Comparative & International Education Society 2024 (CIES 2024)
![cies2024logo_red – Population Council CIES 2024 logo which has an outline of people protesting.](https://popcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/cies2024logo_red.png)
Sessions & Speakers
Tuesday 03/12
- Fatima Zahra (Population Council)
Presenter
- Arindam Nandi (Population Council)
Presenter
Sunita Menon (Breakthrough Trust)
Presenter
Panel Session | 4:45–6:15 pm | Terrace Level, Gardenia A+B
Leveraging education for power and protest: Evidence and practice from a systematic review and programs in India and Zambia
While education remains one of society’s foremost tools for transferring knowledge, building skills, and leveling the playing field in employment, political participation and leadership, too often it does none of these things. Instead, it can replicate privilege and inequality and leave behind the poor and marginalized. Education can include, and it can exclude. We need a better understanding of the ways through which education directly, or via supplemental empowerment-based life skills programs, can foster the skills and perspectives needed for advocacy for a more just and equal world.
Panelists will present findings and/or practices on:
- A systematic review that explores which education indicators—including literacy, numeracy, and attainment—are causally associated with precursors or enablers of protest such as agency, participation in community groups, and more equitable gender attitudes.
- The relationship between free primary schooling and long-term social outcomes based on evidence from India.
- Findings from a randomized controlled trial in Zambia that investigated whether there is a causal relationship between learning—literacy, numeracy, non-verbal reasoning and reading behavior—with girls’ confidence to speak out.
- Key features and practice-based learning from the civic participation module of a gender-transformative curriculum implemented by a large local nongovernmental organization in India.
Thursday 03/14
Dana Schmidt (Echidna Giving)
Chair
Antara Ganguli (UNGEI)
Presenter
- Arindam Nandi
Presenter
Samyukta Subramanian (Pratham Education Foundation)
Presenter
Emma Caddy (Tiny Totos)
Presenter
Panel Session | 9:30–11:00 am | Third Level, Foster 1
Achieving equality in and through education: The power of breaking regressive gender norms in low- and middle-income countries
Education plays a pivotal role in shaping societies, transforming lives, and promoting social progress. However, patriarchal norms and gender-related barriers to schooling continue to inhibit our efforts to create a just and fair world for all. Forgoing any effort to eliminate these barriers could rob societies, economies, and individuals of the transformational and intergenerational power education has on gender equality.Panelists will present four studies that provide new insights into the gender-related barriers and challenges to education in low resource settings and what interventions can do to address them.
- Evidence from a gender-transformative skill building program for girls that was implemented in 2021 and 2023.
- Results from a study in India that used new national data to examine patterns in preschool enrollment among 2-4 year old children, showing that despite gender parity in overall enrollment rates, girls are substantially less likely to be in a better quality private preschool as compared with their siblings.
- A novel analysis of gender norms in public preschool curriculum in Pratham, India, showing that most learning material, while gender-neutral, lack gender-transformative elements that could help break traditional gender norms among parents and teachers.
- Innovative early childhood development program in Kenya that aims to bring social change through economically empowering women in low-income settings.