Girls' education and sexual regulation in Malawi

Sexual regulation has been a core component of formal schooling in Southern Africa since its inception, with discipline central to teachers' work. Yet internationally funded, girl-focused development programs give new shape and legitimacy to teacher interventions on student sexuality. Building...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Gender and education 2022-05, Vol.34 (4), p.429-445
Main Authors: Silver, Rachel, Morley, Alyssa
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Christianity
Development programs
Differentiation
Dropouts
Educational Attainment
Educational History
Educational Strategies
Elementary Secondary Education
Ethnographic research
Ethnography
Females
Foreign Countries
Gender Differences
Girls
Girls education
Health Behavior
Health Education
international development
Intervention
Legitimacy
Mothers
NGOs
Nongovernmental Organizations
Parent Attitudes
Pregnancy
Program Development
Regulation
Religious Education
Sex Education
Sex Role
sexualities education
Sexuality
Socioeconomic factors
Socioeconomic Influences
Student Attitudes
Sub-Saharan Africa
Teacher Attitudes
Teachers
Women's education
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Summary:Sexual regulation has been a core component of formal schooling in Southern Africa since its inception, with discipline central to teachers' work. Yet internationally funded, girl-focused development programs give new shape and legitimacy to teacher interventions on student sexuality. Building on a combined two years of multi-sited ethnographic research in Zomba, Malawi, we show how teachers and mother groups used NGO-sponsored activities to surveil and regulate girls. We argue that, as they implemented projects, school-based actors mediated between transnational logics about the power of girls' education and deeply historic understandings of schooling and girlhood. Teacher and mother group members remade programmatic components in ways that intensified discipline for some girls and ignored others. We theorize this differentiation as a pragmatic response to local socio-economic constraints and argue that, as a result, techno-rational programs designed to keep girls in school may instead push some out.
ISSN:0954-0253
1360-0516
DOI:10.1080/09540253.2021.1989383