Development Studies
Is Formal Education Empowering?
We had earlier observed that the consensus among opinion moulders and discussants in non-formal education settings is that access to formal education and literacy training for girls and women will ensure more active involvement of women in politics (Shvedova 1998), although Longwe (2000) had challenged the claim. We also observed that there is no value-free education, because how a person learns, whether or not s/he is able to learn, who teaches what and to whom, matters. In the light of the identities of women that have emerged from this study, and their implications for the ability of women to exercise power with other women to end domination, gain political power and resist violence directed at their gender, the task here is to find out whether formal education, which should ordinarily be a guarantor of access to power resources, has empowered or disempowered those who have acquired it. This question is pertinent, given the low social status of literate Nigerian women, the omnipresence of religion within and outside classrooms and institutions of learning, different forms of informal teaching and learning within and outside teaching-learning contexts, and the structure of the formal school in Nigeria.
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