Education Commons^™

Village Girls On Schooling In Their Own Words, What Do They Value And Gain? Empowerment-Capabilities & Achieved Freedom, Vilma Seeberg, Shujuan Luo

Vilma Seeberg

Abstract

This chapter explores the relationship between village girls’ schooling and enhanced capabilities and achievements in western China during the economic explosion in the first decade of the 21^st century. We seek to understand what village girls wanted and gained, what opportunities for change they sought to obtain from schooling, why they and their families sacrificed much to attend low quality schooling. Capturing these dynamics may allow us to identify the lever that generates change and frame policy that enhances and increases relevant opportunities to eliminate extreme poverty

Seeberg’s empowerment-capability framework (Seeberg and Lou 2012) applies Sen’s capability approach …

Village Girls’ Schooling Matters: Attainment, Empowerment Capabilities & Achievement, Vilma Seeberg, Shujuan Luo

Vilma Seeberg

This paper explores the relationship between village girls’ schooling, their intrinsic capabilities and achieved re-gendered identities in western China during the tumultuous first decade of the 21st century. Using an empowerment-capability framework developed by Seeberg (Seeberg and Lou 2012 forthcoming) which focuses Sen’s capability approach on rural girls schooling, we seek to explain what village girls themselves said they got out of schooling. In interviews 23 girls and young women from one village described how they valued certain functionings of well-being, agency and achievement, and how these were associated with attainment levels in schooling. We found that with rising attainment …