and Corman (2001) traced the process of women’s struggle to gain access to the heavy industrial jobs mostly held by men, offering more pay, benefits, status, security, and interesting work than the feminized jobs in the area. After the initial victory to enter these jobs, women found themselves facing an ingrained masculinist culture and sexist practices, harassment and resentment by male coworkers for taking jobs from family men or not being at home where they belonged. In terms of work-family conflict, Canadian women report significantly greater role overload, and stress and depression related to work-family balance than men (Duxbury & Higgins, 2001). Role overload for all workers increased significantly from 47% in 1991 to 59% in 2001, which Duxbury and Higgins (2001) linked to new information and communication technologies (i.e., laptops, e-mail, cell phones) and organizational norms that still reward long hours at the office rather than performance. For women, work-role stressors for Canadian women were found to include not only greater demands for childcare but also their concentration in high demand, low discretionary control jobs (i.e., clerical). Therefore, gendered divisions of domestic labor increase Canadian women’s workload and work-family conflict, and gendered divisions of paid work limit their access to jobs with more flexibility and personal control, that in turn facilitate greater ability to balance work-family demands and enjoy greater overall job satisfaction.

136


Gendered Division of Domestic Labor Women’s greater responsibility for childcare and housework in dual-parent families is widely documented (Probert, 1999) and; in Canada, lone parent households are outnumbered by women more than four to one (Statistics Canada, 2000a). While anecdotal and popular media reports suggest some change in men’s participation in child care and housework, the most recent Canadian data reports that women on average spend 69% more hours per week on domestic labor than men (Statistics Canada, 2000a). Thus, little seems to have changed since Hochschild’s (1990) scathing argument that women’s second shift of unpaid domestic work constitutes a gross imbalance of labor in dual-earner families, preventing women from competing vocationally with men. These gendered family responsibilities restrict access to both formal and informal work-based learning opportunities for childcaregivers. Informally, women bearing primary childcare responsibilities find it difficult to participate in learning opportunities of training, special projects, or promotion when these involve travel, conferences, and workshops in offwork hours, as is often the case. Social networks are key sites for workplace learning, and continue to be gender biased in membership, norms and discourses (sports and social clubs are still important in becoming part of a community of practice; Hatfield & Mills, 1999). Gendered Determination of Skill The liberal notion of granting women access to training (i.e., to enable them job parity with men) is a deficit model, ignoring the very structures of such training that exclude women’s knowledge, experiences, and desires. Traditional hierarchies of activity still distinguish between men’s and women’s work knowledge, and reinforce a system of male dominance in craft identity (Probert, 1999). These hierarchies contribute to erasure of women’s talk, forms, and processes of learning. Women’s knowledge developed through childcare and domestic work is often unacknowledged or perceived to reduce their job capability. Invisible skills and work activity, such as relational knowledge or emotional labor are often valued inequitably (Mirchandani, 2001). Gaskell (1995) showed that complex interpersonal clerical work, for example, demands skills and intellectual competencies that must be learned over time, yet these are often considered to be personality factors, or simply part of femininity. Three problems can be identified with this undervaluing of women’s skill and knowledge. First and most obviously, it affects women’s compensation for their work and their ability to pursue advancement. Second and more structurally, it occludes a significant amount of everyday work activity carried out by women in relationship-building, conflict mediation, social organizing, creative problem-solving, knowledge translation, and so on.


137

When this vital community building and its complex social skills are invisible amidst the New Economy discourses of technology and information management, others whose work depends on these social processes fail to recognize how vulnerable the organization is without them. Third, women’s processes of learning are excluded from the planning and delivery of training. Yet more fundamental and consequential even than these arguments is the narrow construction of what constitutes skill within human capital assessments of expertise—a thing to be acquired, ignoring the social context of skill and technology. A significant feminist literature has shown that training is a site of struggle for control of knowledge and power at work, and skill is a subjective notion, traditionally controlled and guarded to protect those in power. Blackmore (1997) showed that while human capital theory treats skill as a measurable attribute of individuals, skill is better viewed as a relational concept whose meaning shifts over time depending on the perceived status of the tasks, the supply of a demand for skilled people, and the ability of the skilled to exclude others. Skills are not neutral, technically defined categories but are socially constructed—trade unions negotiate higher pay rates for their male members, or employers redefine skill levels to reduce costs. Jackson’s (1991) study of gendered skill in Canada called for critical analysis of how working knowledge is organized, whose experience it validates, and whose interests it serves. This affects competency standards for occupations, pay, inclusion in decision making, and organization of training and development initiatives. Gendered Work-Based Learning in the New Economy In the New Economy, workers are expected to adapt flexibly to new jobs and work locations, to become increasingly multiskilled, to adapt to changing technologies, and to develop the skills necessary to perform decision making in self-directed cooperative work teams. This informal learning load has intensified work to a point that excludes women, particularly those carrying family-domestic work responsibilities (Howell, Carter, & Schied, 2002; Probert, 1999). Feminist critics have shown how declarations of the learning organization have presumed workers to be disembodied and universal— obscuring important differences in division of labor, work structure, pay, and support (Devos, 2001; Fenwick, 1997). While the pressure to keep learning is clear, the direction and purpose for learning is not. Workers are constantly vulnerable to skill obsolescence as no one is certain what skills will be most valued in the immediate or long-term future of an organization whose positioning and strategy is determined by management. The post-Fordist emphasis on continuous informal learning and team development may incur overtime, or require willingness to participate in social networking after hours. Probert (1999) argued that these post-Fordist work structures rely on

138


social relationships more than (traditional) labor production, Participation is determined by social criteria of age, gender, and ethnic background. Women’s lack of access to powerful social networks in the workplace, and gendered perceptions-expectations of their ability and commitment, can exclude them from learning opportunities. As Field (2000) showed, little material benefit often accrues to women who do invest significant time and resources in what appears to be the new regime of continuous workplace learning. A recent study completed by Howell et al. (2002) found that the new flexible organizational hierarchies means, for women, increased work and more responsibility without any real voice in important decisions affecting their work. Women were expected to fit coaching of new hires into their already full schedules without compensation, and incorporate training delivery and team-building work without any adjustment to their work responsibilities. For clerical and technical workers, often women, their jobs increasingly comprised activities formerly performed by managerial and professional workers (defining, sequencing, completing, integrating work within larger organizational responsibilities), without increased pay-benefits, recognition, and reduction in other duties. Boundaries between work and home were erased, with the organization positioning itself as the worker’s family who one supported, trusted, and derived life purpose from mutual commitment. Norms embedded in the continuous learner image reinforced the individual as a positive change person, a productive, cheery and positive team player. Not only do such norms reinforce a White, middle class and docile femininity, argued Howell et al. (2002), but they undercut all resistance to gendered work, pay and training as deviant, an irrational refusal to participate in the splendid learning and promotional opportunities of the New Economy. Gendered Enterprise Enterprise is promoted in Canada as a site for full gender equality, economic opportunity, flexibility, freedom, and self-determination (Business Development Bank of Canada, 1999; Industry Canada, 1999). However, literature assessing the actual impact on women has been mixed. Feminist critics have shown issues of self-employed women’s continuing difficulty accessing financing, powerful networks, and resources of support and information (CACSW, 1991; Hughes, 1999). Gendered work division persists in self-employment. Women-owned enterprises tend to be concentrated in gender-segregated, labor-intensive industries (clerical, retail, hospitality, and personal services) where competition is high and rates of return low; women’s enterprises in non-traditional industrial sectors are smaller and yield lower profits than men’s (CACSW, 1991; Hughes, 1999).


139

Looking specifically at home-based women’s enterprises, Mirchandani (1999) showed particular oppression in terms of isolation, blurred lines between work and family, low income, the toll of unacknowledged emotion work, and reduced quality of life. My own qualitative study found that Canadian women who left paid employment for self-employment often experienced dramatic income drops, work expansion and intensification, and continuing work-family conflict despite the so-called benefits of flexibility (Fenwick, 2002). Some women also reported struggles with being treated seriously by banks, suppliers, clients, or competitors, which they attributed to gender discrimination. These issues have been linked with structural issues of continuing gendered divisions of labor combined with specific barriers created by small enterprise in globalized markets. Meanwhile women in enterprise share the same burdens of domestic labor and childcare for which they, like all employed women, continue to bear primary responsibility (Statistics Canada, 2000b). Mirchandani (1999, 2001) also pointed to racialized constructions of work and enterprise that pervade selfemployed women’s work, often confining them to the lowest paying forms of service (piecework, telecommunications, and tailoring) and isolating them in homes where sharply gendered labor divisions and traditional gendered role expectations intensify their stress. In terms of vocational education, training is critical to the survival of women’s new businesses (Brush, 1992; Hughes, 1999). In the process of business start-up, most find themselves launched upon a steep learning curve in multiple disciplines (product development, marketing, accounting, and business operations). They are often isolated from resources, have insufficient funding to stop production long enough to train in these areas, and cannot spare opportunity costs to figure out what they need to know to keep operating (Fenwick, 2002). Self-employed women also often have difficulty accessing capital and social networks that can enable informal or formal learning, mobility, and advancement (Fenwick, 2002), This has been linked with the fact that self-employed women as a group have the lowest income in Canada, lower even than employed nonprofessional women, professional women, and self-employed men (Hughes, 1999). All of these issues, as Mirchandani (2001) argued, doubly disadvantage women who are immigrants or members of an ethnic group or visible minority. FEMALES IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING The literature tends to focus on four barriers inhibiting women’s access to training: family (lack of support); societal structural (poverty, discrimination, lack of sensitivity to race difference, and harassment); bureaucratic (lack of

140


access to information, noneligibility, training allowances, expenses, and childcare), and personal (including lack of self-confidence and knowledge of the system). In terms of training for job entry, McFarland (1999) argued that absence of sponsorship is the most significant barrier to general training for women. In the past, the federal government provided sponsored training through vehicles such as the 1982 National Training Act. Related programs specifically targeted women, including reentry and severely employmentdisadvantaged women, covering tuition, trainee expenses, and direct assistance in transitioning from training to jobs. Problems plagued these programs, such as the short-term focus encouraging training for traditionally feminized, low-paid jobs as in food service and salesclerks, and the skimming of benefits meant for the trainee by the private providers. Yet rather than redesigning the programs, the government withdrew all sponsorship in 1996, which resulted in large drops in women’s enrollment in training and apprenticeship programs. However, education in all provinces is being redirected by the triple forces of globalization, neo-liberalization, and marketization (Barlow & Robertson, 1994; Kachur & Harrison, 1999; Smith, 1999; Taylor, 2001). Fiscal austerity and centralized control over curriculum and finances are evident across Canada (deep funding cuts were initiated in the 1990s as was legislation to reduce the size, numbers, and power of local boards in many regions). The effects are evident to various degrees in different provinces. For instance, Alberta and Ontario saw increased school-work links; enhanced streaming; emphasis on math, science, and technology; quantitative performance measures (provincial standardized testing and tentative statement of national standards); public input to increase accountability and efficiency (parent advisory councils have been established in all provinces); a reorganization of educational governance using business models (students are clients, districts submit business plans, and schools compete for students in an open market); and a general commodification of educational services (Harrison, 1999). In their attack on the creeping influences of the market on Canada’s educational system, Barlow and Robertson (1994) claimed that corporate leaders have three goals: first, “to secure the ideological allegiance of young people to a free-market world view on issues of the environment, corporate rights and the role of government”; second “to gain market access to the hearts and minds of young consumers and to lucrative contracts in the education industry”; and third, “to transform schools into training centres producing a workforce suited to the needs of transnational corporations” (p. 79). An additional issue is the changing assessment of skill gaps in girls, as well as boys. While concern in the 1980s and early 1990s was directed to girls’ perceived lagging participation in math-science and engineeringtechnology courses, a shift to public concern about boys is evident in


141

Canada’s late 1990s (Eyre et al., 2003). Girls score substantially higher than boys in national literacy tests, especially prose, generally outperform boys in school achievement, and report more positive attitudes about school; while boys leave high school in substantially higher numbers than girls, especially in eastern Canada (Thiessen & Nickerson, 1999). An important question here is, how is it that girls can enjoy higher overall educational achievement, but significantly lower economic achievement than boys? What happens or does not happen in girls’ career and vocational education to address this disparity? Girls’ vocational education is difficult to address across Canada since K12 education is a provincial responsibility and curricula vary in different Canadian regions. Examples from two provinces are used here to provide some indication of curricular trends linked to gender and work. In a recent study focusing on gender in education in Nova Scotia, a smaller eastern Maritime province, Eyre et al. (2003) showed that the main approach to vocational education has reflected a progressive ideology of liberal feminism to improve the training of girls, rather than addressing staunch gender inequity and White male privilege embedded in the division of labor and the politics of organizational workplaces. Significant activity in government policy, funding and programs addressing gender equity in work occurred throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Educational initiatives promoted careers of math and science to fix the girls, opened industrial arts classes to girls, encouraged girls to enter college vocational training for nontraditional fields and apprentice trades, and targeted women’s training and retraining. However, Eyre et al. (2003) argued that these gender equity initiatives were sparse, typically one-time grants with little sustainability. In the wake of cutbacks and new worries about Canada’s productivity and competitive capacity, virtual shutdown of such programs occurred in the 1990s. This was accompanied by a perceived rise in women’s economic circumstances, and a shift in gender focus to boys’ issues (including literacy and the feminization of the curriculum). Gender equity was seen as resolved. In Alberta, similar patterns are apparent. One-shot initiatives promoted nontraditional careers for girls and encouraged greater involvement of girls in math, science, and technology. Starting in 1984 all school materials were screened for bias related to gender, race, class, and ability portrayals through a centralized program of tolerance and understanding. These efforts can be characterized as liberal attempts to promote equality for all, without seriously addressing structural inequity, Bach (2000), in her study of the lives and education of Alberta teenaged girls, wrote: “the evaded curriculum within the lives of girls, a curriculum that abstains from lived experiences, one that distorts and avoids a commitment to life by disconnecting dimensions of our told stories, a curriculum that silences life” (p. 11). Then all attention to gender equity faded in 1993 with the installation of an economically neoconservative government that immediately downsized and

142


privatized many services. Charter schools, school-based budgeting, and educational business plans were introduced; open school boundaries led to competitive marketing, and incentives for school-business partnerships were common (Taylor, 1998, 2001). Vocational education with emphasis on technology was made a priority, and reorganized around an integrated curriculum called Career, Technology, and Society (CTS). Comprised of 22 streams and 650 subjects, CTS offers various entry points to students in grades 7 through 12. Levels of vocational schooling were structured to accommodate nonacademic youth, special needs and at-risk youth, centering attention on ability rather than gender differences. These are competencybased, driven by lists of skills and outcome indicators serving to fragment work and produce employees as technicians trained to follow orders rather than question the conditions of work. A Career and Life Management curriculum was implemented to teach a range of life skills, which predictably has been shunned by students as a low-status program of nonchallenging, taken-for-granted abilities. Gaskell’s (1995) study of vocational education for women in Vancouver (on Canada’s West Coast) found that technical task skills were emphasized, social skills and intellectual competencies downplayed, and docile, passive attitudes rewarded along with uncritical acceptance of employers’ needs. The courses for women focused on low-paid work; clerical, hairdressing, childcare, and food service. Gaskell (1995) concluded that “in secondary school classes, those destined for poorly paid jobs in society are taken aside and taught about work…these are the students destined for the ‘bad jobs’…who have been least affected by the gains for the feminist movement” (p. 2). Given the policy shift away from attention to gender equity in schooling, and the accompanying implication that the gender problem is solved, it is interesting to hear contemporary young women’s voices vis-à-vis their perceptions of work and career looming in their futures. What Looker and Magee (2000) called a gendered disposition is evident in their longitudinal study of 1,200 young people in central and eastern Canada. Most girls desired to have families, but also had similar or higher expectations than the boys for highly skilled, meaningful, highly paid careers. However, girls assumed that they would carry primary responsibility for childcare; 80% assumed that they would need to leave their jobs to have a family. Two further Canadian studies show similar results. While girls are ambitious about their career aspirations, they tend to accept as inevitable their main role in childcare. In a series of focus group interviews with young women in their first undergraduate year, Erwin and Stewart (1997) were surprised to find a resignation to domestic labor that paralleled a 1983 Canadian study conducted by Gaskell. In the late 1990s as it was in the early 1980s,


143

Canadian girls accepted the gendered world of labor asymmetry as inevitable. They anticipated conflicts and personal stress managing family and work, and held a mother-centered image of childcare. While girls reported deep-seated beliefs in women’s rights to make individual choices about careers and children, and voiced a sense of education as critical to their success and their security (“a career to fall back on”), career was viewed as secondary to motherhood in their identity. Overall, Erwin and Stewart (1997) noted the contradictions embedded in the young women’s narratives of experiences and vocational choice. While continuing to believe that equal opportunity exists, they experience discrimination—and tend to frame these as personal issues rather than linked to shared political issues or structural inequities. While voicing strong interest and plans for further education and demanding careers, they continue to attach these to traditional ideas of fulfillment through marriage and family. Hughes-Bond (1998) found a similar assumption among Canadian girls aged 16 to 19, that they would take primary childcare responsibility. The girls stated a desire for work enjoyment, creative challenge, sense of autonomy and authority, and recognition of their individuality, stability and security, but indicated their beliefs that these would be threatened by a male-dominated workplace, underrecognition, limitations to their career advancement as women, and limited choices. These conditions were not voiced as political or collectively felt issues, but as personal issues to resolve; yet the girls viewed career planning in vague, uncertain terms, with inevitable problematic tensions between family and career aspirations (Hughes-Bond, 1998). In these findings is discernible both a neo-liberal market-oriented, individualist ideology and a gendered disposition. In both studies, girls appear to have internalized a personal responsibility both to develop a productive career in which they are to find meaning and creative challenge, and to privately resolve work-family conflicts and gender discrimination that they may experience. NEEDS FOR GENDER-SENSITIVE VOCATIONAL EDUCATION If we accept these findings along with other arguments presented here as evidence of a general denial of structural gender inequity persisting in configurations of work and work-related learning, what implications can be identified for vocational education and training? Four directions for change are outlined here, drawn from recommendations outlined by various writers represented in the preceding sections: gender-sensitive career education for girls; sponsored vocational training for women; management education for gender equity; and critical vocational education in both schools and workplaces.

144


First, Hughes-Bond (1998) suggested that vocational education should validate the worldview expressed by young women, attempting to integrate strength of self with concern for others. Ongoing vigilance is needed to remove sex stereotyping in all educational materials, including female perspectives in vocational and other subject areas, and to promote the construction and dissemination of knowledge-supporting women’s worldviews. More broadly, Gaskell (1995) argued that vocational education must be based on a view of the worker as “a thoughtful actor in a complex world” (p. 7), not a technician trained to follow orders. Clerical education, for example, needs to teach social skills, and acknowledge that technical skills are entwined with the interpersonal. Finally, girls may benefit by career education specifically addressing the likelihood of work-family conflict. Opportunities may be extended for girls to voice their confusion about vocational roles, examine the contradictions embedded in their aspirations to motherhood and career, and develop strategies to clarify their vocational futures in ways that do not rely upon unexamined gendered labor divisions. Second, for women, sponsorship appears to be important for enabling women’s access to training in Canada. Government programs to sponsor tuition and expenses and support women’s learning need to be reinstated, but overhauled. Longer training time is needed to avoid programs focusing on low-skill, low-pay occupations that can be trained in short-term projects. Vigilant scrutiny of training providers must ensure that funds for participants’ childcare, travel expenses, and job-appropriate clothing actually go to the women. Well-planned transition assistance from training to job may improve the success of such programs, including attention placed on developing jobs that maximize trainees’ skills. Finally, if training is to be worthwhile it should be designed according to women’s reported needs. For example, women in enterprise report a strong preference for informal coaching, networking opportunities such as sponsored trade missions, and just-intime task-specific information as more useful and accessible than formal classroom training (Fenwick, 2002). Third, to develop organizations as environments for learning, mutual benefit and commitment to equality, Devos (2001) suggested that educational eiforts should be directed at challenging organizational structures, practices, and language. Diversity training common in the education of managers and human resources personnel, often framed in terms of managing difference, needs to be repositioned toward critical analysis of the gendered nature of work and organizations. Workplaces changing to accommodate increased numbers of women or women entering nontraditional jobs may require training for supervisors, union leaders, and workers to ease the transition, starting with understanding gendered work culture, structures, and practices. Workplace educators and human resource


145

staff should be educated to be aware of how skill is constructed in organizations, how knowledge is valued and rewarded differentially, and what identities and knowledge are excluded (Fenwick, 2002). Managers might be educated to examine organizational policies and practices, determine inherent bias, appreciate difference, distribute opportunities, encourage genuine participation by all workers in decisions affecting their workplace, and examine the extent to which contributions of all are recognized and rewarded. The persistence of underemployment of both women and men in Canada shown by Lowe (2000) and Livingstone (1999) in particular requires address, through intentional and broad-based effort. A richer conception of human resources that captures women’s and men’s full range of skills must examine job conditions for better enabling, using and rewarding their knowledge-through improved job design, organizational environment, recruitment processes, career development, and training opportunities. As Lowe (2000) argued, if the New Economy is based on knowledge-intensive economic activity, we must think about how people can be given opportunities to apply their talents in their jobs on a daily basis, and how workplaces can encourage development of untapped talents. Finally, critical approaches to vocational education for girls and women, as well as men and boys, may help illuminate current inequities facing women both in gendered organizations and work structures, and in balancing work and family. Girls should have opportunities to recognize and ana-lyze their own gendered experiences and the vocational conditions of other women in terms of structural inequities, examining their personal experience and disposition as socially constructed and collectively shared through political and economic currents. Luxton and Corman (2001) suggested that in the aftermath of restructuring, few discourses are available for resistance. People feel impotence in the face of globalization and the pressures to continue learning, and are led by neo-liberal explanations to blame others such as feminists and anti-racists who are perceived to threaten an already precarious economy. Emancipatory vocational education is vital, beginning with critical analysis of the effects of neo-liberal ideology and gendered structures on the workplace, examining the patterns creating increased insecurity and workloads, then helping people take action to resist or transform it. In conclusion, the New Economy and enterprise discourses in Canada with their emphases on individual opportunity, knowledge generation, and continuous learning have emerged amid widespread retraction of government funding and services related to both general education and training and gender equity. Canadian feminist writers (Coulter, 1996; Eyre et al., 2003; McAdie, 1998) argued that attention has been led away from gender equity and larger structural issues by the increased marketization, privatization, and competition of education and training in Canada,

146


accompanied by a new focus on individual responsibility for developing and marketing personal knowledge and skills. As well, gender equity has been added to a long list of other equity issues: racism, homophobia, disability, religion, language—which has neutralized and undermined gender work. As Blackmore (1997) argued, equity has become submerged amid competing demands for outcomes-based accountability, flexible delivery, efficiency, and client focus. Yet statistics show clearly that despite the many changes in Canada’s economy since the early 1980s, Canadian women continue to be economically and culturally disadvantaged by gendered divisions in paid and domestic labor; women earn less, achieve lowered vocational expectations, have less access to learning and advancement opportunity, and suffer greater workfamily conflict and associated stress than men. Perhaps most disturbing, Canadian girls appear to accept these conditions as inevitable despite their educational success and aspirations for meaningful, challenging, well-paying work. As educators we can and must reawaken feminist calls for equity in work and training. Feminist challenge to contemporary discourses of the New Economy, and feminist advocacy for women’s learning and positionality within the market economy can be directed to fashioning more critical vocational education for girls. We need to help them question their assumptions about their own futures. We need to continue questioning loudly who bene-fits in learning-for-earning discourses, how different kinds of learning are valued in the New Economy, and what sort of changes are possible to address the more obvious inequities that persist in work and workplace learning. NOTES 1

Livingstone (1999) established the prevalence of underemployment in Canada, and argued that effort would be better expended in job redesign to mobilize and maximize current skills rather than developing new ones. On more general terms, Coffield (1999) is one of the many writers who showed the lack of empirical evidence supporting the common assumption that increased workplace learning or training activity is causally linked with increased productivity or quality of work. 2 Neo-liberaI in this context refers to a market-focused society in which education and lifelong learning are understood to service the economy. Privatization and deregulation are promoted to limit barriers to free market exchange of resources. Individuals are viewed as having unlimited choice and opportunity to develop themselves and market their skills broadly. While Canada maintains a universal health care system, social services, and other remnants of a welfare state, many have argued that these have been eroded through pressure from economically conservative interests to improve Canada’s productivity and positioning in global markets (Kachur & Harrison, 1999; Welton, 1995).


147

REFERENCES Bach, H. (2000). Lives of girls: A photographic inquiry. Edmonton, Canada: International Institute for Qualitative Research Press. Bannerji, H. (1997). Geography lessons: On being an insider/outsider to the Canadian nation. In L.G.Roman & L.Eyre, Dangerous territories: Struggles for difference and quality in education (pp. 23–41). New York: Routledge. Barlow, M., & Robertson, H.J. (1994). Class warfare: The assault on Canada’s schools. Toronto, Canada: Key Porter Books. Beck, N. (1995). Shifting gears…thriving in the new economy. Toronto, Canada: Nuala Beck and Associates. Blackmore, J. (1997). The gendering of skill and vocationalism in twentieth century Australian education. In A.H.Ahlesy, H.Lauder, P.Brown, & A.S.Wells (Eds.), Education: Culture, economy and society (pp. 224–239). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Brush, C.G. (1992). Research on women business owners: Past trends, a new perspective, and future directions. Entrepreneurs hip Theory and Practice, 16, 5–30. Business Development Bank of Canada. (1999). Women business owners in Canada: Geared towards success [On-line]. Available: strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/mi04735e.html#TOP Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women. (CACSW). (1991). The glass box: Women business owners in Canada Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Advisory Council for the Status of Women, No. 91-E-173. Coffield, F. (1999). Breaking the consensus: Lifelong learning as social control. British Educational Research Journal, 25(4), 479–499. Coulter, R.P. (1996). Gender equity and schooling: Linking research and policy. Canadian Journal of Education, 21(4), 433–452. Devos, A. (2001). Gender, work and workplace learning. In F.Reeve, M. Cartwright, & R. Edwards (Eds.), Supporting Lifelong Learning Vol. 2 (pp. 51–63). London: Routledge. Duxbury, L., & Higgins, C. (2001). Work-life balance in the new millennium: Where are we? Where do we need to go? [On-line]. Ottawa, Canada: CPRN Discussion Paper No. W/12. Available: www.cprn.org Erwin, L., & Stewart, P. (1997). Gendered perspectives: A focus group study of how undergraduate women negotiate their career aspirations. Qualitative Studies in Education, 10(2), 207–220. Eyre, L., Lovell, T.A., & Smith, C.A. (2003). Gender equity policy and education: Reporting on/from Canada. In S.Ali, S.Benjamin, & M.L.Mauthner (Eds.), The Politics of gender and education: Critical perspectives (pp. 67–86). New York: Palgrave. Fenwick, T. (1997). Questioning the learning organization concept. In S.M.Scott, B.Spencer, & A.Thomas (Eds.), Learning for life: Readings in Canadian adult education (pp. 140–152). Toronto, Canada: Thompson. Fenwick, T. (2002). Lady, inc.: Women learning, negotiating subjectivity in entrepreneurial discourses. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 21(2), 162–177.

148


Field, J. (2000). Lifelong learning and the new educational order. London: Trentham Books. Gaskell, J. (1995). Making it work: Gender and vocational education. In J.Gaskell & J.Willinsky (Eds.), Gender in/forms curriculum (pp. 59–76). New York: Teachers College Press. Harrison, T.W. (1999). “The Alberta advantage:” For whom? In T.W.Harrison & J.L.Kachur, Contested classrooms: Education, globalization and democracy in Alberta (pp. 33–44). Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta Press. Hatfield, J.C., & Mills, A.J. (1999). Rules, sensemaking, formative contexts and discourse in the gendering of organizational culture. Proceedings of the Critical Management Studies Conference [On-line], Manchester, England. Available: www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/Research/ej rot Hochschild, A. (1990). The second shift. New York: Avon Books. Howell, S.L., Carter, V.K., & Schied, F.M. (2002). Gender and women’s experiences at work: A critical and feminist perspective on human resource development Adult Education Quarterly, 52(2), 112–127. HRDC. (2002). Knowledge matters: Skills and learning for Canadians: Canada’s innovation strategy. Ottawa, Canada: Human Resource Development Canada (Document SP-482–02–02). Hughes, K. (1999). Gender and self-employment in Canada: assessing trends and policy implications [On-line]. Ottawa, Canada: CPRN Study No. W/04, Changing Employment Relationships Series. Available: www.cprn.org Hughes-Bond, L. (1998). Standing alone, working together: Tensions surrounding young Canadian women’s views of the workplace. Gender and Education, 10(3), 281–297. Industry Canada. (1999). Shattering the glass box: Women business owners and the knowledge-based economy. Ottawa, Canada: Micro-Economic Policy Analysis Branch [On-line]. Available: strategis.ic.gc.ca/sc_ecnmy/mera/egdoc/o4.htm, Jackson, N. (1991). Skills formation and gender relations: The politics of who knows what. Geelong, Australia: Deakin University Press. Kachur, J.L., & Harrison, T.W. (1999). Introduction: Public education, globalization and democracy: Whither Alberta? In T.W.Harrison & J.L.Kachur, Contested classrooms: Education, globalization and democracy in Alberta (pp. xiii-xxxv). Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta Press. Livingstone, D.W. (1999). The education-jobs gap: Underemployment or economic democracy. Toronto, Canada: Garamond Press. Looker, E.D., & Magee, P.A. (2000). Gender and work: The occupational expectations of young women and men in the 1990s. Gender Issues, 18(2), 74–94. Lowe, G.S. (2000). The quality of work: A people-centered agenda. Toronto, Canada: Oxford University Press. Lowe, L., & Schellenberg, G. (2001). What’s a good job? The importance of employment relationships. Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Policy Research Networks, CPRN Study No. W/05, Changing Employment Series. Luxton, M., & Corman, J. (2001). Getting by in hard times: Gendered labour at home and on the job. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. McAdie, P. (1998). The abandonment of the pursuit of equity. Canadian Woman Studies/Les Cahiers De La Femme, 17(4), 6–14.


149

McFarland, J. (1999). Women’s access to training in New Brunswick. Toronto, Canada: York University, Center for Research on Work and Society, Labour Education and Training Research Network, Working Paper Series 99–05. McLaughlin, M. (1992). Employ ability profile: What do employers want? Ottawa, Canada: Conference Board of Canada. Mirchandani, K. (1999). Feminist insight on gendered work: New directions in research on women and entrepreneurship. Gender; Work and Organization, (6(4), 224–235. Mirchandani, K. (2001). Learning self employment: The emotion work of negotiating exclusion. In L.West & N.Miller (Eds.), Proceedings of the Standing Conference on University Teaching and Research in the Education of Adults (pp. 278–281). London: University of East London. Probert, B. (1999). Gendered workers and gendered work: Implications for women’s learning. In D.Boud & J.Garrick (Eds.), Learning in work (pp. 98–116). London: Routledge. Smith, D.G. (1999). Economic fundamentalism, globalization, and the public remains of education. Interchange, 30(1), 93–117. Soldressen, L.S., Fiorito, S.S., & He, Y. (1998). An exploration into home-based businesses: Data from textile artists. Journal of Small Business Management, 36(1) 16–43. Spencer, B. (2001). Changing questions of workplace learning researchers. In T. Fenwick (Ed.), Sociocultural perspectives on learning through work. New Directions on Adult and Continuing Education No. 92 (pp. 31-40). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Statistics Canada (2000a). Women in Canada 2000: A gender-based statistical report. Ottawa, Canada: Author. Statistics Canada. (2000b). Labour force historical review 2000. Ottawa, Canada: Author Catalogue 71F004XCB. Taylor, A. (1998) Employabiliry skills: From corporate “wish list” to government policy. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 30(2), 143–164. Taylor, A. (2001) The politics of educational reform in Alberta. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Thiessen, V., & Nickerson, C. (1999). Gender trends in education and work. Ottawa, Canada: Applied research branch, strategic policy, HR DC, T-00–4E. Welton, M.R. (1995). In defense of the lifeworld: A Habermasian approach to adult learning. In M.R.Welton (Ed.), In defense of the lifeworld: Critical perspectives on adult learning (pp. 11–38), Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

9 Where Are the Women in Vocational Education and Training?: An Assessment of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) in Australia Marg Malloch Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia

Life is shared by men and women and this must be a harmonious process, for the two sexes are complementary and do not stand in opposition to one another. However, in this last quarter of the twentieth century, we are still living in a world made by men for men. A new society, totally free of discrimination based on sex, must therefore be fashioned on the initiative of both women and men. —Borcelle(1985, p. 123) It is difficult to feel anything other than discouraged when considering the general context for women today. There have been advances, of course, particularly in the latter part of the 20th century in Australia. Women have achieved, for example, equal pay for equal work, the ability to pursue any area of study, to apply for jobs in almost every area of employment, and have access to maternity leave, but the lived reality for women is not as equals to men in Australian society. Women earn a third less than men in equivalent positions in 15 industries, across 350 jobs and from 556 companies. In some cases women were paid 50% of male wages for the same work. Women in full-time positions earned 81% of their male counterparts’ salary packages; the implication drawn from this was that women were not as able as men in negotiating salary packages (Carson, 2000b, p. 3). The Australian Centre of Industrial Relations Research and Training predicts that at the current rate of change women would have to wait 177 years to have true equality in the workplace (Carson, 2000a, p. 9).

152


This chapter focuses on women in vocational education and training (VET) in Australia, and more specifically on women in Technical and Further Education (TAFE).1 VET in the state of Victoria is the primary focus of this chapter. The first section provides background information on Australian VET and on recent changes impacting the policies and organizational culture of TAFE. The next section explores the situation of women and girls as students and employees of TAFE. This is followed by an explanation of VET gender policies developed in the 1980s and 1990s and an evaluation of the success of their implementation. The conclusion considers women in the future of the TAFE sector in Australia. BACKGROUND Vocational education and training or technical education prepares people for work in specific occupations (Pocock, 1988). In Australia, vocational and technical education is carried out primarily in TAFE Institutes, which, in Victoria, are autonomous technical education colleges (Goozee, 1993). VET has had a masculine focus throughout its history. In Victoria, formal trade training for young men began in the 1830s with the development of mechanics’ institutes, and from 1870 with the establishment of the Schools of Mines (Ryan, 1982). Technical schools were established to provide trade training and operated from the early 1960s to 1989; the majority were allmale secondary schools that offered trade-oriented curriculum in sheet metal, carpentry, plumbing, technical drawing, mechanical manufacturing, automotive repair, and building studies. There were some technical schools for girls that focused on domestic science subjects, such as sewing and cooking and secretarial studies. Technical schools have been described anecdotally as providing education to the less academically inclined students, those who were good with their hands. These schools became coeducational in the 1970s and merged with mainstream secondary school systems by 1989. The TAFE level of training came into operation in the 1970s as training programs attached to technical schools, and were established as 16 Technical and Further Education Colleges in 1981 (Goozee, 1993). These gained institute status in the 1990s. There are now 14 TAFE institutes in Victoria, 6 metropolitan and 8 regional, and 4 TAFE divisions in universities in Victoria. It is a state-based delivery system overseen by the Australian National Training Authority and the Federal Ministers for Education. The public training system is funded at the state level but operates within a national context, which sets the training agenda and qualifications framework. TAFE institutes are generally organized in departments, faculties, and units based on areas of learning and specialized activities

9. TECHNICAL AND FURTHER EDUCATION

153

located across a number of campuses with a corporate, management, and administration sector. The institutes are allocated a number of student contact hours to fill and this forms the basis of state funding, although they do operate competitively in domestic and international (overseas) markets. Increasingly, the VET sector must earn income from a range of projects, consultancies, and fee-for-service activities because of enrollment changes in the last decade. National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER, 2001) reported the number of students in Australia’s publicly funded VET system increased from around 990,000 in 1991 at an annual growth rate of 5.9%, but slowed to 0.4% in 2000–2001, at 1.76 million in 2001. Since 1991, annual growth was greater for females (6.8%) than males (5.2%). In the 1990s, a series of policy and structural changes were carried out in relation to the delivery of vocational education and training at both national and state levels. This included (for some TAFE institutes) a forced amalgamation with small regional universities, or mergers with other TAFE colleges. Additional changes in the 1990s included the introduction of the national training reform agenda and, more recently, National Training Framework initiatives, which aim to provide a nationally consistent, industry-led system of competencies providing for national qualifications, a skilled workforce, and competitive enterprises (ANTA, 2002). The VET sector is more industry oriented now, with strong emphasis upon the achievement of national qualifications through the National Training Packages. The Australian Qualifications Framework is a national competencybased training agenda for the achievement of industry standards. There is an emphasis on assessment of the achievement of competencies, particularly in the workplace (Smith & Keating, 1997). The National Training Packages consist of industry-based competencies, guidelines for assessment, and the qualifications to be achieved. Learning support and professional development materials are also provided (Smith & Keating, 1997). The Australian Quality Training Framework provides standards for the monitoring of training (ANTA, 2002; Smith & Keating, 1997). The development of an open training market with increased competition from private providers was encouraged in 1998, with both public and private sources of vocational education and training able to become Registered Training Organizations—thus issue national qualifications. The introduction of new learning technologies, information and delivery systems, is addressed through the development of the Australian Flexible Learning Framework, aiming to make VET more flexible and to apply new technologies to VET products and services (ANTA, 2002). The implementation of public sector reforms has meant organizational attention to quality assurance (STS Staff Development Committee, 1997b). The VET sector is in

154


many ways very different from its beginnings in the 1800s. What is consistent is a need to address the situation of women in VET more positively. THE SITUATION OF FEMALE STUDENTS IN TAFE Australia has a gendered workforce in that women tend to be located in stereotypically female occupations such as retail, office administration, nursing, and teaching. The general picture of inequality in women’s employment opportunities is a reflection of the training they undertake. The National Plan of Action for Women in TAFE noted this connection (DEET, 1991): Women continue to experience disadvantage in the labor market. They make up 41.6% of the workforce; 39.5% of women workers have part-time jobs, which are often casual. Women are concentrated in a small number of occupations, and at the bottom of the employment hierarchy. This is reflected in the pattern of women’s participation in TAFE. (p. 5) Though the percentage of women participating in VET training is gradually increasing, female students consistently select highly gendered areas of study at a rate greater than male students. Female students composed the majority in traditionally female-oriented programs such as art, humanities, and the social sciences, and multifield education while male students predominated in fields such as engineering and surveying services (NCVER, 1999, pp. 5–6). Females composed 49.2% of the 1.7 million students in Australia’s public VET sector in 2001, an increase from 45.1% in 1991. Over 13% of all working-age (15 to 64 years) Australian women have participated in some kind of public VET. Just over 63% of female VET students were enrolled in courses leading to an Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) qualification (NCVER, 2001). Approximately 36% of women between the ages of 50 and 64 enrolled in VET programs without seeking a qualification, compared with 70% of women between the ages of 15 and 19 who participated in programs leading to a qualification (NCVER, 2001). Although women’s rate of participation in VET is similar to men’s, their employment outcomes are not. Men usually take full-time employment after graduation, while women are more likely to find part-time employment (NCVER, 2001). Women tend to work in low-paid areas such as clerical, sales, and service, in personal care, and as nursing assistants, while men are


155

more likely to become employed as tradespersons (NCVER, 2001). However, about 22% of women and men were able to move to a higher occupational category after their vocational training. Still, women are mainly located in clerical, sales and service positions and men in the trades (NCVER, 2001). Over 60% of female graduates go to work in low-paid areas such as clerical, sales, and service, in personal care, and as nursing assistants, compared to 18% of males. Forty percent of men take jobs as tradespersons (NCVER, 2001). Females made up the majority of graduates employed in such industries as health and community services (87.5%), education (70.1%), and finance and insurance (70.1%). Male graduates significantly outnumbered female graduates in such industries as mining, whereas men constituted 88% of all graduates employed in these industries, manufacturing (75%), electricity, gas and water supply (73.7%), and construction (90.3%; NCVER, 2001). Butler and Ferrier (2000) present a picture of a masculine culture dominating TAFE: The story of the VET system, its development from technical education, through the TAFE era and the National Training Reform Agenda (NTRA) to the present, shows this masculine orientation to be deeply entrenched and strongly resistant to challenge and change, (p. viii) Pocock (1987) argued that TAFE colleges showed “few signs of any adaptation to the educational needs of women” (p. 11). A significant number of women reported active hostility and sexual harassment including offensive graffiti, girlie posters, leers and comments, particularly from groups of young male students. An equal opportunity officer described her college as having a “sub-rape atmosphere” (Pocock, 1988): There’s the feeling of being looked over by the blokes, the comments and the leers. I suppose that’s because it’s a big college, it’s a “men’s town” and apprentices dominate. It’s hostile to women, though—we even have trouble getting served in the canteen. I feel that hostility, and I’m over 30— how do young kids feel, or older women who are a bit tentative about going back to school anyway? (p. 46)

156


WOMEN EMPLOYEES OF TAFE About 53% of TAFE teachers are female and 47% male. During the period between 1993 and 1998, male full-time employment in TAFE slowly declined while both females and males entered part-time teaching (58% female) and in nonteaching positions (78% female). Men hold 69% of all full-time teaching positions in TAFE and 57% of all positions (PETE, 2000b). Men are also more likely to have continuing teaching contracts, while women tend to be hired on short-term labor contracts. Women’s employment prospects with TAFE have been impacted by an increased emphasis on a disposable, contingent work force. As one interviewee commented: “Most of our women are teachers, increasingly employed part-time and casual on contracts that don’t cover the holidays, so there is the issue of job insecurity” (personal interview, June-August, 2002). Sanguinetti (1998) noted short-term contracts reduced both remuneration and job security. Teachers reported feeling intimidated and coerced by TAFE management personnel who wanted them to accept increased contact hours and reduced leave. TAFE colleges have followed a corporate model that downgraded and devalued teachers while “freeing up” their terms and conditions (Sanguinetti, 1998, p. 199). Areas formerly the province of female teachers, such as English as a second language, communication, and job preparation were absorbed into the Training Package competencies which could be delivered by nonteaching staff. New guidelines now require TAFE to assess VET competencies utilized by students in their workplaces. As a result vocational educators must travel to student work sites to conduct training and assessment activities. While this is an advantage to industry and trainees, educators have become peripatetic gypsies burdened with travel frustrations and expenses. Furthermore, as student contact hours have increased and the number of teachers decreased, instructors spend more time on the job, or tasks are turned over to nonteaching staff (PETE, 2000a). Men hold 77% of TAFE leadership positions in TAFE (PETE, 2000b). One male principal in TAFE described the institute as a “male domain” (Pocock, 1988): There’s a lot of talk about getting girls into engineering and so on. We need to upgrade the traditional women’s areas as well…. But if you are going to take it seriously, you have to go beyond girls in auto [apprenticeships]. There are no women in real positions of power in the department…in real decisionmaking. We don’t have any women principals, only two deputies and one substantive superintendent. But I mean real women, not belligerent types.


157

There should be some attempt to allocate a certain number of principalships to women. There are lots of women with ability who don’t get anywhere in TAFE, and something should be done—at the level of principal, deputy principal, study area managers and so on. (pp. 54–55) In 1985 women held only 2 of the 20 national senior executive positions in TAFE, 18% of the 93 administrative offices, one-third of administrative staff positions, but 90% of clerical staff (Pocock, 1988). The situation remains much the same 17 years later, especially in the senior positions. One interviewee commented that there was a period at her workplace when men were “tapped on the shoulder for promotion positions,” while women competing for a higher position went through formal application and interview processes (personal interview, June-August, 2002). Wilson (1997, p. 216) noted: In terms of selection procedures, it is still apparent that a considerable amount of work needs to be undertaken…. All too often it appears that a loose definition of the requirements of the promoted post act to the disadvantage of women, (p. 216) Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, management and leadership in education were defined in masculine terms (Sampson, 1987; Schmuck, 1987; Shakeshaft & Nowell, 1992; Weiner, 1995). As a result, women felt they had to conform to masculine stereotypes to become successful. Yet when they did male peers perceived them as unfeminine and unnatural women. Interviews with TAFE employees suggest that they are active in initiating their own professional development. This corresponds to findings by the STS Staff Development Advisory Committee Research project that found a substantial proportion of TAFE staff participated in self-education (STS Staff Development Committee, 1997a). Though staff performance appraisal is in common use in the TAFE institutes, in 1995 TAFE spent only 0.7% of gross wages and salaries on staff development. In general, training and staff development is provided for tenured staff only (STS Staff Development Committee, 1997b). Apparently the lack of spending is not correlated to lack of staff interest. Two TAFE employees, Ann and Caroline, for instance, who initiated professional development programs observed: “Once people had the resources, they grabbed the opportunities and aren’t looking back” (personal interviews, June-August, 2002). Another employee noted that a professional development program on leadership supported by her institute provided a pathway to pursuit of a master’s degree. While some institutes encouraged individual professional development, others did not. Two interviewees

158


pursuing a second master’s degree (at their own expense) noted most peers at work were unaware of their studies. Others felt that further study was not necessarily a passport to opportunity. One explained: “We have a few people with doctorates. There is no way they will go anywhere…the people they have to report to don’t even have degrees” (personal interview, June-August, 2002). THE VET POLICY CONTEXT During the 1980s and 1990s, a series of policies and programs emerged to provide girls and women equal opportunities in education and training. The policies raised awareness and set goals for women and girls’ participation in the full range of education, training, courses, and programs so that they would eventually have access to wider job possibilities. The 1987 National Policy for the Education of Girls in Australian Schools emphasized the importance of eliminating gender as a deterrent to full educational access and equity (Commonwealth Schools Commission, 1975). The policy also recognized that such goals are not universally held: There is evidence, however, that many parents, as well as teachers, continue to hold differential expectations of the academic and occupational potential of their daughters and sons. There is a need for increased public awareness and understanding of the ways in which irrational and unproven beliefs, linking sex differences to differences in ability and potential, damage many individuals and groups in society and waste the nation’s human resources…. There are many studies pointing to the ways in which the school curriculum generally reinforces a view of the world where males and their activities are depicted as the norm, and where women are variously excluded or marginalized. Along with welldocumented trivialization and stereotyping of women’s activities and achievements, this militates against girls developing a strong sense of identity or purpose. (Commonwealth Schools Commission, 1975, pp. 29–31) The National Agenda for Women in 1988 identified the need of a national approach to women’s education and training in the tertiary sector (DPMC, 1988). The Australian Women’s Employment Strategy, also in 1988, aimed at improving women’s access to and participation in employment, education, and training. In addition, it was to assist in reducing gender segregation in TAFE, higher education, occupations, and industry.


159

The National Plan of Action for Women in TAFE, developed in 1991, identified the need for TAFE to address women’s training in order to develop a more effective and competitive workforce and sustain economic growth, but also to provide more equity in the institutions (DEET, 1991). The document noted that TAFE colleges, which had their historical origins in male apprenticeship and trade training, resulted in a culture in which education, physical facilities, and even support services were not entirely inclusive of women (DEET, 1991). Strategies to assist in the achievement of participation of women cross the range of TAFE activities and include: a gender-inclusive curriculum, materials and delivery, gender-fair course counseling (which also addressed the needs of disadvantaged groups), and a flexible timetable appropriate to women. It also encourages women to study in areas where they are underrepresented, the prevention of sexual harassment, adds childcare provisions, suggests appropriate entry points and pathways, and equitable resource allocation and fees in the changing market for training. Equitable participation by women in decision making at all levels of TAFE operation, and recognition of women’s prior learning are other key components. Performance indicators include the ratio of women to men employed in TAFE management positions, the ratio of women to men on TAFE decisionmaking bodies, and the ratio of women to men in all staff development activities (DEET, 1991). POLICY IMPLEMENTATION AND INTERPRETATION Assessments of policy implementation come from a variety of sources. Sobski (1992) argued in an early assessment that the VET industry did not have a good record of supporting innovative training programs that attack gender segmentation. She warned that the trend toward competency-based training could work against women: “We must guard against a too narrow skills base being prescribed in an industry sector since it could further marginalize women workers and reduce, rather than expand, their mobility” (Sobski, 1992, p. 6). Competency-based training, which requires multiple delivery models and increased numbers and variety of training providers, makes dealing with gender all that more difficult (Sobski, 1992). Programs targeted to TAFE managers and workplace supervisors such as “Managing an Environment Free of Sex-based Harassment” seem to have little effect on the VET. Butorac, Sharpe, Lymon, and Goldflam (1996) noted that many women interviewed about the impact of such programs questioned the system’s commitment to an equity agenda. One respondent claimed: “There’s always a lot of talk and no delivery,” and another

160


maintained the “situation for women seems to be getting worse.” There was a sense among women who had a longer association with VET that “women were no longer flavor of the month” (Butorac et al., 1996, p. 49). The Ministerial Review of Employment Equity for Women in Education recommended that TAFE implement strategies that covered modeling leadership, mentoring, and networking programs; to improve access of women to leadership roles, and assist institutes to carry out their equitable employment and people management responsibilities (State of Victoria Department of Education, 1996). The results were mixed according to a review of TAFE employees (State of Victoria Department of Education, 1996), which showed women still clustered at the lower end of the occupational spectrum. Between 1993 and 1995, for instance, the percentage of male staff in TAFE institutes declined steadily, while women’s numbers increased. Men filled TAFE executive officers positions at Level 1 (the most senior); women still predominated at the lower Level 3 and Level 4. The TAFE report also identified several important factors that had historically impeded women’s admission to positions of greater authority. These included the history and culture of TAFE institutes as male educational organizations; downsizing and budget cuts in TAFE, which resulted in reduced promotion opportunities for both men and women; historical gender bias in the composition of TAFE institute councils; the introduction of college-based employment, whereby staff are employed by the college rather than by a state public service; and changes requiring maximum flexibility of staffing in TAFE institutes, which reduce the number of tenured positions available. Strategies TAFE identified to improve equity included cultural changes and employment structures in the workplace, including special initiatives for women to develop further their skills for leadership and management roles at all levels but particularly at senior levels (State of Victoria Department of Education, 1996). TAFE is an aging workforce, one in which more women are being employed but in less secure modes of employment. All employees are treated cavalierly during the days of economic rationalism and downsizing. In analyzing the situation of VET teachers, Billett (1998) and Rushbrook (1998) identified several problems. A loss of autonomy contributes to feelings of powerlessness and deprofessionalization. Increasing external controls contributes to proletarianization of teaching. With the installation of national syllabi and national curriculum frameworks educators no longer determine instructional content nor select appropriate modes of assessment. Yet Billett (1998) saw possibilities for reshaping professional practice by balancing the needs of VET enterprises and individual employees. Rushbrook (1998) expressed a confidence in the strength and tenacity of TAFE teachers to deal with the changes to VET: “However bleak the future, TAFE educators have demonstrated over time a capacity to respond to


161

change. The issue of CBT [competency-based teaching] is yet another opportunity for that capacity to be exercised” (p. 26). CONCLUSION: WHERE TO NEXT? With the change to a more competitive vocational education and training system there is now a plethora of organizations involved, varying in size, number of employees, and range of functions. Quality assurance procedures and State Training Authority audit procedures provide monitoring and regulation. It is difficult to imagine attention to equity for women staff and students in this deregulated environment of staff downsizing, increased workloads, and declining status. Who will worry if girls study mechanical manufacturing or whether there are a substantial number of women in senior executive positions? An aging TAFE staff means that many will retire over the next 5 years, creating the potential for women to receive promotions and new opportunities. Yet what is more likely to occur is continued downsizing and downgrading of TAFE as is occurring in the rest of the workforce. Policy directions in the 1990s were influenced by arguments of economics, of the practicality of utilizing the skills and contributions of all of the population, not merely part of it. Affirmative action policies, professional development programs were developed and implemented. Yet as Butler and Ferrier (2000) noted the influence of the market interceded; Diminishing commitment to equity in the contemporary marketized VET system will continue to present even greater challenges, including that, in an environment increasingly dominated by “user-pays,” women’s lower-level incomes will inevitably wind back the small participation gains made. (p. viii) Drake and Owen (1998) argued that a different approach is required to gain equity: Paradoxically, the way to achieve a better gender “balance” and a more feminized management of education is to stop focusing on women, or even gender, directly. Instead, the focus should be on management, how it is conceived and how it operates [in]…contemporary discourses in organizations, and how they share hierarchy. I contrast this with international notions of “good governance.” My argument is that the “women problem” is a problem of democracy, and

162


that a solution to gender and indeed other forms of inequity or injustice is to strive for more democratic educational institutions, (pp. 13–14) Yet current policies and opinions appear to reinforce the position that what men do is what we should all aspire to do. Studying to work in childcare occupations should be valued as much as studying to be a motor mechanic. Status, opportunities for promotion, for full-time employment are given a male definition. Is it a problem that females and males remain in genderstereotyped training? Is it a problem that training is gendered, that employment opportunities are still gendered after many policy initiatives and programs designed to effect changes? Hall (1993) claimed: To understand the phenomenon of leadership we need concepts that do not presume the male experience as universal and speaks to all humanity. Women need to be included as objects and subjects of study in leadership and we need to investigate how our concepts of leadership have been formed by the blinding assumption that leader means male. (p. 23) Wilson (1997) felt that changed roles could be beneficial for all: The growingly stressful experience of management as opposed to its promised attractions, may in the end compel both men and women into changed working relationships, with tasks seen as different rather than superior or inferior. That destination, if it be the ultimate one, lies at the end of a long road. (p. 217) Both women and men can feel undervalued, devalued by their experiences. Two interviewees commented on the lack of opportunities in general for both female and male staff in the system. One noted: In our situation, opportunities are fairly limited. There is nothing at a senior level. I don’t know of opportunities elsewhere…. Because TAFE is aging, we’re all locked into positions where we’re going to hang on until the magic age. It’s not only for women, there is the complete lack of a career path, (personal interview, June-August, 2002) When asked about career opportunities, there was a pause for laughter as another interviewee said:


163

I suppose very limited. In terms of succession planning…there is not a culture of succession planning. External opportunities are fairly limited. Career opportunities and promotion? None. I’m bored out of my brain. Mentoring? I haven’t any experience of mentoring of myself or of others, (personal interview, June-August, 2002) The capabilities of people need to be recognized and valued. As they gain in self-efficacy, flexibility, and ability, all benefit. A way forward lies in effecting changes in organizational management and practice to have capable organizations recognizing and rewarding the skills and accomplishments of all workers (Hase, Malloch, & Cairns, 1998). We need organizations that value holistic attributes, facilitate working in teams, utilize innovative ways of learning, flexibility, learning from mistakes and mindful-openness to change. As Elizabeth commented: “There’s got to be some growth and change in a job” (personal interview, June-August, 2002). NOTES 1

In my own career, I spent 5 years working in TAFE and previously worked on committees and programs in relation to TAFE through a variety of roles in the Ministry of Education in Victoria, one of the smaller Australian states. I draw on my own experiences, as well as those of other women working in TAFE (see Malloch, 2000). A cross-section of women working in TAFE were interviewed in June to August of 2002 as part of the research for this chapter—their perspectives are integrated throughout.

REFERENCES Australian National Training Authority (ANTA). (2002). Australian vocational education and training statistics 2001 in detail [On-line]. Adelaide, Australia: NCVER. Available: www.anta.gov.au Billett, S. (1998). Re-professionalising vocational educators or just reshaping practice? Journal of Teaching Practice, 18 (1–2), 1–14. Borcelle, G. (1985). Jobs for women: A plea for equality of opportunity. Centrales de Lausanne, Switzerland: UNESCO Presses. Butorac, A., Sharpe, T., Lymon, K., & Goldflam, A. (1996). Profiling women: Developing state training profiles in consultation with women. Brisbane, Australia: Australian National Training Authority. Butler, E., & Ferrier, F. (2000). “Don’t be too polite, girls!” Women, work and vocational education and training: A critical review of the literature. Kensington Park, South Australia: Australian National Training Authority.

164


Carson, A. (2000a, January 17). [Editorial in the Features Section.] The Age (Melbourne), p. 9. Carson, A. (2000b, May 12). [Editorial in the Features Section.] The Age (Melbourne), p. 3. Commonwealth Schools Commission. (1975). The national policy for the education of girls in Australian schools. Canberra, Australia: ACT, Commonwealth Schools Commission. Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET). (1991). Women and TAFE: a national plan of action. Canberra, Australia: ACT, Australia Vocational Education and Training Division Department of Employment, Education and Training. Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Office of the Status of Women (DPMC). (1988). A say, a choice, a fair go—The governments national agenda for women. Canberra, Australia: Australian Government Printing Service. Drake, P., & Owen, P. (Eds.). (1998). Gender and management issues in education: An international perspective. Stoke on Trent, England: Trentham Books. Goozee, G. (1993). The development of TAFE in Australia: An historical perspective. Adelaide, Australia.: NCVER. Hall, V. (1993). Women in educational management: A review of research in Britain. In J.Ouston, (Ed.), Women in educational management (pp. 23–46). London: Longman. Hase, S., Malloch, M., & Cairns, L. (1998). Capable organisations: The implications for vocational education and training. Adelaide, Australia: ANTANCVER. Malloch, M. (2000). Where are the women in vocational education and training? Paper presented at Making Choices Making Issues: Critical issues for Women and Girls in the VET Sector. Adelaide, Australia: Department of Education Training and Employment. NCVER. (1999). Australian vocational education and training statistics 1998 at a glance. Adelaide, Australia: NCVER-ANTA. NCVER. (2001). Australian vocational education and training statistics 2000 at a glance. Adelaide, Australia: NCVER-ANTA. The Office of Post Compulsory Education Training and Employment (PETE). (2000a). Trends in the Victorian TAFE institute workforce: A research report (Draft). Melbourne, Australia: Author. The Office of Post Compulsory Education Training and Employment (PETE). (2000b). Staffing statistics. Melbourne, Australia: Author. Pocock, B. (1987). Changing systems: Women, work, and TAFE. Canberra, Australia: Australian Government Publishing Service. Pocock, B. (1988). Demanding skill: Women and technical education in Australia. Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin. Rushbrook, P. (1998). Sitting on a log talking to the younger members of the tribe: Problematising CBT and teaching practice in TAFE. The Journal of Teaching Practice, 18(l-2), 14–29. Ryan, R.J. (1982). The administration of technical and further education in Victoria (Research Working Paper No. 82.3). Parkville, Australia: Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne. Sampson, S.N. (1987). But women don’t apply…. A discussion of teacher promotion in Australia. Unicorn, 13(3), 139–143.


165

Sangumetti, J. (1998). Within and against performativity: Discursive engagement in adult literacy and basic education. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. Schmuck, P.A. (1987). Women educators: Employees of schools in Western countries. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Shakeshaft, C., & Nowell, I. (1992), Gender and supervision in school personnel. Education Digest, 57(6), 14–18. Smith, E., & Keating, J. (1997). Making sense of training reform and competency based training. Wentworth Falls, Australia: Social Science Press. Sobski, J. (1992, August). Gender implications of the Mayer and Carmichael reports. Paper presented at the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Women and Girls (MACWAG) seminar, Melbourne, Australia. State of Victoria Department of Education. (1996). Report of the ministerial review of employment equity for women in education. Melbourne, Australia: Community Information Service, Department of Education. STS Staff Development Advisory Committee. (1997a). Staff training and development in the TAFE sector of the State Training System, (Vol. 1. Summary). Melbourne, Australia: The Office of Training and Further Education. STS Staff Development Advisory Committee. (1997b). Staff training and development in the TAFE sector of the State Training System, (Vol. 2. EnterpriseBased). Melbourne, Australia: The Office of Training and Further Education. Weiner, G. (1995). A question of style or value? Contrasting perceptions of women as educational leaders. In B.Limerick and B.Lingard (Eds.), Gender and changing educational management (pp. 23–33). Rydalmere, Australia: Hodder Education. Wilson, M. (1997). Women in educational management: A European perspective. London: Paul Chapman Publishing.

10 Disincentives to Employment: Family and Educational Policies in Unified Germany Katrin Kraus1 University of Trier, Germany Patricia A.Carter Georgia State University

Does family life determine work roles or do work roles determine family life? This question is at the heart of German social policies. A complex of labor laws, social assistance plans, and educational policies correspond to the perceived needs of the country. Embedded within this complex are a hierarchy of values, for example, protective labor legislation is essential to safeguard the childbearing capacities of women, a young child is best cared by a woman within the home, and a gender segregated workforce is appropriate if it facilitates society’s greater need for a stable population and superior child-rearing traditions. Why do women continue to shoulder an unfair burden of these policies? We contend, as did Mósesdóttir (2000): The state adjusts the behavior of men and women to certain patterns/forms of gender relations by creating incentives/disincentives that are based on certain norms about men and women’s roles that are then supported by the appropriate institutional arrangements in the area of production or reproduction, (p. 194) This chapter reviews family-work policies along with strategies to assess the status of working women. Where possible we highlight historical and contemporary East and West German differences. The German apprenticeship, based on a dual system of vocational education, is especially implicat-ed in this discussion since over two-thirds of each age-group takes part in this form of occupational education. Students spend 3 or 4 days a

168


week in the workplace and 1 or 2 days a week in their public vocational school. It is through the education system that the state prepares children for their adult work roles and retrains adults for the changing needs of the economy. Yet implicitly it also promotes gendered expectations about family roles and the hierarchy of state values. We first provide a brief introduction of the German political context with the reunification in 1990 and the workforce, followed by a summary of women’s place within it, Next are the (vocational) educational system and the question of choice of occupation. The centerpiece of the chapter focuses on women’s response to the unified state’s sometimes contradictory expectations of women as workers, mothers, and housewives. THE POLITICAL CONTEXT Germany provides a particularly intriguing illustration of the state’s ability to adjust gender relations since little more than a decade ago its population presented two very different forms of policy promoted by the state. The partition of the country after World War II left Germany divided into 2 states; one state-socialistic and the other guided by the social democratic philosophy of market capitalism. In the East, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) facilitated women’s position in the workforce through extensive services such as comprehensive childcare facilities, housing and child allowances to female students, paid child-illness leaves, and compensated maternity leaves. These incentives to work proved so successful that by 1989 78% of GDR women (ages 15–60) were employed, 90% full-time (“Where East meets West,” 1998). Employment rates varied little by marital or maternal status (Trappe & Rosenfeld, 2000). After unification in 1990 East German women faced the devastating consequences not only of different family-work laws, but also the loss of jobs. This resulted from the closure or merger of old industries (especially textiles and agriculture where women predominated) in the Eastern Bloc, the unequal application of reemployment strategies following the Western malebreadwinner model for women and men, and constriction of government jobs in the East where, again, women predominated. By the mid-1990s unemployment rates for Eastern women hovered around 20%, 5% higher than Eastern men and twice that of both men and women in the West (“Where East meets West,” 1998; Adler, 1997; Trzcinski, 1998). Alternatively, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in the West, committed to the preservation of the German family ideal of a male breadwin-tier and nonworking/part-time wife with children. Although women increasingly joined the labor force, moving from 44% in 1950 to 70% in 1965, most did so as part-time workers (68%) or as full-time workers

10. DISINCENTIVES TO EMPLOYMENT

169

whose careers were fractured by long leaves for childrearing (Trappe & Rosenfeld, 2000). A precipitous drop in Germany’s birthrate in the 1970s and 1980s increased the formation of national pronatalist employment policies, again confirming the state’s priority of women’s childbearing capacities over their economic abilities. By 1989, a big difference between female workers in the West and East of Germany could be seen in the state’s expectations about mothering roles and women’s responses to them. The East provided structures that allowed women almost the same unobstructed access to employment as men, while the West provided resources that led women to choose childrearing and housewifery over employment. Since the Western perspective maintains the dominant political position today, employed women from both sides of the country are forced to adopt both private and public strategies to reconcile work-family incongruities. These strategies involve electing femaleidentified educational and career paths, part-time work, self-employment, leaving the labor force when children are young, hiring household help, using private and public childcare services, deferring marriage and childbirth, and limiting family size. Additionally, the government provides different initiatives like tax deductions, child-allowances, childrearing benefits, parental and maternity leaves, public childcare facilities, among others. We argue that these governmental initiatives are more or less incentives to mothers to leave the workplace at least for the first three years of their children’s life. On the other hand, we argue that disincentives to remain employed can be found in the absence of rigorous enforcement of non-discriminatory laws. The two historically different models of family and the position of women in Eastern and Western Germany have shaped labor market, social policies, and the work attitudes of Eastern and Western German women in different ways. It is a difference that is still visible in the German society more than a decade after reunification. The GDR with its centrally planned socialist economy diverged substantially from the ideologies, policies, and everyday life experiences of the FRG’s capitalist market economy (Adler & Brayfield, 1997). In each political sector women experienced work, marriage, and motherhood differently and these events along with other cultural norms shaped attitudes. For instance, Dolling (1989) found 57% of Eastern German women considered employment to be very important to one’s well-being compared to 36% of women in the West. Another study in 1992 established that 37% of East women versus 26% of West women considered work more important than leisure. In 1992, 25% of Western women regarded homemaking as their dream job compared to only 3% of women in the East, while 69% of Western women preferred part-time employment to 45% of women in the East (Gerhard, 1992). Regardless of their differences both groups shared the consequence of society’s belief that childrearing and household

170


duties are undeniably a female responsibility (Adler & Brayfield, 1997). As a result, employment outside the home and responsibilities within, combine to form a double burden for women that bonds them in a gender hierarchy, GERMAN EMPLOYMENT OVERVIEW Geographically, the FDR is at the center of Europe, surrounded by Denmark in the North; the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France in the West; Switzerland and Austria in the South; and the Czech Republic and Poland in the East. Germany has a population of approximately 82.1 million and is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, but it also has one of the lowest birthrates in the world with only 10.2 births per 1,000 inhabitants per year. In the last few years the unemployment rate has moved between 9% and 10%, Approximately 90% of the 36 million gainfully employed persons are wage and salary earners; 3.5 million are self-employed. Although the industrial sector declined significantly between 1970 (51.7% of the gross value) to 1999 (25.1%), it still employs approximately 6.4 million people (1999) in about 48,900 industrial corporations. The largest industries include carmakers Daimler-Chrysler, Volkswagen, and BMW; chemical corporations Bayer and BASF; energy groups E.ON and RWE; and electrical equipment manufacturers Siemens AG, the Bosch Group, and Ruhrkohle AG. In 1999, public and private services accounted for 21.3%, commerce, restaurant, and hotel trade, and transport 17.45%, and financing, renting, and corporate service providers make up 29.8% of the gross national product. The crafts and trades represent approximately 685,000 independent firms in which 38% of apprentices—currently about 620,000 young people learn their trade through vocational education school-trade relationships (Federal Office of Statistics, 2002). THE SITUATION OF WOMEN IN GERMANY The concept of family and marriage is still strong in Germany and is deeply involved in culture, law, and society. This strong position of family and marriage has also many effects in respect to women’s participation in the labor market. Women acquired the right to vote in 1919 and have since built a representation within the German Bundestag (congress) to 30.9% of its membership in 2001. All state governments have ministers or commissioners for women’s affairs and about 1,700 cities have created equality posts or


171

offices especially for women. A strong women’s movement has established the German Women’s Council, the central organization of women’s associations, representing 52 associations with some eleven million members (Country Reports, 2002). The Basic Law (the German constitution of former Western Germany and now the reunified Germany) guarantees women and men equal rights, but this has proved to be a goal rather than the reality. Since the 1950s numerous pieces of legislation have hacked away at the inequalities that exist between the genders. In 1957, the Act on Equal Rights for Men and Women framed women’s rights only in relation to her role as a housewife. The law permitted women to work only “insofar as compatible with her duties within the marriage and the family” (“Where East meets West,” 1998, p. 5). In response to feminist protests, the First Act to Reform the Marriage and Family Law of 1977 introduced the principle of partnership in marriage, which eliminated the housewife model and ensured divorced women a portion of pension funds acquired by the husband during the marriage. In 1994, another act specified that preference was no longer unilaterally given to the man’s family name. In 1997, rape within the institution of marriage became a punishable offense (Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend, 2002). In most aspects the law is gender neutral but the reality is not. For instance, although schools are both compulsory (for at least 9 years) and free to all children, girls and boys have qualitatively different educational experiences and outcomes. In 1996, 80% of the German population consisted of families with unmarried children (57%) or couples who no longer had children at home or were childless (23%). The divorce rate is still low with only 10 out of 1,000 marriages ending in divorce in 1999 (Federal Office of Statistics, 2002) compared to 1 in 2 in the United States. This strong position of family is connected with a male-breadwinner model that sees the women as mostly responsible for the unpaid family work and the man for earning money outside the house. In 2001, 60% of German women worked, representing 42% of the labor force. About 32% of female employees worked part-time, constituting 84% of all part-time workers (Moon & Jaesoen, 2001). Women compose about 35% of the workers in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries industries, 24% of production employees, and about 48% of the distributive trade, transport, and communications. Women’s wages and salaries range between 65% and 78% of men’s. Women rarely ascend to management or other leadership positions even in the fields where they are most heavily represented. For instance, while women are 75% of the total staff of hospitals they are only 4% of physicians. In school they are over 50% of teachers but only 20% of the principals (32% in the East). In 1999 female executives held just 9.2% of management jobs. A study of managers in the third tier (from the top) found

172


25% of German males had an income in excess of $100,000(U.S.), no women earned as much (Wallace, 2000), The gender-hierarchical division of labor exists on two distinct levels, the general social plane and the individual-private one. The private division of labor is socially preprogrammed; informed by largely unquestioned traditions, religious prescriptions, and social habits. The private sphere involves both reproductive duties (birthing and raising children) and regenerative tasks (such as washing, cooking, and cleaning) typically ascribed to women. The evaluation of labor performed in this realm is socially ambivalent: on the one hand, there is the familiar high praise expressed in warm words for the tasks preformed for husband and children, and in turn for the betterment of society. On the other hand, these tasks are devoid of material recognition (salary) and security (such as unemployment compensation or advancement). The public sphere is traditionally maleidentified, and women who enter this domain must conform to the male model of work. However, few women can fully assume the cloak of male privilege to the extent that they ignore childcare and home responsibilities. Thus, women who participate in both compensated and noncompensated forms of labor take on a burden double that of her male counterpart. The historic male-female division of work-home underlies the still extant social and middle-class ideal of the German family as a breadwinner-father and a housewife/full-time mother with perhaps a part-time job. Although this image covers only a small segment of the reality, other configurations such as single-parent households, same-sex couples, and communes remain outside the general focus. The German family ideal is more in line with traditional Western sentiment than Eastern. The normative sentiment among West Germans is that small children suffer if mothers are employed whereas East Germans believe work and family life are compatible and of equal importance. The family ideal is also enshrined in civil and tax law. Differential tax rates governed by marital status provide substantial tax advantages to wedded couples. An income splitting formula allows two-parent households with a single earner to be taxed as though each earned half of the total. The lower-income earning partner may work part-time as long as she or he doesnot earn beyond the rate at which required contributions to health and pensions insurance plans begin. At that point the benefit of income splitting deteriorates (Trzcinski, 2000). The incentives provided in the tax law predisposes families to opt for a traditional solution instead of striving to achieve a more or less egalitarian division between housework and gainful external employment (Gustafsson, 1991).


173

VOCATIONAL EDUCATION During the 1960s everyone in West Germany seemed to be talking about the educational catastrophe. The term referred to a variety of problems but limited economic growth, an inadequately educated population, and “a lack of safeguards to ensure equality of opportunity and civil rights” were all blamed on the current state of education (Arbeitsgruppe Bildungsbericht, 1997, p. 39). Critics particularly lamented the lack of opportunity of educational equality. They believed this led Germany to compare poorly with other countries’ level of popular education. Efforts to improve educational opportunity and modernize its structures were supported by both economic arguments and humanistic-political justifications. Educational reform coincided with an era of enhanced politicization of society that gave rise to other improvement efforts, including the women’s movement. Among the demands made by the women’s movement in this period were the elimination of existing forms of discrimination in the school, in training, and work. It also called for changes in the concept of patriarchal family relations, in which housework was viewed as the exclusive responsibility of women. As early as 1963 the German Committee for Instruction and Education declared its awareness of this problem: The old model based on a sharp distinction…separating the place of work from the home, assigned the male solely public tasks, while ascribing to the woman tasks that were exclusively domestic. Within the course of the still ongoing confrontation with this model and in regard to the current circumstances and associated problems, it is now necessary for the man to recognize more fully that he has certain tasks within the bosom of the family. At the same time, the possibility should be recognized that women can participate more fully in the shaping of public life. (Deutscher Ausschuβ für das Erziehungs-und Bildungswesen, 1966, p. 487) Although the commentary may seem conservative from today’s perspective, the concept of expanded spheres for both women and men was at least broached and presented as a political goal, if only in passing. One means of accomplishing this goal could be through the increased enrollment of women in vocational education and by encouraging them to have their own careers. Vocational education in Germany is rooted in the medieval guilds of crafts and trades, and though transformed by industrialization, it remains an important touchstone for modern conceptions of work and education. The medieval guilds and crafts were in the hands of men and they continue to dominate craft occupations nowadays. As labor shifted from “the old guild

174


system with its social protectionism” to a “free, market orientation with autonomous enterprises,” state-run vocational schools provided the means to integrate working-class males into the long-standing apprenticeship system (Mayer, 2001, p. 192). As women developed their own crafts and trades (such as dressmaking, millinery, needlework), female vocations were recognized but did not have the same reputation and wage as male dominated ones (Mayer, 2001). The 1969 Vocational Education and Training Act organized apprentice learning as it more or less exists today, with some 360 occupational areas. The apprenticeship system predominates the vocational training in Germany turning out some 1,579,339 trainees (ages 16–19 years) in 1995 compared to only 306,681 pupils in full-time specialized schools (Mayer, 2001). In the dual system about three-quarters of the 3-year curriculum is spent as an apprentice in a local firm, under the supervision of a certified trainer and the remaining one-quarter in school where general education and the theoretical aspects of the specific occupation are taught (Heinz, 2000). Since apprentices receive only a portion of the wages paid regular employees they contribute indirectly to their own training costs and provide a source of low cost labor to the economy (Ertl, 2000). Occupational education in a full-time specialized school provides no wages. On the contrary, pupils sometimes must pay a school fee. Historically, male crafts and trades dominated the dual system, and today males predominate the dual system with 62% of the enrollments, while females comprise 64.5% of full-time vocational school students (Mayer, 2001). Typically, men are found in occupational training for auto mechanics, electricians, bricklayers, painters, plumbers, and joiners. Women tend to train as doctor’s office or dental office assistants, retail clerks, hotel clerks, and hairdressers (Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend, 1998). In the dual system, about 33% of apprentices come from the lower secondary schools (hauptschule) where the majority of the children are from working-class and immigrant families. The boys tend to take positions in craft occupations and the girls in lower paid trade or service jobs. Another 40% come from the middle-secondary schools (realschule), which are predominated by (lower) middle-class children who usually enter occupations in public service or business occupations. Less than 20% are from the uppersecondary schools (gymnasium). If these children of the professional and business class choose vocational training over the university they are most likely to enter public service, business, or commerce (Heinz, 2000). The training salaries for male and females vary widely with the typical male occupations like bricklaying paying almost 1,000 (euros, in 1999) and the typical female occupation like hairdressing and retail sales paying about € 350 per month (Heinz, 2000).


175

INCENTIVES FOR MOTHERS TO LEAVE THE WORKFORCE Trzcinski (2000) noted that German family social policy “provides strong financial and social support for children” in ways that are “specifically formulated to encourage child rearing in the home, with one of the parents focusing extensively on child rearing and family responsibilities” (p. 21). The success of this model is dependent on a high male wage and a social benefits safety net, as well as the “willingness of women with children to accept the role of mother and wife as their primary identity” (p. 22). It would appear that German women do adopt this identity whether willingly or not, since fewer than 50% mothers with children under 6 were employed (51.5% for unmarried mothers) in 1997. Another incentive to stay at home in the first years is the subsidy for parents that provides money for each child under the age of 2 only if one parent (in theory mother or father; in fact, mostly mother) works no more than a maximum of 30 hours a week. Since a reform in 2001, which tried to weaken the incentive of long children leaves for mothers, parents have had a choice of getting a child allowance for 2 years (maximum €307/month) or a higher one but only for 1 year (maximum € 460/month). The government also offers a family allowance, which provides a stipend for each child who is under the age of 18, or up to age 27 if the child is still in school-training, is unable to find an apprenticeship, or is unemployed. This allowance is € 154 per month per child for the first three children and € 179 for each additional child (Trzcinski, 2000). The idea behind the family allowance is that the burden to raise children should not be shouldered only by the parents but by the whole society. In addition to the family allowance, families can receive other financial subsidies including housing, and in some cases they can deduct childcare expenses from their taxes. The state also pays a € 12.8 per day stipend during maternity leave, which women may take up to 6 weeks in advance of their due date and 8 weeks after the birth of the child. A parental leave policy provides either parent with unpaid leave for a period up to 3 years. Although both parents may take advantage of the leave, in 2000 only 2.4% fathers took parental leave (Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend, 2002). As of July 2000, time spent on parental leave is counted toward retirement, and an amount, equal to the average worker’s contribution, is placed into the beneficiary’s account (Trzcinski, 2000). Another form of disincentive to women staying employed is sex discrimination in the labor force. Though a federal statute promotes gender equality in the workplace numerous conditions exist to nullify this goal. First, sanctions against employers only apply to jobs in the public sector, which constitutes just 20% of the workforce (Schiek, 1998). Second, the

176


interpretation of the existing laws by different states is done through a web of exemption clauses, outdated values, subjective employment criteria, outright hostility, and weak-willed implementation. Conditions such as hiring women on fixed (short-term)contracts and men on permanent contracts keeps female workers legally marginalized. In the former category, the worker must reapply for their position at the end of each term, or for any advancement, or reconfiguration of their position. Moreover one’s status as the family breadwinner can be considered as a prevailing factor in the hiring, promotion, and reduction of staff, if it can be proved that it would result in an automatic hardship for long-serving employees (Schiek, 1998). THE CHOICE OF OCCUPATION AND CAREER PATHS Life and career planning mean different things for boys and girls. The average girl anticipates the effect of a career choice on her future role as wife and mother, while boys, for the most part, see no conflict between their career choice and their future role as family breadwinner. In secondary school, the majority of the girls prepare themselves for female-identified careers in the explicit belief that such a career will be more compatible with domestic work (“Where East meets West,” 1998). Usually these jobs involve skills less likely to depreciate during labor-force breaks for childbirth, childrearing, or other family-related events (Mincer & Ofek, 1982). The ability to work at home or in close proximity to the workplace, short working hours, flexible schedules, and ease of job performance are all attractive characteristics of domestically compatible employment (Drobnic, Blossfeld, & Rohwer, 1999). The extent to which the selection of these paths is really a conscious choice is debatable, given the power of social conditioning, economic, and political pressures (Kraus, 1998, 2000). Nevertheless it seems that female students-trainees who plan to have families do anticipate conflicts between employment and home (Trappe & Rosenfeld, 2000). Roeder and Gruhn (2001) noted that career choices appear to be the “result of socialization and learning processes that can be traced back to early childhood” (p. 34). By age 10, a student’s academic destiny is significantly cast in a gender specific pathway. These differences “in performance, interests, and self-ascription of specialized competencies” (p. 34) are evident in the courses selected by males and females in both the Eastern and Western areas of Germany. Females are more likely to choose courses in German and other languages, literature, art, the social sciences (excluding history), and biology is the only natural science more often chosen by females than males. Of the women who attend the university, 47% enter an applied sciences course of study likely to result in a female-typical (defined as at least 70%


177

female) career. Only women with the highest grade point average (GPAs) in the category of very good tend to opt for university education while many men rated in the satisfactory or good also feel adequately prepared for higher education. Roeder and Gruhn (2001) attributed this response to a lack of willingness on the part of females to take risks, a more critical (perhaps realistic) assessment of their abilities, or a tendency to take a “traditionally female plan for their future” (p. 38). Therefore, one aim of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in the last years has been to attract girls to study areas like information sciences and engineering in order to encourage them to make creative and individual choices outside the traditional pathway for women’s lives (Bundesminsteriumjum Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend, 2002). Career choice is an especially high-risk category for Eastern adolescents who now live within a state that no longer guarantees job security or even employment. Christmas-Best and Schmitt-Rodermund (2001) explored research indicating that since unification female adolescents in the East have altered their preferences from more or less gender-neutral to gender-typical careers, While girls in the West continued to hold gender-typical preferences, boys moved toward gender-neutral career choices as a hedge against the decline of jobs in heavy industry. Parents may have encouraged the selection of gender-typical careers for their daughters as a way of increasing their employment chances in an increasingly gender-conservative environment. Reskin and Roos (1990) offered a gender-queuing argument that suggests as men become available for jobs women are effectively frozen out by employers’ preference for males. Christmas-Best and SchmittRodermund (2001) also noted that girls in the East may have opted for female-typical jobs, which appeared more glamorous compared to those they had seen their mothers do. Adler and Brayfield (1997) listed several characteristics that attract people to certain occupations. These include social aspects: a desire for human interaction, to help others, to be useful to society, and to do something meaningful; socioeconomic status aspects: job security, good income, advancement possibility, and respect; and cognitive: interesting work, independent work, and responsibility. Traditionally German women trade-off good pay, advancement, and respect for meaningful, useful, and helpful work. They make this Faustian bargain with the implicit belief that they are not expected to become the chief breadwinner for their families. Another possible trade-off for women is full-time for part-time employment. The typical life course of the (Western) German woman is to take fulltime paid work after graduation from school-training. After a few years she leaves employment or adopts part-time work after the birth of her first child. After her children are somewhat self-sufficient she usually returns to work, most likely in a part-time capacity if she is married and full-time if she is single mother (Drobnic et. al., 1999). Part-time labor offers elements

178


compatible with domestic responsibilities such as flexible scheduling around children’s school day. It also allows a woman to maintain a connection to the labor market and prevents her market value from depreciating while she raises children. Yet it is ultimately difficult to have a really successful career with part-time work. Due to the fact that the social security system in Germany is based primarily on full-time employment, part-time work also reduces benefits like old age or disability pensions, and the unemployment benefits. HOW DO WOMEN COMBINE FAMILY AND EMPLOYMENT? Rather than trade-off access to economic, social, and cognitive independence some women have chosen to postpone or avoid marriage and children altogether. The year before unification, 1989, Eastern women married at least 2 years earlier than Western women (23.2 to 25.7 years old). They also gave birth to their first child earlier, at age 22,9 versus 26.7 years in the West. Having children outside marriage carried no stigma in the East and, as a result, many women had their first child while still in school. In fact the state encouraged this course, in large part, to prevent workplace problems related to maternity leave later on (Juang & Silbereisen, 2001). Birthrates took a sudden nose-dive of 50% in East Germany after unification. In 1998, 15% of all German women were childless and the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin predicted that rate could rise to 25% by 2010 (“Where East meets West,” 1998; Population Council, 1996). By 2000, married women waited until age 29 to give birth to their first child, while the average unmarried woman gave birth at age 27.5 (Federal Office of Statistics, 2002). In an environment of abrupt change and uncertainty the rational response was to simply slow or stop making “risky…high responsibility, irreversible transitions to adulthood” (Juang & Silbereisen, 2001, p. 1902). An additional problem related to declining birth rates in both the West and East is how to combine family and employment under conditions that do not fully support this combination. Women, who do not want to reduce or leave the workforce because of motherhood, have little choice but to do so, in the absence of good childcare alternatives. A confounding factor in the lower birthrate is the erasure of abortion on demand and free contraception for Eastern women (Mushaben, 1993). Several attempts at restoring, at least partially, these rights have failed court challenges (Banaszak, 1998). Currently, a pregnant woman may terminate a pregnancy in the first trimester as long as she receives an appropriate certification after obligatory counseling.


179

Due to the opportunities women have in vocational training, the increasing desire for waged employment by women in the West, and the persistence of Eastern women, the government is slowly putting more support behind the concept of full-time public childcare. For example, during his 2002 election campaign Chancellor Schröder vowed to make childcare a family policy priority. Yet still demand continues to exceed availability (“Childcare Priority,” 2002). State supported daycare can increase an individual’s ability to freely choose work outside the home (Elschenbroich, 1999), a concept acknowledged in the former GDR. GDR mothers earned 84% of father’s wages, while FRG mothers earned only 67% (Trappe & Rosenfeld, 2000). In 1997, 44% of all former-GDR children under the age of 3 remained enrolled in daycare facilities, compared to only 2% in the old FRG (Ernst & Herbst, 1997); despite the fact that kindergartens no longer provided free care and meals (Marks, 1991). Nevertheless the availability of childcare for those 0–3 years (kinderkrippe) and 3–6 years (kindergarten) is still much better in the former GDR. In the East approximately 350 out of 1,000 children ages 0–3 enroll in a kinderkrippe compared to approximately 30 out of 1,000 children in the Western states. Since 1999 each child (age 3–6), by law, has a right to a space in a kindergarten. Yet only in the former Eastern states have enough kindergartens made that law a reality (Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend, 2002). This difference between East and West also exists for facilities caring for children in the hours before and after school (Ahnert & Lamb, 2001). Since German primary schools schedule no afternoon classes individual families must make arrangements to cover the gap in supervision. Private solutions to childcare generally require women to subordinate their employment to this pressing problem by taking part-time jobs, or in some instances, to give up waged work entirely. To extend the hours in school in the afternoon was one of the big topics among social democrats in the election campaign of 2002. The conservative party argued against this aim preferring family care. Childcare outside of private arrangements is still a controversial theme in Germany. Some working women pass a portion of their childbearing responsibilities to another woman. This could be a family member, a (female) neighbor, or someone hired part-time to look after children or take care of the home. Although federal sources do not provide the number, gender, ethnicity, and age of domestic servants in Germany, Odierna (2000) estimated some 2.4 million people held subminimum wage jobs in private households in 1998. We do know that at least nearly all paid household helpers are women usually from migrant groups or from the German working-class (Lutz, 2000).

180


The choice to bring an outsider into the home to fill the female-typical role is not without its problems for either the worker or the employer. Most household workers work on an unofficial basis due to social assistance requirements. Even migrants with proper residence and work permits still face serious difficulties in the German labor market; plaintiffs currently have no legal recourse to curb perceived racial discrimination and abuses in the job market. This results in a high degree of de facto segregation in the German labor market, which discriminates against migrants. As a result of the difficulties in the labor market, female migrants often look for a job in a private household. Usually household workers practice their job completely separate from and unconnected with their former level of education and training. Whether migrants have a foreign university degree or were trained as sales personnel is irrelevant. These jobs only demand a quality that has been termed the female capacity to work. The basic assumption is that any woman can clean a house or care for children, no matter what her formal education. Less than 1% of domestic servants are thought to be covered by national insurance (Schultz, 2000), meaning they are not protected by regulations governing normal work relations, such as protection from being fired, paid vacations, and social insurance. They may be subjected to excessive workloads, sexual harassment, nonuniform job requirements, fluctuating levels of supervision, and for live-in help, a lack of privacy. A special relationship exists in a private household between the employer (the housewife-hausfrau) and the (often migrant) employee-household worker. Domestic service workers are generally expected to maintain a degree of social distance to the employing female in the household. Both employee and employer find this relationship both necessary and disturbing. There are various strategies to deal with these ambivalences. The female employer (housewife) frequently tries to recast the character of the working relation as friendly assistance, rewarding the worker with small gifts for good performance along with the agreed upon remuneration. Other female employers find it problematic to be at home while the servant is at work, feeling that they have to pitch in, to do some of the work as well. As a result many women come to regard this labor as a transitional solution in their work lives, dictated by certain external circumstances, and by no means a longer-term vocation (Odierna, 2000; Thiessen, 1997). CONCLUSION Germany’s historic dependence on the male breadwinner model through which social, political, and educational policy is interpreted has forced the state and women into a continuous struggle to overcome the limitations


181

perpetuated by dynamics of capitalism and patriarchy. As Mósesdóttir (2000) noted: The decisions of women and men to be active or inactive part-time or fulltime in the labor market are in continuous non-accommodating interaction with social norms, family structure of paid employment and employers’ policy as well as structures and policies of the state, (p. 194) The women in Germany still do not have equal opportunities with men in the labor market. The world of work is still mostly male-identified and the family affairs are more or less considered female duties. Yet the pattern has begun to change in the last decades and both spheres are not so sharply separated as before. One reason is that reunification brought together women from two different socialized perspectives. Additionally, women’s success as students, academically and vocationally, especially those from the middle class, has positioned them to take advantage of fractures in the patriarchy as they appear. Women are anything but silent victims meekly accepting their fates. Instead, they have made choices such a limiting their reproduction, hiring household workers, and marrying later, which have made very apparent their quqst to engage in career opportunities as fully as possible. For this reason and others the future of the breadwinner model is anything but guaranteed. A high level of male unemployment combined with persistent demands by the European Common market for a decrease in Germany’s deficit may soon force a reevaluation of the current level of funding for all social programs. A decreased commitment to the family subsidies could drive more women into the labor market to compete with men for a dwindling number of jobs. This is likely to erode the supremacy of the male breadwinner model. There remains a tension in Germany today. On one hand most women have to and wish to participate in employment, while on the other hand traditional patriarchal patterns and structures do not support this participation. On the contrary they offer incentives-disincentives to get women off the career path especially, but not only, while their children are young. Whether this tension will eventually lead to a German society that is more gender equal is questionable. The women’s movement started more than 100 years ago to realize equal opportunities and it still is an incomplete aim even though some steps toward the goal have been accomplished. NOTES 1

Portions of this chapter were translated from the German by Bill Templer.

182


REFERENCES Adler, M.A. (1997). Social change and declines in marriage and fertility in Eastern Germany. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 59, 37–49. Adler M.A., & Brayfield, A. (1997). Women’s work values in unified Germany. Work and Occupations, 24(2), 245–267. Ahnert, L. & Lamb, E.L. (2001). The East German child care system: Associations with caretaking and caretaking beliefs, and children’s early attachment and adjustment American Behavioral Scientist, 44(11) 1843–1863. Arbeitsgruppe Bildungsbericht am Max-Planck-lnstitut für Bildungsforschung. (1997). Das Bildungswesen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Strukturen und Entwicklungen im Überblick. [The Educational system in the German Federal Republic. A bird’s eye view of structures and developments] (rev. ed.). Hamburg, Germany: Reinbek bei Hamburg. Banaszak, L.A. (1998). East-West differences in German abortion opinion. Public Opinion Quarterly, 62(4), 545–582. Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend. (Ed.) (1998). Frauen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland [Women in the German Federal Republic], Bonn, Germany: Author. Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend (Ed..) (2002). Frauen in Deutschland [Women in Germany]. Berlin, Germany: Author. Child Care Priority of Family Policy: Schröder [Germany]. (2002, April 18). Xinhua News Agency (Beijing). Christmas-Best, V.E., & Schmitt-Rodermund, E. (2001). Adolescents’ career choices in East and West Germany after reunification: Interregional and intraregional differences and the role of gender. American Behavioral Scientist, 44(11), 1879– 99. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2000 (2001). Germany: Women are somewhat underrepresented in government and politics. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Documents Office. Deutscher Ausschuss für das Erziehungs-und Bildungswesen. (1966). Empfehlungen und Gutachten des Deutschen Ausschusses für das Erziehungsund Bildungswesen 1953–1965 [Recommendations and expert opinions from the German committee for education and training, 1953–1965]. Stuttgart, Germany: Ernst Klett Dolling, I. (1989). Culture and gender. In M.Rueschemeyer & C.Lemke (Eds.), The quality of life in the German Democratic Republic (pp. 27–47). Armonk, NY: M.E.Sharpe. Drobnic, S., Blossfeld, H., & Rohwer, G. (1999). Dynamics of Women’s employment patterns over the family life course: A comparison of the United States and Germany. Journal of Marriage and Family, 61, 133–146. Elschenbroich, D. (1999). A childhood free of knowledge? Reflections on German educational policy in the early years. International Journal of Early Years Education, 7(3), 259–264. Ernst, A., & Herbst, V. (1997). Kursbuch Frauen [Timetable: Women]. Cologne, Germany: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Ertl, H. (2000). The transition of vocational education and training in Eastern Germany: Notes on the role of European union programs. Comparative Education Review, 44(4), 464–492.


183

Federal Office of Statistics. (2002). The Country: Quickfacts [On-line]. Available: www.germanyinfo.org/info/facts/facts_about/edu.html Friese, M. (1995). Die osteuropäische Akademikerin, die im Westeuropäischen Haushalt dient. Neue soziale Ungleichheiten und Arbeitsteilungen zwischen Frauen [The East European university graduate employed as a female domestic in the West European household]. In I.Modelmog & U.Gräßel (Eds.), Konkurrenz und Kooperation [Competition and cooperation] (pp. 171–194). Münster, Germany: Lit Verlag. Gerhard, U. (1992). German women and the cost of unification. German Politics and Society, 24, 16–33. Gustafsson, S. (1991). Separate taxation and married women’s labor supply. Journal of Population Economics, 5, 61–85. Heinz, W.R. (2000). Youth transitions and employment in Germany. International Social Science Journal, 52(164), 162–172. Juang, L.P., & Silbereisen, R.K. (2001). Family transition for young adult women in the context of a changed Germany: Timing, sequence, and duration. American Behavioral Scientists, 44(11), 1899–1918. Kraus, K. (1998). Verschiebebahnhof Haushalt. Erwerbsarbeit, Reproduktion und Dominanzkultur [The household as shunting yard. Gainful employment, reproduction and the culture of dominance]. In T.Geisen, K.Kraus, & V.Ziegelmayer (Eds.), Zukunft ohne Arbeit? Beiträge zur Krise der Arbeitsgesellschqft (pp. 111–143). [A future without work? Essays on the crisis of the society of work]. Frankfurt, Germany: Interkulturelle Kommunika. Kraus, K. (2000). Reproduktionsarbeit und europäische Dominanzkultur. Aspekte der Verschiebung von Reproduktionsarbeit unter Frauen [The Work of Reproduction and the European Culture of Dominance. Aspects of the shift in work of reproduction among women]. In R.von Bardeleben (Ed.), Frauen in Kultur und Gesellschaft. Ausgewählte Beiträge der 2. Fachtagung Frauen/Genderforschung in Rheinland-Pfalz [Women in Culture and Society. Selected papers from the 2nd Conference on Women/Gender Research in Rhineland-Palatinate] (pp. 447–459). Tübingen, Germany: Seiten-Stauffenburg. Lutz, H. (2000). Geschlecht, Ethnizität, Profession. Die neue Dienstmächenfrage im Zeitalter der Globalisierung [Gender, ethnicity, profession. The new question of maids and domestics in the age of globalization]. Interkulturelle Studien—iksQuerformat, No. 1. Münster, Germany: Arbeitsstelle für Interkulturelle Pädagogik. Marks, J. (1991), Liberation, but not for women. U.S. News & World Report, 111(1), 44–46. Mayer, C. (2001). Transfer of concepts and practices of vocational education and training from the center to the peripheries: The case of Germany. Journal of Education and Work, 14(2), 189–208. Mincer, J., & Ofek, H. (1982). Interrupted work careers: Depreciation and restoration of human capital. Journal of Human Resources, 17, 3–24. Moon, Y.J., & Jaesoen, J. (2001). Women’s employment policies in OECD countries. Women’s Studies Forum, 17, 135–142, Mósesdóttir, L. (2000). Pathways towards the dual breadwinner model: The role of the Swedish, German and the American states. International Review of Sociology, 10(2), 189–205.

184


Mushaben, J.M. (1993). Greater freedom equals fewer rights: Abortion law(s) in the united Germany. University of Missouri Women’s Studies Newsletter, 10(2), 2–3. Odierna, S. (2000). Die heimliche Rückkehr der Dienstmädchen. Bezahlte Arbeit im privaten Haushalt [The Secret Return of the Maid. Paid work in the private household]. Opladen, Germany: Leske & Budrich. Population Council. (1996). East German fertility after unification: Crisis or adaptation? Population and Development Review Abstracts, 22(2), 331–358. Reskin, B.F. & Roos, P.A. (1990). Job queues, gender queues. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Roeder, P.M. & Gruhn, S. (2001). Gender and course choices. European Education, 32(4), 33–55. Schiek, D. (1998). Sex equality after Kalanke and Marschall. European Law Journal, 4(2), 148–167. Schultz, S. (2000). Labour market and private households. No border network [Online]. Available: www.noborder.org/about/index.html Thiessen, B. (1997). Individualisierung und Reproduktion. Analyse prekärer Arbeitsverhältnisse im Privathaushalt [Individualization and reproduction: The analysis of precarious working conditions in the private household]. Bremen, Germany: Werkstattberichte des IBL Universität Bremen. Trappe, H., & Rosenfeld, R.A. (2000). How do children matter? A comparision of gender earnings inequality for young adults in the former East Germany and the former West Germany. Journal of Marriage & Family, 62(2), 489–508. Trzcinski, E. (1998). Gender and German unification. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 13(1), 69–102. Trzcinski, E. (2000). Family policy in Germany: A feminist dilemma? Feminist Economics, 6(1), 21–44. Wallace, C.P. (2000). Germany’s glass ceiling. Time, 155(19), 2–3. Where East meets West (1998, July 18). Economist, 348, 5.

11 Gender Equity in Vocational Education in the United States: The Unfinished Agenda Steven M.Culver Radford University Penny L.Burge Virginia Tech Historically, from early grade school experiences to graduate school, education in the United States has been different for men and for women, even though such educators as Willard in the early 1800s argued against discriminatory practices (Willard, 1814). Today, gender continues to dramatically shape educational experiences for workforce preparation in the United States. This single human trait influences current and future economic and social benefits realized for boys and girls and women and men. Vocational and career education and training have a major role to play in redirecting social expectations surrounding gender, schooling, and employment. More than a decade ago, Copa (1992) pointed out that it is the domain of vocational education to deal with the discrepancies between the individual, the workplace, the family, and desired conditions in vocational life. Such beliefs follow in the footsteps of Dewey who hoped that vocational education would alter existing industrial and business systems to enhance the empowerment of individual workers (Simon, 1982). This goal with specific respect to increasing gender equity has been addressed in varied legislative, programmatic, and research efforts. This chapter provides a lens to examine the lack of comprehensive progress made in the United States despite the legislative requirements and sparse benefits from vocational gender equity initiatives that have occurred for a limited number of individuals and groups. Strategies for future initiatives to improve the status quo are given.

186


STILL A GENDERED ECONOMY Children learn from a young age that secretaries are female and business executives are male (Berk, 2000). Yet, in several studies of children and early adolescents, girls were found to be open to a variety of career options. For example, Mendez and Crawford (2002), analyzed career choices of 227 students, ages 11–14, in a program for gifted adolescents. They found that girls ruled out fewer occupational choices than boys and that girls showed greater gender-role flexibility in their choices. Despite their perceived freedom to choose a career path, girls in school are still tracked into such programs as childcare, clerical, or cosmetology, while young men pursue automotive services or engineering related to the building trades. In Connecticut, for instance, during the 1998–99 school year, high school carpentry, electronics, and automotive programs were 85% male; hairdressing and fashion technology programs enrollments were 96% female (National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education, 2001). Once in the work force, women remain segregated across and within occupations, earning considerably less than their male counterparts. Salaries for traditionally female jobs across the United States include $18,620 for a receptionist, $16,350 for a childcare worker, and $23,300 per year for a preschool teacher. In 2000, the median annual earnings for hairdressers and cosmetologists were $17,660. Contrast these wages with traditionally male jobs that pay $37,310 for an engineering technician, $29,730 for welders, solderers, or brazing machine setters (of whom fewer than 6% are female), or the $15.69 median hourly pay for carpenters (fewer than 3% female) or the $20.48 per hour paid to power line repairers (U. S. Department of Labor, 2001). This problem is exacerbated by the greater likelihood of women working in part-time employment. As Bernard-Powers (2001) noted, gender is an omnipresent reality that rarely stands alone; its interaction with race and social class forms the basis of future inequitable career orientation and workforce preparation. In 2001, United States men without a high school diploma earned on average over $23,000, while women earned $16,000; with high school diplomas, men earned $32,000 while women with diplomas earned only about $21,000 (Wood, 2001). When race is also used as a variable, the results are even more stark: of full-time workers, for instance, Black women earn nearly $14,000 less a year than White men; Hispanic women earn 52 cents for every dollar White men earn. Over a 35-year career, this adds up to a wage discrepancy of nearly three-quarters of a million dollars (U. S. Census Bureau, 2001). Diaz (2001) noted that female students and students of color should make up a significantly higher proportion of the United States’ professional, scientific, and managerial workforce, given their percentages in the population. So little substantive

11. THE UNFINISHED AGENDA

187

progress seems to have been made in addressing gender and race issues that cynicism and ambivalence (Rolling, Burnett, & Huh, 1996) still must be a central part of the conversation. In fact in the June 6,2002 issue of USA TODAY Jocelyn Samuels, vice president of the National Women’s Law Center, stated that the options for noncollege young women today are only marginally better than they were 30 years ago (Henry, 2002). IMPACT OF FEDERAL LEGISLATION Vocational educators first received formal mandates through federal legislation in the 1960s to eliminate sex-role stereotyping, sex-bias, and sexdiscrimination in their programs. The Equal Pay Act of 1963, considered the first significant legislation relating to vocational gender equity, was designed to provide equal pay for equal work. This Act was given more weight with the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, intended to eliminate employment discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, religion, and national origin. Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, banned discrimination in education on the basis of sex, and the Women’s Educational Equity Act of 1974 (Public Law 93–380), provided monies for equity advancement projects. Both added to the message that gender bias and gender-specific stereotyping and discrimination should end in vocational programs. Perkins I Though the Educational Amendments of 1976 brought gender equity forward as a critical programming element and provided some funds for activities and development, it was not until the Carl D.Perkins Vocational Education Act of 1984 that federal interest brought significant funds to vocational gender equity efforts. Title II of the Educational Amendments set aside $50,000 per state to fund a full-time sex equity coordinator to direct efforts to overcome gender bias in vocational education. The Perkins Act increased this amount to $60,000. As specified by the Perkins Act, states were required to expend a percentage of federal vocational education money to provide vocational educational training in marketable skills to single parents, homemakers, and displaced homemakers. The Act required 3.5% of Perkins funds be set aside for programs to foster gender equity in vocational education and 8.5% be set aside to provide services for single parents and displaced homemakers. At the time, this law contained the most federal dollars ever set aside for vocational training of women and girls (National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education, 1988). With the dollars also came the special attention on the part of school administrators and classroom

188


educators to equity issues and the needs of girls and women in vocational programs. Perkins II Congress reauthorized the Perkins Act in 1990 as the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act. This “Perkins II” appropriated $1.6 billion/year through 1995 for state and local programs that taught skill competencies necessary to work in a technologically advanced society. This newer Perkins gave less emphasis to gender equity and more to new programs like Tech Prep, which consisted of cooperative agreements that combined academic and technical courses at secondary and postsecondary schools (Brown, 2002). The set asides for equity were reduced from their 1984 levels to 3% for gender equity programs; 7% for programs to support single parents and displaced homemakers; and 0.5% to be used at the state’s discretion for either of these programs. Still, funding nationally for single parents, displaced homemakers, and gender-equity programs exceeded $100 million (National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education, 2001). Perkins III In October 1998, the Perkins Act was reauthorized for a second time. “Perkins III” changed the emphasis on federal mandates again. It strengthened Tech-Prep through emphasis on technology in classroom instruction; it increased accountability for states, requiring new data collection on effectiveness of programs; and most importantly, it completely eliminated the setaside funding for gender equity programs and the full-time department of education employee in each state responsible for coordinating them (“New Age,” 2002). In the early 1980s, each state, in its department of education, had a separate vocational gender equity office. With the 1998 Perkins Act, those offices were eliminated and the activities and responsibilities were assigned to general state programs. Instead, Perkins III provided funding potential through state reserves of $60,000 to $150,000 for state leadership activities to provide service to those pursuing nontraditional training and through a state’s option to allocate 10% of the funds for local educational agencies to distribute to agencies and may require funds to be used for single parents, displaced homemakers, and those pursuing nontraditional paths. Without specific requirements for these gender initiatives and without a designated state leader to establish direction for the programs most initiatives were not carried out. As noted elsewhere (Burge & Culver, 1990), the content of vocational education is closely tied to federal legislation. Though the needs of the workplace help form the curricula of vocational education, the field is significantly affected by federal guidelines related not only to schooling, but


189

also to work and employment procedures. Federal guidelines set the parameters, but even more important mandate the funds made available to fulfill federal requirements. Available funds provide the impetus for program development and the motivation for vocational teachers and administrators to participate. After the initial Perkins Act was passed, with its emphasis on programs for displaced homemakers, homemakers, and single parents, 20 regional centers were created in Virginia, for example, most of them housed in area community colleges (Burge & Culver, 1990). These centers, in response to Title II, Subpart A, of the 1984 Perkins Act, provided vocational education and training activities to homemakers, displaced homemakers, and single parents with marketable skills. Centers provided career guidance and counseling, life skill development, remedial education, study skills training, mentorships, support groups, and job training. As part of these efforts, funds were also provided for childcare, transportation, and related support services, such as books and materials and tuition support. With the redirection of Perkins funds toward technology and accountability, these centers no longer exist, except in limited career counseling centers at a few of the community colleges. A statewide gender equity newsletter and organized network of educators were also phased out. This scenario in the state of Virginia is consistent with the experiences in other states as legislators, education officials, and school administrators struggle to reframe vocational programs so as to receive significant federal dollars. With the first reauthorization of Perkins in 1998, the education of girls and women, particularly for nontraditional employment, was no longer a priority. Rather, according to Patricia McNeil, then U.S. Department of Education Assistant Secretary, “accountability is job one” (Dembicki, 1999, p. 32). Ironically, the indicators of quality include such elements as student attainment of vocational and technical skill proficiencies, placement in employment or advanced training, and student participation in vocational and technical education programs that lead to nontraditional training and employment, In the fall of 2000, the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education (2001) surveyed over 1,500 programs across the country that had received gender equity set asides under Perkins II to determine how the Perkins III changes impacted them. As noted in the coalition’s report. Invisible Again: The Impact of Changes in Federal Funding on Vocational Programs for Women and Girls, funding was reduced dramatically, services to students significantly decreased, students’ needs were more likely to be unmet, and declining support was provided by state and local educational agencies. The report also noted that few programs are promoted, while most are losing ground and their support is disintegrating. Of course, the number one reason these programs were no longer a focus was lack of funds. Even the best years of federal funding emphasized

190


services to individuals with only token amounts provided to changing the system that fosters continuation of sexism in educational programs. Consequently, little substantive change has occurred and conservative social policy threatens to undermine equity initiatives. THE STATUS QUO In the spring of 2002, just before the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, the National Women’s Law Center’s officials asked the Civil Rights Office of the U.S. Department of Education to investigate vocational and technical education programs for violations of Title IX. This law requires educational programs receiving federal monies to treat female students equally in recruiting, counseling, testing and admissions. The investigation focused on data collected in all 12 regions of the United States where the Department of Education has an Office of Civil Rights (National Women’s Law Center, 2002). Notable findings from these data indicated that young women fail to receive accurate information and counseling on nontraditional career options; they do not have female role models in high-wage trades; they face discriminatory attitudes and practices of counselors, teachers, and other administrators; and they fear being isolated in a primarily male environment.1 The overall picture suggested by the study is not a good one, despite locally based attempts to ameliorate the effects of gendered occupational pursuits. These attempts typically come from programs that are narrowly focused and limited in scope. For instance, the Aspiring Tradeswoman Program in Chicago was created in 1998 to address the problems girls often face when trying to enter nontraditional high school trades programs. The program works with Chicago area vocational high schools to ensure girls are given information about all careers, not just those stereotypical for their gender. It provides unique programs, such as an all-female construction workshop. It also gives young women the opportunity to talk to mentors, though these are few. One success story of the program is a female who has been an electrician for 15 years and serves as a mentor (Barbier, 2002). Typical of programs that have faced reduced funding is the Western Massachusetts Gender Equity Center operating out of Springfield Technical Community College. The Center received a grant from its state department of education and staffs a half-time counselor to focus on continuing activities for young women in nontraditional career areas in partner high schools. The counselor also tracks and attempts to support nontraditional students as they move from high school to the postsecondary level (Springfield Technical Community College, 2002). Again, there are individual success stories but


191

the ability of a half-time person to have a substantive effect on girls’ ambitions in several high schools is necessarily limited. The Ohio Department of Education has developed the 8-week Orientation to Nontraditional Occupations for Women (ONOW) training program, used in Ohio and other states, to help socioeconomically disadvantaged adult women explore high-wage nontraditional careers (Ohio Department of Education, 2002). The Wisconsin Workplace Partnership Training Program is another state-level program that provides instruction and training to participants, in this case to employees at their place of work (Center on Education and Work, 2002). These kinds of state programs have had few demonstrated effects in terms of girls and women achieving success in nontraditional programs, perhaps in part due to the relatively small numbers of girls and women served. Furthermore, such programs also often exist within state milieus that do not specify educational objectives related to girls and women. For example, the State of Georgia provides curriculum development goals, work-based learning, and professional development objectives for statewide trade & industrial education programs (Georgia Department of Education, 2002). Among these elements is only the statement under professional development that staff development will meet the needs of students from special populations that might speak to the recruitment and enrollment of girls and women in this area. Otherwise, there is no mention of nontraditional students in these career-related fields. Lack of specific language does not provide clear guidance and clear impetus for change. It also limits the effectiveness of evaluation to detail what is working and what is not. These examples reflect the status quo in vocational programs. They are, in their limited focus, illustrative of the kinds of difficulties evident in nontraditional programs in vocational education at the beginning of the 21st century. Programs are typically the creation of a specific person or persons on whom the continuity of the program depends. They are limited in focus, but also in resources. This, in turn, both limits the numbers of girls and women who can be involved and the ultimate effectiveness of the program. In short, many of these programs can point to individual success stories that hopefully will have future ripple effects in the workplace. Despite such stories, the programs are typically short term and doomed to fail. Long-term effects on the advancement of societal changes for a more gender equitable educational climate in the schools or a more gender fair workforce are minimal.

192


STRATEGIES Lack of federal and state monies to implement changes in gendered enrollment, gendered curricula, and gendered attitudes in vocational education contributes to the lack of progress. Yet, the problem is more than lack of funds. Even when dollars are provided, schools find that they must serve many different constituencies and try to juggle demands related to several improvement programs at the same time (e.g., High Schools That Work, Modern Red Schoolhouse, Success for All), thus limiting the effectiveness of any one program (Hatch, 2002). Teachers, too, feel that pressure of several additional initiatives and requirements without the benefit of appropriate professional development or financial compensation. According to Fullan (1982), a renowned expert on change theory, educational changes depend “on what teachers do and think—it’s as simple and complex as that” (p. 107). If teachers’ morale is low, turnover is great, and they do not have time for professional development related to the power of gender differences, then change in this area is not likely to occur. Over the last 10 years, certain strategies have been suggested to ameliorate gender discrepancies in vocational enrollments. These strategies include recruitment of nontraditional students, encouraging women and men to pursue careers dominated by the opposite sex. Those recruited were seen as then able to serve as mentors and role models for future cohorts of students. Other strategies include identifying Kelly’s (1991) internal barriers that hinder women’s pursuit of nontraditional careers. Among these barriers are low self-esteem, external locus of control, fear of failure, and fear of success. Simply identifying these problems has not contributed toward solving them. This approach also journeys close to a blaming the victim mentality that is anathema to feminists (Cox, 2001). Focusing on a student’s strengths, rather than her weaknesses, is more likely to lead to empowerment and to change (Saleeby, 1997). Another strategy that can be central for all stakeholders in workplace education is analysis of all the mechanisms that maintain the gender division and labor and pay. Burge and Culver (1994), for example, suggested helping students to become aware of pay inequities and job distribution as a basis for their career choices. Vocational and career education will benefit when teachers and administrators also discuss these inequities and work to become change agents within their schools, their communities, and surrounding workplaces, Graham and Lindsey (2002) pointed out that for true educational change to occur, system components must be interrelated and working together. Allocation of resources, curriculum, instruction, and assessment are critical elements that are often the focus of change directives, but support structures, relationships, and community involvement are even more important.


193

Connections to business and industry leaders have long been the strength of vocational education, with successful advisory boards and direct student experiences on work sites. The business community needs to continue to offer apprenticeships and internships for students who pursue nontraditional training; to offer high-technology options for traditionally female programs; and to ensure that resources provided to eliminate sex stereotyping are used for that purpose. Vocational educators also need to change their relationship to advisory boards and expand their influences on the professional work community through allegiance to oppressed groups. Vocational educators who follow this lead can join the struggle for social justice in education and work. An important element in the pursuit of social justice is to stop sexual harassment in the schools and eliminate discrimination in counseling and recruiting. Teachers still help male students get summer jobs but do not help female students; guidance counselors still steer female students into cosmetology based on their lower expectations for them, and schools still fail to protect girls from sexual harassment (“Nation’s High Schools,” 2002). Schools should develop clearly written policies, educate all school stakeholders about them and be sure they are enforced. For instance, to be in compliance with Title IX, educational programs must have a written policy and complaint procedure for sex discrimination and a person in charge of Title IX compliance. Van Buren (1996) reported in a 10-year review of gender equity research that female students continued to report facing barriers when enrolling in courses that are nontraditional for their sex. Despite equitytrained teachers, girls and women still face sex discrimination in classrooms (National Coalition for Women and Girls, 2001). Attention to diverse learning styles, among individuals and across groups, is also a necessary component in the pursuit of social justice. For instance, considerable research indicates differences in how girls and boys approach certain learning situations. For example, Ching, Kafai, and Marshall (2000) demonstrated that, in computer and technology classes, girls initially concentrated on organizing, reporting, and on solving conflicts. Boys were more likely to focus on getting the job done and ignored the group process. In this study, it looked like the girls were working more slowly because they were exchanging information and regularly reflecting on the group process. They even positioned the computers differently to facilitate conversations among students. Such differences in approaches may help explain perceptions regarding boys’ more computer-centric (Hoyles, Healy, & Pozzi, 1992) attitudes and abilities. These perceptions, combined with the fact that software is still more likely to be aimed at boys rather than girls (Volman & van Eck, 2001), contributes to continued gender differences in technological areas. As more education-related experiences and work-place experiences include technology, these differences become even more critical.

194


Gendered differences (and commonalities) across populations also should be examined and intervention programs put in place, AfricanAmerican males experience the educational experience differently in many ways from African-American females, Asian males and females, and EuropeanAmerican males and females (Bernard-Powers, 2001). Programs whose leaders are encouraged and rewarded for positive gender equity efforts will continue to make a difference. These programs include components that encourage nontraditional occupational choices, improve recruitment of girls and women in high prestige and high paying occupations, establish support systems for nontraditional students, include components of the program that critique sexism and racism in the workplace, and incorporate development of strategies to integrate successful home and employment skills. CONCLUSION There still remains substantial evidence for the need for gender equity in U.S. society. While workforce preparation must fit within societal norms, vocational educators have substantial opportunities to influence the political and social culture. Everyone gains if both women and men prepare for occupations for which they have aptitude, knowledge and desire, not just those dictated by traditional gender assignments. Society gains if women achieve education for economic freedom that allows them to contribute as central players in our economy—able to support themselves and their families. These words paraphrase concluding remarks in a book chapter on gender equity in vocational education written over a decade ago (Burge & Culver, 1990). Since that time some individual gains have been made, but the overall picture appears less than optimistic. What is lacking, even though Lakes (1994) suggested it nearly 10 years ago, is a critical discourse— “where human agency, social responsibility, equity, and justice are restored to their rightful place in public schooling” (p. 13). A sense of empowerment and community cannot take place without such discourse. The situation seems even bleaker when little discussion has occurred in vocational education regarding the relationships among gender, race-ethnicity, social class, and occupational pursuits. Though federal funds were specifically allocated to vocational educational programs to alleviate gendered classrooms, with little effect, no federal funds have been provided to reduce racial and social class disparities in vocational educational areas. Vocational educators must build a wider support network to help their students succeed despite these biases. This network includes vocational teachers and counselors, as well as teachers and counselors throughout the school system. It involves school administrators, college and university teacher educators, as well as educators in other disciplines. It gets advice


195

from school board members, city and county administrators, service organization personnel, parents, and other community members, in addition to managers, administrative assistants, personnel directors, and other members of the business and workplace community. It needs the support of city councils, mayors, state legislators, Congress people, senators, and other members of local, state, and federal lawmaking bodies. In short, the new agenda for vocational education must be seen as not just the agenda for vocational education, but for all of these constituencies, working together in practical, interrelated ways. Smithson (1990) believed there was reason to hope that universities would become institutions that would empower rather than undermine women. Given its unique place in relating school and work, we would like to believe that vocational education is uniquely able to take the lead in improving the occupational outlook of women and men, of all races and social classes. This should be vocational and career education’s Unfinished Agenda (National Commission on Secondary Vocational Education, 1985). NOTES 1

The Center sought data from every state and the District of Columbia and examined in depth the vocational program enrollment patterns by gender in 12 states. The specific states from which these data came were Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Washington.

REFERENCES Barbier, M. (2002). Statement of Melissa Barbier, Director of Girls’ Programs for Chicago Women in Trades [On-line]. National Women’s Law Center. Available: www.nwlc.org/details.cfin?id=l 133§ion=education Berk, L.E. (2000). Child development (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Bernard-Powers, J. (2001). Gender effects in schooling. In C.F.Diaz (Ed.), Multicultural education in the 21st century (pp.79–84). New York: Longman. Brown, S. (2002). What’s next for Perkins? CTE advocates discuss the issues surrounding the law’s upcoming reauthorization. Techniques, 77(4), 26–29. Burge, P.L., & Culver, S.M. (1990). Sexism, legislative power, and vocational education. In S.Gabriel & I.Smithson (Eds.), Gender in the classroom (pp. 160– 175). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Burge, P.L., & Culver, S.M. (1994). Gender equity and empowerment in vocational education. In R.Lakes (Ed.), Critical education for work (pp. 51-66). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Center on Education and Work. (2002). Wisconsin Workplace and Partnership Training Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison [On-line]. Available: www.cew.wisc.edu/cew/gropus/workpat.html

196


Ching, C., Kafai, Y., & Marshall, S. (2000). Spaces for change: Gender and technology access in collaborative software design. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 9(1) 67–78. Copa, G.H. (1992). A framework for the subject matter of vocational education. Berkeley, CA: National Center for Research in Vocational Education. Cox, A.L. (2001). BSW students favor strengths/empowerment-based generalist practice. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services, 82(3), 305–314. Dembicki, M. (1999). Interview with Patricia McNeil. Techniques, 74(2), 32. Diaz, C.F. (2001). Multicultural education in the 21st century. New York: Longman. Fullan, M.G. (1982). The meaning of educational change. New York: Teachers College Press. Georgia Department of Education, Technology, and Career Education. (2002). [Online]. Available: www.doe.kl2.ga.us/edtech/trade/html Graham, S., & Lindsey, R.B. (2002). Balance of power: New ideas about challenging the status quo provided this group of educators with inspiring possibilities for themselves and others to act in service of all children. Leadership, 31(4), 20–24. Hatch, T. (2002). When improvement programs collide. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(8), 626–636. Henry, T. (2002, June 6). Sex bias charged in vocational programs. USA TODAY, p. D1. Hoyles, C., Healy, L., & Pozzi, S. (1992). Interdependence and autonomy: Aspects of groupwork with computers. Learning and Instruction, 2, 239–257. Kelly, R.M. (1991). The gendered economy. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Lakes, R.D. (1994). Critical education for work. In R.D.Lakes (Ed.). Critical education for work (pp. 1–16). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Mendez, L.M., & Crawford, K.M. (2002). Gender-role stereotyping and career aspirations: A comparison of gifted early adolescent boys and girls. Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, 13(3), 96–109. National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education, Vocational Education Task Force. (1988). Working toward equity: A report on the implementation of the sex equity provisions of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Act. Washington, DC: Author. National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education. (2001, October). Invisible again: The impact of changes in federal funding on vocational programs for women and girls, Washington, DC: Author. National Commission on Secondary Vocational Education. (1985). The unfinished agenda. Washington, DC: Author. National Women’s Law Center (2002). Title IX and equal opportunity in vocational and technical education: A promise still owed to the nation’s young women. Washington, DC: Author. Nation’s high schools still operate “separate and unequal” vocational education for male and female students. (2002, June 6). National Women’s Law Center [Online]. Available: www.nwlc.org/details.cfm?id=l 133§ion=newsroom New Age. (2002). Techniques, 77(2), 38–44. Ohio Department of Education. (2002, June 6). Orientation to nontraditional occupations for women [On-line]. Available: www.ode.state.oh.us/ctae/equity/default.htm


197

Rolling, P.C., Burnett, M.F., & Huh, M. (1996). Principals’ perceptions of nontraditional gender vocational teachers. Journal of Vocational and Technical Education [On-line]. Available: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JVTE/vl2n2/ Saleeby, D. (Ed.). (1997). The strengths perspective in social work practice (2nd ed.). New York: Longman. Simon, R.I. (1982, March). The new vocationalism: Adapting to the world of work or deferring one’s work in the world. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, NY. Smithson, I. (1990). Investigating gender, power, and pedagogy. In S.Gabriel & I. Smithson (Eds.), Gender in the classroom: Power and pedagogy (pp. 1–27). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Springfield Technical Community College, Gender Equity in Massachusetts. (2002). Non-traditional Outreach Program in full swing [On-line], Available: www.genderequity.org/whatsnew/gecenternews.html U.S. Census Bureau. (2001). Current population survey. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. U.S. Department of Labor. (2001). Occupational outlook handbook. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Van Buren, J.B. (1996). Gender equity research. In S.S.Redick (Ed.), Review and synthesis of family and consumer sciences education research: 1985–1995 (pp. 268–278), Peoria, IL: Glencoe. Volman, M., & van Eck, E. (2001). Gender equity and information technology in education: The second decade. Review of Educational Research, 71(4), 613–634. Willard, E. (1814). An address to the public: Particularly to the legislature of New York, preparing a plan for improving female education. Middlebury, VT: Middlebury College. Wood, J.T. (2001). Gendered lives. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Afterword Richard D.Lakes and Patricia A.Carter Georgia State University

In this chapter, we sketch-out a composite picture of gender equity in VET by drawing out a number of common themes introduced by the contributors to this volume. There are four overarching discourses: (a) corporate globalization shifts responsibility for ensuring equity from the state to the individual; (b) nation-state sociocultural tensions continue to suppress political rights, economic and educational opportunities, and civic status; (c) institutional and system-wide practices and student peer cultures reproduce gender stereotypes and masculine privilege; and (d) donor agencies direct potentially colonizing messages toward developing countries. SHIFTING EQUITY RESPONSIBILITIES FROM THE STATE TO INDIVIDUALS Nowhere is this shift more apparent than in Canadian VET policy, as Fenwick argued (in chap. 8), with the privileging of entrepreneurship and microenterprise development. Neo-liberals obfuscate equity issues and negate feminist agendas with talk about self-reliance and self-help; a posture that instantiates choice models at the same time ignoring the reality of gendered labor markets, job creation, and access to skills training. Women have particular concerns about feminized occupations marked by lower wages, part-time and contingent labor, low mobility, and work-family conflicts. These, among other issues, are increasingly denied legitimacy and met with silence in governmental quarters. Funding for initiatives that promote girls’ access to occupational training and apprenticeships in fields nontraditional for their gender have been all but curtailed as granting agencies shift their emphasis to at-risk boys in K-12 education. Similarly, Burge and Culver (in chap. 11) indicated that U.S. funding for VET gender equity initiatives have eroded with enactment of the Carl Perkins Act reauthorization in 1998. When educational and training services for women and girls were no longer deemed a federal priority, the states

200


removed set-asides and redirected monies into outfitting vocational classrooms with technology and strengthening accountability measures. Burge and Culver concluded that conservatives torpedoed systemic identification of the gender equity issues and curtailed exemplary solutions. The neo-liberal turn away from state-sponsored progressive social policy, as Lakes suggested (in chap. 3), ushers forth a biographical model in which individuals must count on themselves alone to direct changing career trajectories by increasing their educational credentials. Among those most affected by restructured labor markets under globalization are traditional working-class males transitioning into regendered work in the customerservice sector. In addition, they must police a gender regime of emotional work. Those once secure in the labor market now are adrift in a new highrisk society, with no safety net in place to cushion the fall. DESPITE VET SYSTEM RENOVATIONS UNDER GLOBALIZATION, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL TRADITIONS OF PATRIARCHY CONTINUE TO LIMIT FEMALE EQUITY Due to its Confucian inheritance, as Pae and Lakes reported (in chap. 5), in Korea females face a number of obstacles regarding occupational and educational choices. For one, parents strictly control girls and families value a hierarchy of schooling that favors sons over daughters. Second, state superordinated training programs sort students by gender into dichotomies that feature distinct male-defined and female-defined careers. Many girls enroll in vocational training programs related to clerical or office occupations. Finally, patriarchal kinship networks operating in business firms exclude females from managerial options and advancement. Sexist employers regularly demand physical attractiveness from female applicants, specifying height and weight measurement in well-publicized beauty codes (ones that are articulated by vocational teachers as well). By far the strongest cultural constraint to women’s equity is marriage and motherhood. In Korea, labor force participation rates are lowest for women in their prime childbearing years, ages 24 to 34. As women have entered the job market, however, the family birthrate has declined precipitously in a 30year period from 4.5 children in 1970 to 1.5 children in 2001. As Kraus and Carter indicated (in chap. 10), German women are confronted with state disincentives that prioritize the family ideal of male breadwinner and nonworking wife with children. Prior to reunification working women in the former socialist East German Democratic Republic benefited from favorable treatment with comprehensive childcare packages, including maternity leaves and housing allowances. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989,

AFTERWORD

201

employed women throughout the country were forced to choose from a range of private strategies to reconcile work-family obligations, such as leaving the labor force when children are young, hiring household help, using childcare facilities, deferring marriage and childbirth, and limiting family size. Public options for working mothers such as child-rearing benefits and tax breaks to wedded couples, Kraus and Carter argued, are basically incentives for females to stay at home. While some countries are arguing whether daycare is detrimental to children, others such as Norway have created an intricate web of support for workers during the period of pregnancy, childbirth, and postnatal care. For instance, women comprise a large portion of Norwegian and Danish apprentices who obtain a craft certificate in the printing industry, as Mjelde detailed (in chap. 7). Through union struggles females have gained a measure of equal rights in the workplace. In fact, Nordic family policies direct men to share in responsible care and welfare of their children, and a father quota is given for 4 weeks of paternity leave. In Norway, 80% of new fathers take advantage of the quota; dual breadwinner roles and shared domestic duties represent a gender revolution there. While social democratic countries in Scandinavia have attempted to deal with cultural issues of workfamily conflicts in gender-fair and evenhanded ways, some women still believe that they are the natural caretakers of children, husbands, and homes. VET DELIVERY SYSTEMS REINFORCE SEX-TYPED TRAINING PROGRAMS; VOCATIONAL TEACHERS REPRODUCE GENDER STEREOTYPES; AND INSTITUTIONAL CULTURES REINFORCE MASCULINE PRIVILEGE The women’s movement of the post-World War II era has made significant inroads in publicizing the nature of dual-labor markets that impact work and vocational education opportunities for females. Still, sex-typed training crosses national borders, as described throughout the volume in countries from Korea to Ethiopia and Brazil to Canada, typically with boys enrolled in the hard trade and industrial areas and girls in the soft caregiving fields such as in health occupations. Craft certificates and apprenticeships mostly are awarded to males ensuring full-time, steady employment with fixed career ladders; females comprise a larger majority of the part-time, casual labor force. In Australia, male and female graduates in TAFE colleges exhibit high levels of participation in VET, as Malloch illustrated (in chap. 9), but their employment outcomes are unequally distributed by gender. Over 60% of female graduates enter low-paid areas of feminized occupations compared to 18% of males; males comprise over three-fourths of all job placements in the

202


construction, manufacturing, mining, and power utility fields. Malloch also described the male-based culture of TAFE institutions that privilege the administrative posture of masculine resistance to gender equity agendas, including a lack of support for the leadership development of female staff members. Several contributors pointed out the male-biased instructional practices that permeate teacher-student interactions and student peer cultures in vocational training. For example, Malloch mentioned the hostile and harassing climate for girls in male-dominated trade training in Australia, such as offensive graffiti, leers and comments, and sexual suggestions. Lakes (chap. 3), too, characterized VET classrooms in the United Kingdom and the United States as places where White, working-class masculinities are constructed by the boys as dominant identities framed in direct opposition to other, subordinated male students of color and females. More troubling are parodied gender codes and displays of bodily knowledge the boys act out at school, often with the consent of their instructor. In Korean vocational high schools, Pae and Lakes (chap. 5) reported that girls receive overt, explicit messages of subservience to males; pleasing female demeanor and bearing are emphasized by teachers in an inventory of skills guaranteeing success on the job. DONOR AGENCIES MAY WIELD UNFAIR ADVANTAGE IN DETERMINING VET AND GENDER EQUITY AGENDAS IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD Several of the contributors in this volume draw attention to the potential colonizing aspects of donor agencies promoting Western business ideology and funding plans in developing countries. For example, Ramalho (in chap. 4) noted how decreased capital investments and higher interest rates from international lenders such as the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank have caused monetary destabilization and inflation, growing unemployment, and greater dependence upon foreign corporations and markets in Brazil. Under globalization, donor agencies prioritize technological modernization while devaluing social welfare. Women in developing countries need new resources to challenge patriarchal relations, create communities of empowerment, and build networks of resistance and contestation. Yet the narrow scope of most international assistance tends to view educational progress through an economic lens alone. Since the World Bank and other donor agencies insist upon their own program designs— temporary, specialized VET projects nowadays—questions of sustainability and capacity building over time remain unanswered.

AFTERWORD

203

Carter (in chap. 2) said that feminist-inspired international treaties bring to light the adverse treatment of women throughout the world, with special attention to the educational conditions of girls and boys including unequal access to vocational education and training. Yet there are problems with the First World approach to women’s liberation. The Western enlightenment view toward human rights, Carter (chap. 2) noted, tends to treat all women as one, disregarding the fundamental historic and cultural nature of gender differences where traditional, aboriginal, or rural societies operate, in relationships between local men and women that include marriage, reproductive, and social practices (such as sutee, clitoridectomy, and forced veiling) that would be highly objectionable to others. Interestingly, feminist rhetoric may be used by some ruling elites—as in Iran and Iraq—to integrate women into public life in order to help dislodge power from rising fundamental movements—a real threat to female education, literacy campaigns, and political freedoms. Perhaps the greatest impact upon women’s organizing for VET equity in developing countries was the four United Nations sponsored conferences on women. Beginning in 1975, in Mexico City, and at regular intervals international delegations of activist women came together at these meetings (Copenhagen in 1980; Nairobi in 1985; and Beijing in 1995) to establish social policies and create action plans in critical areas of concern, including overturning barriers to access and opportunities in vocational education and training. Consequently, when Brazilian feminists advanced positions advocated by the UN Beijing conference the government was compelled to develop a National Plan for Worker’s Qualification, establishing a protocol the next year that guaranteed females would comprise at least 30% of trainees for vocational certificates. Priorities were given to low-income women, single heads of household, youth at risk, Afro-Brazilians and other ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities. The Beijing conference influenced Ethiopian women to pressure their government as well, Lasonen remarked (in chap. 6), resulting in the African Women Platform of Action, a plan meant to guarantee women equal rights, improve social, cultural and economic conditions, and facilitate success in employment and education. A National Women’s Affairs Office was established under the Prime Minister to monitor the on-going reforms in public affairs and state institutions. In this volume, we examined vocational education and training globally in light of the educational policy reforms neo-liberals enact to ensure worker readiness in labor markets. Corporate leaders in transnational enterprise articulate a desire for learning opportunities in computer and information technologies; state governments create technocratic measures of accountability, assessments, and standards as compliance mechanisms. Business practices have little use for social welfare measures in the arena of

204


equal opportunities and affirmative action. Neo-liberals desire a minimum of state intervention into educational delivery systems. The cross-national perspectives in this volume illuminate the meaning of VET equity theory and practice in the new economy, and explore the current efforts of a number of nations around the world to transform VET programs into gender equitable institutions. We recognize that gender equity in education is constructed differently from place to place dependent upon a variety of factors including economic development and cultural traditions. Still, the state refuses to relinquish control entirely over schooling (as free market capitalists would like). This means that the possibility exists for progressive social movements to influence gender equity agendas in education and work. These tensions underlie the changing face of vocational education and training internationally.

Author Index

A Aarebrot, R., 13, 126 Addelston, J., 45, 55 Adler, M.A., 170 171, 172, 179, 184 Ahnert, L., 181, 184 Ahuja,V., 31, 38 Alemu,Y., 105, 108 Ali, N.M., 33, 38 Almeida, M.V., 54 Alt, M., 44, 56 Andermahr, S., 25, 38 Annexstein, L., 12, 13 Annfelt, T., 126 Anzaldúa, G., 25, 38 Apple, M.W., 90, 91, 94 Arbeitsgruppe Bildungsbericht, 175, 184 Australian National Training Authority (ANTA), 155, 165 Avenstrup, R., 106, 110 Azevedo, F., 71, 72, 73, 81 B Bach, H., 144, 149 Banaszak, L.A., 181, 184 Bannerji, H., 133, 137, 149 Barbier, M., 194, 199 Barlow, M., 142, 143, 149 Basu, A., 4, 13 Beck, N., 131, 149 Beck, U., 11, 13, 44, 54 Bekele, A., 106, 110 Belanger, C., 4, 14 Belayneh, T., 100, 109 Benavot, A., 6, 13 Benería, L., 30, 38 Benjamin, S., 54, 55

Benton, S., 21, 38 Berk, L.E., 190, 200 Billett, S., 162, 165 Blackmore, J., 139, 148, 149 Blossfeld, H., 178, 185 Borcelle, G., 153, 165 Bourdieu, P., 112, 126 Bowles, S., 112, 126 Brayfield, A., 171, 172, 179, 184 Brown, S., 192, 200 Bruschini, C., 68, 69, 70, 81 Brush, C.G., 141, 149 Bundesministerium, 173, 176–177, 179, 181, 184 Bunting, A., 26, 38 Burge, P.L., 12, 14, 193, 196, 198, 200 Burnett, M.F., 191, 201 Burns, J., 48, 56 Business Development Bank of Canada, 141, 150 Butler, E., 8, 14, 157, 163, 165 Butorac, A., 161, 165 C Caillods, F., 4, 5, 14 Cairns, L., 164, 166 Canadian Advisory Council (CACSW), 135, 136, 141, 150 Carnoy, M., 4, 14 Carson, A., 153, 154, 165 Carter, V.K., 140, 151 Center on Education and Work, 195, 196 Chang, K.S., 88, 94 Chang, P., 88, 94 Chang, S.J., 90, 94

206


Charlesworth, H., 25, 38 Chariot, B., 112, 126 Ching, C., 197, 200 Cho, H., 88, 94 Cho, M.K., 10, 14, 90, 91, 94 Chosun Ilbo, 88, 94 Christmas-Best, V.E., 179, 184 Chung, H., 90, 94 Cockcroft, J.D., 2, 14 Coffield, F., 149, 150 Commonwealth Schools Commission, 160, 165 Conly, S.R., 3, 14 Connell, R.W., 45, 46, 50, 52, 54, 55 Copa, G.H., 189, 200 Corman, J., 137, 148, 151 Coulter, R.P., 148, 150 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2000, 173, 184 Cox, A.L., 196, 200 Crawford, K.M., 190, 201 Culver, S.M., 12, 14, 193, 196, 198, 200 Currie, D.H., 31, 38 D Da Silva, B., 2, 14 Dekkers, H., 12, 13, 17 Dembicki, M., 193, 200 De Montfort, R., 8, 14 Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET), 156, 160, 161, 165 Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC), 160, 165 Deutscher Ausschuss, 175, 184 Devos, A., 140, 147, 150 Diaz, C.F., 190, 200 Dixon, C., 49, 55 Dollar, D., 63, 81 Dolling, I., 171, 184 Drake, P., 163, 165 Drobnic, S., 178, 180, 185 Dumbrell, T., 8, 14 Duxbury, L., 132, 134, 137, 150

E Ehrenreich, B., 92, 94 Eisenhart, M. A,, 9, 15 Ellingsæter, A.L., 122, 125, 127 Elschenbroich, D., 181, 185 Elson, D., 30, 38 Ernst, A., 181, 185 Erskine, S., 7, 11, 14, 15, 17, 56, 94 Ertl, H., 176, 185 Erwin, L., 145, 150 ESDP, 102, 103, 104, 106, 108 Eyre, L., 132, 133, 136, 143, 148, 149, 150 Ezekiel, R.S., 45, 55 F Fawcett, C.S., 6, 7, 14 Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE), 97–100, 102, 104, 108 Federal Office of Statistics, 172, 173, 180, 185 Fenwick, T., 140–142, 147, 150 Ferguson, A., 26, 38 Ferrier, F., 8, 14, 157, 163, 165 Field, J., 132, 140, 150 Filmer, D., 31, 38 Fine, M., 45–47, 55 Finn, P.J., 48, 52, 55 Finnegan, W., 8, 14 Fiorito, S.S., 134, 152 Fleischman, J., 32, 39 Floro, M., 30, 38 Foster, V., 49, 55 Fraser, A.S., 20, 21, 28, 31, 39 Freedman, T., 62, 82 Freire, P., 78, 81, 82 Froyland, E., 104, 105, 106, 108, 110 Fuentes, A., 92, 94 Fukuyama, F., 124, 127 Fullan, M.G., 196, 200 Fundação Carlos Chagas, 74, 75, 82 Furtado, C., 63, 64, 82

AUTHOR INDEX G Gaskell, J., 9, 14, 112, 127, 137, 139, 144–146, 150 Gee, J.P., 1, 14 George, S., 62, 63, 82 Georgia Department of Education, Technology, and Career Education, 195, 200 Gerhard, U., 172, 185 Ghorayshi, P., 4, 14 Ghoussoub, M., 54, 55 Gintis, H., 112, 126 Glucksmann, M., 124, 127 Goldflam, A., 161, 165 Goodman, G.S., 52, 55 Goozee, G., 154, 166 Graham, S., 197, 200 Gramsci, A., 111, 127 Green, A., 5, 11, 14 Grewal, I., 26, 39 Griffen, C., 49, 55 Grinberg, J.A., 52, 55 Grønbeck Hansen, K., 113, 127 Grønseth, E., 126, 127 Grown, C., 30, 38 Grupta, G.R., 1, 14 GTZ, 105, 109 Guimarães, N.A., 70, 72 Gustafsson, S., 175, 185 H Hadden, K., 3, 6, 15 Håland, K., 112, 127 HaIl, V., 163, 166 Harrison, T.W., 134, 142, 143, 149, 150, 151 Hasan, M., 33, 39 Hase, S., 164, 166 Hatch, T., 196, 200 Hatfield, J.C., 138, 150 Haywood, C., 50, 55 He, Y., 134, 152 Healy, L., 198, 200 Heath, S., 10, 12, 15 Heinz, W.R., 176, 177, 185 Hejtmanek, M., 87, 95 Henry, M., 11, 15, 37, 39 Henry, T., 191, 200

207

Herbst, V., 181, 185 Hernes, G., 112, 127 Higgins, C., 132, 134, 137, 150 Hill, M.A., 3, 6, 15 Hill Collins, P., 26, 39 Hochschild, A., 138, 150 Holland, D.C., 9, 15 Høst, H., 12, 15, 115, 119, 127 Howden, S., 6, 7, 14 Howell, S.L., 140, 151 Hoyles, C., 198, 200 HRDC, 131, 135, 151 Hudson, L., 44, 55 Hughes, K., 134, 141, 142, 151 Hughes-Bond, L., 145, 146, 151 Huh, M., 191, 201 Hui, X., 5, 16 Hull, G., 1, 14 Human Development Report, 92, 94 Human Rights Watch, 21, 32, 39, 42 Hurst, D., 44, 55 I Ihm, C.S., 91, 93, 94 Industry Canada, 131, 134, 141, 151 International Labour Organization, 24, 39 J Jackson, N., 139, 151 Jaesoen, J., 173, 186 James, P., 53, 56 James, S., 20, 39 Jayaweera, S., 92, 94 Jones, K.B., 21, 39 Juang, L.P., Jung, K., 90, 94 K Kachur, J.L., 134, 142, 149, 150, 151 Kafai, Y., 197, 200 Kanpol, B., 53, 56 Kaplan, C., 26, 39 Karninen, M., 113, 127 Katzenstein, M.F., 25, 39 Keating, J., 155, 166 Keddie, N., 32, 33, 39

208


Kelemu, M., 106, 110 Kelly, P.F., 4, 15 Kelly, R.M., 196, 200 Kensinger, L., 27, 39 Kenway, J., 10, 15, 43, 49, 56 Kim, H.M., 87, 88, 94 Kim, J.I., 90, 94 Kim, S.K., 88, 95 Kim, Y.H., 91, 93, 95 Kimmel, M., 49, 55 King, E.M., 3, 6, 15 Kirjavainen, L., 99, 109 Knudsen, K., 99, 109 Korean National Statistical Office, 89, 95 Korean Women’s Development Institute, 89, 90, 95 Kraay, A., 63, 81 Kraus, K., 178, 185 Kymlicka,W., 21, 39 L Lakes, R.D., 45, 56, 198, 200 Lankshear, L., 1, 14 Lao Embassy, 3, 15 Lasonen, J., 99, 109 Lauen, D., 44, 56 Lee, J.H., 85, 95 Levesque, K., 44, 56 Lindgren, A., 121, 128 Lindsey, R.B., 197, 200 Lister, R., 27, 39 Little, A.W., 30, 39 Livingstone, D.W., 112, 128, 147, 151 Løkke, P.A., 122, 128 London, B., 3, 6, 15 Looker, E.D., 145, 151 Louro, G.L., 81, 82 Lovell, T., 25, 38 Lovell, T.A., 132, 150 Lowe, G.S., 133, 134, 137, 147, 151 Lowe, L., 133, 151 Lugones, M.C., 26, 39 Lutz, H., 182 186 Luxton, M., 137, 148, 151 Lymon, K., 161, 165

M Mac an Ghaill, M., 50, 51, 52, 55, 56 MacDonald, M., 30, 38 Magee, P.A., 145, 151 Malloch, M., 164, 165, 166 Marks, J., 181, 186 Marshall, C., 31, 39 Marshall, S., 197, 200 Martin, J.R., 8, 15 Martin, M., 9, 15 Marusza, J., 45, 46, 47, 55, 56 Mayer, A.M., 25, 39 Mayer, C., 126, 128, 176, 186 McAdie, P., 148, 151 McCleay, P., 3, 15 McDowell, L., 51, 52, 54, 56 McFarland, J., 136, 142, 151 McLaughlin, M., 134, 151 McLeer, A., 26, 40 Medel-Anonuevo, C., 31, 40 Melo, F. de A. 67, 82 Mendez, L.M., 190, 201 Mengxia, S., 5, 16 Mercer, M., 103, 110 Michelsen, S., 12, 15, 115, 127 Mickelson, R.A., 5, 15 Mid-Term Review Mission, 102, 109 Mies, M., 38, 40 Milanovic, B., 63, 82 Mills, A.J., 138, 150 Mincer, J., 178, 186 Ministério da Educação, 77, 82 Ministry of Economic Development and Cooperation (MEDC), 104, 109 Ministry of Education, 102, 104, 105, 106, 109 Ministry of Education and Human Res. Dev. of Korea, 86, 87, 90, 93, 95 Ministry of Political Affairs, 90, 93, 94, 95 Mirchandani, K., 139, 141, 142, 151, 152 Mitchell, J.D., 3, 15 Mjelde, L., 111–114, 116–119, 121, 125, 128 Moghadam, V.M., 33, 34, 40 Mohanty, C.T., 4, 15, 26, 40 Møller, E., 114, 129

AUTHOR INDEX Monk-Turner, E., 89, 95 Moon, Y.J., 173, 186 Morrell, R., 54, 56 Morris, M.E., 33, 40 Mósesdóttir, L., 169, 183, 186 Mountain Voices, 97, 109 MPR Associates, 44, 56 Mushaben, J.M., 181, 186 N Narayan, U., 26, 40 National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education, 190, 192, 193, 197, 201 National Commission on Secondary Vocational Education, 199, 201 National Committee on Traditional Practices of Ethiopia, 99, 109 National Women’s Law Center, 191, 194, 199, 201 NCVER, 155, 156, 157, 166 Nkomo, M., 5, 15 Norton, A.R., 33, 40 Nowell, I., 159, 166 Nussbaum, M., 26, 40 O Odierna, S., 182, 186 Ofek, H., 178, 186 Ohio Department of Education, 195, 201 OIT/CINTERFOR, 76, 77, 83 Okin, S.M., 20, 26, 27, 40 Oliveira, R. de, 77, 78, 82 Ovaskainen, E., 99, 109 Owen, P., 163, 165 P Park, I.H., 87, 95 Passeron, J.C., 112, 126 Pateman, C., 27, 40 PETE, 158, 166 Peters, J., 21, 40 Pettman, J.J., 21, 40 Pittin, R., 33, 40 Pochmann, M., 62, 64, 65, 83 Pocock, B., 8, 16, 154, 157, 158, 159, 166

209

Pollack, W., 49, 56 Poluha, E., 102, 106, 109, 110 Population Council, Inc., 35, 40, 180, 186 Poutiainen, E., 99, 109 Pozzi, S., 198, 200 Probert, B., 132, 137, 138, 140, 152 R Rabelo, S., 67, 83 Rago, M., 66, 67, 83 Raissiguier, C., 9, 16 Raphael Reed, L., 49, 56 Ravallion, M., 63, 83 Reskin, B.F., 179, 186 Riddell, S., 10, 16, 48, 49, 56 Robertson, H.J., 142, 143, 149 Roeder, P.M., 178, 179, 186 Rohwer, G., 178, 185 Rolling, P.C., 191, 201 Roos, P.A., 179, 186 Rosenfeld, R.A., 170, 171, 178, 181, 186 Rupp, L.J., 28, 40 Rushbrook, P., 162, 166 Russo, A., 4, 15 Ryan, R.J., 154, 166 S Sala-i-Martin, X., 63, 83 Saleeby, D., 196, 201 Sampson, S.N., 159, 166 Sandier, J., 37, 40 Sanguinetti, J., 158, 166 Sapiro, V., 28, 41 Schellenberg, G., 133, 151 Schied, F.M., 140, 151 Schiek, D., 178, 186 Schmitt-Rodermund, E., 179, 184 Schmuck, P.A., 159, 166 Schultz, S., 182, 186 Schutte, I., 126, 128 Sen, A., 63, 83 SENAI.DN.PPEA, 75, 83 Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Comercial, 73, 83 Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Industrial, 73, 83

210


Shakeshaft, C., 159, 166 Shalev, C., 23, 41 Sharpe, T., 161, 165 Shibeshi, A., 103, 110 Shiva, V., 38, 40 Silbereisen, R.K., 180, 185 Simon, R.I., 189, 201 Sinclair-Webb, E., 54, 55 Singerman, D., 33, 40 Siringi, S. 32, 41 Skarpenes, O., 119, 127 Skelton, A., 54, 56 Skelton, C., 49, 52, 55, 57 Smith, B., 26, 41 Smith, B.G., 4, 16 Smith, C.A., 132, 150 Smith, D.G., 134, 152 Smith, E., 155, 166 Smith, S.S., 5, 15 Smithson, I., 199, 201 Sobski, J., 161, 167 Soldressen, L.S., 134, 152 Soros, G., 62, 83 Spelman, E.V., 26, 39, 41 Spencer, B., 132, 152 Spring, J., 93, 95 Spring, K., 12, 16 Springfield Technical Community College, 191, 201 Stanton, E.C., 28, 41 State of Victoria Department of Education, 161, 162, 167 Statistics Canada, 133, 136, 138, 141, 152 Statistisk Sentralbyrå (Statistics Norway), 115, 129 Stewart, P., 145, 150 Stig, B., 116, 129 Stiglitz, J.E., 62, 83 Strauss, S., 111, 129 Stromquist, N.P., 7, 11, 13, 16, 31, 41, 54, 57, 93, 95 STS Staff Development Advisory Com-mittee, 156, 159, 167 Suh, M.S., 89, 95 Sultan, M., 33, 41

T Tallaksen, D.W., 121, 129 Tanguy, L., 112, 129 Taylor, A., 134, 142, 144, 152 Teferra, T., 103, 110 Teitelbaum, P., 44, 56 Tekle, A., 100, 109 Tervo, L., 99, 109 Tesfaye, H.Z., 104, 109 Thiessen, B., 182, 186 Thiessen, V., 136, 137, 143, 152 Tiedao, Z., 5, 16 Tomasevski, K., 23, 41 Torres, L., 4, 15 Torres, R.M., 6, 7, 15 Transitional Government of Ethiopia, 100, 103, 104, 109, 110 Trappe, H., 170, 171, 178, 181, 186 Tregenza, K., 10, 15, 43, 56 Trzcinski, E., 170, 174, 177, 178, 187 Turner, C.G. 89, 95 U United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, 22, 37, 41 United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 86, 95 United Nations Division for the Advance-ment of Women (UNDAW), 8, 16 United Nations International Children’s and Educ. Fund (UNICEF), 24, 34, 35, 36, 41, 97, 99, 100, 102, 108, 110 United Nations, 6, 16, 19, 41 Unterhalter, E., 13, 16 U.S. Census Bureau, 109, 201 U.S. Department of Labor, 109, 201 V Valli, L., 9, 16 Van Buren, J.B., 197, 201 Van Eck, E., 198, 202 Veríssimo, L.F., 59, 78, 81, 83 Voet, R., 27, 42 Volman, M., 198, 202

AUTHOR INDEX W Wachman, A., 87, 95 Walker, J.C., 10, 16, 48, 57 Wallace, C.P., 174, 187 Watkins, P., 10, 15, 43, 56 Weber, A., 12, 17 Weiming, T., 87, 95 Weiner. G., 159, 167 Weis, L., 10, 17, 45, 55, 57 Welton, M.R., 149, 152 Willard, E., 189, 202 Wilson, M., 7, 11, 12, 13, 17, 159, 164, 167 Wolf, D., 4, 15 Wolkowitz, C., 25, 38 Wolper, A., 21, 40

211

Women’s International Network (WIN), 30, 42 Wood, E., 106, 110 Wood, J.T., 190, 202 Workmen, T., 103, 110 World Bank (WB), 31, 42, 98, 100, 108, 110 World Health Organization (WHO), 24, 42 Wright, P., 8, 14 Y Yan, W., 5, 16 Yuh, Y.S., 89, 95

Subject Index

A Africa, 3, 4, 10, 23, 26, 31–32, 60–61, 64, 66, 79, 97–108, 207 Apprenticeships, 4, 12, 50–51, 73, 104, 113–126, 142, 143, 158, 160, 169, 176–177, 197, 204, 206 Australia, 2, 8, 10, 46, 49, 53–54, 153–167, 206 Australian Technical and Further Education (TAFE), 8, 14, 153– 165, 206 B Beijing Conference, 7, 23, 29, 76, 100, 207 Breadwinner, 50, 52, 112, 124, 125, 170, 173, 174, 178, 180, 183, 205 Business, 11, 12, 24, 30, 35, 44, 47, 61, 64, 76, 7, 88, 91, 116, 134, 141, 143, 144, 176, 177, 189, 190, 197, 199, 204, 206, 208 C Capitalism, 2, 5, 20, 45, 46, 50, 61, 62, 64–66, 68, 70, 72, 77–81, 124, 170, 183 Career, 8, 11, 12, 31, 36, 43, 44, 48, 50, 66, 90, 103, 105, 122, 133, 136, 143–147, 164, 165, 171, 175, 178–179, 183, 190, 193–196, 199, 204, 206 Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act (U.S.), 11, 191–192 Childcare, 68, 80, 89, 120, 123, 136, 138, 141, 145, 147, 161, 163, 17, 171, 174, 177, 181, 190, 193, 205 China, 5, 23, 25, 106

Citizenship, 20, 27–29, 63, 76, 78, 81, 173 Class, 8, 20, 26, 29, 30, 40, 45, 46, 49, 50, 53, 54, 60, 67, 91, 112, 124, 132, 137, 144, 177, 190, 199 middle-class, 26, 29, 61, 72, 124, 140, 174, 183 upper-class, 29, 66, 71, 73 working-class, 9–10, 43–45, 47–49, 51, 52, 54, 88, 111–112, 121, 124, 176, 182, 204, 206 Conventions, 24, 25, 29, 77, 136; see also Treaties Cultural values (traditions), 3–4, 11, 19–21, 23, 25–26, 28–33, 37, 44– 45, 47, 50–54, 62, 71, 72–73, 86– 88, 91, 93– 94, 99–100, 132–134, 137, 147–148, 162, 171, 198, 203–208 D Debts, 2, 63, 70, 80 Deindustrialization, see Industry Discrimination, 7, 10, 21–24, 29, 31, 35, 37, 70, 75, 77, 88–89, 118, 133, 135, 141–142, 145–146, 153, 171, 175, 178, 182, 189, 191, 194, 197; see also Racism, Sexism E Economic barriers, 19, 24, 29, 148, 171, 18, 180, 195 development and enterprise, 1, 4, 85, 176, 203, 28, improvement, 6, 160, 175, 198, 207

214


policies and theories, 6, 20, 30, 31, 34, 46, 62, 63, 64, 65, 93, 132, 134, 147, 162, 163, 171, 175, 189, 207, productivity, 3, 31, 37, 45 Economics, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 and females, 12, 21, 27, 28, 31, 36, 51, 66, 100, 118, 122, 135, 144, 148, 180, 190, 198, 207 and males, 10, 11, 33, 46, 51 and vocational education, 5, 8, 143 family, 3, 52 globally, 1, 5, 10, 13, 25, 45, 62, 63, 64, 70, 78, 86 in Australia, 2, 160, 162, 163 in Brazil, 59–61, 63, 69, 70, 73, 79, 80 in Canada, 2, 133–135, 141, 149 in Ethiopia, 99, 100, 101 in Germany, 2, 170, 171, 175, 176, 180 in Korea, 85, 86, 90, 93 in Norway, 2, in the United States, 198 Employment full-time, 34, 43, 89, 137, 153, 156, 157, 158, 163, 170, 171, 180, 190, 206 part-time, 34, 51, 126, 136, 137, 156, 158, 171, 172, 173, 174, 180, 181, 183, 190, 203, 206 Entrepreneur, 5, 104, 106, 131–136, 203 Ethnicity, 8, 20, 24, 26, 35, 50, 76, 79, 98, 137, 140, 148, 182, 199, 207

First World, 1, 26, 31, 64, 207

F Feminist theory, 4, 9, 12, 19, 20, 25– 31, 33, 34, 37, 53, 67, 132, 133, 137, 207 139–141, 143, 145, 173, 196, 203, Feminists (individuals, groups), 11, 12, 22, 25 26 76, 78, 80, 81, 132, 136, 145, 148, 207 Fertility (infant mortality, child birthrate), 3, 6, 36, 172, 180, 181, 205

L Labor force, 8, 10, 11, 13, 20, 66–68, 71, 89, 101, 116, 118, 126, 133, 171, 173, 78, 204–206 Labor market, 5, 10, 11, 30, 35, 44, 5, 51, 54, 68, 74–76, 83, 89, 93, 112–114, 118, 120, 121, 124, 132, 135, 156, 171, 172, 180, 182, 183, 203–205, 208 Law/laws, legislation, 11, 21–25, 28, 32 34, 36, 37, 63, 70, 80, 92, 100,

G Gender equity, 97, 104, 107, 133, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148, 154, 160–163, 178, 183, 189, 191–192, 197, 198, 203–204, 206, 208 Globalization, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 25, 30, 31, 36, 50, 52, 54, 59, 60, 62, 63, 66, 68, 69, 70, 75, 77, 78, 79, 81, 92, 93, 142, 148, 203, 204, 206 Government, 1, 11, 12, 13, 19–28, 32, 34, 36–37, 59, 61–64, 68, 72– 73, 75–78, 80, 89–90, 93, 98, 100–107, 126, 131, 133–134, 136, 142–144, 146, 148, 171, 173, 177, 204, 207, 208; see also Political perspectives H HIV/AIDS, 32, 99, 101 I India, 323, 106 Industry, 1, 4–5, 11, 23, 43–44, 59– 61, 63–65, 68–75, 79, 85–90, 92– 93, 99, 101, 104–105, 11–114, 116–121, 125, 131, 134, 136–137, 141, 143, 155, 158, 160, 161, 179, 197, 205 Instructors, 48, 53, 106, 158, 206 International Bill of Rights, 20, 22 J Japan, 5, 22, 60, 64–66, 79, 104

SUBJECT INDEX 112, 118, 125, 169–174, 178, 181, 189, 191, 193, 194, 199; see also Title IX, Carl D.Perkins, International Bill of Rights Legal reform, 7, 20, 21, 27, 34, 36, 37, 67, 71, 100, 173 Literacy/illiteracy female, 3, 4, 6, 22, 23, 24, 207 in Bangladesh, 33 in Brazil, 2, 71, 76, 81 in Canada, 135, 143, 144 in Ethiopia, 97, 99, 144 in the Sudan, 33 M Marketplace, 2, 4, 5, 6, 30, 43, 44, 61–63, 68, 70, 74, 76–79, 85, 93, 134, 135, 141–144, 146, 148, 149, 155, 156, 161, 163, 171, 172, 176, 180, 182, 183, 203–206, 208 Maternity (motherhood), 3, 27–29, 35–36, 67, 85, 88–89, 112, 120– 122, 126, 145–146, 153, 170–171, 177–181, 204, 205 Migrants, 12, 60, 66, 79, 100, 133, 136, 137, 142, 176, 182 Minorities, 10, 45, 47, 76, 79–81, 118, 129, 133, 136, 142, 207 O Occupational segregation, 4, 7, 8, 12, 20, 31, 43, 44, 50–51, 66–67, 69, 70, 75, 86, 87, 90, 106 112, 114, 116, 136, 137, 146, 156, 157, 160, 161, 163, 176–180, 190, 194, 195, 203, 204, 206 Organizations donor agencies, 5–7, 11, 13, 203, 206–207 International Labour Organization (ILO), 24, 34, 35, 106 nongovernmental (NGO), 4, 6, 11, 30, 33, 80, 104 Registered Training Organizations, 155 Organization for Economic Cooperation

215

and Development (OECD), 131, 134 United Nations (UN), 6, 19, 76, 136, 207 United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), 6 United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), 6 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 6 U.S. Agency for International Develop-ment (USAID), 3, 104 World Bank (WB), 4, 6, 24, 30, 31, 62 63, 78, 98, 100, 105 World Health Organization (WHO), 24 World Trade Organization (WTO), 5 P Patriarchy, 2–5, 11, 21, 27, 29, 33, 66, 79, 87, 92, 93, 183, 204, 207 Political perspectives; see also Government centrist, 11 conservative, 25, 49, 62, 111–112, 119, 133, 149, 175, 179, 181, 194, 203–204 liberal, 19–21, 25, 27–31, 37, 59, 62–63, 71, 73, 112, 131, 133, 136–138, 143–144 neo-conservative, 144 neo-liberal, 11, 62–63, 65, 70, 77– 79, 93, 132, 134–135, 142, 146, 148–149, 203, 204, 208 Poverty, 29, 35, 36, 46, 60, 63, 70, 97–100, 10, 104, 142, R Race, 8, 20, 24–26, 29, 45, 47–48, 50, 52–54, 60, 77, 79, 133, 137, 142, 144, 182, 190, 191, 199 Racism, 10, 60, 80, 148, 182, 198 Reform, 21, 23, 37, 46, 71–73, 88, 90, 93, 100, 103, 105, 107, 112, 114, 155–157, 173, 175, 207, 208

216


Religion, 19–20, 23, 25, 29–30, 32–33, 35–37, 62, 77, 87, 133, 148, 174, 191 Resistance, 4, 10, 33, 36, 45, 48, 49, 52–53, 88, 91, 99, 117–118, 137, 140, 148, 157, 206, 207 Rights, human, 7, 19–38, 65, 67, 133, 207 Rights, women’s, 8, 12, 20–38, 67, 88, 100–101, 107, 114, 120, 135–137, 207 145, 173, 181, 191, 194, 203, 205, S Schools/schooling and males, 43–54, 107, 143, 154, 173, 176, 206 constraints to, 36, 97, 99, 101, 160, 175, 190, 197, 204 drop-outs (unenrolled), 36, 45–46, 97, 102 in Brazil, 6, 68, 71, 72, 73, 74 in Canada, 133, 135, 142–146 in Ethiopia, 97 in Korea, 86 in Norway, 111-126 in the United Kingdom, 48, 50 primary, 71, 86, 90, 101, 104, 120, 181, 189 secondary, 43, 44, 47, 52, 71, 86, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 102, 104, 111, 143, 154, 176, 178, 195, 206 tertiary, higher education, 73, 189 vocational, 44, 47, 48, 53, 71, 73, 78, 85–87, 90–93, 154, 170, 172, 176, 176, 190, 192, 194– 195, 199 School to work transitions, 44, 54, 70, 93, 142, 180, 190, 193 Sexism, 10, 52, 80, 194, 198; see also Discrimination Sexual harassment, 10, 24, 32, 35, 46–51, 66, 76, 89, 157, 161, 182, 197 Social welfare, policies, security, assitance, 2, 20, 93, 115, 169,

171, 177, 180, 182, 183, 189, 194, 204, 206, 207, 208 Socioeconomics, see Economics Stereotype, 7–8, 10, 19, 22, 31, 108, 146, 159, 163, 205 Structural adjustment policies (SAPs), 30, 36, 68–69, 75–76, 78–81, 162, 204, 206 Subcultures, 10, 45, 132 T TAFE, see Australian Technical and Further Education Teachers, 54, 71, 73, 91, 92, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 116, 121, 157, 158, 160, 162, 174, 190, 193 194, 196, 197, 199, 204, 205– 206; see also Instructors Third World, 4, 25–26, 64, 68 Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act (U.S.), 11, 191, 194, 197 Trade (policies), 2, 20, 30–31, 66 79, 92, 133, 136, 147 Trades (vocational), 2, 8, 12, 44, 47, 53, 71, 101, 105–106, 112–118, 125, 135, 139, 143, 154, 157, 160, 172, 173, 176, 190, 194, 15, 205, 206 Treaties, 7, 22, 23, 207 Tunisia, 6, 23 U Unemployment, 12, 33, 43–44, 46, 50, 77, 80, 116, 124, 133–134, 170, 172, 174, 177, 180, 183, 206 Unions, 1, 2, 44, 73, 76, 80, 86, 88, 119, 120, 125, 139, 147, 205 V Vocational education, 6, 13, 154, 169, 170, 175, 176, 189, 195, 196, 199, 205, 207 and masculinity, 8, 43, 205, 207 and the United Nations, 23

SUBJECT INDEX Carl D.Perkins Vocational Education Act (U.S.), 11, 191 in Australia, 10, 153–165 in Brazil, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 80 in Canada, 9, 131, 132, 135, 141, 142, 143, 144, 146, 147, 148 in China, 5 in Ethiopia, 97, 105, 106 in France, 9 in Germany, 175–178 in Korea, 85, 86, 87, 90, 91, 92 in the Netherlands, 12–13 in Norway, 111, 112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 124, 125 in the United Kingdom, 12

217

in the United States, 11, 189–199 Vocational education and training (VET, TVET), 1, 4–9, 11, 13, 90, 92–94, 97–98, 103–107, 142, 146, 155, 162, 176, 191, 193, 208 Vocational education curriculum, 11, 154, 160 162, 176, 195, 197 W Wages, 4, 24, 30, 34, 43–44, 50, 70– 71, 79, 85, 89–90, 93, 118, 120, 173, 176, 177, 182, 190, 194, 195, 203

Globalizing Education for Work: Comparative Perspectives on Gender and the New Economy (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education)

Global Constructions of Multicultural Education: Theories and Realities (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education)

Philosophers on Education: New Historical Perspectives

Sociolinguistics and Language Education (New Perspectives on Language and Education)

Invisible Children in the Society and Its Schools (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education)

Invisible Children in the Society and Its Schools (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education)

Inequality in Education: Comparative and International Perspectives (CERC Studies in Comparative Education)

The Renaissance of American Indian Higher Education: Capturing the Dream (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education)

Gender, Equality and Education from International and Comparative Perspectives (International Perspectives on Education and Society, Vol. 10)

Education And Gender Equality

School Knowledge in Comparative and Historical Perspective: Changing Curricula in Primary and Secondary Education (CERC Studies in Comparative Education)

School Knowledge in Comparative and Historical Perspective: Changing Curricula in Primary and Secondary Education (CERC Studies in Comparative Education)

The Routledgefalmer Reader in Gender and Education (Readers in Education)

Gender and Choice in Education and Occupation

Globalization and Educational Rights: An Intercivilizational Analysis (Volume in the Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education Series)

Decolonisation, Globalisation: Language-in-education Policy And Practice (New Perspectives on Language and Education)

Testing the Untestable in Language Education (New Perspectives on Language and Education, Volume 17)

The Politics of Language Education: Individuals and Institutions (New Perspectives on Language and Education)

Testing the Untestable in Language Education (New Perspectives on Language and Education)

Gender and Education: An Encyclopedia

Distance Education And Languages: Evolution And Change (New Perspectives on Language and Education)

International Perspectives on Diversity and Inclusive Education

Linguistic Perspectives on Language and Education

Transformations in Schooling: Historical and Comparative Perspectives

Perspectives on Participation and Inclusion: Engaging Education

Linguistic Perspectives on Language and Education

Creating Classroom Communities of Learning: International Case Studies and Perspectives (New Perspectives on Language and Education)

Comparative Fascist Studies: New Perspectives

Education, Globalisation and New Times (Education Heritage)

Issues unresolved: new perspectives on language and deaf education

Comparative and International Research In Education

Globalizing Education for Work: Comparative Perspectives on Gender and the New Economy (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education)

Global Constructions of Multicultural Education: Theories and Realities (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education)

Philosophers on Education: New Historical Perspectives

Sociolinguistics and Language Education (New Perspectives on Language and Education)

Invisible Children in the Society and Its Schools (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education)

Invisible Children in the Society and Its Schools (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education)

Inequality in Education: Comparative and International Perspectives (CERC Studies in Comparative Education)

The Renaissance of American Indian Higher Education: Capturing the Dream (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education)

Gender, Equality and Education from International and Comparative Perspectives (International Perspectives on Education and Society, Vol. 10)

Education And Gender Equality

School Knowledge in Comparative and Historical Perspective: Changing Curricula in Primary and Secondary Education (CERC Studies in Comparative Education)

School Knowledge in Comparative and Historical Perspective: Changing Curricula in Primary and Secondary Education (CERC Studies in Comparative Education)

The Routledgefalmer Reader in Gender and Education (Readers in Education)

Gender and Choice in Education and Occupation

Globalization and Educational Rights: An Intercivilizational Analysis (Volume in the Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education Series)

Decolonisation, Globalisation: Language-in-education Policy And Practice (New Perspectives on Language and Education)

Testing the Untestable in Language Education (New Perspectives on Language and Education, Volume 17)

The Politics of Language Education: Individuals and Institutions (New Perspectives on Language and Education)

Testing the Untestable in Language Education (New Perspectives on Language and Education)

Gender and Education: An Encyclopedia

Distance Education And Languages: Evolution And Change (New Perspectives on Language and Education)

International Perspectives on Diversity and Inclusive Education

Linguistic Perspectives on Language and Education

Transformations in Schooling: Historical and Comparative Perspectives

Perspectives on Participation and Inclusion: Engaging Education

Linguistic Perspectives on Language and Education

Creating Classroom Communities of Learning: International Case Studies and Perspectives (New Perspectives on Language and Education)

Comparative Fascist Studies: New Perspectives

Education, Globalisation and New Times (Education Heritage)

Issues unresolved: new perspectives on language and deaf education

Comparative and International Research In Education

Recommend Documents