11.2074, Review: Egbo: Gender, Literacy in Subsaharan Africa

[The LINGUIST Network]

LINGUIST List:  Vol-11-2074. Fri Sep 29 2000. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 11.2074, Review: Egbo: Gender, Literacy in Subsaharan Africa

Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar, Wayne State U.<aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Dry, Eastern Michigan U. <hdry at linguistlist.org>
            Andrew Carnie, U. of Arizona <carnie at linguistlist.org>

Reviews: Andrew Carnie: U. of Arizona <carnie at linguistlist.org>

Associate Editors:  Ljuba Veselinova, Stockholm U. <ljuba at linguistlist.org>
		    Scott Fults, E. Michigan U. <scott at linguistlist.org>
		    Jody Huellmantel, Wayne State U. <jody at linguistlist.org>
		    Karen Milligan, Wayne State U. <karen at linguistlist.org>

Assistant Editors:  Lydia Grebenyova, E. Michigan U. <lydia at linguistlist.org>
		    Naomi Ogasawara, E. Michigan U. <naomi at linguistlist.org>
		    James Yuells, Wayne State U. <james at linguistlist.org>

Software development: John Remmers, E. Michigan U. <remmers at emunix.emich.edu>
                      Sudheendra Adiga, Wayne State U. <sudhi at linguistlist.org>
                      Qian Liao, E. Michigan U. <qian at linguistlist.org>

Home Page:  http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded jointly by Eastern Michigan University,
Wayne State University, and donations from subscribers and publishers.


Editor for this issue: Andrew Carnie <carnie at linguistlist.org>
 ==========================================================================

What follows is another discussion note contributed to our Book Discussion
Forum.  We expect these discussions to be informal and interactive; and
the author of the book discussed is cordially invited to join in.

If you are interested in leading a book discussion, look for books
announced on LINGUIST as "available for discussion."  (This means that
the publisher has sent us a review copy.)  Then contact Andrew Carnie at
     carnie at linguistlist.org

=================================Directory=================================

1)
Date:  Fri, 29 Sep 2000 13:49:19 +0800
From:  Angela Bartens <Angela.Bartens at helsinki.fi>
Subject:  Egbo review


-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Fri, 29 Sep 2000 13:49:19 +0800
From:  Angela Bartens <Angela.Bartens at helsinki.fi>
Subject:  Egbo review


Egbo, Benedicta (2000): Gender, Literacy and Life Chances in Sub-
Saharan Africa. (The Language and Education Library 16.) Clevendon,
Buffalo, Toronto & Sydney: Multilingual Matters.  ix + 206 pp.
Hardback  GB £ 29.95 / US$ 49.95.

Reviewed by Angela Bartens, University of Helsinki.

The volume under review is a revision of the author's 1997 doctoral
dissertation defended at the University of Toronto. As the author
explains in the "Preface" (pp. vii-ix) and again in Ch. 5 (p. 92),
the roots of the research project go back to the Biafran war when
she, a "young city girl" (p. vii), went back to her ancestral rural
community and started wondering about the inequality between the
sexes as far as access to literacy, education, and information as
well as life chances in general are concerned. While there is no
denying that such differences also exist in Sub-Saharan urban
agglomerations, they were and still are much more pronounced in
rural areas.

Synopsis

Ch. 1 "Introduction" (pp. 1-19) examines the way in which colonial
rule curtailed the traditional rights and statuses of women in Sub-
Saharan Africa. The author does not deny the existence of deeply
rooted patriarchal structures but merely highlights the
deterioration of the status of women under colonialism. As exclusion
from educational opportunities has an impact on various aspects of
an individuum's life in a modern, increasingly westernized society,
e.g., wage labor, participation in politics, etc., the result was a
gender-based social chasm. However, there has been disagreement
especially among feminist scholars on whether literacy alone is
sufficient to empower women. Hence the single most important goal of
this study which is to give voice to the women (p. 12), i.e., a
focus on the perception the subjects themselves have of il/literacy
and its impact on their lives. While there certainly is a
substantial body of research on gender and il/literacy in Sub-
Saharan Africa and elsewhere, it should be signalled right here that
the approach of departing from the accounts of the subjects as prime
data is highly innovative and probably the only meaningful research
method when the research is meant to constitute a basis for praxis-
oriented policy making as stipulated by Freire (1970; see below). -
Ch. 1 ends with a preliminary presentation of the two communities in
Delta State, Nigeria, where the research was conducted and an
outline of the contents of the subsequent chapters.

 Ch 2 ("Il/Literacy: Some Theoretical Considerations", pp. 20-39)
starts with examining different types or definitions of literacy.
While the UNESCO has propagated the importance of functional
literacy where literacy must enable a person to function in his or
her group or community and to contribute to its development, the
author of this study has adopted the concept of critical literacy.
Critical literacy has beeninfluenced by the thinking of Paulo Freire
and bestows a political dimension upon literacy in that literacy is
seen as a tool for initiating and bringing about radical social
change (p. 25). The second part of Ch. 2 examines the linkages
between literacy and life chances, socio-cultural and socio-economic
development, cognition, and language.

 Ch. 3 deals with "The Intersections of Gender, Literacy and Power"
(pp. 40-60). In the first part of the chapter, the interrelatedness
of these three variables is examined with relation to women in  Sub-
Saharan Africa in general and in Nigeria in particular. The focus
then shifts to specific areas of Nigerian women's lives where
literacy potentially has an impact: social relations and decision-
making in the household, access to means of production, wage labor,
and micro-entrepreneurship as well as  physical and socio-cultural
well-being. In the vein of critical literacy theory, Egbo argues
that literacy is a social artifact which can be used to improve
women's life conditions and chances just as it has been used to
subjugate them in the past. She refers in passing (pp. 57-58) to the
cases of four African women who were enabled by their education to
challenge unfair social practices in their respective societies.

 Ch. 4 presents "The Historical and Social Context of
Literacy/Education" (pp. 61-85). Prior to colonization, traditional
and Islamic education coexisted in Nigeria as in many other regions
of Africa. Both promoted community cohesion and the importance of
all community members. Colonial educational policies, on the other
hand, were Eurocentric, exploitative, assimilationist,
discriminatory and hegemonic (p. 63). Colonial education produced a
gender bias which the governments of independent Nigeria (and other
African nations) have found impossible to redress in spite of a
succession of different programs since independence in 1960. These
programs and their shortcomings as well as the constraints to
women's access to literacy in Nigeria are discussed at some length.

 Ch. 5 ("A Critical Literacy Research", pp. 86-101) discusses the
philo-ethnographic foundations of the study.  The concept of
critical literacy is embedded in the theory of critical realism, a
philosophy of the human sciences recently advanced by the British
philosopher Roy Bhaskar. Both critical literacy and critical realism
give priority to agency as a starting point for transformative
action. The gap between 'knowing' and 'doing' is bridged in that the
researcher in the human sciences is morally compelled to use the
findings of contextualized social inquiry to change the social world
(p. 87). Egbo then proceeds to discuss her specific design of
inquiry: participant observation, selection of informants, in-depth
and follow-up interviews, focus-group discussions. 75 potential
informants were contacted but in the end only 18 literate and 18
illiterate women were selected for the study. Practical logistical
considerations lead to the mixed composition of the four focus-group
discussions attended by all but five of the 36 informants.

 In Ch. 6 ("Perceiving Il/literacy: Impact, Constraints and
Possibilities: Literate Women's Accounts", pp. 102-122) the literate
informants of the study get to voice their views and perceptions;
correspondingly, Ch. 7 ("Perceiving Il/literacy: Non-Literate
Women's Accounts", pp. 123-145), it is the illiterate informants'
turn. These two chapters, the data basis, constitute the most
interesting part of the volume under review.

 Some sharp contrasts emerge from the women's accounts: Firstly,
il/literacy has an impact on the feelings of self-worth among the
informants. Illiterate informants frequently equate their lack of
education to blindness. The overwhelming majority of the informants
were not allowed to make the relevant choices about their own
education which is why many of the illiterate women would like their
daughters to have all the opportunities they did not have. All women
value their children's education highly. However, a point which I
feel is not emphasized sufficiently by the author is that literate
women seem to be more aware of the need for their children to study
and to do their homework regularly in order to succeed.

 Literate women are more socially aware. This translates itself both
into more involvement in community level participation and into
participation in decision-making at home. Most literate women have
access to wage labor while few illiterate women do. However, this is
only one of the reasons why literate women's monthly incomes are
much higher: on the average 2500 Naira vs. the average illiterate
informant's income 700 Naira. Literate women are more likely to have
access to credit facilities and frequently engage in supplementary
income-generating activities besides their salarial employment while
illiterate women only have subsistence farming and petty trade to
sustain them and their children as husbands rarely make a
contribution. Needless to say, the literate woman's regular income
gives her more negotiating power at home. At the same time,
illiterate women work longer hours.  Literate women are more likely
to use contraception and the difference in the number of children
literate and non-literate women have is perhaps one of the most
significant findings of the study (p. 133). A corollary finding is
that illiterate women tend to get married younger than literate
women. Literate women are less likely to circumcise their daughters
and cite government campaigns and print media among the reasons for
discontinuing this ancestral pratice. Only illiterate informants
reported not having immunized their children.

 Ch. 8, "Literacy and Life Chances: Examining the Evidence" (pp.
146-170), relates the results of the inquiry to the findings of
other academic studies on Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa in general.
In Nigeria and elsewhere, lack of financial resources and
differential valuation of male and female children conspire to women
having less access to education than men. A recurrent theme is the
equation of literacy with modernization and urbanization. At the
same time, literacy is found to enhance rural women's lives even
more drastically than the lives of women living in urban areas.
However, most illiterate women no longer see participation in a
literacy course as a means of changing their situation. According to
the author "the problem as well as the solution is, fundamentally,
economics" (p. 166).

 In Ch. 9 ("From Rhetorics to Praxis: (Re)constructing Women's Life
Chances and Bridging the Gender Gap in Literacy/Education", pp. 171-
188), the author embarks upon putting the findings of her study into
practice. In order to do so, she introduces the concept of
"Femanomics", an economic intervention framework geared towards the
educational needs of women and girls. Although increased investments
in girls' and women's education including remuneration of
participants, profound curriculum reforms, legislation against
discrimination, attitudinal campaigns, general infrastructural
development, etc., are required above all from the government, the
author argues that women's increased contribution to the national
economy, social reconstruction and overall development will make up
for all that. Illiteracy may be merely symptomatic of the
subjugation of women. However, it is also an institutional variable
amenable to policy interventions, in short, a starting point.  The
volume closes with the References (pp. 189-201) and an Index (pp.
202-206).

Evaluation

This is an interesting case study of the impact of literacy on the
quality of life of rural Nigerian women. As indicated above, it is
highly innovative in taking the accounts and self-perception of the
subjects of study as its point of departure. It is solidly couched
in the framework of critical literacy theory and critical realism
which consider it the responsibility of the researcher to take the
findings to the level of praxis-oriented social engagement.

 The chapters on the theoretical framework do not make easy reading
for the average linguist and the reader cannot help wondering if
Femanomics will not just remain another utopic proposal to empower
the disempowered. But you have to reach for the sky if you want to
bring down the moon.

 My points of criticism are minor. First of all, one of the key
terminological assumptions of this study is that literacy and
education can be used interchangeably: literacy is a prerequisite
for educational advancement and most literate people in the African
context acquire literacy beyond initial alphabetization according to
the author (p. xiii). However, evidence to the contrary is more than
abundant: the relapsing of neoliterates into functional
analphabetism is one of the big challenges especially to adult
education campaigns in Sub-Saharan Africa (and elsewhere), cf., e.g.
Pasch (1994) and Lopes (1998).  I somehow missed a stronger
thematization of the language of education in the study under review
although I recognize that it probably would have been beyond its
scope to tackle such a complex issue. The Nigerian government's
policy to use local languages during the initial stage (the first
three years, to be exact) of formal instruction and the possibility
of extending their use to adult literacy programs when the
participation of older women is at stake are mentioned only in
passing (p. 18, footnote 5, and p. 182).  I doubt that subject
pronouns not marked for gender as in Igbo, the main language of the
two communities studied, reflect less sexism in the speech community
or even "the complementary nature of gender roles in traditional
African societies" (p. 2). "Swahili" and "Kiswahili", listed as two
different African languages used in education (p. 10) are of course
variants of the same glossonym. But, as I said, the points to be
criticized are minor, and Benedicta Egbo has succeeded in making a
solid contribution to research on literacy, education and gender
studies.

 References:

Freire, Paulo (1970): Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder &
Herder.

Lopes, Armando Jorge (1998): "The Language Situation In Mozambique".
In: Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 19:5-6,
440-486.

Pasch, Helma (1994): "Status and role of Sango in the Central
African Republic as contrasted to French". In: Helma Pasch (ed.):
Sango: The National Official Language of the Central African
Republic. Koln: Rudiger Koppe, 85-97.



The Reviewer: Dr.phil. Angela Bartens is Docent of Iberoromance
Philology at the University of Helsinki. Her research interests
include language contact including pidgins and creoles,
sociolinguistics and applied sociolinguistics including language
planning. E-mail: Agela.Bartens at helsinki.fi


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you buy this book please tell the publisher or author
that you saw it reviewed on the LINGUIST list.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-11-2074