Gendered Paradoxes

What does it mean to become an

educated woman in Jordan?

Jordan as an improbable state

• Created by British in 1921 (defeat of Ottoman Empire in WWI)

• Given a king, whose family (the Hashemites) has ruled to today

• The majority of population are not Jordanians but refugees:– Palestinians (1948, al-Nakba

and creation of state of Israel; 1967, annexation of West Bank and Gaza)

– Iraqis– now Syrians

Schools as critical to state consolidation

• Western schooling in the Middle East introduced by missionaries and very much with the goal of Christianization

• But adopted by the Jordanian state, because they hoped schools would– Build loyal citizens among young people– Create a shared vision for the nation– Help sustain a notion of Jordan being “modern” in the world of

nations

• Schools is where young people encounter the state, in a sustained way; including discourses (“talk”) about what the state would like them to become

Why Girls’ Education?National Development

• Kwegyir Aggrey (1875-1912)• On the Phelps-Stokes Commission,

which toured African-American colleges and made recommendations for schools in British colonial Africa

• One of the founders of Achimota School, first co-educational school in Ghana, 1924

• He said, “The surest way to keep people down is to educate the men and neglect the women. If you educate a man you simply educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a whole nation.“

• What is the underlying rationale?

Why Girls’ Education? Reduces Population Growth

Why Girls’ Education? It represents “modernity” and “progress”

• What is modern and progressive? “New” possibilities for womanhood: p. 50

• Is there one route to progress? p. 13• Does empowerment of women mean: Divorce? Entering

workforce? Disobeying/ending connection to family? Having fewer children?

Many dreams for girls’ education for the transformation of self and nation

• Including the ones they have for themselves:– status and economic return of

education, p. 47– Education is viewed positively

for women

• Schools do not always succeed in making these national and personal dreams come true…– tawjihi

Yet transformations do happen….

• School as a critical site for deliberations about gender, p. 15

• School as helping create bonds with nonkin

• Girls themselves involved in these deliberations and therefore their own transformation

• Does this argument apply to the US?