As researchers enter the room the collective student body jumps to a standing tension, a remnant of the austere education system that existed throughout much of East Africa during the colonial period. “Good Morning,” the students exclaim in unison, formal but excited. Halla Holmarsdottir smiles broadly and greets the room in English. Her colleagues, Nagla Taha and Alawia Farag from northern Sudan, follow suit in Arabic.
Perhaps more unusual than today’s visit is its purpose- to acquire significant, qualitative information regarding gender-related challenges in education. Through a series of surveys and in-depth, recurring personal interviews, this team of advanced researchers encourages students to explore topics that they hope will illuminate gender inequities in the education system. “We see very low levels of gender awareness in Sudan,” explains Nagla Taha, a northern Sudanese researcher based at the Afhad University for Women in Khartoum. “Gender inequities in education are widespread but rarely discussed or properly identified. In many cases, people do not even know what the word gender means” she adds.
Gender-related data collection in schools like Buluk is just one aspect of the Gender Equality, Education and Poverty (GEEP) project. Established in 2008 with funds from the Norwegian Programme for Development, Research and Education (NUFU), the GEEP project aims to concurrently achieve two major objectives. Primarily, GEEP researchers, who hail respectively from Norway, Sudan and South Africa, carry out comparative studies of how global gender and education policies are implemented in south Sudan and South Africa. Additionally, through workshops, conferences and publications, GEEP participants significantly expand their own intellectual capacities as well as that of their respective institutions.
Halla Holmarsdottir coordinates the GEEP project from the Oslo University College and has been deeply involved in both South Africa and southern Sudan. When Holmarsdottir earned her PhD in Education and Development in 2005, she possessed intimate knowledge of and extensive contacts in South Africa. “I had a lot of exceptionally talented colleagues in South Africa that I was eager to work with again,” she says. In addition to rekindling existing relationships, she soon developed a close relationship with Dr. Alawia Farag, a lecturer at the Ahfad University for Women in Khartoum. The two countries would be tied together as the research fields for the GEEP project.
IN THE CLASSROOM AT BULUK PRIMARY SCHOOL: Halla Holmarsdottir is coordinating the GEEP project from Oslo University College
“Dr. Alawia has an impressive background in education and gender studies,” Holmarsdottir explains. “She had an extensive network of colleagues who were working of issues that were relevant to the scope of our work.” It was through Dr. Alawia’s network that four additional Sudanese researchers were selected for participation in the project. “I knew some individuals who had very interesting ideas for research that I believed could be beneficial to the GEEP project,” Dr. Alawia says outside of the Buluk Primary School in Juba. Through a highly competitive recruitment process, she selected a group of researchers whose topics range from educational aspirations among young internally displaced girls to disparities in gender-based violence levels in primary schools. “We are exploring a large and varied group of issues,” Dr. Alawia explains. “When we finish, we will have created a comprehensive map of the challenges.”
In South Africa, Dr. Voyokazi Nomlomo coordinates GEEP researchers from the University of the Western Cape. “The environment in South Africa is vastly different from what exists here in southern Sudan,” Holmarsdottir says. “While development indicators are higher, we continue to see alarming levels of violence, poverty and other issues that have a direct impact on education.” Given GEEP’s interest in context specific findings, researchers in South Africa and Sudan have developed questionnaires and research methodologies that reflect environmental differences.
As researchers in both locations build their findings, the GEEP project aims to enhance research and build capacity by hosting an array of workshops. “We’ve held a series of workshops that included the Norwegian, Sudanese and South African participants,” says Holmarsdottir. The workshops kicked off in Cape Town, South Africa in March of 2009 with a week’s worth of qualitative discussion regarding research topics and methodological approaches. Moderated by a gender specialist, GEEP researchers and facilitators provided critical feedback on one another’s projects. “It was a great help to many of the researchers, including the Norwegian members,” Holmarsdottir explains. “One of our master’s candidates was doing research in South Africa and she received some very formative advice from her South African counterparts.”
Recognizing the need for ongoing capacity building, GEEP has held additional workshops that focus on issues such as academic English, presentation styles, reference management, core literature review and other critical fields. “Perhaps our biggest challenge in the program is the imbalance in capacity among the researchers,” Holmarsdottir explains. “Many of our Sudanese colleagues bear a heavy workload at their home universities and the opportunities to publish articles are sometimes limited to consultancies,” she adds. She explains that academic publication is a major goal of the GEEP program. “In order to be promoted in the academic community, publication is required.
A significant success in that direction was the presentation of research materials at the World Congress for Comparative Education Society summit in Turkey. After presentation training and other capacity building exercises were undertaken in May 2010, GEEP dispatched a representative delegation to the summit. “The room was packed and the response to our presentations was very good,” says Holmarsdottir. “It was a very strong sign of the interest in our research.”
Both Holmarsdottir and Dr. Farag believe that the interest was strong because GEEP’s research is new and significant. Both of GEEP’s target countries experience significant gender-based educational challenges and scholars in both have not devoted sufficient time and effort to examining the phenomena. Dr. Farag believes that it is essential to examine these issues if progress is to be made. “If we do not explore and understand the issues that are impacting the education of our young people, we will be powerless to make positive changes,” she says after conducting an interview with a young southern Sudanese girl.
Building on the strength of the research and the goal of capacity building, GEEP coordinators had a workshop in Cape Town during October of 2010 during which they laid the framework of a book that will draw upon findings of researchers in both of the target countries. “Many of our researchers will contribute chapters to a book that deals specifically with gender issues in education,” Dr. Holmarsdottir explains. “It is a big success of the project that researchers will draft, develop and ultimately contribute to an academic book on the subject we’re addressing.”
At this stage of the programme, Dr. Holmarsdottir believes that her research, and that of her colleagues, is yielding significant findings. “I have found that gender plays a significant role in access to education,” she says. “Boys have higher access levels as the education process progresses because they are able to generate income that girls are often not able to,” she adds. She notices a significant decline in female enrollment rates after primary level 4, which she believes is due, at least in part, to cultural attitudes that prevent girls from working part time jobs. “It seems that girls are meant to be protected, to be kept away from markets and other places of business where they might be ‘spoiled.’” She believes that boys are not subject to the same restrictions and are therefore able to sell small items, drive taxis and engage in other forms of employment that helps defray mounting school costs.
As the GEEP program moves toward its final year of funding, its participants feel that they have made significant progress towards their objectives. “We have collected a tremendous amount of data regarding gender related education issues,” Dr. Alawia says. “The capacity of our researchers is growing all the time.” The participants are eager for funds to keep the program alive. “We have come a long way in mapping the landscapes and their respective challenges,” Holmarsdottir explains. “On the basis of this research, we are moving towards a stage in which we can develop actionable results to the challenges we’ve mapped.”
In an environment such as southern Sudan, where nearly 90 percent of women are unable to read or write, programs like GEEP seem essential to progress. With southern Sudan preparing for an independence referendum that will likely transform the region into Africa’s newest country, intensive assessment of educational challenges is an essential part of the way forward.