Girls first! Promoting early education in Tibetan areas of China, a case study

Abstract

This study explores conditions promoting girls' education in ethnic Tibetan pastoral highlands of the Qinghai‐Tibet plateau of western China. Global discourse and cross national evidence on the transgenerational benefits of girls' education has shown prioritizing girls' education to be the most effective strategy of breaking the vicious cycle of poverty, a crucial policy strategy for this comparatively declining region. The study looks beyond utilitarian concerns as it examines the situation of girls within the network of relationships that (1) bind them in their traditional place, and (2) create new spaces for their educational empowerment. Based on rich qualitative data narrating girls' pursuit of education the author concluded that girls were advantageously situated for primary schooling, that schools functioned as change agents that opened up spaces of possibility for girls, including their demand for parity in promotion to secondary and higher schooling. Male adults leaving for work in the modern money economy and the rising demand for secondary education placed Tibetan girls even in remote settings into a modern habitus as they acquired a modern subjectivity – though they remained materially locked in a pre‐modern terrain and declining socio‐economic conditions. The author argues that taking a critical empowerment perspective in exploring socio‐economic as well as cultural conditions as changeable allows us to see beyond grim developmentalist predictions of vicious‐circles and find the seeds of change. Thus deeper understanding enables policy makers to formulate culturally responsive policies that have the salutary effects of expanding human liberties. The article concludes with a series of recommendations for improving girls' education.