Lunch Hour Lecture | Is girls’ education the answer to everything?
Date of Lecture: Tuesday 29 November 2022 About the Lecture: Girls’ education is frequently portrayed as a panacea – to overpopulation, poverty, harmful social norms, and political instability. This lunchtime lecture critiques this through three presentations from UCL IOE’s Centre for Education and International Development (CEID). The first presentation asks who is promoting strategies about girls’ education, and why. It sets out four pathways associated with policy, practice and research – what works, what matters, what disorganises, and what connects; and traces the processes and outcomes emerging from these. The second presentation poses a decolonial critique of white feminism within the international development sector and asks what the sector can learn from critical feminist movements that arise from some of the world’s most violated, and most incarcerated populations. The third presentation draws insights from girls’ accounts of sexual exploitation and violence in schools, with a case study from Uganda. The presenter will reflect on complex layers of silencing within research, policy and practice that sustain gender violence in schools. Across the presentations the speakers reflect on what kinds of connections need to be built to counter unjust structures and ideas shaping intersecting inequalities in education around the world. About the speakers: Elaine Unterhalter, Professor of Education and International Development at Centre for Education and International Development (CEID), in IOE UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, UCL Laila Kadiwal, Lecturer in Education and International Development at Centre for Education and International Development (CEID), in IOE UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, UCL Jenny Parkes, Professor of Education, Gender and International Development at Centre for Education and International Development (CEID), in IOE UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, UCL