E Unterhalter
Biographic Data
| ID | 52301 |
|---|---|
| NAME | E Unterhalter |
| GIVEN NAMES | E |
| FAMILY NAME | Unterhalter |
| SIGNATURE | UNTERHALTER E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2302-6583 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 70 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 267 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 70 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
What Connects: Reflections on Gender, Education and Cowen’s Historicized Perspectives on the Comparative
The idea of connection, deployed in Cowen’s historicized perspective on comparative education, is compared with that used by some feminist theorists, Writings on intersectionality, empowerment and solidarity have influenced scholarship on gender and education. The perspective termed “what connects” for work in gender and education is elucidated, drawing out some normative and methodological ideas that constitute its core., The Accountability for …
Distinctively Debbie: Portraits of the professional and political contributions of Debbie Epstein 1945–2024
Debbie Epstein was Professor Emerita of Cultural Studies in Education at the University of Roehampton, London when she died on July 29th 2024, aged 79. Her contributions to education were profound ...
Cumulative, collective or conservative? A review of seven decades of writing about women, gender, sex, sexuality and intersectionality in international and comparative education
This article traces the cumulative and collective development of knowledge on women, gender, sex, sexuality and intersectionality over seven decades of scholarship in international and comparative education. The discussion centres on a history of articles published in the International Review of Education (IRE) , written by women and by women and men about women’s learning and, gender, sex, sexuality , intersectionality and education . This frame…
Disarticulated networks and neoliberal agendas: How insights from GAD theory became disconnected from work on gender, girls’ education and international development
Finding consensus on well-being in education
Research on well-being and concern over the well-being of students and teachers has grown dramatically in recent years. Researchers and reformers in positive psychology and education, self-determination theory, social and emotional learning, liberal-democratic political and educational philosophy, and neo-Aristotelian theories of flourishing and character education have played formative and intersecting roles in what is now an international movem…
Putting Down Markers: Women and Gender in South African Feminist Scholarship, c. 1980-1990
Forty years since the publication of Belinda Bozzoli's "Marxism, feminism, and South African studies," its influential contribution to an emergent South African feminist scholarship is evident.The South African academy experienced transformations and contestations in the 1970s regarding Marxist theory and social history, impacting the feminist analyses of women and gender in South Africa.We argue that Bozzoli's interventions contributed to an int…
Soft power in complicated and complex education systems: Gender, education and global governance in organisational responses to SDG 4
This article examines how the distinction between complicated and complex education systems contributes to our understanding of global governance and how “soft power” concerned with gender is used in international development organisations’ responses to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, the global goal for education. Four global governance approaches which shape these organisations are distinguished: partnership building, gender mainstreaming…
An answer to everything? Four framings of girls’ schooling and gender equality in education
Girls’ education has been widely promoted as the answer to a wide range of problems. This article maps four key ideas that have framed this formulation. These are firstly, a techno-rationalist approach linked to narrowly defined interventions, termed here ‘what works’. Secondly, a more normative engagement is outlined, termed ‘what matters’ which explores how girls’ education is part of processes to extend and defend rights, support feminism or d…
Philosophical Reflections on Child Poverty and Education
The harmful effects of Covid 19 on children living in poverty have refocused attention on the complex nature of child poverty and the vexed question of its relationship to education. The paper examines a tension at the heart of much discussion of child poverty and education. On the one hand, education is often regarded as essential for children’s flourishing and a means by which children can “escape” poverty; yet on the other hand, education syst…
Higher Education, Inequalities, and a Tetralemma: Reflections on Depictions of Neonationalism and the Knowledge Society
In this article, we reflect on debates about the position of the university in contexts of widening intersectional inequalities, neonationalism, and questions regarding the capacity of the knowledge society to adequately address the range of vulnerabilities associated with the Anthropocene. We review a role we proposed for universities after the 2008 financial crisis, considering that, as particularly located institutions with links across a rang…
Unaligned connections or enlarging engagements? Tertiary education in developing countries and the implementation of the SDGs
Given that tertiary education (TE) is a sector often associated with exclusion, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where only a small proportion of the population gain access, how well placed is this sector to support the implementation of the SDGs? This article extends our reflections from a recent rigorous review of literature, published from 2010, which looked at the role of tertiary education in low- and lower-middle-in…
The Many Meanings of Quality Education: Politics of Targets and Indicators in SDG 4
The formulation of the SDG education targets was more inclusive than the processes linked with the MDG s. Key constituencies making representations through the Open Working Group and other consultative processes succeeded in formulating targets that stressed inclusion, quality and equality in all phases of education. However, the development of the global indicators for SDG 4, has resulted in metrics that miss many of the values of the targets, m…
Balancing Pessimism of the Intellect and Optimism of the Will: Some Reflections on the Capability Approach, Gender, Empowerment, and Education
In this chapter, Elaine Unterhalter considers four brief moments in the history of the concept of ‘empowerment’ and links these with the capability approach. To ‘empower’ in a pessimistic sense dates to the English civil war and was initially used to describe the illicit exercise of authority on behalf of powerful actors. In the twentieth century, ‘empowerment’ came to be reframed optimistically to describe Black Power and liberation theology, an…
An other self? Education, foreignness, reflexive comparison and capability as connection
The article is an attempt to explore through the lens of my identification as a foreigner, a number of different themes around work in comparative education, particularly aspects of the question of method, and some reflections on the relationship with education and international development. The discussion begins with some reflection on internal or external foreignness, and the ways in which these identifications within my autobiography are heter…
Higher Education and the Common Good
Higher education has become a key site of contestation in the contemporary moment as struggles play out between aspirations for open, inter-connected political and economic relationships, and needs
A Review of public private partnerships around girls' education in developing countries: Flicking gender equality on and off
The article reviews the literature on Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and policy on girls’ schooling in developing countries. It considers the ways in which aims around gender equality and women's rights are positioned in policy texts concerned with girls’ education PPPs. The argument made is that these documents exemplify an oscillation, using a multipolar register, between pragmatic initiatives that recognise existing sites of power, and att…
Exploring public private partnerships in health and education: A critique
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The Routledge handbook of international education and development
How does one make sense of the sprawling area of investigation that comprises international education and development? Unlike comparative education, which has a number of foundational thinkers, som
Educating adolescent girls around the globe: Challenges and opportunities
In 2012 Malala Yousafzai was on a bus in Pakistan on her way from school when members of the Taliban hijacked the vehicle, shot her and two school friends. The horrible attack elicited widespread c
Negative capability? Measuring the unmeasurable in education
This introductory article to the special issue of Comparative Education on measuring the unmeasurable in education considers measurement as reflecting facts and uncertainties. The notion of negative capability is used metaphorically to depict some limits of what is measurable, and portray aspects of the process of education, associated with uncertainty and public scrutiny of complexity. Four overarching questions – what, when, why and how – have …
Education in Southern Africa
These two books form part of the series edited by Colin Brock aiming to provide an account of education in ‘virtually every territory’ in the world. They are companion volumes to the interesting an
Capabilities, Gender, Equality: Towards Fundamental Entitlements
Questions of gender, injustice and equality pervade all our lives, and as such, the capabilities or 'human development' approach to understanding well-being and basic political entitlements continues to be debated. In this thought-provoking book, a range of authors provide unique reflections on the capabilities approach and, specifically, Martha C. Nussbaum's contributions to issues of gender, equality and political liberalism. Moreover, the auth…
Walking backwards into the future: A comparative perspective on education and a post-2015 framework
Two anonymous reviewers gave valuable suggestions on nuance.Additional informationFundingFunding. Many of the ideas have emerged from collaborative research projects and I acknowledge the work with colleagues on GEGPRI, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council [Award No. RES 167-25-260], TEGINT, (funded by Comic Relief and the Tubey Charitable Trust), the Power of Numbers, an independent research initiative involving 17 scholars and …
Thinking about gender in comparative education
Comparative and international education has been both a particularly generative area for the exploration of themes in relation to gender and education, but has also tended to impose limits regarding how gender and education are understood. In reflecting critically on the history of my own work in this field, and some of the early scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s, this article poses questions about how and why particular theorisations of gender …
Teacher education in sub-Saharan Africa: Closer perspectivesTeacher education and the challenge of development. A global analysis
Global inequality, capabilities, social justice: The millennium development goal for gender equality in education
Class, race and gender: Domestic workers in South Africa
Domestic service has long been a major sector of the South African labour market, for black women particularly, but the government has only lately begun to consider stipulating minimum employment conditions in this sphere. Union formation among domestic workers on any significant scale is also only a recent phenomenon. This article takes a preliminary look at domestic service from various angles — conceptual, historical and contemporary. A new sl…
The Work of the Nation: Heroic Masculinity in South African Autobiographical Writing of the Anti-Apartheid Struggle
Responding to the gender and education Millennium Development Goals in South Africa and Kenya: Reflections on education rights, gender equality, capabilities and global justice 1
This paper explores understandings of gender equality and education and the nature of global goal and target setting, drawing on empirical data collected in central and local government departments in Kenya and South Africa reflecting on their implementation of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1, concerned with poverty, MDG 2, concerned with education, and MDG 3, concerned with gender equality. The study raises questions about the ownership of t…
Blaming the poor: Constructions of marginality and poverty in the Kenyan education sector
The article examines how blame and disconnection from the lives of the poor feature in a nexus of ideas about implementing education policy articulated by education officials and teachers in Kenya. Three different approaches to understanding marginality are distinguished, each associated with a different process of setting a boundary concerning the marginalised. This differentiation is used to analyse qualitative data collected between 2007 and 2…
Negative capability? Measuring the unmeasurable in education
This introductory article to the special issue of Comparative Education on measuring the unmeasurable in education considers measurement as reflecting facts and uncertainties. The notion of negative capability is used metaphorically to depict some limits of what is measurable, and portray aspects of the process of education, associated with uncertainty and public scrutiny of complexity. Four overarching questions – what, when, why and how – have …
Thinking about gender in comparative education
Comparative and international education has been both a particularly generative area for the exploration of themes in relation to gender and education, but has also tended to impose limits regarding how gender and education are understood. In reflecting critically on the history of my own work in this field, and some of the early scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s, this article poses questions about how and why particular theorisations of gender …
What is Equity in Education? Reflections from the Capability Approach
New MDGs, Development Concepts, Principles and Challenges in a Post-2015 World
Assessing gender mainstreaming in the education sector: Depoliticised technique or a step towards women’s rights and gender equality
In 1995 the Beijing Conference on Women identified gender mainstreaming as a key area for action. Policies to effect gender mainstreaming have since been widely adopted. This special issue of Compare looks at research on how gender mainstreaming has been used in government education departments, schools, higher education institutions, international agencies and NGOs .1 In this introduction we first provide a brief history of the emergence of gend…
Girls claiming education rights: Reflections on distribution, empowerment and gender justice in Northern Tanzania and Northern Nigeria
We opened the road for you, you must go forward' ANC Women's Struggles, 1912-1982
Cosmopolitanism, global social justice and gender equality in education
This article attempts to locate approaches to understanding gender, education and notions of the international within debates on global social justice and cosmopolitanism. It looks at the work of three feminist scholars (Martha Nussbaum, Onora O'Neill and Iris Young) on this theme, draws out some ways in which they engage critiques of cosmopolitanism and considers some of the implications of their work for thinking about gender equality and compa…
Gender, Education and Women's Power: Indian state and civil society intersections in DPEP (District Primary Education Programme) and Mahila Samakhya
This paper examines different understandings of gender equity and women's empowerment in two linked organisations, working in India to expand access and improve quality in primary education. Drawing on case study material from Bihar, the workings of two different, but linked programmes-the District Primary Education Programme and Mahila Samakhya (Women's Empowerment) are examined. The complementary achievements of the two organisations, represent…
An other self? Education, foreignness, reflexive comparison and capability as connection
The article is an attempt to explore through the lens of my identification as a foreigner, a number of different themes around work in comparative education, particularly aspects of the question of method, and some reflections on the relationship with education and international development. The discussion begins with some reflection on internal or external foreignness, and the ways in which these identifications within my autobiography are heter…
Gender, sexuality and development: Education and society in sub‐Saharan Africa
edited by Mairead Dunne, Rotterdam/Taipei, Sense Publishers, 2008, 250 pp., £65 (hardback), £35 (paperback), ISBN 978‐90‐8790‐470‐8 ‘... What I would like you to do is just to tell me how you would i
Translations and transversal dialogues: An examination of mobilities associated with gender, education and global poverty reduction
Commentary on gender equality in education as a global issue often assesses what makes policy work or why certain emphases in policy are selected. The article recasts this division by looking not so much at the separation between policy and its enactment, but at the forms of mobility entailed in the movement between these different poles. It delineates two forms of mobility, termed translation and transversal dialogue. A case study is presented l…
An answer to everything? Four framings of girls’ schooling and gender equality in education
Girls’ education has been widely promoted as the answer to a wide range of problems. This article maps four key ideas that have framed this formulation. These are firstly, a techno-rationalist approach linked to narrowly defined interventions, termed here ‘what works’. Secondly, a more normative engagement is outlined, termed ‘what matters’ which explores how girls’ education is part of processes to extend and defend rights, support feminism or d…
The education MDGs: Achieving gender equality throughcurriculum and pedagogy change
This article argues that there is a need for gender-sensitive curricula and pedagogies in schools in order to achieve good-quality outcomes for girls' education. It examines different dimensions of gender equality and draws on issues raised and discussed at two international seminars which challenged narrow views of curriculum and pedagogy. The article considers these issues in the context of a case study of the abuse of school girls in Mozambiqu…
Educating adolescent girls around the globe: Challenges and opportunities
In 2012 Malala Yousafzai was on a bus in Pakistan on her way from school when members of the Taliban hijacked the vehicle, shot her and two school friends. The horrible attack elicited widespread c
Compare Forum: The post-2015 education and development agenda
Yusuf Sayed Centre for International Education, School of Education and Social Work, University of Sussex, UK Terra Sprague Research Centre for International and Comparative Studies, Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, UK This is an Author’s Original Manuscript of an article submitted for consideration in Compare [the exclusive right to publish residing [...]
Aspirations, education and social justice: Applying Sen and Bourdieu
Review of: Aspirations, education and social justice: applying Sen and Bourdieu, by Caroline Sarojini Hart, London, Bloomsbury, 2013, 208 pp., ISBN 978-1441185747
Connecting the private and the public: Pregnancy, exclusion, and the expansion of schooling in Africa
In a number of countries in Africa, young women who become pregnant are excluded from school. This article presents a critique of policy and practice in this area drawing partly on Diana Leonard's scholarship concerning the relational dynamic of gender, generation, social division, and household forms. Much of the policy prescription of large global organisations concerned with the expansion of secondary schooling in Africa does not sufficiently …
Educating Capabilities
New times and new vocabularies: Theorising and evaluating gender equality in Commonwealth higher education
We Opened the Road for You, You Must Go Forward: ANC Women's Struggles, 1912-1982
We opened the road for you, you must go forward' ANC Women's Struggles, 1912-1982
Class, race and gender: Domestic workers in South Africa
Domestic service has long been a major sector of the South African labour market, for black women particularly, but the government has only lately begun to consider stipulating minimum employment conditions in this sphere. Union formation among domestic workers on any significant scale is also only a recent phenomenon. This article takes a preliminary look at domestic service from various angles — conceptual, historical and contemporary. A new sl…
South Africa
Books reviewed: Reissues and literature in South Africa
Sylvester Stein, Second‐Class Taxi (Cape Town and Johannesburg: David Philip, 1983). Pp. 209. £4.45. Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali, Sounds of a Cowhide Drum (Johannesburg: Ad Donker, 1982). Pp. 92. £4.00. John Howland Beaumont, The Great Karoo (Cape Town and Johannesburg: David Philip, 1983). Pp. 96. £3.20. Sol T. Plaatje, Native Life in South Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1982). Pp. xiii+437. £9.95. Paul B. Rich, White Power and the Liberal Cons…
The Heretic: A Study in the Life of John William Colenso 1814-1883
Call Me Woman
Books reviewed
Kevin Shillington, The Colonisation of the Southern Tswana 1870–1900 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1985). Pp. xxiv+311. R20/£10.95 paperback. (Available from Third World Publications, 151 Stratford Road, Birmingham B11 1RD.) André Odendaal, Vukani Bantu! The Beginnings of Black Protest Politics in South Africa to 1912 (Cape Town and Johannesburg: David Philip, 1984). Pp. xv+391. £7.75. Beatrix Heintze (ed.), Fontes para a história de Angola do sécu…
Not Either an Experimental Doll: The separate worlds of three South African women
Journal Article Not Either an Experimental Doll: the separate worlds of three South African women Get access Not Either an Experimental Doll: the separate worlds of three South African women, edited by Shula Marks. The Women's Press, London, 1987. xii+217 pp. £5.95 paperback. ISBN 0 7043 4048 82. ELAINE UNTERHALTER ELAINE UNTERHALTER University of Essex Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volu…
The impact of apartheid on women's education in South Africa
While the proportions of their age group in school at primary, secondary and tertiary levels is quite high for black South Africans, relative to the situation in other African states, they face an authoritarian education system which is still riven by inequality. The expansion of education for all groups has formed part of the strategy of the government both to create skills needed for the economy and, through limited individual improvement, to s…
Women and the state in Africa
Journal Article Women and the state in Africa Get access Women and the state in Africa. Edited by Jane L. Parpart and Kathleen A. Staudt. Boulder, CO, London: Lynne Rienner. 1989. 228pp. Index. ISBN 1 55587 082 1. Elaine Unterhalter Elaine Unterhalter Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 66, Issue 2, April 1990, Pages 427–428, https://doi.org/10.2307/2621457 Published: 01 April 199…
And still they dance: Women, war and the struggle for change in Mozambique
Journal Article And still they dance: women, war and the struggle for change in Mozambique Get access And still they dance: women, war and the struggle for change in Mozambique. By Stephanie Urdang. London: Earthscan. 1989. 256pp. Index. £12.95. ISBN 1 85383 038 0. Elaine Unterhalter Elaine Unterhalter Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 66, Issue 1, January 1990, Pages 205–206, h…
Books reviewed
Robertshaw, Peter, ed., A History of African Archaeology, (James Currey, London), 1990, vii + 389pp, £15.95/£35.00 Saul Dubow, Racial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid in South Africa, 1919–36 (St Antony's Macmillan Series, Macmillan, Basingstoke and London, 1989, v + 250pp. Ruth First and Ann Scott, Olive Schreiner (The Women's Press, London), 1989
Education in Africa: Search for realistic alternatives
Apartheid Education and Popular Struggles
States, Households and the Market in World Bank Discourses, 1985-1995: A Feminist Critique
Globalisation, Gender and Curriculum 2005
Enormous faith is placed in the ability of Curriculum 2005 to overcome gender and race inequities and to mould a highly skilled workforce who will reap the benefits of globalisation. Yet, there is every reason to question this optimism, writes ELAINE UNTERHALTER
The Work of the Nation: Heroic Masculinity in South African Autobiographical Writing of the Anti-Apartheid Struggle
Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Cultural, and Social History
Gender, Education and Women's Power: Indian state and civil society intersections in DPEP (District Primary Education Programme) and Mahila Samakhya
This paper examines different understandings of gender equity and women's empowerment in two linked organisations, working in India to expand access and improve quality in primary education. Drawing on case study material from Bihar, the workings of two different, but linked programmes-the District Primary Education Programme and Mahila Samakhya (Women's Empowerment) are examined. The complementary achievements of the two organisations, represent…
The school setting: Opportunities for integrating gender equality and HIV risk reduction interventions
ROBERT MORRELL, RELEBOHILE MOLETSANE, QUAIRRAISHA ABDOOL KARIM, DEBBIE EPSTEIN and ELAINE UNTERHALTER argue school-based HIV interventions offer an opportunity to transform gender, in schools and beyond
The Capabilities Approach and Gendered Education: An Examination of South African Complexities
This article examines Amartya Sen's writings on the capabilities approach and education. Sen sometimes suggests a loose association between education and schooling. Elsewhere he concludes that one can read off the outputs of schooling as an indication of capabilities and an enhancement of freedom. While the capability approach provides a valuable way beyond human capital theorizing about education, Sen's writing fails to take account of the compl…
A Fragile Dialogue? Research and Primary Education Policy Formation in Bangladesh, 1971-2001
This paper considers the relationship between knowledge production and primary education policy making in Bangladesh. It investigates the form of discussions and dialogues that have taken place between policy makers and researchers and considers how these have shaped the nature of the evidence policy makers have used in different periods. The paper also attempts to assess the implications of the shifting forms of relationship between policy and k…
Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries: The potential of Sen's capability approach for sociologists of education
Rationality and Freedom AMARTYA SEN, 2002 London, Harvard University Press 736 pp., £25.04 ISBN 0 674 00947 9 Valuing Freedoms. Sen's Capability Approach and Poverty Reduction SABINA ALKIRE, 2002 Oxford, Oxford University Press 340 pp., £45.00 ISBN 0 19 924579 This important selection of essays by the in.uential Nobel Prize winning economist, Amartya Sen, deals with economic theory and social philosophy. Sabina Alkire's book combines a lucid expo…
Knowledge, Narrative and National Reconciliation: Storied reflections on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
This paper considers the educational work that narrative does. Against the context of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission that examined the crimes of apartheid, it discusses the narrative implications of South African poet Antjie Krog's multi-layered text of Truth Commission testimony, and autobiographical and philosophical musings. The paper argues that narrative points to education in four ways. The first involves research pra…
Sociology (58 works) · Political science (53 works) · Gender Studies (31 works) · Law (31 works) · Economics (27 works) · Law (23 works) · Gender Studies (22 works) · Economic growth (21 works) · Global Educational Policies and Reforms (21 works) · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare (20 works)