Women and Education: Global Lives in Focus

This volume captures how women’s education is shaped by the lived context of women and girls around the world, focusing on the cultural construction of gender, political economy, religion, and history.

In some parts of the world, women’s education remains a controversial topic, and many girls are not allowed equal access or any access at all to schooling. This volume examines what education is like for women and girls across the globe.

This book examines in regional chapters such topics as early marriage and child brides, safety and sexual vulnerability of schoolgirls, and cultural and religious opposition to girls’ schooling in the non-West, in addition to the added burdens of managing menstruation at school and the disruption of armed conflict and violence in war-torn nations. Such topics as machismo, backlash to girls’ success, and sexual harassment in educational environments are covered too.

Written by a cultural anthropologist, the book shows how cultural perspectives about women’s education impact the daily lives of girls and women. It provides context for how the lives of women in those countries may be shaped by political economy, religion, and history. High school students, undergraduates, and general readers will be able to make cross-cultural comparisons of women’s education around the world.

Erin Kenny, PhD, is a professor of cultural anthropology at Missouri State University. She is coauthor of Beauty around the World: A Cultural Encyclopedia.