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2013 Literacy Uses and Women's Gender Roles: Ethnography of Local Practices in a Peri- Urban Gambian Community Haddy Njie
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COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
LITERACY USES AND WOMEN’S GENDER ROLES: ETHNOGRAPHY OF LOCAL
PRACTICES IN A PERI-URBAN GAMBIAN COMMUNITY
By
HADDY NJIE
A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2013 Haddy Njie defended this dissertation on October 3, 2013. The members of the supervisory committee were:
Peter. B. Easton Professor Directing Dissertation
Michael Uzendoski
University Representative
Alysia Roehrig Committee Member
Jeffrey Milligan Committee Member
The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.
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I dedicate this piece of work to all girls who reside somewhere in Africa and whose material poverty is the bane to the enlargement of their capabilities. A word of advice: do not relent in pursuing your ambitions and particularly as it regards education. Work hard, pray hard and never get tired knocking doors of opportunities for personal advancement. For one day, one fine day, a door would open and when it does, rise up to the occasion and guard it wisely, as if it is your last.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Peter Easton, my academic advisor for his valued mentoring. This dissertation has benefitted terrifically from Dr. Easton‘s wisdom and guidance. His work ethic, humility, and high-mindedness are great assets of socioeconomic capital worth emulating as an emerging scholar.
Dr. Easton worked with a committee of three members: Dr. Alysia Roehrig (Educational Psychology); Dr. Jeffery Ayala Milligan (Philosophy of Education), and Dr. Michael Uzendoski (Modern Languages). This work has greatly benefitted from the selfless reviews, suggestions and feedback of these committee members. I salute you all!
My sincere gratitude goes to my study participants, the amazing 120 women of peri-urban Gambia without whose genuine participation and commitment this study would not have been possible.
Many thanks to my family - both immediate and extended - for their immense contributions and support in my educational pursuits. My mother, Maram Bojang, has taught me to be spirited in mind and relentless in the face of adversity. She has demonstrated strength and courage even in sickness and today the family praises God and prays for her continuous good health. My late father, Mr. Ousman Njie, was very proud of the woman I have become although he did not live long to witness many of my accomplishments. How I wish you were alive, Dad! To my siblings- Yama, Saihou, Busso, Bassirou, Alieu, Musu, Jankey, Alpha Samphally and Soffie- thanks for your love, support and understanding. My Grandma, Aji Marie Jagne, taught me life lessons I continue to treasure! I am fortunate to have a very good uncle – Bassirou Cessay - who has made it his duty to step in a father shoe for me and worries about my trials and tribulations as he would for his biological children. I am greatly indebted to him and his wife Adama Njie Cessay. To my extended family members in the U.S – Aunty Marie Ngum, Baboucarr Ngum, Charlotte Jow and Aunty Amie Mbye - thank you all for the moral support and encouragement.
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Thanks to my research assistants - Awa Njie and Haddy Singhateh - for their tremendous support and hard work during course of the data collection. You all are Rockstars!
To the amazing people I have crossed paths with in the United States, through the wonderful workings of God - Ms. Mariama Diarra, Dr. Patrice Iatarola, Dr. Lisa Aubrey, Dr. Tamara Bertrand Jones, Mrs. Margaret Etchi, Gene Ennemoser and Jimmy Pastrano, I cannot thank you all enough for your mentoring, friendship, and moral support. Rusty Ennemoser, Reiko Niimi, and Dr. Donna Hall deserve special mention for not only being my very good friends and mentors but they devoted time to meticulously read many of my dissertation chapters and offered valuable feedback. It is my hope that time shall only serve to strengthen our relationship.
I am a beneficiary of a number of fellowships from philanthropic organizations that support the education of women from developing countries - Philanthropic Educational Organization (P.E.O), The American Association of University Women (AAUW), and The World Bank Family Network. These organizations have contributed financially towards my studies and I am forever grateful.
To my P.E.O BH chapter cheerleaders, thank you for all your support and encouragement. Words cannot truly express how much I value our cross-cultural exchanges.
My love and deepest appreciation goes to my husband, Dr.Youssouf Diallo, for his continuous encouragement, immense support, and understanding during the course of my studies. Although he has been away and across the Atlantic during the course of the write-up of this dissertation, the first line of our everyday conversation was in regards to my progress in this. The motivation I received from him took me extra miles in finishing this project.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables ...... xi List of Figures ...... x Abstract ...... xi
1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Problem Statement ...... 2 New Directions and Gaps ...... 4 Serekunda: Urban Gambia as a Case in Point ...... 5 Research Purpose ...... 7 Research Questions ...... 7 Significance of the Research ...... 8 Limitations and Assumptions ...... 11
2. LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 14 The Setting: Urban Gambia ...... 14 Education in The Gambia: Provision and Results ...... 20 Understanding the Nature of Literacy...... 28 Theorizing and Observing Literacy Effects ...... 33 Socio-Cultural Practice: A Theoretical Lens for Examining Literacy Uses ...... 39 Women’s Triple Gender Roles ...... 59
3. METHODOLOGY ...... 64 Overall Research Design ...... 64 Sampling Plan ...... 70 Data Collection ...... 72 Data Analysis...... 77 Reinforcing Validity ...... 81
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4. STUDY PARTICIPANTS’ DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS ...... 86 Introduction ...... 86 Demographic Attributes ...... 86 Language Acquisition, Mastery and Usage...... 89 Socio-Economic Characteristics ...... 92 Educational Attainments ...... 97 Literacy and Numeracy Competences ...... 101
5. WOMEN’S USES OF LITERACY AND NUMERACY IN THEIR REPRODUCTIVE ROLES: THEMES AND TESTIMONIES FROM THE FIELD ...... 113 Introduction ...... 113 Peri-Urban Gambian Women’s Reproductive Roles ...... 113 Literacy and Numeracy Utilization in Women’s Reproductive Gender Roles ...... 117
6. PRODUCTIVE ROLES OF WOMEN IN PERI-URBAN GAMBIA AND LITERACY AND NUMERACY UTILIZATION ...... 135 Defining the Informal Economy ...... 135 Women’s Participation in the Informal Economy in Developing Societies ...... 137 Levels of Women’s Participation in the Informal Economy in Sub-Saharan Africa ...... 140 Women’s Literacy and Numeracy Practices in Productive Activities ...... 144
7. LITERACY AND NUMERACY UTILIZATION IN WOMEN’S COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT GENDER ROLES ...... 166 Women’s Community Management Gender Roles ...... 166 Literacy and Numeracy Uses in Women’s Community Management Gender Roles ...... 168 The Dynamics and Functioning of Women’s Groups ...... 175
8. CONTEXTUAL AND GENDER RELATED FACTORS AS IMPEDIMENTS TO LITERACY AND NUMERACY ACQUISITION, USES AND RETENTION ...... 189 The Concept of the Literate Environment ...... 191 Assessing the General Picture of the Supply-Side of Literacy in The Gambia ...... 192
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Assessing the Gender Factors that Limit Demand for Literacy Acquisition and Uses ..... 198
9. CASTING LIGHT ON THE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF NEW LITERACY STUDIES ...... 211 Earlier Conceptions of Literacy as a Cognitive Set of Skills ...... 211 Reconceptualizing Literacy and the Role of New Literacy Studies ...... 214 The Strength of New Literacy Studies ...... 216 Identifying the Weakness in New Literacy Studies ...... 222
10. CONCLUSIONS, THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS, DIERCTIONS FOR FUTHER RESEARCH AND RECOMMENDATIONS ...... 234 R.Q.1. Level, Types[s] and Languages of Literacy and Numeracy Acquired ...... 235 R.Q.2. Modes of Acquisition of Literacy and Numeracy Skills ...... 237 R.Q.3. The Women’s Triple Gender Roles ...... 238 R.Q.4. Principal Usages of Literacy and Numeracy Skills ...... 240 Challenges Encountered in Literacy and Numeracy Uses by Women ...... 243 Theoretical Implications ...... 247 Recommendation for Future Research ...... 249 Recommendation for Policy and Practice ...... 250
APPENDICES ...... 255 A: Demographic Survey Questionnaires ...... 255 B: Literacy Assessment Test in the Different Languages ...... 264 C: Oral and Written Numeracy Assessment ...... 268 D: Focus Group Discussions and Indepth Interview Questionnaires ...... 272 E: Grading Scheme for the Literacy and Numeracy Test ...... 275 F: Human Subject Approval Letter and Informed Consent Form ...... 279
References ...... 283 Bibliographical Sketch ...... 302
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Participant characteristics-marital status ...... 88 Table 2: Participant characteristics- number of children ...... 88 Table 3: Oral linguistic competence ...... 89 Table 4: Ownership of property and spousal employment...... 94 Table 5: Women's employment patterns ...... 95 Table 6: Participation in formal schooling and grade attainment ...... 97 Table 7: Participation in non-formal education ...... 99 Table 8: Reading and writing competence by age group ...... 102 Table 9: Numeracy competence by grade attained in school ...... 106 Table 10: Comparison of literacy competence by school grade attained ...... 109 Table 11: Comparison of numeracy competence by school grade attained ...... 109 Table 12: Comparing reading and writing competences by type of work ...... 110 Table 13: Comparing oral and written numeracy competences by type of work ...... 111
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Map of The Gambia from the CIA Fact Book ...... 15 Figure 2: A conceptual framework for analyzing women’s uses of literacy and numeracy ...... 39 Figure 3: The recursive process of ethnography ...... 84 Figure 4: A study participant tending to two of women’s domestic works ...... 116 Figure 5: Isatou during one of her study sessions with her children ...... 122 Figure 6: Ida helping her children with school homework ...... 123 Figure 7: A non-literate parent’s strategy for monitoring children’s schoolwork ...... 125 Figure 8: A study participant preparing her shopping list ...... 128 Figure 9: An example of a shopping list ...... 129 Figure 10: One of many stalls on the streets of Serekunda selling imported food ...... 130 Figure 11: Binta enthralled by her text composing activity to a friend ...... 132 Figure 12: Binta's text message blended with words in English and Wolof ...... 133 Figure 13: Archetypical market offerings and inventory of women in peri-urban Gambia...... 142 Figure 14: Isatou at her shop ...... 148 Figure 15: Ida at her store ...... 150 Figure 16: Ida’s record book ...... 150 Figure 17: Fatou at her store ...... 154 Figure 18 : Kaddy takes measurements of one of her customers ...... 157 Figure 19: Kaddy discussing her uses of literacy and numeracy ...... 159 Figure 20: Binta at the market setting her table to begin the day’s sales ...... 161 Figure 21: Women budgeting for a naming ceremony ...... 172 Figure 22: A copy of the shopping list ...... 172 Figure 23: A griot assigned to present financial contributions ...... 173 Figure 24: A friend of the host recording financial contributions ...... 173 Figure 25: The contribution list ...... 174 Figure 26: A typical example of a record book used by women's groups ...... 180 Figure 27: Collection of weekly dues in progress ...... 181 Figure 28: Group secretary reviewing her notebook ...... 181
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ABSTRACT
Non-formal education programs that target women with little or no formal education living in resource-poor and marginalized communities of emerging nations are among the strategies adopted with increasing frequency to promote human development. Yet evaluations suggest that such initiatives are seldom effective in attaining their anticipated outcomes, despite indicators of continuing need (e.g. Street, 2001). Moreover, little attention has been given to one critical conditioning factor: the uses that African women with low educational qualifications are effectively able to make of the literacy and numeracy skills that they do acquire, and the ways in which these women interact with – or are constrained by profound contextual and gender related factors. A developing tradition in social science research on literacy, the New Literacy Studies
(NLS) paradigm, has placed valuable emphasis on examining the actual literacy practices embedded in everyday life, but it has rarely focused on the situation of African women or the interactions between literacy usage and gender roles. The gap is attributable in part to the need for anthropological insight and social science methodology in investigating practical gender- related topics, as well as an insider’s knowledge of everyday life and the socio-cultural context of the women concerned. Both remain very scarce in the field. In this study, ethnographic methodology was used to probe the nature of relationship that exists between women's uses of their literacy skills and the gender roles that they perform.
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
In much of the global south, women have lower educational attainments than men and are disproportionately represented among the poorest of the poor and the unemployed (Chant, 2006 and 2013; Sanyang & Hung, 2009; World Bank, 2011). Women are also more economically and socially disadvantaged in many developing societies, and this is particularly true in Sub-Saharan
Africa (McFerson, 2010). The equity and welfare issues that women face in poor countries have been attributed to their lack of access to and control over resources that are fundamental in transforming their lives, and to their lower educational attainments relative to men (Blumberg,
2005; Boserup, 1989; Nussbaum, 2000; Sen & Grown, 1987; Quisumbing, Haddad & Peña,
2001; Tinker, 1990). A number of strategies have, however, been tried throughout the developing world to improve the living conditions of women and to end the vicious circle of poverty that not only affects them and their families, but also creates real jeopardy for society at large.
One of these strategies has been the introduction of functional adult literacy programs that specifically target women and girls in resource-poor and marginalized communities. As
Street (2004) has noted, in the 1960s when large-scale literacy programs were launched in developing countries with international support, adult literacy was considered a panacea that would single-handedly and radically improve the lives of the illiterate poor. That rather naïve faith was grounded in the assumption that use of new literacy skills to access information, increase productivity and improve social standing would, in and of itself, transform the lives of these women irrespective of the context in which they lived or the particular nature of their own needs. However, large-scale success in improving the lives of people in developing countries
1 through adult literacy programming has not yet materialized (Easton, 1989; Gomez, 2005;
Maruatona, 2006; Puchner, 2003; Ojugwu, 2009; Soriano, 2007 and Stromquist, 1990).
Available studies like those just cited have attributed this failure to the irrelevance of literacy curricula to the everyday needs of literacy participants and to the poor quality of instruction, factors that contribute to the twin syndromes of failure frequently afflicting such efforts: scant use of the knowledge acquired and subsequent relapse into illiteracy.
Problem Statement
The importance of improving the outcomes of adult literacy programs to make them more responsive to the particular needs that women experience within their culturally defined gender roles and their socio-cultural environment should be self-evident, both for continued funding as well as for pedagogical purposes. Yet, research in this area has made relatively little progress in taking certain factors into account. Critically missing are the qualitative questions of how literacy skills (with its various types and usages) fit within daily realities and routines, and how women with incipient literacy skills perform their diverse and dynamic gender roles within the communities where they live. Traditional patterns of inquiry (Burchfield, Hua, Baral, & Rocha,
2002a, 2002b; Carron, Kilemi & Gabriel, 1989; Kagitcibasi, Goksen, & Gulgoz, 2005;
Sandiford, Montenegro & Sanchez, 1995) focus on quantitative assessment of the impacts of women’s literacy on a variety of development proxies like empowerment, health status and material well-being, while ignoring some of the most critical factors that could help explain how such results are produced and/or why they are not. This myopia parallels similar failings in general theories to address the linkage between literacy and development -- illustrated in the works of social scientists such as Ong (1982) and Goody (1986, 1987), who consider literacy in and of itself as a prime factor responsible for the development of human rationality and the
2 ability to think in a decontextualized way, without taking into account the socio-cultural environment in which it is acquired and hopefully applied (Purcell-Gates, 2007).
Stromquist (2005) shared this skepticism of studies of the cognitive effects of literacy that take scant account of socio-cultural context. She argued that these approaches to gauging the benefits of adult literacy, although effective for suggesting some of its immediate impacts on the lives of women participants, are riddled with flaws because they do not shed light on the everyday uses of literacy by women. Maddox (2005) concurred: “(The) processes of assessment
(in such studies) have generally focused on narrowly-oriented tests of ability rather than examining how people have applied such learning in their daily lives” (p.123). Nearly three decades ago, Street (1984) dubbed the approach taken by such studies, which portray the benefits that inevitably accrue from the simple acquisition of literacy, the “autonomous model” of literacy. That model, he asserted, supposes that literacy skills inevitably confer major psychological, social and economic benefits on whoever acquires related competence, regardless of the historical, geographical, social or linguistic setting in which the learning takes place.
In short, the fundamental flaw that critics identified in dominant research on adult literacy is a failure to illuminate how the various types and usages of literacy serve the everyday needs of people with low educational qualifications and the way in which these usages -- or the lack of them -- are governed by a host of contextual factors like the social networks in which they take part and the environment in which they operate.
Available research, which is covered in detail in the literature review section, shows that in many cases women find literacy a less productive skill than anticipated by providers of literacy programs. In others, they discover ways to work around severe social and economic limitations to wield the tool to their benefit. But in all cases, the nature of their skills, how those
3 skills fit within the diverse and dynamic gender roles they perform and the new learning needs arising from such activities continue to remain invisible and under-valued. These factors largely reside in the “black box” that lies between the implementation of programs and measures of their impact—i.e., in the realm where women attempt to apply new skills and knowledge to an unchanging context of the communities where they continue to live.
New Directions and Gaps
Over the past three decades, however, a new generation of researchers in the fields of social anthropology, education, linguistic and development studies has begun turning its attention to the everyday practices of literates. The body of knowledge that they have generated is generally subsumed under the title of “New Literacy Studies” (NLS) (Barton & Hamilton,
1998; Heath, 1983; Street, 1984). NLS proponents conceptualize literacy as first and foremost a social practice, and question the assumptions of the “autonomous” model of literacy. They have focused on understanding the varied ways in which people with little or no formal education apply their literacy skills to the socio-cultural context that define the uses of those skills (Heath,
1983; Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Purcell-Gates, 2007; Street, 1984, 1995, 2004; Wagner, 2005).
The scope and number of New Literacy Studies are expanding and these socio-cultural practice theories have been increasingly applied throughout the world. Certain gaps in the scholarship must nonetheless be noted.
First, there is a common weakness in the ethnographic studies of women’s uses of literacy, which lies in the relative neglect of the ways in which these practices fit into women’s culturally defined and yet ever-changing gender roles in their communities. At the same time, there is still relatively little research of this sort devoted specifically to women who live in poor
4 urban settings, where in fact the majority of African women with at least the rudiments of basic or formal education reside (Chant, 2013; Jones & Chant, 2009).
Second, the gender and development research fully recognizes that women in developing societies exercise a variety of occupations and perform diverse gender roles (Brydon & Chant,
1989; Dollar & Roberta, 1999; Nussbaum, 1995; Nyamu, 2000; Tinker, 1990). The connection between that complex reality and their usage of literacy skills, however, is rarely highlighted, with the exception of rare insights in the collection of research edited by Robinson-Pant (2004).
Since women’s learning does not occur in a vacuum, it is important to place their learning experiences in the context of their socio-cultural environment. Gender roles are critical in shaping when, how and if women can acquire and use literacy and numeracy skills.
Finally, the existing literature at times gives insufficient recognition to the fact that – in multilingual and multicultural settings like the one in this study – we are in the presence of
“literacies” in the plural: different languages and different codes are used for purposes of writing and communication. They are moreover stratified and related in subtle and telling ways. As a consequence, “literacy practices” may span different written codes and traditions with different social statuses and effects. The exposure to each, the distribution of their use and the differential levels of their retention are themselves critical data in the study of literacy practices that have been given little attention in the NLS agenda.
Serekunda: Urban Gambia as a Case in Point
Serekunda, The Gambia, currently has a population of about 337,000 (The Gambia
Information Site, 2011). It is the largest agglomeration in The Gambia and is located on the outskirts of the capital, a few kilometers inland from the coastal area of Kololi and Kotu. The
Serekunda district is composed of a cluster of villages that have merged over the years into three
5 main towns: Churchill's Town, Latrikunda and London Corner. Its population is multi-ethnic and composed of people of many different cultures, religions and linguistic backgrounds. Like many urban areas in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is characterized by high rates of immigration and emigration, to and from both the capital city, Banjul, and international destinations. Despite the relatively congested setting and due to the proximity of the Banjul produce market, farming and horticulture by small commercial firms and families remain vital sources of economic growth and informal trade, particularly for vegetables and fruits (Roth, Carr & Cochrane 1996).
Here as in other urban areas of the developing world, high levels of poverty affect social welfare indicators, such as life expectancy, infant mortality, nutrition, the proportion of the household budget spent on food, literacy, school enrollment rates, and access to health clinics
(Masika, de Haan & Baden 1997; Baker, 2012). It is this increasing poverty, coupled with high unemployment rates and the emigration of men to more affluent countries in Europe and North
America, that has forced Serekunda women with no or modest educational attainments into assuming roles that transcend their traditional reproductive and community management functions. They have done so mostly by gaining a foothold in the informal economy1 that allows them to alleviate the poverty of their households.
There is no official data on average literacy rates for Serekunda women between the ages of 18 and 49 years, but levels can be presumed to remain relatively weak, given that the mean years of schooling for the national population -- male and female -- aged 25 and older in The
Gambia registers as only 2.8 years in recent reports (UNDP HDI, 2013). In response, there are a number of adult literacy programs targeted at urban and rural women with limited literacy skills and using African languages as a medium of instruction, one of which I was able to visit during a
1 The informal economy refers to that part of the economy, which is neither under heavy government control nor heavily taxed. It is also not included in any Gross National Product (GNP). 6 stay in The Gambia in 2010. Literacy programs are not recent phenomena in The Gambia but they are not very widespread in urban areas. Serekunda, as the largest urban area in The Gambia and one of the most diverse, has a large proportion of poor families and of people with very limited educational qualifications -- so it was, as a consequence, an ideal location for this study.
Research Purpose
The principal purpose of this study is to explore –
how women of low educational qualifications in a urban Gambian community actually
use whatever literacy and numeracy skills they have acquired;
how these uses fit into their changing productive, reproductive and managerial gender
roles; and
what effects the uses have on the women’s daily lives and in their gender roles in
particular.
“Women with low educational qualifications” is defined to include primary school dropouts, primary school graduates having no further education, secondary school drop-outs and women made literate and/or numerate through varieties of non-formal and/or informal education.
The findings generated in this way should throw fresh light on the paradigm and existing research of the New Literacy Studies – an auxiliary purpose of the this dissertation.
Research Questions
The central research question that flows from this purpose may be articulated as follows:
“What is the nature of the relationship between women's daily uses of literacy and numeracy skills and their culturally defined and changing gender roles?” Secondary questions that were critical in pursuing the topic were these:
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What level, type(s) and languages of literacy and numeracy have the women in the study
in fact acquired?
How did they learn these skills -- i.e., by what combination of formal, nonformal and
informal means, under what circumstances and over what period of time?
What are the principal productive, reproductive and community management gender
roles that they carry out on a regular basis?
What are the principal usages that they are able to make of their literate and numerate
skills?
What light does this analysis throw on strengths, weaknesses and potential new directions
of the New Literacy Studies paradigm?
Significance of the Research
In order to assist the research community in remedying some of the weaknesses in the traditional patterns of inquiry on the effects of literacy, as reviewed above, which also hinder our understanding of the actual uses of literacy to women in developing countries, and to help further elaborate the theoretical framework of New Literacy Studies, the goals of this dissertations were to:
Add a Significant Dimension to the Growing Tradition of New Literacy Studies
Although the NLS concept of literacy as a social practice is becoming widely applied in recent literacy studies across different disciplines such as education, linguistic and development studies, research that targets women with incipient literacy skills, who live in resource-poor urban settings and are in fact the target beneficiaries of literacy programs, is scarce. The study therefore addressed the relative dearth of attention to African women, and to the relationship between gender roles and literacy practices that still characterizes the NLS agenda.
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Illuminate the Poorly Understood Areas in Adult Literacy Intevention Models
The misunderstood areas in adult literacy intervention seem to lie in the “black box” between program implementation and measures of impact – that is the realm where women participants attempt to use and retain what they have learned. These realms can only be mapped with the help of rigorous ethnographic methodology for discovering and describing actual practices in the home, in the market place and in women’s cycle of associative activities.
Build on Existing Gender and Development Theories
This study will build on existing gender and development theories by examining the intersection between women’s productive, reproductive and community management roles – well documented in the literature (e.g., Moser 1989) – and their acquisition, use and retention of the tool of literacy.
Inform Current Theories of Multilingualism
This study will inform current theories of multilingualism and specifically those that deal with the interface between (and among) “indigenous” and official languages (Juffermans &
McGlynn 2013; Subba, 2003; Wagner, 1993). My research will do so in part through simple recognition and careful observation of the fact that – in developing country contexts like the one proposed for this study – we are in the presence of “literacies” in the plural, rather than a unitary phenomenon, as Street (1993) pointed out. Different languages and different codes are used for purposes of writing, communication and calculation in this environment; each has its own status, plus its own infrastructure – whether weak or strong -- of institutional training and communication. In The Gambia, for example, formal schooling is given almost entirely in
English, though people speak a variety of African languages (principally Wolof, Mandinka and
Pulaar); nonformal education and literacy training in those African languages is available; a
9 parallel system of Islamic religious training uses written Arabic; and Christian religious training may be given in either English or African languages. As a consequence, “literacy practices” may span different written codes and traditions. My study accounts for the exposure to each and the distribution of their uses among women through the use of ethnographic survey, interviews and observation – and in so doing informs both the database and the theoretical framework of anthropological linguistics.
Articulate the Perspectives of Academically-Marginalized Women
This will be achieved by creating a space for dialogue on the uses of literacy in their daily activities and constraints in applying and developing literacy skills. Through the use of feminist participatory research to assess the actual uses of literacy of the women in the study, the perspectives of the academically marginalized women may offer compelling data that can be used to redress development interventions such as adult literacy and other further learning opportunities. In many development interventions, the lessons from research that could potentially inform practitioners about the relevancy of such programs is not often utilized and ignores the indigenous knowledge of women (Dighe, 1998; Hertzog, 2009; Robinson-pant, 2004;
Stromquist, 1992). The use of feminist participatory research is an attempt to create what Sen and Grown (1987) refer to as a process of “mutual education” (p. 92), that is knowledge that would benefit both the researched and researcher. This knowledge can also be used as a post- research step to engender action by reaching out to key stakeholders, such as literacy planners and providers, through the dissemination of results of the study in an organized forum.
Inform Relevant Further Learning Opportunities for Women
Research of this nature that explores women’s uses of literacy and the how literacy fits into their changing gender roles in a developing country context may have potential for contributing
10 to what Mosse (2004) called the "ethnography of development [which is alone] capable of opening up the implementation black box…"(p. 643). The ultimate goal of this study is to inform relevant literacy and further learning policies for women in developing countries and in The
Gambia with modest educational attainments. This cannot, however, materialize without knowledge of how the various types and usages of literacy fit into women’s daily realities and gender roles, their actual literacy needs, and opportunities on the ground for furthering their learning. As Claire (2008) suggested, this study sheds particular light on the uses of literacy and constraints on its application by women in developing countries that have remained largely undocumented.
Cast Light on the Interaction between Literacy Uses and the Gender Roles of Women
Specific factors that offer or affect opportunities for women to put literacy skills to use and influence their gender roles in Serekunda and The Gambia may of course be different from those affecting women in other developing countries. Insight derived from this study should nonetheless benefit literacy policy planners and providers in other developing settings, especially in enhancing the relevance of literacy programs for women of limited means. NLS research has been criticized at times for focusing too much on local context (Brandt & Clinton, 2002), to the point of ignoring the influence of global processes upon local literacy. This study shall yield quality data that may be used for systematically analyzing the similarities and differences in literacy practices and events in different contexts around the world.
Limitations and Assumptions
This research project was restricted by several factors, both external and internal, that are worth evoking.
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First, time and cost constraints may rule out the sort of multi-year study that is common in ethnography. The researcher is likely to have a maximum of eight months in the field. As a native of The Gambia, however, I am already very familiar with the languages and cultures that guide everyday social interaction among the sample of women who will participate in the study.
Second, the study will concentrate – at least in its intensive phases – on a limited number of participants in a particular peri-urban community of The Gambia, so its results could not be considered “representative” in the statistical meaning of that term. However, measures further described in the methodology section of this prospectus -- including stratification of a larger population of potential participants in Serekunda’s diverse sub-communities and selection of final participants to represent these dimensions of the population – should largely compensate for this weakness.
Third, as in any ethnographic study, there will be strong reliance on the informant perspective, and therefore trustworthiness of data could be compromised if measures are not taken to address this potential shortcoming. The study will utilize multiple methods of data collection, including an ethnographic survey, detailed interviews, participant observations and the ethnographic case study of individual uses of literacy. This data will be triangulated with those in the literature to improve the quality of the study and the trustworthiness of findings.
Apart from these external factors, researcher limitations may also influence the outcomes of this study. As a native of The Gambia, whose family members in fact reside in Serekunda, I am familiar with the cultures and the various norms that guide everyday interaction ”on the ground” as well as with the socioeconomic context in which the research will be conducted.
Despite this familiarity, however, I have doubtless developed, by virtue of my level of education, a different social and philosophical orientation from the ones prevalent in Serekunda and may
12 therefore be perceived as an outsider. For similar reasons, my own social experiences are likely to affect the way in which I perceive or interpret the field interactions, events observed and data collected. The study was therefore designed to limit this risk to the greatest extent possible through triangulation of various sources of data and by privileging participants’ perspectives. I will regularly engage in a self-reflection on the assumptions I bring to the study; I will then compare this documented perspective with the data that is collected to see how the data itself reinforces findings from past studies or disapproves it. I will further seek comments and constructive criticisms from my adviser and colleagues who are working in this area of research as well as participants for the purpose of self-evaluation. This may lessen the effects of researcher bias.
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CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
This study focuses on the ways in which the women of Serekunda acquire, use and integrate literacy skills in their daily interactions with their families and communities. Chapter 2 provides contextual background and the main conceptual frameworks for this research.
This study is set within a peri-urban area of The Gambia and West Africa; some of their socio-economic and cultural characteristics will be reviewed herein. The organization and current situation of the education system within The Gambia – formal, nonformal and informal varieties—will also contextualize this study.
The conceptual and literature review portion of Chapter 2 will then address three main bodies of thought: those on (1) understandings of literacy, (2) theorization and investigation of its effects, and (3) the multiple roles of African women. Each major section of this latter portion of the chapter concludes with a summary of conceptual lessons learned from the literature review, whereas a general summary at the very end of the chapter provides a bridge to the ensuing sections on research methodology.
The Setting: Urban Gambia
Although this study will be conducted in Serekunda, a peri-urban urban area located within the jurisdiction of the Local Government Area of the Kanifing municipality on the fringes of the national capital of Banjul, it is important to approach discussion of that particular historical, geographical, socio-economic, cultural and linguistic context from the larger context of The Gambia as a country.
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History and Demography
The Gambia is the smallest of Sub-Saharan African nations, entirely encased by Senegal on the West
Coast of the continent and stretching out eastward on the two banks of the Gambia River, namely the
South and North Banks. Figure 1 vividly depicts the country’s geographical landscape.
Figure 1: Map of The Gambia from the CIA Fact Book
During the long pre-colonial epoch, the area was within the territory of numerous African kingdoms; it was then was governed by the English until its independence in 1965. The Gambia boasts 1,750,000 inhabitants, to judge by data from the Human Development Index (UNDP,
2010), and its population size has increased by 650,000 or fully 60 percent since 1993. This demographic growth has severely strained the country’s limited resources, including fertile land and social services such as health care and educational infrastructure.
15
Socio-Economic Context of The Study Setting
The country remains extremely poor, ranking 165th out of 187 countries for which there is comparable data in the UNDP Human Development Index (HDI) of 2013. The Gambia has a HDI of 0.439 and one below the average of 0.466 for countries in the low human development group. The Gambia’s HDI average is also below the average (0.475) for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a measure of economic development, its Gross National Income per capita stood at USD510 in 2012 -- higher than nearby West
African countries like Guinea and Liberia with USD 460 and 370 respectively. Gambian GDP per capita increased from USD309 in 1993, for an annual growth rate of just over 3.3 percent (World Bank, 2010).
However, this growth has been inequitable and there is large disparity of income and of educational attainment among different strata of Gambian citizens.
Survey data collected between the periods of 2005/2006 and reported in the UNDP HDI
(2013) estimated that 17.6 percent of the population is vulnerable to poverty, 35.5 percent live in condition of severe poverty and 33.6 percent live below the income poverty line.
The Human Development Index report is now based upon multiple indicators that reflect the multidimensional nature of poverty and how this affects the development of human. In The
Gambia, 30.7 percent of the country’s population suffers deprivation in health, 33.5 percent are deprived of formal education and 35.8 percent suffer from deprived living conditions (UNDP,
2013). It is the combination of these data elements that provide a comprehensive picture of the poverty picture in The Gambia.
The climatic patterns of the country only favor seasonal rain; thus agricultural production which depends upon rainfall --on which almost 80 percent of the population relies-- can only be carried on for three months a year. The persistent poverty in the country means in addition a chronically low demand for labor, low productivity in agriculture, weak redistributive policies, especially in public social services, and weak support mechanisms for the poorest households.
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Women are particularly disadvantaged in this poverty situation although regional disparities are evident from one section of the country to another. Most income-earning women are self- employed, and collectively they represent about 62 percent of the self-employed population of the Gambia. Many of these women have never attended school (International Monetary Fund,
2007).
The Gender Inequality Index (GII) within the HDI report shows that Gambian women are disadvantaged in three key areas: reproductive health, socio-political empowerment, and economic activity. The measure of empowerment, calculated from the share of parliamentary seats that are held by each gender, makes it clear that women are disempowered politically, as they hold only 9 percent of parliamentary seats. This may, of course, be explained in good part by disparity in educational attainment: only 17 percent of adult women have a secondary or higher level of education compared to 32 percent of their male counterparts. Closely related to their low level of political empowerment is their low level of participation in the labor market compared to men. In the most recent available figures, 72.4 percent of women are employed compared to 83.1 percent of men (UNDP HDI, 2013) and the majority of them work in the informal economy. When combined with indicators of reproductive health status, maternal mortality and adolescent fertility rates, the resulting Gender Inequality Index for The Gambia
(0.594) ranks it 128th out of 148 countries in the 2012 index (UNDP HDI, 2013).
Cultural and Linguistic Context
The Gambia is a multilingual country with five major ethnic groups and a variety of smaller ones. According to the most recent (2003) census, the distribution of population among these groups is the following: Mandinka 42 percent, Fula 18 percent, Wolof 16 percent, Jola 10 percent, Serehulie 9 percent, and other 4 percent. Each of the major ethnic groups in The Gambia
17 has its own language. Despite this diversity of ethnicity and language, however, the country is characterized by a measure of homogeneity in cultural practices. Islam and Christianity, for example, are the two main religions, practiced respectively by 90 percent and 8 percent of the population, while a minority of 2 percent follows traditional African religions. Each uses a different script for its sacred texts (Arabic and Latin respectively), though Latin is now rarely encountered and is no longer taught in school. It is still heard, though, in the sermons of Catholic churches.
Official schooling is largely carried out in English and Islamic religious instruction in
Arabic. Nonformal education programs in Wolof, Mandinka and Fulah have recently been introduced. The formal legal and communication systems operate in English; Islamic courts and laws make much use of Arabic; and traditional ceremonies and litigations are conduced orally and employ African languages. Although English is the official language, it is uncommon to encounter it outside of the schooling environment, except in the context of official events and the ministrations of government authorities.
In Gambian schools, English is the medium of instruction for all subjects beginning from grade four. Wolof, Mandinka and Fula are the media of instruction in lower grades. Like other countries with multilingual settings, the use of English in the classroom is not reinforced outside of the school environment because it is not widely used orally in community life or when used it is often informally employed in its Creole form (Cheffy, 2011; Moore, 1999).
Serekunda consists of a mosaic of cultures and ethnic groups as a microcosm of the multilingual nature of The Gambia. Similar to the region of Foni, an administrative district located to the south of the River Gambia, as Juffermans (2011) observed, Serekunda “is a multiethnic town, since no ethnic group forms an absolute majority” (p.168). The town was
18 historically dominated by the Wolof, and the political leadership of the town remains in the lineage of the Wolof. Based on my knowledge of the area, the lingua franca in this town is
Wolof and Mandinka; however, other languages such as Fula and Jola are very often and widely used. As Cheffy (2011) observed in his study of the uses of literacy in Mofu-Gudur, a multilingual community in northern Cameroon, each of the local languages used in Serekunda are associated with a distinct domain of uses, and thus people in The Gambia code-switch a lot depending on the context of communication.
Efforts have been made to promote the use of local languages in adult literacy programs, given their relevance in community life and also because they consist of the repertoire of the community’s indigenous knowledge. Nonetheless, there is paucity of knowledge that illuminate the distribution of their uses and the differential levels of their retention among women. This is vital data in the study of literacy practices in multilingual contexts. Although this study specifically focuses on how the uses of literacy fit into the changing gender roles that Serekunda women perform in their communities, it will shed light on the use and the level of distribution of written codes other than the English language by women in the study setting.
Summary
Women’s literacy acquisition and uses are for the most part determined by the socio- cultural, economic and educational context of their application. The discourse of literacy is also informed by theories, notably the autonomous model and the social practice theories. These competing perspectives have informed the design of literacy programs, particularly those of the autonomous model that conceptualize literacy in terms of its unilateral effects on human development. Therefore any attempt at effectively studying literacy has to be grounded within the larger context of the environment that governs, enables or hinders literacy acquisition and
19 application, and the competing perspectives that have informed the conceptualization of literacy and implementation of adult literacy programs for women in developing countries.
Education in The Gambia: Provision and Results
As in most countries of the world, the provision and situation of education can best be described by distinguishing among formal, nonformal and informal modes of delivery. The first refers to the official and graded forms of schooling that stretch sequentially from early childhood education through universities. Nonformal education, on the other hand, covers the myriad forms of training and learning that are organized by an equally broad variety of social institutions – associations, businesses, civic clubs and so forth – to provide access to knowledge and skills relevant to their participants but without conferring any certified equivalence with formal education. Finally, informal education refers to generally self-directed learning that citizens acquire by their own efforts and without group sponsorship.
The Administration and Structure of Formal Schooling
Reforms in educational administration in 2007 divided the former Department of State for Education into two divisions: (1) Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology and
(2) Basic and Secondary Education. Adult and Non-Formal Education is a sub-component of
Basic Education. Both divisions are supervised by the Secretary of State for Education.
The educational system that The Gambia inherited from the British colonial government in 1965 was one in which students attended six years of primary schooling, at the end of which was a national examination that would determine their placement in five years of high school and two years of post-high school education for university training. Presently, the structure of the education system in The Gambia is numerically represented by 9-3-4, i.e., nine years of continuous basic education, followed by three years of senior secondary education and four years
20 of post-secondary or tertiary and higher education (The Republic of The Gambia, 2006). This change in the educational structure is part of the country’s Education for All (EFA) goals. It seeks to improve the former primary school curriculum that consisted of only six years of schooling by covering a longer cycle and a wide range of learning outcomes (The Republic of
The Gambia, 2004).
Recent Developments in Primary School Outcomes
More recent development in primary schooling outcomes in The Gambia is notable.
According to the Global Monitoring Report (The Gambia GMR, 2010), primary school survival rates2 increased by 10 percentage points between 1999 and 2008 to 80 percent. Girls’ survival rates decreased by three percentage points between 1999 and 2007 from 83 percent to 80 percent, but had a slight increase over the survival rates of boys which were 88 percent in 1999 and 68 percent in 2007. Primary school completion rates3, per World Bank data (2008), were estimated to be 75.6 percent for boys and 82.5 percent for girls.
The slight increase in girls’ survival and completion rates in The Gambia overall could be attributed to the numerous strategies undertaken to address gender disparity in Gambian schools, such as the introduction of a fee-free policy in public primary schools as outlined in The
Gambia’s educational policy 2004-2015. Akyeampong (2009) however noted that although the educational policies that support fee-free primary education have great intentions, the outcomes of this policy created many other issues that it did not originally anticipate. As a result of fee-free education, which many African countries have adopted to accelerate progress towards Education for All (EFA), a surge in enrollments has occurred and consequently put strains on available educational resources. He further noted that getting children from disadvantaged or marginalized
2 Survival rate is a measure of the percentage of a cohort of students who enter the first grade of primary education and who are expected to reach the last grade, regardless of repetition. 3 The percentage of students that complete their last year of primary schooling. 21 communities to enroll and complete basic education remains a challenge. Though fee-free education essentially eliminates all direct costs associated with tuition, households still face the indirect costs of books, stationery, uniforms, and transportation, all of which poorer households have difficulty supplying (Akyeampong, 2009).
Similar constraints in achieving universal basic schooling in Africa is observable in The
Gambia where -- as one might expect -- the success registered in girls’ primary school completion rates is not consistent across the six Regional Education Directorates (RED). Overall, the Greater Banjul area (urban) that covers Regional Education Directorate 1 and part of
Regional Education Directorate 2, and of which Serekunda is a part, has higher completion and survival rates than school administrative areas that are mainly found in rural Gambia (The
Republic of The Gambia, 2006). Problems of inequity in the provision of basic education, even in its new incarnation, thus continue to exist and will be further discussed below. The educational system is challenged to devise strategies for remedying these inequities and for providing further learning opportunities required to stem the relapse into illiteracy of school drop-outs – who are primarily girls and young women.
Formal Education: Schooling and Its Challenges
Despite The Gambia’s remarkable achievement in primary school survival and completion rates, many girls abandon their formal schooling at the most critical juncture of their education, i.e., in transiting from primary to secondary schooling where more advanced literacy and education is acquired.
Drop-out rates at the level of primary school is less acute in The Gambia as compared to other African countries; Senegal, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Madagascar, Guinea Conakry,
Ethopia, Rwanda, Ethopia, Benin, Sierra Leone, and Mauritania all have lower primary school
22 completion rates. Nonetheless, given a national primary school completion rate of 82.5 percent from the World Bank education database for 2008, nearly one in five girls are failing to complete six years of basic education.
Prospects for higher education beyond the primary school level are dismal, even among the population below the age group of 15 to 24 years, as the country’s expected years of schooling are presently nine as reported in the World Bank education database for the year 2008 and below the level of senior secondary education. These expected years of schooling are much lower for girls, the majority of whom never exceed junior secondary school education due to poor performance relative to boys in national examinations, such as the junior secondary school certificate examinations.
In 2005-2006, the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) for senior secondary school was 31 percent for boys and 23 percent for girls (The Republic of The Gambia, 2006). This gender disparity upon enrollment is further exacerbated by lower percentages of girls who remain enrolled in their final grade of senior secondary school compared to boys. Although the
Department of Education does not provide this statistic, studies on factors affecting girls’ schooling in Africa advanced that girls are likelier to drop out at this level of schooling due to teenage pregnancy and early marriages (Swainson, 1995; Owusu, 2000; Sutherland, 2008) and similar trends may be noted in The Gambia.
Non-Formal Education: Literacy Training Programs
The most common means of acquiring literacy skills outside of the formal schooling system is through Quranic education and functional adult literacy programs. Quranic education is widespread in countries with large Muslim populations. This traditional nonformal education has produced a literate clerical class both for religious instruction and for the management of
23 business and administrative affairs, such as the application of Islamic laws on marriage and inheritance (Easton & Peach, 1997; Easton, 2010). In The Gambia, Quranic schools are largely private – that is, they are not sponsored, licensed or underwritten by the State -- and they exist in parallel with formal schooling. The educational curriculum varies widely, with some covering all subjects taught in public schools while others focus on memorization of the holy Quran. A small number of people in Africa and Gambia have acquired the mechanics of reading and writing in
Arabic script from their Quranic education (Easton & Peach, 1997; Easton, 2010), although official statistics are not available. There may also be a group of people that have acquired competence in both English and Quran literacy since some students may start off their education with Quranic schools and later move to formal schooling in English.
In general, Gambian people seem to consider the Quranic education inferior to English education because of the limited access to jobs and further education for graduates of Islamic schools. Due to the non-formal nature of Quranic education, there is no data regarding the level of distribution, use, retention and relevance of Arabic literacy to the everyday lives of women.
Literacy programs, another area of non-formal education, are widespread in both rural and urban Gambia and almost all parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. They target the cross-section of the population who lack literacy skills, or those with intentions to nurture such skills. In The
Gambia, literacy programs target youth, out-of-school children and adult men and women, the majority of whom have little or no formal schooling at all (DoSBSE, 2008). The Adult and Non-
Formal Education Unit (ANFEU) of the Ministry of Basic Education is responsible for adult and non-formal education programs. They design literacy promotion policies and work to ensure that literacy programs are offered in The Gambia in line with the relevant government mandate
(DoSBSE, 2008). The ANFEU does not directly provide adult literacy services to the population
24 in need. Instead, it works through and with non-governmental organizations that are registered with the government to provide the actual instruction and classes.
Charities and private organizations are contracted by the government, when there are grants to fund adult literacy programs. Alternatively, literacy programs are supported by the organizations themselves, particularly in the case of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like Tostan. At present, there are many registered literacy providers in The
Gambia. While some of their programs are mainly for women, others are open to both men and women.
Challenges to non-formal education. However well-intentioned the providers of literacy programs and services, they have been limited in impact and scope by the lack of certification and recognition in the formal education system. In The Gambia, national examinations for a formal school certificate can only be taken by registering with the exams council. The opportunity to register for these exams as a private candidate is currently limited to the level of the senior secondary school. Private examinations to certify people outside of the formal schooling system are not available and hence serve as a demotivating factor for participation in non-formal education.
Adult literacy programs are also challenged by numerous factors during the post-literacy phase. After completing the literacy programs, students in general often lack motivation or opportunities to hone those skills; this has implications for newly literate women and their gender roles. Studies have shown the dearth of the literate environment in general and a lack of demand4 and supply5 factors (Easton, 2013, p3). Other factors include a relapse into illiteracy
4 The demand side of a literate environment refers to factors that accentuate the use of literacy supplies in a given society.
5 Literacy supplies are in the form of books, newspapers and other print or electronic media. 25 and an ineffective instruction that does not target the actual needs of learners (Easton, 1989;
Maruatona, 2006; Omolewa, 2008).
Informal Education: Patterns of Self-directed Learning
In the field of adult education, the concept of self-directed learning has been captivating to many adult education researchers who were highly inspired by Tough’s work on adult learning that was published in 1971 (Merriam, Caffarella & Baumgartner, 2007). The concept refers to people’s ability to initiate and direct their own learning. Self-directed learning occurs outside of formal education settings; it is in essence embedded in everyday lives. The desire or need for learning, and the manner in which adults acquire new knowledge are all determined by the social context of the learner.
Knowles’ theory of Adult Learning (1968 as cited in Merriam, Caffarella &
Baumgartner, 2007), commonly referred to as andragogy, also embodies a series of assumptions about how adults learn or what compels them to learn. One of Knowles’ four assumptions provides a framework for understanding the distinctiveness of adult learners and the concept of self-directed learning –something of particular concern in this study. Knowles asserted that adult learners are autonomous and self-directed. By implication, when the desire to learn is present in adults, they do not need a teacher more than readily available opportunities to learn on their own terms.
There have been numerous studies (mainly descriptive) about the nature of self-directed learning, i.e. investigations to verify that adults can indeed pursue self-directed learning on their own, and to analyze the processes involved in this kind of learning (Candy, 1991; Garrison,
1997). Although such investigative pursuits are rarely focused on developing countries, there are numerous case studies on the ethnography of literacy documenting that people who are not
26 formally schooled do at times partake in school literacy practices (Gebre, Rogers, Street &
Openjuru, 2009). Self-directed learning is arguably one of the ways for non-schooled adults to learn how to navigate the literate world.
Anecdotal evidence, which will be confirmed in the field, suggests that there are indeed instances where women in The Gambia have been involved in self-directed learning, whether it involves the acquisition of reading and writing skills or the use of arithmetic in their everyday living activities and within the gender roles they play in their communities. This study may therefore yield empirical evidence that would confirm whether women do pursue self-directed learning and, if they do, for what purpose and through what mechanism.
Summary
The educational system of The Gambia has developed considerably over recent years. A particularly positive aspect of this change has been the increase in gross enrollment rates (GER) among girls both at the primary and secondary levels. A considerable problem of school drop- out nonetheless persists among girls.
Adult literacy programs and vocational learning have provided alternative routes for the acquisition of literacy and useful skills for school drop-outs and adults who have never been to school. These non-formal educational opportunities are afflicted by numerous problems, ranging from the limited availability of such programs to the lack of effective instruction and reliable supply of literacy materials as well as low demand among the population groups that such programs are intended to serve.
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Understanding the Nature of Literacy
Literacy and Literacies: Defining the Different Forms
The definition of “literacy” is a subject of considerable controversy among scholars, who tend to conceive of and measure the concept in multiple ways. In some discourses, this term evokes a metaphor for a basic level of cognitive skills in many different domains, particularly in reading and writing. In one definition by UNESCO (2006), literacy refers to the ability to understand and write at least a simple sentence about one’s life. The sets of skills referred to as literacy might also include primary levels of numeracy: the capacity to transcribe numbers plus mastery of the rudiments of written arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division).
In another definition of what became known as functional literacy (Freddie 1969, p.19), literacy is “a way of preparing man for a social, civic and economic role that goes far beyond the limits of rudimentary literacy.” Both UNESCO definitions of literacy support the conceptualization of what will be considered literacy in this study, although they do not greatly simplify the task, for two reasons.
First, even within and around the types of afore-mentioned competencies, people might have varying levels and mixes of skills. Second, that skill may be applied and deployed in different linguistic codes and scripts, and similar skills may serve varying functions. In The
Gambia, five potential languages of literacy (English, Arabic, Wolof, Mandinka and Fulah) are heard and two different scripts (Roman and Arabic) may be used. The use of Latin is common in the sermons of Catholic churches in The Gambia.
Further, some combinations may serve more than one set of purposes. Official schooling is largely carried out in English, religious instruction in Arabic and nonformal education programs recently in Wolof, Mandinka and Fulah. The formal legal and communication systems 28 operate in English; religious courts and laws and Muslim services make much use of Arabic; and traditional ceremonies and litigation employ African languages. The multilingual situation in The
Gambia thus justifies the use of the term “literacies,” and the definition of literacy as a social practice (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Gee, 1999; Jufferman, 2011; Streets, 1984). The term literacies and literacy as a social practice have been frequently invoked in recent research, in
New Literacy Studies (NLS), to represent the varying types of competencies involved and the differing ways, circumstances, and sociocultural context in which they are applied.
The meaning of the word literacy continues to be broadened. Literacy is associated with competence, skills and awareness. The word literacy is used with “computer literacy, civic literacy, health literacy, and a score of other usages in which literacy stands for know-how”
(Dublin & Kuhlman1992, vi). Dublin's (1992) definition shows that literacy is a fluid and continuously evolving concept that is increasingly difficult to pinpoint. The implication is that people can be literate in a myriad of ways by virtue of being educated in one’s own culture (oral or written), professional and technical areas and other ways of knowing or practicing literacy.
Literacy and Orality
Critics of literacy as a writing tool, and the only tool, for that matter, that enhances cognitive processes have put forth the argument that oral cultures might as well be conceived of as literacy. Abrams (1996), for instance, argued that oral cultures --like written cultures-- consist of traditions, knowledge, and performances that relate human beings to their social world, but cannot be fully represented by alphabetical systems without distorting their original social purposes.
Proponents of oral cultures advanced the arguments against literacy discourses that have characterized all knowledge that is not written as inferior. They based their justifications, which
29 are explicit in the writing of David Abrams, on the cognitive processes that are involved in the construction of oral bodies of knowledge, and the fact that these bodies of knowledge are traditionally, and still are, a repertoire of communities’ knowledge of their social environment and ways of knowing (Abrams, 1996). To exclude this kind of knowledge from the realm of literacy would be tantamount to removing a whole repertoire of cultural tools that shed insight on other ways of relating to the world. For instance, Ruth Finnegan (2007), a proponent for the recognition of knowledge embedded in oral forms, argued in her book The Oral and Beyond:
Doing Things with Words in Africa, for “the visibility and worth of African literary forms on equal terms with those from anywhere else” (p.145) and more especially, those of written cultures.
These ways of conceptualizing literacy are noted for their large numbers and significance within the field of literacy and language research; however, they are not the focus of the current study. The term “literacies” will nonetheless appear frequently in the pages to follow as an acknowledgement that literacy exists not only in various textual forms but in varieties of oral languages as well. For the purpose of this study, I was interested in the uses of the textual form of literacy (Reading, Writing and Numeracy), not only in English but also in other written languages (Wolof, Mandinka and Arabic) currently employed throughout The Gambia. This focus on the textual form of literacy and numeracy was in part a consequence of the multilingual and multicultural context in which the study was conducted and so the difficulty within the time available of studying uses of multiple literacies across multiple languages. Future investigations of literacy and numeracy uses in the study setting might nonetheless profitably be extended to this additional forms.
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Literacy and Numeracy
There is no single internationally accepted definition of numeracy. In the Global Monitoring Report
(UNESCO, 2006), numeracy is said to be more recently employed to reference the ability to interpret and communicate numerical, quantitative, statistical and even mathematical information in a variety contexts.
From the above definition, knowledge of numeracy entails the capacity to transcribe numbers plus mastery of the rudiments of written arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) not only in English, but in other local languages as well.
Gal (2000) identified three types of numeracy that are pertinent to drawn upon here as they show the varieties of activities that define numeracy: generative, interpretative and decision situations. Generative situations of numeracy are those that require people to count, quantify, compute and otherwise manipulate numbers, quantities, items or visual elements. Interpretive situations, closely related to the generative, require people to make sense of verbal or text-based messages based on quantitative data, but do not require the manipulation of numbers. Unlike the generative and interpretative situations of numeracy, decision situations require that people take into consideration multiple pieces of information in order to determine a course of action, typically in the presence of conflicting goals, constraints or uncertainty.
Studies that seek to understand how the uses of mathematics are shaped by cultural practices, and subsumed in the body of knowledge call ethno-mathematics, (Barton, 1996; D'Ambrosio, 1990; Knijnik,
1996 as cited in Mendes, 2007) conceptualize numeracy practices as bounded by socio-cultural context.
Similar to the argument of New Literacy Studies (NLS) scholars --that literacy is context specific and exists in multiple forms, studies on ethno-mathematics often conclude that numeracy practices are context dependent, and that even people who are officially considered non-literate may practice numeracy.
Gal’s (2000) categorization of the various kinds of numeracy therefore only emphasizes the decoding of quantitative information, to the relative neglect of the varying social contexts that define the uses of numeracy. This study will analyze the uses of numeracy from the perspective of how it is employed for coding and decoding quantitative information with respect to the afore-mentioned numeracy practices, and their use by the women of Serekunda. 31
Measuring and Assessing Literacy Attainment
Conventional forms of literacy assessment focus on reading, writing and arithmetic.
Statistically, adult literacy rates are obtained by the number of persons over 15 years of age in the population who are designated as ‘‘literate,’’ divided by the total number of persons in that same age category (Wagner, 2008). Literacy rates may be broken down into age range, gender, urban-rural residency, but data disaggregated this way are seldom reflected in national reports.
Data collection in the past was mainly through census that is based on self-assessment -- raising concerns about credibility. Wagner (2008) noted that in order to address this shortcoming in the use of census data, household surveys are now used for capturing the whole picture of a country’s literacy level. Adult literacy rates, on all three (reading writing and numeracy), in The
Gambia are therefore arrived at based on household surveys that are obtained from census data.
The adult literacy rates in The Gambia have increased remarkably over the years. The literacy rate for the population aged 15 years and above increased slightly from 37 percent in
2000 to 46 percent in 2009. Disaggregated by gender, male literacy rates were 32 percent and female literacy rates were 20 percent in 1990 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2009). These rates increased in 1998 by six percentage points for male (38 percent) and eighteen percentage point for female (32 percent). In 2008, the countrywide literacy rate was estimated to be 70 percent for men and only 58 percent for women for the age bracket 15-24 (World Bank, 2011).
Regionally, The Gambia Multiple Indicator Cluster survey (2005/2006) reveals that the literacy rate for the age bracket 15-24 was 58.4 percent for urban women and 30.9 percent for rural women. In the same report, the literacy rates are further disaggregated into wealth index quintiles. Women’s literacy rate for the richest quintile is 67.9 percent, with the poorest quintile at 15.7 percent. Literacy rates among older women, for which there is no recent data, is much
32 lower. These rates increased by 11 per cent for both males and females in 2000. The data consulted does not reveal what percentages of males and females have acquired literacy in other languages other than English and through what means (formal, informal or self-directed learning). The ethnographic survey to be conducted during the first phase of the study will collect data that would throw light on these fundamental concerns regarding the level of literacy acquisition and retention of skills in languages other than English.
Summary
The definition and nature of literacy, or just what comprises the concept of literacy, are subject to considerable controversy and thus are constantly shifting. This evolution is evident in the progression from understanding literacy in the mid-1980s as cognitive skills linked to economic development (e.g., Goody, 1977; Olson, 1977; Ong 1982) to its more recent conception as a social practice that is shaped by socio-cultural needs and context (e.g. Street,
1984, 1993). The socio-cultural theory has also emphasized literacy’s multiple forms, suggesting that the most appropriate term is in fact “literacies.” The latter conceptualization will inform this study. Rather than restricting consideration to the solely cognitive benefits of literacy independent of socio-cultural context, common in early literacy studies, this research will analyze how women have interpreted, used and integrated a variety of “literacies” into their activities entailed by the myriad gender-specific roles that they perform in their communities.
Theorizing and Observing Literacy Effects
The Autonomous Model of Literacy
Governments, policymakers, and the general public tend to think of literacy as the ability, on the part of individuals, to read and write (Robison-Pant, 2004). Street (1984; 1993) christens this concept of literacy as the “autonomous model,” –that is a technical term that treats literacy as independent of social context, “an autonomous variable whose consequence for society and cognition can be derived from its 33 intrinsic character” (Street, 1993, p. 5). Stephen (2000) further espoused the fundamentals of the autonomous model that Street (1984) references. He noted that in Street's conception the autonomous model seems to refer to more than one aspect and thus…
on the one hand, the autonomous model is considered to view literacy independently of its social context. On the other hand the model is also autonomous in the sense that it holds that literacy has autonomous cognitive consequences. (p.12)
Wagner (2004) also offered an explanation of what Street’s autonomous model constitutes, supposing that literacy is a tool for producing and understanding written text. Papen
(2008) refers to the autonomous model as the “skill view of literacy” (p.23) that links literacy to education and erudition; the ability to read and write is often regarded as the first and necessary step for people to become educated.
The theoretical underpinning of the autonomous model of literacy is drawn from earlier psychological perspectives that conceptualize literacy as the acquisition of particular behaviors, cognitive, and linguistic processing skills (Purcell-Gates, 2007) and also from the human capital theory. Similar and myopic conceptions of literacy can be found in the works of Goody (1986,
1987, Ong (1982) and Olson (1977). Goody (1986) argued that the mastery of writing enables people and cultures to expand their range of activities and in fact creates its own uses. He linked the advent of writing to the growth of individualism, bureaucracy, abstract systems of government, and modem science. Put differently, Goody argued that literacy is the factor that separated the “educated” societies from oral societies in terms of early development, since oral societies lack the element that is needed to broaden their human capabilities. Ong (1982) offered a similar view of literacy, noting that it fertilizes individual abstract thought, a prerequisite at the collective level for more complex political and legal systems. Ong (1982) implies that oral societies lack certain cognitive skills for developing complex political or legal systems. Street
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(1993) also points to Olson (1988) as an adherent of the autonomous model: in Olson’s conception, when writing began to serve the memory function, the mind could be reorganized to carry out more analytical and complex activities.
Earlier findings from Scribner and Cole (1981) and Street (1984) questioned the validity of such assumptions, and this questioning continues to date in what has become New Literacy
Studies. Under the banner of New Literacy Studies, proponents have argued that the uses of literacy are not by any means universal since they are mediated by sociocultural contexts and needs. By implication, people have may the same level of skills in reading and writing but may have differing needs for the uses of those skills and the kinds of literacy activities people might potentially engage in are all ingrained in sociocultural life
The New Literacy Studies
The “New Literacy Studies” is theoretical movement whose proponents argue that in order to effectively understand how literacy benefits the lives of people, it must not be limited to assessment of cognitive skills, but expanded through the understanding of literacy as social practice (Barton & Hamilton 1998; Heath, 1983; Street, 1984; Gee, 1991; Purcell-Gates, 2007).
Baton and Hamilton (1998) further espoused the basic tenets of the literacy theory they proposed: namely, literacy is a set of social practices rather than mere cognitive skills; there are different literacies associated with different domains of life; literacy practices are patterned by social institutions and power relationships; literacy practices are purposeful and embedded in broader social goals and cultural practices; literacy is historically situated; and literacy practices change. The use of some key terms in their discussion of literacy deserves further explanation.
Among these concepts that are relevant per the theoretical framework for use in this study are the concepts of literacy events and literacy practices.
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Literacy as a socio-cultural practice. The concept of literacy as a social practice is derived from the theory that seeks to understand the actions and practices of individuals in connection to the environment, context and cultures that govern those actions (Turner, 1994).
The concept emanates from the fields of social anthropology, education and socio-linguistics, among other fields, and it describes the ways in which routinized behaviors relating to uses of literacy are ingrained in socio-cultural life and bounded by socio-cultural context. The concept is derived from Street’s (1984) Ideological model 6of literacy that he proposed in place of the autonomous model, discussed earlier. The ideological model is an umbrella term that refers to the theoretical framework, adopted to demonstrate that the cognitive effects of literacy cannot be automatically assumed, but are the result of particular practices in a particular context, practices that might endow some non-literates with similar cognitive skills.
Literacy events and practices. In their efforts to document literacy practices in numerous settings, NLS scholars have distinguished between “literacy events” and “literacy practices” in order to explicitly include both the repeated behaviors relating to literacy that are captured under the first term (Street, 1984; Heath, 1982; Gebre et al, 2009) and more infrequent episodes involving some uses of text that occur in the subjects’ lives, even if they are not active readers and writers themselves. Literacy events serve as tangible proof of people’s literacy practices and expand the concept beyond what would normally be considered habitual patterns of behavior.
Heath (1983) defined a literacy event as “any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of participants’ interactions and their interpretive processes” (p. 93). Barton and
6 Street (1984) suggested an ideological model of literacy in place of the autonomous model to demonstrate that literacy is a highly contested term both in its meaning and in practice. In his more recent contribution (2006), Street explains that particular versions of literacy are “ideological” when they are deeply couched in particular worldviews, particular those that tend to dominate and marginalize alternate conceptions of the world.
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Hamilton (1998) described events as observable episodes which emerge from practices and are shaped by them. By observing literacy events, social literacy practices and the functions they serve become clearer. One example of literacy events that emerges in the findings of many NLS on the uses of literacy is letter writing. In this study’s setting, probable literacy events may include writing letters, filling in forms for personal identification cards and job applications, wire transfers, the use of numeracy in market transactions etc., but this study may discover other hidden literacies that women practice as part of the diverse gender roles they perform in communities where they live.
The term “literacy practices” generally refers to social practices in which literacy is involved and the complex ways in which it is mediated and shared (Street, 1995), the meaning that people assign to it and the ideologies that surround it (Baynham, 1995). Barton and
Hamilton (1998) defined literacy practices as:
… the general cultural ways which people draw upon in their lives. In the simplest sense, literacy practices are what people do with literacy. […] Literacy practices are more usefully understood as existing in the relationships between people, within groups and communities, rather than as a set of properties residing in individuals. (p.6-7)
Papen (2005) defined practice as a metaphor for what people do on a regular basis or the things that they might do to either build up or maintain some skills. Papen (2005) further stated that practice might also denote an area of work within which people participate in recognizable activities that is linked to a particular body of knowledge and expertise. In this study, and following Papen (2005), literacy practices are not only conceptualized as routine behaviors of women relating to literacy. Rather, literacy practices will be observed and analyzed as part of (a) social activities, during which women write and read, (b) the social and institutional context within which reading and writing takes place, (c) the cultural conventions and rules that govern
37 their behaviors in literacy events, and (d) the people who read and write and the meaning and intentions they bring to this event. (p. 31).
In my examination of literacy practices of the women in the study, and in addition to
Papen’s (2005) delineated boundaries of literacy practices, I shall focus on the activity domain of women’s literacy practices, which is in Barton and Hamilton’s (1998) conception, the context or place where literacy practices takes place. I shall specifically focus on how the literacy practices of the study’s participants are incorporated into their diverse gender roles, which draws from
Moser (1989) their Reproductive, Productive and Community management ones. I shall use these topologies to further develop knowledge on how the uses of literacy fit within the gender roles of women and their consequent constraints. A conceptual map that will inform this study is found below, followed by a discussion of the research that has been conducted using the socio- cultural practice theory of literacy that Street (1984) proposed.
REPRODUCTIVE GENDER ROLES
LITERACY AND NUMERACY PRACTICES AS SOCIOCULTURALLY SITUATED COMMUNITY PRODUCTIVE MANAGEMNET GENDER ROLES GENDER ROLES
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Figure 2: A conceptual framework for analyzing women’s uses of literacy and numeracy
Socio-Cultural Practice: A Theoretical Lens for Examining Literacy Uses
Studies usually published under the socio-cultural studies of literacy defined literacy as a set of skills whose uses are highly context-dependent. Unlike the autonomous conceptions of literacy, described earlier, studies that employ New Literacy Studies theoretical framework tend to assess the actual uses of reading, writing and numeracy within the context of everyday life, rather than automatically confer benefits onto whoever demonstrates possession of skills considered as literacy. Thus, rather than assessing literacy skills through surveys and as a yardstick for measuring assumed benefits such as empowerment, health and wellbeing, and economic prosperity, NLS studies focus on how people use literacy skills in their daily lives and the relevance of those skills in the functions they perform.
The Meaning People Assign to Literacy
As a key component of literacy practices, NLS scholars emphasize the understanding of the meaning that people assign to their uses of such skills. The following are some studies that use the NLS theoretical framework to understand the meaning that people assign to their own literacy skills.
In her ethnographic study Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in
Communities and Classrooms, Heath (1983) documented numerous literacy practices, such as reading, writing and speaking, in her study setting, in the communities of the Piedmont
Carolinas, a work she did in the 1970s. Her analysis centered on the interaction and the communicative processes through which children are socialized into a community’s ways with words. She contrasted two communities to illuminate diverse literacy events that are practiced by
39 communities: in Roadville, language instruction was a private endeavor, primarily the domain of a child’s mother, and geared toward preparing the child for school; in Trackton, an African
American community, language learning was for the most part social and extended the public domain, conferring prestige to the most skillful for their competitive word play and stories. In this study, Heath argued for and justified the existence of an interdependent relationship between literacy and orality, and that even practices not valued in the mainstream have cultural value and meaning. Heath is among the pioneers of NLS that conceptualized literacy as a social practice.
Her literacy event has informed us of the unit of analysis used in numerous NLS research studies, defined as “any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of participants’ interactions and their interpretive processes” (Heath 1983, p. 93). Her study has tremendously enriched the field of the ethnography of literacy and has informed the conceptualization of literacy events among women, that will be observed and analyzed in this study.
Mpofu and Youngman (2001), in their article “The Dominant Tradition in Adult
Literacy: A Comparative Study of National Literacy Programs in Botswana and Zimbabwe”, investigated the meaning that is assigned to literacy at the global level. The authors raised the question of how the old paradigm that dominated international discourse on the meaning of literacy profoundly influenced national decisions in the provision of literacy programs for non- literate adults. Through the comparative study of two Sub-Saharan African countries, Zimbabwe and Botswana, they show how national policies, organizational structures, financing, language, contents and methods in literacy provision all tended to follow the old paradigm of understanding literacy as a cognitive tool. The authors asserted that the narrow perspectives of literacy are the result of ineffective programs, but the old paradigm will be difficult to effectively
40 displace in Zimbabwe and Botswana despite token recognition of the new paradigm in international policy statements. This study shows that autonomous views of literacy continue to permeate the discourse and design of national literacy programs not only in Zimbabwe and
Botswana, but in many countries of the developing world. My study conceptualizes literacy as a social practice, and will contribute to mainstreaming the inclusion of program participants in research and design. This will be achieved through the use of participatory research to identify the actual uses of literacy of the study’s participants.
In his study on the uses of literacy and its assigned meaning in a community of Papua
New Guinea, McKeown (2006) advanced that the uses of reading and writing in the Simbu village of Maidom are strongly associated with local notions of self-promotion, prestige, chance, economic relations, and decoration to an extent that “written texts act as visible carriers of messages about an individual's success in appropriating a valued aspect of modernity” (p. 367).
Also, their language of communication was observed to have embedded important messages about the identity and prestige of the communicator. Zubair (2004) also arrived at similar findings in her study. She concluded that younger women’s use of literacy in English and Urdu is influenced by their search for a new identity and for the purpose of supplanting their traditional gender roles.
Maddox (2005), in his study among Bangladeshi women, came up with interesting insights into the meaning that women attached to their uses of literacy. He observed that although the use of Arabic literacy has the ability to raise the status of women in their community, the women who were literate in Arabic did not value Arabic literacy outside of a connection to religious piety. Also, instead of women’s use of literacy in the public domain, much was conducted in private places. This conclusion supports the idea that literacy as a social
41 practice is intrinsically linked to socio-cultural context, and in this respect, women’s literacy was not observable outside of the gender roles and social expectations.
Dyer and Choksi (2001) learned that their presumed literacy needs of the Rabari pastoralists in India (informed by their development assistance perspective) was not congruent with the value assigned to literacy by the Rabari themselves. The researchers had thought that their literacy intervention would be closely related to the migratory culture and animal husbandry of the Rabari. More specifically, they anticipated that the new literacy skills they were providing the Rabari would help them to more effectively perform their occupation of animal husbandry.
On the contrary, and as revealed through ethnographic work, the Rabari desired literacy as a means to reduce their dependency on others and to offer a better future for their children in a non-pastoral economy.
This study demonstrates the most fundamental criticism against development interventions, such as adult literacy programs, for their oversight of the actual literacy needs of the people they intend to serve and the meaning they assign to it. It is also clear from this study that the literacy needs of beneficiaries cannot be (pre)determined without the local knowledge of the intended beneficiaries. Their participation in factoring those needs into literacy programs would seem fundamental to program effectiveness; nonetheless few literacy programs are designed in this way. My study seeks to provide grounded knowledge on how literacy fits within the everyday realities of the women concerned and their need for further learning. This is the kind of knowledge is critical for adult literacy planners to design successful literacy programs.
Studies on Everyday Uses of Literacy
Using the social perspective of literacy as a theoretical framework have identified a wide range of practices across the world (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Gebre et al., 2010; Juffermans,
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2009 and 2010; Cheffy, 2011; Lynch, 2009; Kalman, 2001; Mckeown, 2006; Street, 1984;
Walter, 2005; Zubair, 2004). These studies are no doubt informative in their illumination of the everyday uses of literacy and how the uses of literacy are mediated by the socio-cultural contexts where such practices exist. All of the studies find that understanding how people of low educational qualifications use literacy skills can aid the effective development of literacy programs through a bottom-up approach.
Missing in these studies, however, is the gender dimension: for instance, the types and usages of literacy fit into the changing gender roles of women. Each of these studies will be examined in depth, to demonstrate how my study will add to these bodies of knowledge.
Street (1984) argued that literacy is not independent of the socio-cultural and political context where it is applied. Further, literacy is embedded in social institutions and must be defined in relationship to how it is practiced. He presents the case of Arabic literacy that is used by the Chesmeh, a village in Iran, where literacy has contributed in fundamental ways to its social and commercial dominance. He further noted that the number of people who had already developed specific literacy practices and skills contributed to the region’s economic development in the 1970s. He observed three main kinds of literacy practices: the commercial literacy of shop keepers, religious literacy of the Mullahs and school-based literacy practices emanating from formal education programs.
Also, using the case of the Mullahs’ uses of literacy, Street (1984) engaged the orality versus written debate. He challenges Goody’s (1986) concept of oral tradition as fixed. The use of literacies that he observed among the Mullahs demonstrate that the acquisition of literacy skills, mainly oral from the “Maktab”, was not limited to a fixed reproduction of text, and “there was scope for imaginative play upon the meaning being offered” (p.151).
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Street’s (1984; 2004) arguments generally debunk the universal notion of literacy, and suggest that varied socio-cultural and political contexts give birth to and govern the use of literacy; therefore, literacy is best understood in its plural form—literacies. Key among his overall observations and arguments, however, is that some literacies provide access to power and material well-being, while others do not. A similar proposition can be made about literacy events and practices -- that some bestow power and provide material well-being to their users, while others do not. Part of the focus of this study is to therefore examine the various types of literacy that women find relevant in the culturally defined and changing gender roles they perform.
In a study using the same theoretical framework as Street, Barton and Hamilton (1998) criticized early literacy studies that generalized the benefits to literacy without taking into account the socio-cultural context that shape literacy practices. Their study focused on the uses of literacies in Lancaster, England, each of which embed literacy as a set of social practices associated with different domains of life, showing that literacy practices do evolve and present new characteristics. Their cases were also categorized around the functions served by two types of literacies, namely: dominant literacy and vernacular literacy practices. The latter are those that are rooted in daily experiences and serve everyday purposes, while dominant literacies are those associated with formal organizations, such as those of education, law, religion and the workplace.
Within the framework of vernacular literacy, Barton and Hamilton (1998) observe and theorize from their cases that some literacy events and practices may serve the purposes of
“organizing life; personal communication; private leisure; documenting life; sense making and social participation” (p. 248). Doubtless, the authors would subscribe to the view that such purposes and functions of literacy may differ in other contexts, and this is mainly due to gender
44 and cultural differences relating to literacy practices. Although they also recognized that literacy practices are somewhat gendered, this thesis was not fully explored. They asserted that “within the home there are many patterns of how literacy is distributed as people participated in different relationships and assert different identities” (p.70). More specifically, gendered patterns in literacy activities in their study were revealed, as they dwelled on questions about “who pays the bills; who deals with other financial matters; who writes personal letters; who opens the post and junk mails; who reads what kinds of books; who sends greeting cards” (p.171). They also point out that there were counter examples where, for instance, a female was interested in martial art books and magazines; this should, in my understanding, be considered an exception rather than the norm.
Barton’s and Hamilton’s (1998) insights into the gendered patterns of literacy practices do in fact support the proposition in this study that women’s literacy practices cannot be studied outside of the gender roles they perform.
One limitation in the Barton and Hamilton study (1998), and many new literacy studies, is their sole focus on documenting local literacy practices and events. Barton and Hamilton
(1998) provided a snapshot of the difficulties people encounter with reading and writing in this community, but they did not relate these difficulties to the gender roles of their study participants. Therefore, knowledge of the constraints to women’s everyday uses of literacies, within the NLS theoretical framework, will tremendously enrich current strategies and efforts to develop pragmatic adult literacy programs that many NLS justify as their study purposes.
Zubair (2004), in her study on women’s literacy in Pakistan, asserted that research on women’s literacy practices (reading of popular fiction, women’s magazine and television viewing) is mainly focused on Western women, and little is known about women’s literacy
45 practices in non-Western communities. This argument supports the much needed work in this area, as there is still some gap in the research to inform our understanding of the everyday uses of literacy by women who live in the developing parts of the world.
The literacy practices that Zubair identified in her study include writing diaries (both men and women) and reading magazines. The young women in her study were engaged in writing personal diaries and reading magazines. Women wrote diaries before their marriage but stopped that practice after they got married. Also, younger women, who have far better access to English,
Urdu and Arabic, had a far more advanced approach to literacy than older women and men.
Although Zubair asserted that younger women were more willing to embrace social change and a new identity that goes hand in hand with the gaining of secular literacy, I would argue that the younger women in her study did have better access to and control over using secular literacy in their practices of reading and writing than older women. In fact, Zubair (2004) did advanced that the younger and older women experienced different cultural winds of change, and thus had developed different tastes for practicing literacy. Her younger women informants, such as Huma, had completed high school and the First Certificate at College.
In her analysis of women’s uses of literacy, Zubair (2004) observed that upper-class women are hindered in their access to literacy not by resources but by traditional values and roles that keep them in a subordinate position relative to men. On the other hand, lower class women have less opportunity to gain literacy, since their problems are further complicated by the lack of financial and economic resources. My study may complement Zubair’s conclusions in examining of how the uses of literacy fit women’s reproductive and community management roles).
Research in women’s uses of literacy and its impact upon their lives has been minimal, but will be addressed in this study to be of use to literacy planners and providers. Zubair’s (2004) study is
46 particularly insightful and will be a valuable resource in the analysis of data in this study. It would be informative to compare how the literacy practices of the women in my study are similar or dissimilar to those she observed.
McKeown (2006) provided evidence of literacy practices at funerals and weddings in the
Simbu village of Papau New Guinea. In such events, younger villagers are responsible for recording the names of people who attended and their contributions towards the event, mainly food. This kind of literacy practice provides a mnemonic devise for a host to remember who attended their functions so that they can reciprocate when it is their turn. The literacy practices that McKeown observed point out that literacy is embedded in cultural context and its impact cannot be effectively studied outside of the milieu in which such practices exist. This kind of everyday literacy practice may be ignored or under-valued under the autonomous model, because it may not fit the concept of development by human capital theorists, but it is ingrained in everyday lives, serves socio-cultural purposes and supports social networks in the Simbu village.
Similar literacy practices may be observed as women organize social and cultural events in their communities.
Gebre et al. (2009) presented cases on everyday uses of literacies in Africa. Although this exploration was not entirely focused on women, and the cases are short on ethnographic description, the data generated from the women informants expose us to the uses of literacy by
Ethiopian women in the informal economy.
The everyday uses of literacies by women in their productive roles in Gebre et al, (2009) are mirrored through the life of their informants. They present the case of Guyato Guyala, a trader in the informal economy selling Cheka-- a local drink of Konso-- and sheep, who obtained micro-financing to start her business. Guyato uses her own strategy, and one she claimed to learn
47 from her father, to participate in the micro-financing program and to run her small scale business. For example, she knows that she repays 40 birr every month, and her loan is to be repaid in 40 months. Therefore she keeps 40 grains (of maize) in a safe place, from which she deducts one every month until no more grain is left, to record her payments.
In another case, Gebre et al, (2009) highlighted how literacy and numeracy practices are featured in the daily activities of their informant who is involved in a small scale business. Their informant, Tirhas Gidey, had been a fighter with TPLF/EPRDF 7 and then became a civilian after the Derg regime failed. Through the support of her church and micro-financing institution, she has a small shop near the teacher training college and sells mainly barley flour due to its high demand. The use of numeracy was evident in the running of her small scale business.
The literacy practices that Gebre et al, (2009) identified in their research are doubtless salient in illuminating of the uses of literacy in some productive roles of Ethiopian women but unfortunately does not touch upon the uses of literacy in their reproductive and community management roles. My study will provide in-depth data on all three fundamental areas.
In his study of one village in The Gambia, Juffermans (2009) observed and analyzed, through informant L, local uses of literacy. His informant is a male who received a Quran education. His informant keeps a diary for organizing life and for keeping contacts. Juffermans argued that although his informant is unable to record phone numbers but he makes much use of a community support network to help him write contact information in his diary. Therefore, he concluded that “illiterate or low-literate people like L can still do literacy things when they make use of the human resources in their community” (p.229). It remains to be explored whether the literacy practices of informant L fit into the gender roles that are carried out by women in The
Gambia.
7 A rebel group that fought the military junta in Ethopia. The TPLF/EPRDF later came to power in 1991. 48
The other theme that emerged in Juffermans (2009) on the uses of literacy is the politics of language, specifically the high value associated with use of the English language. Although L could use his limited Arabic writing skills to record contact information of family and friends, he prefers using friends and family to record these contacts in English. Juffermans opined that this phenomenon may be associated with a feeling of insecurity in using Arabic, and this point tied in well with Street’s (1984) assertion that some literacy practices confer more social prestige and economic powers than others.
While this article offered an interesting glimpse of the uses of literacy in rural Gambia, it was not clear from the article why L kept a diary and the personal, social and economic meaning he assigned to his diary-keeping practices. My study on how the uses of literacy fit into the gender roles of women provides more analysis on this area.
In another study on the uses of literacy in the same community in rural Gambia,
Juffermans (2010) provided an ethnographic narrative of a literacy event he witnesses, and he described the event as an ethnographic “rich point”, following Agar (1995). An ethnographic rich point, or “critical incident”, refers to “a moment in which one witness a meaningless or mundane event that renders an increased understanding of the research subject” (p.167). This critical incident involved an old man in the village who wished to write a letter of negotiation over a marriage dowry. Juffermans seized the opportunity to discuss the network of resources that illiterate people use to engage in literacy practices. He is right to mention that in The
Gambia, non-literates engage in literacy practices through other (literate) people in the community, and that such practices might include writing letters, writing phone numbers and wire transfers. Such literacy practices are an example of “grassroots literacy” -- that is, writing performed by people who are not fully inserted into the (elite) economics of information,
49 language and literacy practices (Blommaert, 2008, p. 7). As a result of the collaborative nature of such events, Juffermans noted that “personal writing is not an exclusively private affair but a rather public event” (p.176). Also important in this article is his observation of the dearth of material artifacts for using literacy, and the general socio-cultural context that is defined by the scarcity of materials and a multitude of educational constraints in many rural and urban communities in the Gambia.
These two articles by Juffermans are most directly related to both the context of my study and are informative, particularly with regards to his ethnographic survey that provides a neat tapestry of multilingualism in The Gambia. However, answers to some fundamental questions, reflected in my purpose statement and research questions, did not fall under the purview of his studies. This study will therefore add to the work on the everyday uses of literacy that
Juffermans has begun in The Gambia.
Cheffy (2011) offered an ethnographic account of literacy uses in the Mofu-Gudur area, a community in Northern Cameroon. He observed two main uses of literacy by people in this community. As a multilingual community, other languages exist and are used side by side with
French, which is limited to school and other formal settings. The community saw French literacy as a critical tool for accessing jobs, although finding employment was difficult in their economic situation. Literacy was also perceived as vital for religious purposes, such as reading the Bible.
Another popular literacy practice is for the purpose of personal correspondence, involving letter writing and letter reading. It is, however, worth noting that Cheffy (2011) informants did not engage in these literacy practices by themselves, but like Juffermans (2007) argued, these are the literacy practices of illiterate or low literate people, mainly carried out by other (literate) people in the community. The question that was not addressed in this study was how such uses of
50 literacy fit the gender roles of women. Ian, however, provided justification for literacy providers to be cognizant of such literacy practices as they design their curricula. Towards this end, he asserted that “by reaching outside of the classroom, these initiatives [adult literacy programs] would ensure that literacy teaching took place within the community activities…” (p. 258). In this context, what is particularly important, and reflected in the purpose of my study, is the identification of women’s everyday uses of literacy in the context of their gender roles.
Kalman (2001) also examined the daily literacy practices among unschooled and the under-schooled women in semi-urban communities of Mexico City. The everyday literacy practices of the women she studied include activities that were geared towards the running of the household for the most part. Their literacy practices include paying bills, caring for their families’ health, keeping records and filing relevant paper work. She noted further that the ability of these women to carry out these literacy functions is due to their familiarity with printed documents such as bills, birth certificates and receipts. Also, most of these print materials have
“logos, colors and symbols that make them distinguishable from the rest” (p.374). The women’s literacy practices also include record keeping in small scale businesses, interpreting different texts, such as school report cards and paperwork relating to selling, buying and owning property and property rights, and the writing of letters for personal correspondence. She explores an important question, and one that relates to the variety of strategies that women resort to when they confront a situation requiring literacy, such as trying to read and write on their own, copying, taking dictation and getting help from others. The extent to which the women in her study have access to and control over such resources for practicing literacy was not clear. Her study provides great insight into the local literacy practices of women in Mexico, but she does not analyze the uses of literacy by her informants in the context of their changing gender roles.
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Kalman advanced an excellent argument in the beginning of her article, noting that “what knowledge they [women] have and how they make use of it varies widely and is more of a consequence of social relationships and power rather than the result of individual abilities and personal drive” (p. 368). Given the use of literacy in the household that Kalman offered, it could well be added here that the use of literacy by women may also be a consequence of their culturally defined gender roles, and the extent to which those literacy practices are required or not. The exploration of this proposition is not included in Kalman’s study but comprises one of the major research questions in this study.
In a study on the print engagement of parents from low-income backgrounds in a
Midwestern state in the United States, Lynch (2009) asserted that adult literacy levels are perpetual concerns in both poor and affluent nations. For instance, in the United States, adult literacy levels remain low, particularly among those from low-income backgrounds, and more especially, among migrant families, despite large numbers of adult literacy programs. She cites
New Literacy Studies scholars (Purcell-Gates, Degener and Jacobson, 2001) in noting adult literacy programs are not effective because they have little or no connection to out-of-school experiences. Although lack of teacher preparation for adult education plays a role, the fundamental problem stems from lack of knowledge of the different literacy practices that exist and how to incorporate those resources in the classroom. Her study almost entirely depends upon an ethnographic survey to document the literacy practices of the parents in her study. She randomly selected 38 parents from a list of 120, and mainly those whose children participate in a
Head Start program. She asserted that these are parents who are stereotyped as not engaging in print literacy practices. She documented a myriad of literacy activities as practiced by this demography of parents. These activities include reading pre-school communication information,
52 store advertisement coupons or fliers, and the most writing activity reported was writing names or labels. Their writing activities include grocery and to-do-lists, money orders and checks.
Lynch noted that her research participants did not consider most literacy practices they perform as literacy, and this finding is also consistent with Robinson’s (2004) claimed that adults who are not engaged in dominant literacy practices consider themselves illiterate. Lynch opines on the phenomenon, noting that “perhaps because out-of-school print literacy was not valued or integrated into their earlier education” (p.158). The major lesson to be drawn from this study is that by gaining insight into the literacy practices that women perform, educators can support their effective learning in adult literacy programs. She further suggested that by building on some of the print activities that young children are exposed to in the home, such as calendars, lists, noted and advertisements, educators can bridge in-school and out-of-school literacy practices. My study expanded this interest to document women’s local literacy practices as resources for designing relevant literacy practices by illuminating everyday local literacy practices that fit the diverse roles women perform in the urban setting of Serekunda.
Walter (2005), in an ethnographic study, examined the domain of literacy uses in the daily lives of women in northeastern Thailand, and the strategies that they employ to negotiate day-to-day tasks in the context of change and development. He identified many uses of literacy by women informants, ranging from reading common texts, such as road signs, instructions on medicine and chemical facilities, advertisements, letters from family members and materials from the various adult literacy programs in which they had participated. Also, women applied literacy skills in their community management roles.
As a result of the bottom-up approach to government policy development, Walter (2005) asserted that women leaders serve as liaison between all of the village women and the
53 department of community development. They were, among other things, responsible for interpreting the content of the policy to members of their mother’s groups. In this community, it was not a literacy practice to read newspapers and other written texts, as the village women relied on the village loudspeaker system, radio and television for both local and national news.
The lack of culture for reading newspapers did not mean that the women were not cognizant of events in the village and in their country, as they relied on the headsman’s early morning announcements for upcoming village events.
Walter’s (2005) study, in this respect, demonstrated that literacy practices are socio- culturally situated. His study alludes to the constraints that women face in using literacy in their productive role (commercial transactions) in noting that “women’s lack of literacy skills disadvantaged them in commercial transactions, particularly where their social status as rural
Northeastern Thai women was low in relation to members of the more economically powerful class” (p.6). However, the study was not specifically on how literacy fits into the gender roles of women in his study. Like Juffermans (2010) and Ian (2011) observed, he noted that writing letters to friends and relatives, travelling and doing coursework required by educational programs was a communal or family activity rather than an individual one. These studies show the strategies and the network of resources that people with low literacy skills use to negotiate literacy practices for tasks. My study on how literacy fits into the gender roles of Serekunda women may contribute knowledge to the phenomenon of literacy brokering-Perry (2007) —a term she used to refer to the ways that non- or semi-literate people use family and community networks as the medium to practice literacy and for navigating the literate world.
Walter concluded with a salient note that programs of adult education in the developing world should tap into the context of their target learners’ lives, and more especially, conduct
54 further research and understand literacy as a socially constructed practice for low literates in developing countries.
The Effects of Literacy
The effects of literacy on the lives of people who utilize such skills are perhaps the most debated areas in adult literacy studies. The dominant concept of literacy, as a set of cognitive skills that endows its users with psychological, socio-cultural, political, and economic empowerment, has been taken on in New Literacy Studies (NLS) (see Aheam, 2004; Khandekar,
2004; Prins 2008; Tagoe, 2008) and in an earlier study by Scriber and Cole (1981). These studies, among others, have demonstrated that the benefits of literacy cannot be generalized and are context dependent. The most contested area is the generalized assumption that women’s participation in literacy programs will improve their overall social and material conditions and lead to their empowerment. Each of the studies cited above will be reviewed in this context, to show how this current study may contribute to existing knowledge and what gap it would fill.
Scribner and Cole (1981), in the area of psychology of literacy, empirically study the literacy practices of the Vai people of Liberia; this is widely quoted in the New Literacy
Scholarship as an early study that gave impetus to the social perspective of literacy. The Vai script is an indigenous African literacy with relatively little influence from Western, Arabic or formal schooling. The study marks a point of departure from the earlier psychological definition of literacy as a set of (mere) cognitive skills. Although the study started with the goal of searching for generalized causes and effects of literacy, the research agenda pursued the understanding of specific literacy practices. The authors asserted that:
First it is clear from the evidence we reviewed that unschooled literacy, as we found and tested it among the Vai, does not produce generalized cognitive effects as we have defined them. The small and selective nature of Vai script and Arabic influences on cognitive performance precludes any sweeping generalizations about literacy and
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cognitive change. At best we can say that there are several localized literacy-specific effects on certain task-specific skills. (p.132)
Their findings also challenge the long-held belief that literacy is the only condition that affects human thoughts, and thus support the NLS argument that literacy practices vary with their settings, because literacy skills are shaped by socio-cultural environment. It should be noted here that although Scribner and Cole (1981) use an experimental design from the tradition of social psychology, almost all NLS studies adopted an ethnographic approach to highlight the significance of socio-cultural context in the nature of literacy events and literacy practices.
Khandekar (2004), in her ethnography study on women’s literacy in Mumbai, India, and against the background of literacy learning programs, examined how gender is constructed, operated and reinenforced through various structures in Santosh Nagar. The study also investigates the possible impact of the literacy program upon women’s self-awareness and social position. Although the study did not specifically focus on women’s everyday uses of literacy or their application of literacy skills within their gender-specific roles, it shows how literacy offered women the opportunity for meeting some strategic gender needs, such as social and mental space and opportunities to discuss matters of collective interest. Through this sharing of ideas, the women gathered the courage to break the “culture of silence” and agitated against the alcoholic habits of men in the community.
Using the Moser (1989) framework of strategic gender needs, it could be said that these women were able to question the power relationship that perpetuates their subordinate positions, to collectively end the suffering that they incurred from male abuse of alcohol by confronting the liquor den owners. This study offered great insight into some benefits that women gain from literacy programs, but it neglected to analyze their uses of literacy skills per se.
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In her study, “Literacy, power, and agency: Love letters and development, in the Nepal village of Junigau”, Aheam (2004) found that the increase in female literacy rates in the 1990s gave birth to new courtship practices involving love letters and self-initiated marriages. She suggested that literacy is thus both a means for social change and a result of other types of social change. She further posits that although this kind of literacy may be viewed as empowering to women, her research specifies that literacy does not always confer power to its users. The basis of her argument was that:
A Junigau woman who uses her newly acquired literacy skills to write love letters that culminates in elopement with a young man often entirely forfeits the support of her natal family should the marriage turn sour. Having married someone she usually knows only through love letters, she may end up devastated when her husband is less loving in actuality than he sounded in his letters… .(p.313)
In his qualitative study, Tagoe (2008) assessed a literacy program that operated under the
Regenerated Freirean Literacy through Empowering Community Techniques framework
(REFLECT). This program emphasizes the empowerment of participants, an alternative metric for literacy programs that are not informed by participants’ needs. The larger goal of REFLECT in Ghana is “to empower rural people who are caught in a web of interlocking factors so that they initiate their own development at the grassroots” (p.715).
Tagoe (2008) found that the REFLECT method used in literacy programs by Action Aid did result in some personal empowerment of the participants. Some of his informants allude to their increased self-efficacy in problem solving. Empowerment was also observed at community level, by helping people “to mobilize in the construction of new school blocks, cladding of school blocks, hand-dug wells, farmers’ centers, dam construction, grain banks and traction inputs for farming” (p. 720). The women participants were also able to gain a voice at community level; prior to inception of the literacy program, the voices of the women were not
57 heard in community affairs. Nonetheless the REFLECT programs “failed to deal with core issues of oppression and gender relations in the home” (p. 721). Although the program seemingly aided women in meeting some practical gender needs, it did not meet their strategic gender needs, as the oppressive structures that perpetuate their disempowerment remain intact.
Prins (2008), like Tagoe (2008), arrived at a similar conclusion. Her ethnographic study in rural El Salvador, and drawing on New Literacy Studies (NLS) and gender and development
(GAD) literature, examined how participation in a Freirean-inspired literacy program fostered and/or limited women's and men's personal, interpersonal and collective empowerment. Similar to the findings of Tagoe (2008), Prins (2008) asserted that participation in a literacy program contribute powerful psycho-social benefits. However, there was little evidence to suggest that it led to improved economic well-being and gender equity in the household or community. Also she did not observe empowerment at a collective level. This, she asserted, may be due, partly, to the short duration of the program. She concludes that literacy education is an essential yet inadequate means of diminishing deeply rooted social and gender inequalities.
Neither Tagoe (2008) nor Prins (2008) identified the literacy uses of their study participants. Rather, these studies evaluate programs that premised on Paulo Freire’s (1972) concepts of praxis and action— to understand and locate oppression, and take action to end it.
Although my study will not seek to specifically analyze whether the use of literacy by women empowers them, it may garner data to support or disclaim that hypothesis.
My study will not specifically evaluate the effects of literacy on the lives of the women, but it will document the uses and domains of literacy practices (home, work, etc).
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Women’s Triple Gender Roles
In developing societies and Africa in particular, there are clearly defined gender roles, spanning reproduction, production to community service, although these roles may overlap and change. In The Gambia, there is a clear difference between the roles of men and women at the conceptual level, mostly visible in the division of labor, as advanced by Copper & Schaffer
(1987) in their study of Pakau, a rural Mandinka community in The Gambia. The majority of women with low or no educational qualifications, like women in other developing countries, participate in informal sectors of the economy. Most of their labor is unpaid and considered a part of their gender social roles (Moser, 1989). Moser’s (1989) conceptualization of women’s triple roles as Reproductive, Productive and Community management are instructive for profiling the activities of Serekunda women with the caveat that gender roles are dynamic and that there is enormous heterogeneity among Serekunda women.
Women’s Reproductive Gender Roles
The literature on gender roles in Africa suggests that the reproductive roles of most women with limited formal education include childrearing and care, taking care of the elderly, tending to domestic work such as cooking, laundry, fetching water, firewood and subsistence agriculture (Muah, 1998; Phillott-Almeida, 1994). Based on my knowledge of the area,
Serekunda women perform similar reproductive roles. In the country as a whole, these activities may vary by region and women’s social class by virtue of their highest level of education, their spouses and/or family economic status. This is because household jobs are deemed to be women’s jobs, in accordance with some normative social expectations that regard women as homemakers (Chant & Jones, 2005). On the contrary, men are excluded from domestic work, particularly in reproductive roles, but they can perform traditional female roles outside of the household when their labor will attract income. Gender patterns are changing, however, and with 59 an increase in women’s access to the informal economy, more responsibility for some reproductive roles may fall upon men, particularly if they have retired from their productive roles or are facing unemployment.
Women’s Productive Gender Roles
In Sub-Saharan Africa, women’s productive activities are mainly restricted to the informal economy. Rural women are overwhelming growing food and raising animals. Their efforts constitute about 60-80 percent of the overall food production in developing countries
(Jiggins, 1989; FAO, 2009), while urban women subsist mainly on small-scale income generating activities. The important roles they play are, however, often ignored by development planners (Blumberg, 2005).
The productive activities of most non-literate women in The Gambia and those with incomplete formal education are restricted mostly to agriculture and as well as small-scale trading. The Gambia Women’s Bureau, (2013) reported that about 75 percent of the agricultural labor forces are women, and agriculture accounts for 27 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Urban women are restricted to the running of small businesses, such as the selling of processed food, inexpensive groceries, indigenous fabric (tye and dye and batik) in their homes or at the market. Urban women also participate in the fishing industry as off-loaders, processors and sellers (Sanyang & Huang, 2008).
Suffice it to note here that there are also instances of shifting gender roles, similar to other African countries, with men encroaching upon traditional female enterprises, such as the selling of comestibles due to rising unemployment, as observed in Mozambique (Agadjanian,
2002) and in Burkina Faso (Zuidberg, 1994).
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Women’s Community Management Gender Roles
In The Gambia and generally in Africa, women wield relatively less power than men in politics. Manuh (1994) poignantly stated the low representation of African women in the political sphere as:
Average female representation in parliaments is less than 8 per cent in Africa, and many of the women are nominated, not elected. In only two countries, the Seychelles and South Africa are women more than 25 percent of elected members in parliament or in ministerial positions, thus approaching the 30 percent minimum threshold in decision- making for women recommended in UNDP's 1995 Human Development Report. (“Women's legal rights and political participation,” Para. 68)
In The Gambia, such political powers are vested in traditional structures such as
chieftaincy (head of a district), alkaloship (head of a village), imamship (head of a Muslim
congregation) and kabila Keebaa (head of lineages), and in the contemporary structures of
government. All of these structures are rigidly patriarchal, with the exception of women’s tiny
participation in Alkaloship and in contemporary government. For instance, the National
Assembly of The Gambia has only five female representatives compared to 40 males
(Republic of The Gambia, 2005). This gender disparity is also glaringly marked at the
divisional level where there is no female Divisional Commissioners and at the local level, there
are only five female village heads. These depressing patterns of women’s underrepresentation
in politics demonstrate that Gambian men continue to be the policy makers on fundamental
issues affecting women. In most cases, however, they lack lived experiences to inform the
development of policies that support effective gender mainstreaming for addressing women’s
issues.
Female participation in politics has been increasing despite the fact that the majority of
Gambian women are not active participants. Women have assumed leading roles in political affairs or governance of the country’s political institutions, due to the formation of women’s
61 organizations across the country (Sanyang & Huang, 2008) that take on political as well as economic roles.
Sanyang and Huang (2008) further noted the critical economic roles of these organizations in mobilizing financial resources for their members through the administration of
Asusu - a revolving loan scheme. Asusu is supported by fixed contributions of members. Every week, a member will collect the entire contributions of the registered members. This program enables women, particularly rural and urban market vendors, to expand their small scale businesses and also contribute financially to the running of their homes. Politically, and through women’s organizations, women leaders are able to access resources in the form of capacity building workshops and loans from government institutions for their members as an implicit contract in exchange for votes during elections. The uses of literacy in women’s community management activities outlined above was explored in this study.
Summary
The literature review confirms a growing number of studies which examine literacy practices among (some) women and men in Asia, Africa and Latin America. At the same time, research has yet to illuminate how the various types and usages of literacy fit into the diverse and changing gender roles of women with modest initial levels of attainment, particularly those living in the Sub-Saharan Africa. This study shall therefore, within the theoretical framework of
New Literacy Studies (NLS), document how reading, writing and use of numeracy may fit into women’s diverse and changing gender roles, including their roles in the informal economy.
Along this line, detailed insight into strategies employed by women to navigate the written world will be provided, because it is fundamental for informing the design of more effective literacy programs.
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Also, the literature on women’s roles in Africa illustrates the constantly changing gender roles that may create or demand new uses for literacy. In order to understand the interaction between literacy and the gender roles of Serekunda women, this study provides a detailed ethnography on the varied and dynamic roles of women in their communities and will further probe how literacy skills are applied in those roles. In so doing, the dissertation contributes insight into the daily local and relevant literacy practices of women with incipient skills that can potentially inform and improve literacy programs for women.
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CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY
The purpose of this study was to explore and illuminate the direct and indirect uses of literacy by women with the rudimentary skill levels who reside in the urban areas of The
Gambia, and to analyze the interaction of these literacy skills with their gender roles. This chapter discusses the methodology and research design employed as a means of answering the research questions defined in Chapter 1. The methodology includes research design, data collection tools, and inquiry procedures.
This chapter begins with a characterization and justification of the general research design. Next to be described are the study sample, the types of data required and the research instruments and procedures employed for data collection. The chapter concludes with a discussion of specific types of data analysis and the measures taken to enhance the reliability and validity of the results.
Overall Research Design
As noted in Chapter 1, New Literacy Studies (NLS) -- or the body of research that this study sought to inform -- emphasize the understanding of local literacy practices in varying contexts. Hence the general design of the proposed dissertation research involved interviewing a sample of women living in the urban Gambian community who have varied but modest educational attainments, and an extended ethnographic observation of their interactions with and uses of different kinds of literacy. The inquiry was carried out in a modified Feminist
Participatory Research (FPR) mode. Incorporated in this research design was the use of survey data for characterizing the demography, level of literacy abilities and educational history of the study participants. A qualitative-interpretative and naturalistic approach was, however, the overriding research design for data collection and analysis. 64
Qualitative research on social phenomena, employed in this study is a well-established alternative and complement to a strictly quantitative approach (Creswell, 2008). Quantitative methodology, as Creswell (1994) noted, derives from an empiricist tradition recognized in the works of philosophers such as Durkheim, Newton, Comte, Mill and Locke. Research studies that employ a quantitative design focus on explaining the relationship between two or more variables or on establishing causal connections among them. Also, the overarching goal of much quantitative research is to test pre-specified hypotheses. Relationships within the body of data are analyzed using statistical procedures (Creswell, 2008). A purely quantitative approach to understanding social phenomena is indeed useful for generating empirical knowledge in both the hard and social sciences. However, it is not well suited for discovering and interpreting knowledge that is generated from human experience, which was the purpose of this study.
Appropriateness of Qualitative Methods
By contrast, qualitative research designs are often associated with naturalistic or interpretative approaches (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Lincoln & Guba, 1985). A naturalistic approach is particularly appropriate for understanding social phenomena from the perspective of human experience. Wiersma (1995, p. 211-212) aptly described the defining characteristics of qualitative design in a naturalistic setting:
(a) The phenomenon under study is viewed in its entirety or holistically in order to avoid the
danger of reducing complex phenomena down to a few interdependent or independent
variables.
(b) Though the qualitative researcher may come to the field with preconceived ideas about
what is happening, he or she is expected to be careful not to impose personal assumptions
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on the emerging data. The process of building an explanation is thus inductive rather than
deductive.
(c) The study takes place in a natural and uncontrolled environment and -- since the
researcher is the main instrument of data collection -- he or she records fully, and is
expected to accurately represent, reality as seen through the eyes of subjects.
Given the purpose of the research was, to understand urban women’s usages of literacy and how these fit with their changing gender roles, the qualitative-interpretative approach was adopted as a means of studying the phenomenon holistically. I relied on the experiences of the study participants, augmented by personal observations of the contexts in which activities provided the medium for “meaning making” (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994). Every attempt was made to provide a thick description of the socio-cultural context in which literacy-related activities take place. The study participants shared their understanding of how literacy is employed in their own lives, and I interpreted the phenomena from the data that was collected.
This research interest thus fits neatly into two of the five particular research purposes described by Maxell (1996) for which a qualitative design is highly suited. One of these is an explicit focus on meaning, which Maxell takes to signify “cognitions, affects, intention and anything else that can be included in what qualitative researchers refer to as the participant’s perspective” (p.17). The second relevant purpose that the adopted research design satisfies is an interest in understanding the social context in which a particular phenomenon is occurring or has occurred. Examination of literacy usage within this general framework and within the specific setting constituted by gender roles is central to this study. More specifically, understanding the socio-cultural context where women practice literacy and its influence on their literacy practices
66 lies at the heart of this study. It is only by scrutinizing the socio-cultural context of women’s lives that the question of how literacy fits into their gender roles can be properly addressed.
Qualitative research methodology is, of course, not without its critics, who sometimes tax it with a lack of objectivity, the limitations of a naturalistic setting, weaknesses in the inductive process of analysis typically used and certain problems with the generalizability of findings
(Creswell; 2005; Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Lincoln & Guba, 1985, Miles & Huberman, 1994).
As Hamilton and Barton (1998) argue, however, capturing the social-cultural context where literacy practices exist requires more than a survey of items that have little relationship with the respondents’ everyday uses of literacy in their native context.
In this study, quantitative data were collected by survey to fill the gap in critical demographic information about the study participants, such as socio-economic characteristics, educational history, literacy and numeracy competences. Although aggregated data on those variables exist for The Gambia as a whole, disaggregated data on the demographic characteristics of the women of Serekunda is sorely lacking. Thus, the survey data in addition to providing context specific data on the socio-economic conditions of Serekunda women also yielded interesting patterns and associations that preempt their possibilities and limitations for literacy and numeracy uses
The use and relevance of ethnography. Ethnography was an indispensable tool for a variety of reasons although a phenomenological approach would have enabled the researcher to assemble quality data on some of the study’s research questions. First, ethnography challenges the traditional research paradigms that conceptualize literacy as set of cognitive skills that endows its users with broad benefits (Nabi et al., 2009). Such studies have been criticized for their failure to capture the actual uses of literacy by women, and for missing the learning needs
67 of women and girls who continue to enroll in literacy programs in developing countries. Second, ethnography provides the most effective tool for examining critical contextual factors: the socio- cultural environment where women live, gender roles in that environment; and the functions of literacy therein.
In addition, an ethnographic approach would more effectively represent women’s perspectives on their own uses of literacy. As Clifford Geertz (1973) maintained, documenting the viewpoint of subjects about a social phenomenon is a fundamental element of ethnographic research, because it is critical in fleshing out an “emic” (insider perspective). Hymes (1996) agreed that ethnography focuses on ordinary and everyday life, and the knowledges and practices that originate from those experiences. In short, an ethnographic approach looks at how these knowledges are embedded in the cultural norms and patterns that guide everyday life.
The Value Added of a Feminist Participatory Research Orientation
The fusion of an ethnographic approach with Feminist Participatory Research is uncommon among ethnographic studies of literacy and numeracy. Much of the existing research purports to value local knowledge in understanding the uses of and social value inherent in literacy practices; yet these same studies minimize the agency of participants in the scientific construction of knowledge.
Nabi et al. (2009) argued that the ethnographic process does not allow the “researched” to control the discussions. Though the central focus is on items of concern to the participants, they are considered informants who are [merely] the subjects to be studied. They do, of course, contribute directly or indirectly to knowledge generation, but they do not truly benefit from the interactive process of education with the researcher that Feminist Participatory Research (FPAR) might offer them.
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Some researchers have argued that participants in a study should be able to contribute to the construction of new understandings because they are the custodians of their own knowledge.
For example, feminist scholars have, long ago, criticized the marginalization of women’s experiences and insight in the production of scientific knowledge (Harding 1986, Maguire,
1987). This critique can also be applied today to the traditional discourses on women’s literacy in developing countries, and the common fieldwork strategies for gathering evidence on its uses and benefits. Maguire (1987) has noted that even some academic feminists have continued to maintain control over research projects and knowledge creation, and their research rarely empower the women they study.
Even in recent literacy studies based on the NLS theoretical framework, the researcher continues of course to be physically present in the field, and to carry on everyday interactions with the social group whose literacies are being studied. Under these conditions, unfortunately, the “researched” often do not play an active role in the study other than as sources of information. As Nabi et al. (2003) noted, despite the fact that “the researched are encouraged to take control of the discussion, to talk about what is important to them rather than only what is important to the researcher, power is still in the hands of the researcher, but characterized by respect rather than assertiveness” ( p. 3). Therefore the valuing of local knowledge remains somewhat limited.
In the framework of this dissertation research and given the limited time and resources available, it wasn’t possible to carry out a full-fledged instance of Feminist Participatory
Research, but judicious efforts were made to associate the subjects in conduct of the inquiry and particularly during the focus group discussions. This nonetheless adds an important element to the undertaking and should increase the validity and usability of findings.
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Sampling Plan
The population for this study is constituted by young adult Serekunda women with modest levels of educational attainment. “Modest” is defined as formal schooling up to but not exceeding a complete secondary/ High school education. In fact, the women who participated in the study have acquired some level of literacy by a variety of means: differing amounts and combinations of primary schooling, non-formal education, religious training and/or self-directed learning. The target group was between 18 and 49 years of age -- the most economically active segment of the population, mostly in the informal sector -- and resides in the four principal towns that compose the urban community of Serekunda: London Corner, Dippakunda, Bundung and
Tallinding. Given the data on female schooling and literacy rates reported in Chapter 2, the women of “modest educational attainment,” as defined here, make up the large majority of the adult female population in The Gambia.
The sampling plan was built around an organizational framework containing three tiers of participants in selected women’s associations of Serekunda. Within those associations, actual research participants include 1) survey respondents selected from members; 2) focus group participants as a subset of survey respondents; and, 3) interviewees and partners in ethnographic observation identified from within the focus groups. Inquiry at the first two levels was broad whereas research at the third level was more focused and intensive. The procedures used at each of these levels is detailed below.
Women’s Associations of Serekunda
Most women living in Serekunda are active in one or more women’s associations, which differ among themselves by size, ethnic composition, age of members and socio-economic characteristics. These associations were the principal medium of inquiry and sampling of
70 participants, as they offer access to a varied population of women who are actively engaged in the life of their community. Although there is no official data on the number of women’s organizations in Serekunda or on the exact characteristics of their members, women groups abound in every community. One cannot fail to notice women gathered on Saturdays and
Sundays for their weekly association meetings and revolving funds contributions, locally called
Oususu.
The first phase in the fieldwork stage of the dissertation research thus consisted of inventorying and investigating the women’s associations of Serekunda. Ten organizations were selected on the basis of their leaders’ willingness to collaborate in the research effort and because they have group members who meet the research criteria. They all have members in the age bracket of 18-49, with low, educational experience and are active participants in any two of the roles of women- reproductive, productive and community management.
Survey participants. Once the women’s associations were selected, their members’ profiles were established with the cooperation of their leadership, regarding approximate age, ethnicity, level of formal education, economic livelihood and family responsibilities. This provided a basis for identifying twelve members from each organization, who were then informed about the purpose of the study in order to solicit their participation for the opening ethnographic survey. Selected participants could all be characterized as (a) women between 18 and 49 years of age; (b) having modest educational attainments, as described above; and (c) executing multiple roles (family, economic and community).
The reason for using women’s organizations as an entry point, and employing this sort of purposive sampling as a modus operandi, is its potential for facilitating access, ensuring well-
71 rounded demographic characteristics and creating a high probability for obtaining information- rich data to respond to this study’s research questions (Bernard, 2002).
Focus group participants (Extensive interviews). Based upon the results of the ethnographic survey, the number of participants selected for the focus group was narrowed down to twenty women, all of whom roughly matched the sample characteristics described above and all of whom moreover had expressed live interest in and practical availability for more detailed face-to-face discussions of the principal research questions. Two sets of women with mixed capacity levels (i.e., low or high literacy skill levels) were identified among the survey respondents for potential participation in the focus group discussions; two from each set were then purposively selected. My interaction with survey participants during the initial field data collection process made it easier to identify candidates for the focus group discussion who were
“information-rich” with respect to the questions that I hoped to address.
Subjects for intensive interviewing and ethnographic observation. Five cases were selected for the in-depth phase of the ethnography. The prime criteria at this stage of the sampling was the availability of the women for extended periods of interaction with the researcher, their openness to the researcher’s presence, participation in a range of personal activities, and their ability to analyze and articulate their own experience while conveying insight into the related experience of their peers. The characteristics of the selected women, and the criteria for selecting them were informed by lessons learned from the preceding stages of the study and the results of focus group discussions.
Data Collection
Like the sampling plan detailed above, the strategy for data collection was likewise multi- tier. In order to examine uses of literacy and numeracy among Serekunda women and the
72 interaction of these activities with their gender roles, I need information on their daily occupations, their social functions and their own perceptions and interpretations of these phenomena, along with information on the cultural and economic context in which they live.
This information was gathered during eight months of residence in Serekunda (from May 2012 through January 2013). Related research tasks were carried out in five overlapping phases: 1) entry, recruitment of study participants and explaining of the research protocol; 2) ethnographic survey; 3) focus group discussions; 4) intensive interviewing and ethnographic observation; and
5) field data analysis.
Entry, Recruitment of Study Participants and Explaining of the Research Protocols
One of the first tasks while in the field was to identify and gather basic information about as many existing women’s organizations as feasible, and then to select those that would later serve as venues for further inquiry. The Kanifing Municipal Council’s Office of Commuity Development was my first port of call as the agency works with many women’s groups and has contact information for all of them. I got from them contact information for ten women’s groups in the general area of the Kanifing
Municipality. My research assistants and I also gathered contact information for five additional women’s groups with the help of local community members.
I visited group presidents first to discuss with them the purpose of my study and inquire about the potential interest of their group members in participating. I also gathered from group leaders information about the age of their members, their socio-economic activities and their educational qualifications. That information helped me to identify members for the ten groups of women – twelve from each association -
- that ended up participating in the study. In selecting the women associations on which I wished to concentrate, I was most interested in the demographic characteristics, membership size and activities of the various associations. Groups that had a sufficient number of members who both met the study requirements and consented to participate in the study were therefore selected.
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In all cases, I was invited to attend one of the group’s weekly meetings so that I could explain my research purpose to the rest of the group members. Half of the groups consented to participate without posing follow-up questions about the benefit of this research to them, but members in the others asked probing and valuable questions about the significance of the research. Though I explained the academic and potential social impacts of the research, some members were particularly concerned about its immediate benefits. I had to be candid to the women and explain to them that I did not foresee any immediate and tangible benefits from the study. I did explain to them, however, that their participation would be significant and could have longer-term payoffs for the community as a means of better informing donor agencies, for instance, about the current economic roles of Gambian women with low educational qualifications and the best ways to support them in those functions.
Once group members reached an agreement to participate in the study (all the ten groups that were selected did), I visited group leaders for the second time to help me select actual study participants who meet the study criteria. This task involved us in going over their registers to identify women with the requisite characteristics. For every group, I checked to make sure that all the age groups of interest were represented. However, there were relatively few in the youngest age brackets (18-24), due to limited participation of young women in the associations, and that bracket was consequently the least well represented in the research. I personally gave a call to the women I had identified and informed them of their selection and sought their participation.
To make the exercise more feasible for the women themselves, I conducted all surveys for members of a single group on the same day. This gave me the opportunity to discuss the research process as well as the research protocol with the assembled study participants. I re-explained the purpose of my study to the women and the measures that I would adopt to safeguard their privacy. The women were also informed about their rights to participate, to refuse to participate or to stop participating at any point in the study, in conformity with the terms and conditions of the IRB approval letter and informed consent form (see
Appendix F). The IRB informed consent form was translated into the two local languages that were principally used in the study: Wolof and Mandinka. The resulting text was then read to the women and
74 they were asked, first, if they understood the information and then, if they did, to append their signatures.
Those who could not sign the form gave oral consent to participate.
During the initial phase of the study, I also gathered socio-economic and cultural background information on the Serekunda community and began the search for “grey” documentation and reports not easily obtainable outside the country that would cast more light on the acquisition and uses of literacy in The
Gambia in general and its urban communities in particular.
Ethnographic Survey
The use of surveys is not at all uncommon in ethnographic studies. Bernard (2002) endorses the method, affirming that “ethnographic and survey data combined produce more insight than either does alone”
(p.362-364). I administered an initial survey of this type, (see Appendix A) devoted to better understanding the basic demographic characteristics, linguistic competences and socio-economic activities of a sample of association members and to help them assess their own current literacy and numeracy levels. I targeted 120 survey respondents across the ten associations, chosen again by interest in participating and maximum feasible variability within the subpopulation of concern. Demographic information gathered from the survey included the of age of participants, their present occupations, marital status, level of schooling attained or experience in other venues for literacy acquisition and chronology of learning. The oral linguistic competence test garnered data on the spoken languages with which the women were familiar, where and when they had learned them as well as their levels of competence in those languages (See Appendix A under 2.2 for the related survey questions). The schema used in determining the respondents’ levels of competences is reported in footnotes found on pages 91 and 92.
The literacy assessment (reading and writing) was carried out in English, Wolof, Mandinka and Arabic
(see Appendix B) and again, the study participants chose their preferred language for this testing. The oral numeracy test was read to the participants in their preferred local language, in which they likewise responded.
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The assessment was administered orally with the help of locally recruited and trained research assistants. Respondents were invited to assess their own levels of reading, writing and numeracy in their chosen language, via a set of test items designed to illustrate and facilitate their self-assessment of these skills. Research assistants then tested them with some additional items of the same level to confirm the accuracy of their self-assessment or modify it up or down as needed. Those who successfully demonstrated the levels that they had self-assigned were encouraged to try performing at the level above it (see Appendix E for the rubric used in grading the reading, writing, oral math, and written numeracy competences of the study participants).
Focus Group Discussions
In a third phase, and based on preliminary analysis of the survey results, twenty women were selected from survey respondents to participate in one of two focus groups (of ten participants each), in order to discuss and share details of their uses of literacy and how such competence relates to their community roles and responsibilities (see Appendix D for questions that guided the focus group discussions). Once again, the willingness of participants and optimal representation of the most relevant stratification factors were the key criteria used in selecting focus group members. In addition, at this juncture I structured the two groups to differ from each other and represent respectively women of relatively high literacy competence and women of relatively low competence, because I was particularly interested in the differences in perspective that could emerge between the two groups (Morgan 1997). These groups were also a principal hub of what was in effect “participatory research,” as their members were informed of the overall progress and methodology of the study, invited to participate in focus group discussions, and invited to share in the analysis of the data that emerged from the focus group discussions.
Members in fact conducted the preliminary analysis themselves, as they engaged in questioning
76 and lengthy discussion on various topics, like their gender roles and the reasons why women of low educational qualifications often relapse into illiteracy.
Intensive Interviewing and Ethnographic Observation
The baseline activity in this phase of the study was actual observation and “shadowing” of the intensive research subjects: By participating in many daily activities, the researcher could identify direct and indirect usages of literacy, and their relationship to diverse gender roles and everyday realities, as well as to illuminate the attitudes, values and beliefs of these women concerning such roles (deMunck & Sobo,
1998; Patton, 2001; Spardley 1980). Participants were shadowed at their work place, in their homes and in other locations where they carry out their day-to-day activities. I engaged in two periods (about eight hours each) of daily continuous monitoring with each of the participants (Bernard, 1998).
Direct observation was complemented by conducting semi-structured and unstructured interviews with the research subjects, devoted to better understanding their own perception of their activities and roles. Interviewing is, as Fetternman (1998) explains, a critical means for gathering data that can explain and contextualize what the researcher witnesses. I employed unstructured interviews to establish further rapport with the women taking part in this phase of the study and also to “uncover new topics of interest that the researcher have overlooked”
(Bernard, 1998, 2011) during the ethnographic survey and focus group discussions.
The semi-structured interviews, on the other hand, covered the specific topics outlined in the interview guide (see Appendix D), all of which were derived from initial analysis of research results (Bernard 1998; Fetterman 1998; Patton, 2001). Themes included the gender roles of these women and the related use of literacy and numeracy skills.
Data Analysis
The first step before actual data analysis began was the transcription of the data. The data collected in this study were all recorded in the two principal local languages, Wolof and
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Mandinka. Wolof was, however, the primary language of study participants, since about three- quarters of the women spoke Wolof fluently. I translated all the data recorded in these local languages into English, while trying carefully to recognize and circumvent the inherent dangers of the task, such as the tendency to alter the meaning of the original. The task was further complicated by the fact that I am not a native speaker of English, although I have high level of competence in both the local languages and English. However, I am scarcely the only researcher to have encountered such difficulties. Translating oral evidence obtained in one language into written text expressed in another is a tricky task that all ethnographers have to negotiate
(Chambers, 2006). I nonetheless strove for accuracy in translating the data from the local languages into written English and in very rare situations, when I doubted my translations and worried that I might have lost the meaning of the original, I sought the opinions or alternate translations of two of my colleagues in The Gambia with knowledge of the languages used. I would compare those with mine. In instances where their versions were different from mine, I engaged them in a debate to select the version that best represented the interviewees’ meaning, or to find a synthesis of the two. In order to ensure that the privacy of the study participants was fully safeguarded -- as promised -- I used pseudonyms in my write-up and presentation of their comments or narratives throughout the text.
My cultural knowledge and mastery of the local languages and English therefore situated me in the unique position of being the cultural translator of the women’s perspectives about their gender roles and literacy and numeracy practices. This entire research journey could thus be conceptualized as an attempt at translating to the world outside peri-urban Gambia the nature of the gender roles of women with modest educational attainments and the uses -- or lack thereof -- of literacy and numeracy in the fulfillment of those roles.
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Data analysis proceeded first with the analysis of the survey data and then followed by the qualitative interviews. Despite the collection of critical survey data, the overall research design of this study was qualitative and more specifically, ethnographic in nature. Ethnographic data analysis is heavily reliant on a “thick description” (Geertz, 1963) of context and meaning assigned to observed cultural actions (Denzin, 1989). Data analysis involved blending, comparing and triangulating from the body of evidence described above, in order to identify patterns of gender roles and literacy and numeracy usage among participants, the meanings assigned to such usage, and some variability in these practices and attitudes, while also situating these patterns within the socio-economic and cultural context of peri-urban Gambia.
Analysis was carried out both iteratively and participatorily – that is, at repeated points in and after conducting field research with the contributions and reflections of focus group members.
The resulting methodology-in-practice should both increase the validity of findings and their significance for the study participants themselves. More specifically, data analysis started with the survey data on the demographic characteristics, educational history and literacy ability levels of the participants. This was critical for identifying the right participants for the focus group discussions. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software was used for frequency distributions and cross-tabulation to examine preponderant tendencies and interesting associations. The generated tables helped to identify overall patterns of demography and literacy levels, but fell short of the conditions needed to test a hypothesis; thus, these data were not employed for establishing cause and effect in a statistical sense.
Interviews and participant observation data were analyzed together. Qualitative data analysis, like the qualitative design itself, is an iterative undertaking (Mile & Huberman, 1994;
Patton, 1990). It is rarely a linear process, but some fundamental steps are often adopted. In this
79 study, the following steps were applied in analyzing the data derived from interviews and ethnographic observation:
The first step entailed reading through interview transcripts, observational noted,
research journal and other generated or collected documents (Dey, 1993; Maxwell,
1996; Tesch, 1990). This process was vital for developing tentative ideas, categories
of interest, and potential relationships in the data. Analysis of this sort was conducted
as soon as data collection began. Miles & Huberman (1994) strongly recommend
early analysis to aid the researcher in moving between thinking about the existing
data and devising strategies for collecting new and better data if the need arises.
The second step involved “categorizing” (Maxwell, 1996), or data reduction (Miles &
Huberman, 1994) in the form of coding. Through coding, the collected data was
rearranged into categories to facilitate comparison and capturing of recurring themes.
For the most part, codes were inductively developed from the data, but some of the
codes were drawn from existing theories and from the researcher’s own hunches.
Data reduction was further guided by the research questions, so that categories are
well targeted to the study objectives.
The third step, which is in fact the second in Miles and Huberman’s (1994)
fundamental stages of qualitative data analysis, is data display. In this stage of data
analysis, the recurring themes from the previous step were organized and displayed in
a conceptual map to visually aid the capture of emerging themes and patterns, thus
provided direction for further analysis.
The fourth step involved the formulation of conclusions and the verification of
findings. In this step, I carefully noted patterns, explanations, propositions and
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regularities (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Given that qualitative data analysis does not
end when data collection stops (Miles & Huberman 1994), conclusions are tentative
and subjected to verification through overall data review, comparison with the
conclusions of similar studies and through discussion with the participants.
Given the volume of data collected, the qualitative software Nvivo was used to facilitate data analysis, given its efficiency and robustness in dealing with all of the important and varied steps outlined above (Bazeley, 2002).
Reinforcing Validity
The first measure that was undertaken to ensure validity was member checking. The results of both the focus group discussions and the individual indepth interviews were member- checked. After focus group data had been transcribed (and translated) into English, the participants were invited for another session to validate their assertions, which we would conduct by “retranslating” key aspects of the written record of their interview into the relevant Gambian language. Most of the data had in fact been partly validated prior to that meeting, as the women in each group had engaged in lengthy discussions of the overall themes on their gender roles and uses of literacy and numeracy after the end of the focus group discussions. The session organized for the member-checking therefore offered another opportunity to reconfirm with the women their assertions.
I also member-checked the data collected from the study participants who took part in the indepth interviews by preparing a summary of each day’s discussions I had with the participants. I presented that summary of discussion the following day to the interviewee before I began a fresh topic in order to confirm assertions made while also conserving consistency in the debriefing process.
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The underlying methodological approach used in this research – ethnographic fieldwork
– is generally considered strong on the safeguarding of validity; and it was further strengthened by the participatory research orientation described above. That said, any instance of qualitative research faces its own challenges to validity and must be carefully monitored and reinforced to handle threats to the credibility of findings.
Two principal challenges to the trustworthiness of ethnography, for example, lie in threats of ethnographer bias (Agar, 1986) and in the danger of non-factual responses by informants. The ethnographer’s bias was largely controlled with the researcher taking a step back and allowing the perspectives of the study participants to inform this study despite the fact that I am an insider and, by virtue of that, have some cultural knowledge about the research topics and questions. Additionally, I grew up seeing my own mother, who has a socio-economic status and educational qualifications very similar to the study participants, perform gender roles like theirs; but that experience is not my own lived experience. Thus, one means of controlling for my own biases was to give precedence to the perspectives of the study participants as people who have firsthand experience of the phenomena I was studying. Although my cultural knowledge was important as a foundation for understanding and interpreting the data, it was applied mostly in the process of filtering out non-factual responses and as well as in my translation of the oral bodies of evidences from local languages to English.
In addition, issues regarding non-factual responses were addressed by repeatedly and systematically applying data triangulation (survey, interviews, participant observation, and the visual data) for the purpose of identifying the most coherent views and responses from women about their uses of literacy in their gender roles.
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Participant observation – one of the key component of ethnographic research – also contributed to filtering out non-factual responses, as it afforded me a means to acquire ground- level familiarity with the interaction between literacy uses and gender roles in periurban
Serekunda. The knowledge generated in this way was compared to interview records. The researcher’s ability to speak with confidence about the meaning of the data she collected,
Bernard (1994) suggests, “extends both the internal and external validity of what (she) learns from interviewing and watching people” (p.141).
In general, both ethnography and participatory research are considered highly valid methodologies. Their validity was ensured in this study by applying the guiding principles of credibility and neutrality (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), through triangulation of the data collected and an attentive inquiry audit (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The former involves examination of the different data sources used (observation, interviews, and visual materials) and repeated verification with research participants in order to verify the data collected.
At the same time, as Maxwell (1996) points out, part of the verification conducted by the researcher must concentrate on her own methods in order to ensure that they are eliciting the kind of data that s/he intended to gather and are optimally aligned with the purpose of the study. In this effort, I paid attention not only to supporting evidence but also to “outlier cases” – that is, observations, responses and comments that did not at all fit my expectations or patterns already noted, but that were often very persuasive and quite helpful in shedding light on the research questions (Maxwell, 1996; Miles & Huberman, 1994). The persuasive outlier cases were reported in the study where necessary in order to allow readers to draw their own conclusions about the relevance and meaning of this “contrary data.”
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Further validity was drawn from the fact that the ethnographic approach used is grounded not only in the data collected but also in theories and concepts from the literature and in the researcher’s curiosity and informed instincts (Heath, Street & Mills, 2008, p.34, graphically illustrated in Figure 3 below). These two points of reference, external to the data themselves, offer a means of boosting and testing the relevance of insights that emerge from interviews and observations.
There are thus several advantages to the recursive process of ethnography, portrayed graphically in Figure 3, particularly with respect to ensuring the trustworthiness of the study.
Hunches and Analysis of data Theory and
curiosity from interviews, concepts from observations, etc. the literature
Hunches and
curiosity
Figure 3: The recursive process of ethnography
Given the central role that I myself necessarily played in this study as the instrument and the triangulation between collected data on the one hand and theory and concepts from the literature on the other, that recursive and reflexive process became the prime guarantor of
84 validity. Reflexivity here refers to the on-going interrogation of personal experiences, hunches, beliefs and values that the ethnographer brings to her study (Heath at al., 2008 and Gebre et al,
2009) and that I have tried to emulate. The ethnographic validity of this study was improved not just by triangulating from different data sources but also by my own ongoing effort while in the field to compare my hunches to other theories and data.
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CHAPTER FOUR
STUDY PARTICIPANTS’ DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS
Introduction
This chapter presents an analysis of the descriptive quantitative data generated from the survey that was administered to 120 women who took part in this study and reside in the peri- urban areas of Serekunda, The Gambia. The survey pertains to the study participants’ demographic characteristics that include socio-economic status, educational history, and levels of literacy and numeracy competence.
The patterns that the data generate provide the basis for a better understanding of the study participants’ socio-economic characteristics but more importantly for discussing critical information about the level, types, and languages of literacy and numeracy the study participants have in fact acquired and how they have learned such skills. The presentation of the data begins with a discussion of the participants’ characteristics and concludes with a summary of the major findings.
The demographic characteristics of the study participants provide information about their socio-economic status and their educational attainments. Review of data on these characteristics is grouped into five areas: (a) demographic attributes; (b) language learning, mastery and usage; (c) socio-economic characteristics; (d) educational attainments; and (e) literacy and numeracy levels.
Demographic Attributes
The demographic characteristics of the study participants are diverse in age, marital and educational attainment. Overall, they shared similar socio-economic characteristics as they are all materially poor. Below is a presentation of these various demographic attributes.
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The study participants range from 18 to 49 years of age with a modal age in the bracket of 30-39 years. This overall age bracket includes women who constitute the most economically active segment of the female population in peri-urban Gambia. The age brackets of 30-39 and
40-49 have higher percentages of participation level than the younger age brackets in the study group.
The distribution of the age bracket of the study participants is typical of the actual age of members of women’s associations in Serekunda. Most members of women’s organizations-are in the early 30s and late 40s, although some groups have much younger members in their early and late 20s.
As shown below in Table 1, nearly 80 percent of the study participants are married. As was expected, the 18-24 age brackets has the highest proportion of single respondents, while the
40-49 age bracket has the highest ratio of married respondents. This finding may suggest that the problem of early marriage of girls that was so pronounced in the past is now lessening, particularly in peri-urban Gambia. Numbers of divorce cases are low among participants, affecting only three of the study’s 120 participants. The data on marital status did not reveal the number of times the women were married, and thus does not reflect any possible previous divorces.
Nearly 40 percent of the married women live in polygamous households and that puts additional strains on financial resources, as these women have to share whatever meager income their spouses bring home with their co-wives. Polygamous households are typically larger than monogamous households, adding the possibility of additional financial burdens.
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Table 1: Participant characteristics-marital status
Age Group Monogamous Polygamous Divorced Single Total 18-24 11 3 0 11 25 25-29 7 9 0 3 19 30-39 17 18 3 2 40 40-49 20 14 0 2 36 120 TOTAL 55 44 3 18
Table 2: Participant characteristics- number of children
Average Number of Maximun Number of Age Group Number of Women Children Children 18-24 14 2.2 2 25-29 15 2.4 5 30-39 35 4 9 40-49 31 5.5 12 TOTAL 95 3.5
Most of the study participants (79.2%) have children, with an overall average number of
3.5 children per respondent. The maximum number of children among the women was 12. Only
15 percent of the respondents have more than five children. UNICEF (2011) estimated the national total average number of children per woman to be 5.00 in The Gambia. The data from
UNICEF suggests that growth in the national fertility average has somewhat stagnated over the years, as it was estimated to be 5.13 in 2003 according to the census report and 5.00 in 2011 according to UNICEF data. Study participants have a much lower average than this, but one must remember that the data reported here only represent selected Gambian women in a peri-
88 urban areas. They therefore might not be very representative of the national average, which includes the rural majority.
Language Acquisition, Mastery, and Usage
The study participants were tested for their levels in literacy and numeracy and given the choice of completing the assessment in any of the four different written languages spoken in The
Gambia - Wolof, Mandinka, English, and Arabic. It is therefore essential to discuss here the multilingual nature of the context in which this study was conducted and the level of distributions and uses of these spoken and written languages particularly in literacy practices.
Wolof and Mandinka are two of the most prevalent and widely spoken African languages in The Gambia. Although both exist in written form, they are very rarely used in that respect.
English is the official language of The Gambia; it is the language used for instructions in formal schools and for official communication in public offices. The Arabic language is the language of instructions in Arabic schools and it is also often employed in Islamic religious sermons and in connection to other religious practices. Table 3 presents information about the multilingual landscape of the study setting and the oral linguistic competence of the study participants.
Table 3: Oral linguistic competence
Linguistic Competences Av. # Max. # Age spoken spoken Group Wolof Mandinka Fula Jola English Arab Creole Other well well 18-24 23 16 10 2 18 0 1 2 2 5 25-29 18 8 8 1 10 0 2 0 2 5 30-39 35 29 8 14 24 0 1 6 4 7 40-49 35 26 6 13 28 0 0 5 4 7 TOTAL 111 79 32 30 80 0 4 13
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The data gathered also included some of the other spoken languages in The Gambia in addition to the four languages that were used in the literacy test. Information concerning mode of acquisition of these languages and levels of oral competence the study participants maintain are also discussed.
Wolof and Mandinka are the most widely used languages in the study setting with speakers having very high level of fluency. This linguistic pattern is true in the case of The
Gambia as a whole. Almost all of the respondents (92%) speak Wolof and they have acquired it through various means. Forty percent acquired it through one or both parents who are native speakers and 38 percent acquired it at home but they have a mother tongue that is not Wolof. The remaining speakers acquired it from the community where they live and where Wolof is predominantly spoken - this may apply to any community of the peri-urban Gambia. Seventy percent of the Wolof speakers are fluent8.
Sixty-six percent of the study participants speak Mandinka, with 19.2 percent as mother tongue speakers. About half of the study participants who speak Mandinka acquired the language at home as a second language or from the community and 40 percent of the Mandinka speakers are fluent.
Sixty-six percent of the study participants possess some knowledge of oral English. They acquired it from school, as one would expect since English is the language of instruction in
Gambian schools while others learned it from the community where they live and through interaction with people who have knowledge of the language. A little more than half (52%) of the study participants who speak English reported having functional9 knowledge of oral
8 As used in this study, a speaker of a language is fluent if they speak the language smoothly with no errors in their uses of the words, sentence, and proverbial phrases. 9 In this study, a speaker of a language is functional if she can use the language in everyday conversations with no errors in her uses of words and sentence but may lack knowledge of proverbial phrases. On the other hand, a speaker 90
English and 32.9 percent only have some level of comprehension of oral English but they cannot speak it at all.
Though most respondents were fluent in Wolof and/or Mandinka, none reported speaking
English with fluency. Also, none of the respondents reported having oral linguistic competence in Arabic, but thanks to past Koranic schooling some familiarity with written Arabic was evident. In fact, the results of the literacy test show that one of the fifteen women who took the reading and writing test in Arabic attained level four, the highest category of the reading test.
That level of the reading test required participants to read a paragraph about everyday life and to explain its meaning.
The older age brackets 30-39 and 40-49 overall spoke more number of languages than the other two younger age brackets. This pattern in the data suggests that the ability to communicate in the multiple languages spoken in the study setting and particularly among the younger age brackets of 18-24 and 25-29 is perhaps on a decline.
The uses of local languages in the first three grades of primary school might have positive impacts in terms to equipping students with multilingual literacy competences but how much actual fluency children can acquire in three years is in fact questionable. In addition, the
English language continues to be highly valued when it comes to literacy learning and literacy practices over the local languages that are introduced as languages of instruction in the early grades of primary schooling given the lack of pragmatic policies that support the development of local languages. Forinstance, with the exception of the English language, all the local languages
who has minimal language ability can participate in everyday discussion in a particular language but with some errors in the uses of words and sentences.
91 used in The Gambia are under-developed with regards to their uses in written forms and are seldom encountered in printed forms.
Juffermans (2010) reported a similar pattern of the dominance of English language in his appraisal of the multilingual situation of The Gambian context. He noted that although The
Gambia truly qualifies as a multilingual country with a variety of local languages used in everyday informal conversations on the streets and in social gatherings, these local languages are not assigned official status in The Gambia. The local languages are also not codified into dictionaries and grammar books and thus they are not normally used for reading and writing. The use of the English language too is, however, not without problems. Despite the high value accorded to the language, Juffermans (2010) observed that it was common for many teachers and students to struggle in their uses of the language with frequent errors. This is because literacy learning in English operates in a context that is severely under-stocked with the much-needed supplies that facilitate literacy learning, particularly in a foreign language. This “unequal literacy regime” (Juffermans, 2011) also reflects the power assigned to the value of the English language at the expense of the other local languages and could explain why 60 percent of the study participants chose to be tested in English albeit with poor results.
Socio-Economic Characteristics
The study participants are of low socio-economic status by the measures of that characteristic used in the study and reported in Tables 4 and 5: ownership of property, type of employment, and spousal job. Their low socio-economic status may be explained in part by their low levels of educational attainment that invariably affect their chances to access job opportunities with relatively better wages.
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Additionally, as an indicator of low socio-economic status and reflected in Table 5, nearly 80 percent of the women do not own a house or a valuable property, which they can use as collateral to access loans. The study participants expressed this lack of a valuable property for use as collateral during in the focus group discussions as a major hindrance to accessing loans for improving their small-scale businesses.
Although policies that target land reform and redistribution have been implemented in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa so that women can gain access to such valuable assets, the majority of sub-Saharan African women continue to suffer profound marginalization with regards to land ownership (Hilhorst, Toulmin, & Quan, 2000). In the case of The Gambia, women’s slow progress to own land can be explained by gender inequality that is deeply entrenched in customary land tenure practices that favor patriarchy (Carney, 1992; Carney &
Watts, 1990; Schroeder, 1993). Most recently, however, and given the commercialization of land in The Gambia, women’s lack of financial capital to acquire land has left many of them with no such assets.
The women appeared also to have married men of similar socio-economic status. From the open-ended interviews, only fifteen out of the 120 women’s spouses work in administrative positions where they earn beyond average wages in The Gambia. The rest of the men are skilled workers in the informal economy and they work in construction, welding, carpentry, or are petty traders, where they earn very meager income that could hardly meet their families’ monthly expenditures. As a result, women are faced with enormous financial burdens that push them into petty trading activities in order to satisfy some of their families’ most basic needs.
Patterns from the demographic data on the socio-economic status of the study participants adequately suggest the material poverty of peri-urban Gambian women. However, women’s
93 poverty is not unique to my study participants. Women’s poverty is a highly documented fact throughout Africa and couched in the concepts of the feminization of poverty (Chant, 2007).
Although women make crucial contributions to the prosperity of their communities through their paid and unpaid labor, they remain disadvantaged in terms of equitable access to valuable resources they need to improve their socio-economic conditions and other development indicators such as health, education, and access to assets. These developmental problems affect society at large but women are evidently, and in many cultures, the ones who are mostly affected
(Chant, 2007).
Table 4: Ownership of property and spousal employment
Possesses Property Spouse Holds Job Age Group Yes No Yes No Not Married Total
18-24 1 27 14 0 11 25
25-29 2 17 15 0 3 18
30-39 7 30 32 3 5 40
40-49 6 30 31 2 4 37
TOTAL 16 104 92 5 23 120
Women’s Income Generating Activities
The number of women working for income has increased over the years and many of the study participants have noted that swift trend and associated these rapid changes in women’s lives with the high cost of living in The Gambia that made it impossible for them to rely only on the meager income that most of their spouses earn.
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About three quarter of the study participants were participating in one or more economic activities in the informal economy. As reported by the study participants, major obstacles encountered by women who are not working include a chronic shortage of the capital necessary to start up a business.
The income-generating activities of the study participants take many different forms.
Table 5 below shows the employment patterns of the women. More than half of the women are petty traders – a broad category covering anyone who makes a living by buying and selling commodities, generally on a very small scale; 20 percent are engaged in paid informal domestic work; and close to a quarter of the women are not engaged in any income-generating activity.
Table 5: Women's employment patterns
Paid Work Type Of Work
Age Group Yes No Petty Trading Menial Jobs None Total 18-24 15 13 10 3 12 28 25-29 15 4 12 4 9 19 30-39 25 12 19 9 8 37 40-49 36 0 26 8 0 36
TOTAL 91 29 67 24 29 120
Qualitative data from the survey’s open-ended questions, focus group discussions, and in- depth interviews with the study participants revealed a wide variety of women’s petty trading activities in the market and in their neighborhoods. These types of businesses can be broadly categorized into two different trades - local retail of goods and food vending. The term “local retail” comprises various types of small business through which women buy and sell materials like locally-made soap bars and soap powder, tye-dye and batik fabrics and woven bags. Second-
95 hand clothing and second hand cooking ware are imported in bulk from Europe and the United
States by wealthy businessmen and the women buy from these businesspersons whatever quantity of goods they can get from their megre financial resources. A small number of women in the local retail business sell imported shoes, perfumes, jewelry, and hair products they get from other businesspersons through different avenues, including door-to-door, on the streets, and in shops. A few Gambian women who have access to capital travel frequently to Dubai, where they buy quality goods such as clothes, shoes, jewelry, and cosmetics for resale in The Gambia.
However, none of the study participants had the means necessary for this sort of trade. The furthest that respondents can travel to buy goods is neighboring Senegal, though a few of the women have connections to buy goods that have been imported and resell them.
Food vending accounts for a much larger slice (72%) of the activities reported by the women and includes sale of comestible items such as locally-made beverages, fruits and vegetables, cheap groceries, and food for prepared ready-to-eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
The women food vendors attributed their choices for participating in that economic activity to their lack of the amount of capital required to participate in the local retailing of goods. Also many of the respondents lack skills for soap making and fabric-dying.
The women’s effectiveness in petty trading activities and their financial profits are limited by the time they must spend on social and reproductive roles before participating in outside productive work like to constitute a cash-earning livelihood. They nonetheless contribute financially towards family upkeep and are, in many cases, the sole breadwinners in their families, particularly in polygamous households where there are competing budgetary demands for income among co-wives and barely enough in the common till to meet each family’s needs.
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Educational Attainments
An examination of the kinds of organized learning activities in which the women in the study took part will illuminate some critical background information about their educational experiences and the combinations of different learning experiences that make up their educational history. In order to effectively discuss the levels, type(s) and languages of literacy and numeracy the study participants acquired and the avenues through which they have obtained such skills, it was necessary to explore their educational history. As shown in Tables 6 and 7 below, the educational experiences or the venues of women’s literacy and numeracy acquisition included their participation in a variety of formal and non-formal learning activities, including primary schooling, post-primary education, vocational education, Quranic education, and adult literacy programs. There is however some overlap in the women’s participation in the different types of education.
Table 6: Participation in formal schooling and grade attainment
School Grade Attainment Age Group None 1-3 4-6 7-9 10-12 Average Max. Total 18-24 9 0 7 12 0 4.7 8 28 25-29 5 1 6 6 1 4.8 11 19 30-39 8 5 15 4 5 4.6 11 37 40-49 10 2 8 7 9 5.5 11 36 TOTAL 32 8 36 29 15 4.9 120
The majority of the women have some formal schooling (73.3%). In this stage of schooling, attainment levels are mixed as can be seen in Table 6. About 37 percent of the women
97 have completed more than six years of schooling while others have grade attainments that range from Grade 1 to Grade 6. The average year of schooling of the study participants was 4.9, higher than the UNDP International Human Development Indicators (2013) that estimated some 2.8 average years of schooling for adults 25 years and older in The Gambia. However, analysis from the data on educational attainments shows that the UNDP estimated average years of schooling for both men and women adults 25 years and older might be accurate since some of the study participants in that age bracket left school as early as the first three grades of primary schooling.
The age bracket of 18-24 by comparison has no one with less than four years of schooling. That finding seems to support that the educational indicator of persistence to last grade of primary schooling of the youngest population has increased over the years in The Gambia as a whole. For instance, it was estimated that in 2010, 60 percent of the females enrolled in the first grade of primary school completed the last grade of primary school (World Bank, 2013)10. Despite this progress registered in girls’ education for the youngest age bracket, the data reveals as many women as in the older age brackets of 30-39 and 40-49 who were never enrolled in formal schooling.
From the survey’s open-ended questions, the reasons given by the respondents for dropping out of school at the secondary school level included marriage, financial reasons, and pregnancy, with marriage as the most cited factor. For those who dropped out at the primary school level, participation in family activities and household duties rather than marriage were given as the primary reasons.
The survey results showed records of women’s participation in other types of organized learning like Quranic education, adult literacy programs, and vocational training. However, and
10 This is the share of female children enrolled in the first grade of primary school who eventually reach the last grade of primary. The estimate is calculated based on the reconstructed cohort method, which uses data on enrolment and repeaters for two consecutive years (UNESCO institute for statistics). 98 as shown in Table 7, women’s levels of participation in these areas are low compared to participation in the basic level of formal schooling. They are nonetheless discussed below as these non-formal educational programs form a part of their educational experiences and adult literacy programs serving as the only literacy and numeracy learning experience of some of the study participants.
Table 7: Participation in non-formal education
Other Training Received Religious Instruction Nonformal Education Voctech Training Age Av. Dur. Av. Dur. Av. Dur. Group Yes No [Months] Yes No [Months] Yes No [Months] Total 18-24 19 9 45 0 28 6 22 15 60 25-29 12 7 35 0 19 1 18 36 71 30-39 12 25 42 13 24 13 5 32 16 71 40-49 25 11 47 10 26 13 9 27 25 85 TOTAL 68 52 42 23 97 13 21 99 23 72
More than half of the study participants (56.7%) attended Quranic education. However, this training did not include reading and writing activities except in the case of those women who attended a standardized Quranic education commonly refer to as Arabic schools in the study setting. The women who attended Quranic education in general reported benefits such as knowing how to practice one’s religion, how to perform abolition for prayers, how to pray and fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and how to become good Muslims in general.
Overall, knowledge of the Quran was gained mainly through memorization. Very few of the respondents were able to read or write in Arabic, the language of the Holy Quran. For instance, of the fifteen respondents (12.5% of the entire sample) who took the test in Arabic, eleven (33%) fall under the category of low reading ability while 10 of the respondents (28%)
99 have low writing ability. Also the majority of the respondents who took the test in Arabic have no familiarity with the Arabic numerals and thus, they fall under the no competence category for written numeracy.
Vocational training was the weakest area of women’s participation in organized learning activities. Less than a quarter of the women’s surveyed ever participated in vocational training courses of any type. The benefits that were reported to have accrued from vocational training included skills in tailoring, hairdressing, cookery, tie-die and batik designing, and ceramics, and bag weaving, domains commonly referred to as “women’s jobs” in the scholarly literature.
Only one study participant who did not have formal schooling took part in vocational training. In the case of this participant, the vocational training she took part in perhaps did not require basic foundation in reading, writing and numeracy. Such kinds of training are often in the form of workshops where members of women’s organizations participate in a week-long workshop for training in livelihood skills. In these programs, women learn weaving bags, scarves, and other garments, and tie and dye and Batik. Access to such opportunities however varies across women’s groups and benefitted mostly by those groups with political contacts, meaning they manifest open support for the ruling party and participate in their events when they are requested to do so.
Women’s acute lack of participation in vocational training may be explained by poor access to training centers that are free in peri-urban areas and in The Gambia at large. The majority of the women who participated in vocational training programs were enrolled in private skill training centers where they had to pay fees and other indirect expenses such as transportation cost and materials for practical training.
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Financial reasons were the most cited as deterrents to women’s participation in vocational skill training programs. Other factors include marriage and increased responsibilities in the conduct of reproductive gender roles that left them with very little time to participate in vocational training. Women’s lack of participation in programs where they could have acquired livelihood skills explains the high unemployment rates among the study participants and their over-concentration in petty trading activities that allow them to earn income without any formal qualifications.
Although adult literacy programs are spreading widely in The Gambia, they are more prevalent in rural areas than in urban areas. Consequently, and as revealed in the Table 7, only 19 percent of the women surveyed had the opportunity to participate in adult literacy programs, the majority of whom had some primary schooling. Ten of the study participants without formal education took part in adult literacy programs, while 13 of the study participants with some primary schooling participated in that kind of non-formal education. The age brackets of 30-39 and 40-49 are only ones with women who participated in adult literacy programs with an average duration of thirteen months for both groups. Overall, the average number of months spent in
Quranic education was higher than the averages for both adult literacy and vocational training programs.
Literacy and Numeracy Competences
The results of the reading test, as shown below in Table 8 hereafter, indicate that 81 percent of the study participants could read but at least to some degree, though a third of those were at the lowest level of competence, just able to decipher certain sounds and letter groups.
About 19 percent of the study participants could read nothing at all; 28.3 percent could read syllables about everyday life (level 1); 22.5 percent could read words used in everyday sentences
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(level 2); 20 percent could read a simple sentence about everyday life (Level 3) and 10 percent of the women attained the highest reading level (level 4), where they were required to read and understand paragraphs about everyday life.
The reading results are quite weak overall, particularly given the fact that more than 30 percent of the study participants have at least seven years of schooling. A host of factors might explain the low results in reading registered by the study participants and prominent among these factors are school quality, a deficient literate environment, and gender barriers to literacy learning and usage.
Nearly 77 percent of the study participants can write but their writing levels, similar to the patterns of the reading levels, are mixed. The result of the writing test indicates that less than a quarter of the women could not write even syllables used in everyday words (no competence level); 30 percent of the women have the ability to write syllables used in everyday words ( level
1) ; 22.5 percent can read words use in everyday sentences ( level 2); 18 percent of the women have the ability to write a sentence about everyday life (Level 3); and less than six percent of the study participants can write a paragraph about everyday life (Level 4).
Table 8: Reading and writing competence by age group
Reading Competence Writing Competence Age Nb. at Tested Level Nb. at Tested Level Group 0 1 2 3 4 TOT AV. 0 1 2 3 4 TOT AV. 18-24 3 11 4 7 3 28 1.9 3 10 5 9 1 28 1.8 25-29 4 5 8 0 2 19 1.5 5 7 5 1 1 19 1.3 30-39 6 11 12 5 3 37 1.7 9 12 9 6 1 37 1.4 40-49 10 7 3 12 4 36 1.8 11 7 8 6 4 36 1.6 TOTAL 23 34 27 24 12 120 1.7 28 36 27 22 7 120 1.5
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As a comparison between reading and writing abilities, the average scores of the study participants are somewhat similar with 1.7 in reading and 1.5 in writing. Notwithstanding, reading abilities seem to be higher than the writing abilities. Although the study participants were requested to write sentences they read in the reading test, fewer women could write than read those sentences.
Comparison of Reading and Writing across Age Groups
As shown in Table 8 above, the age bracket of 18-24 has the lowest proportion of illiterate women (11%) and the age bracket 40-49 the highest proportion (28%). Some of the study participants in age group of 40-49 dropped out of schooling as early as the first three grades of primary schooling. Overall, the age group of 30-39 and 40-49 has the most number of women who could read at least words used in everyday sentences compared to the other age groups of 18-24 and 25-29. For instance, the age group of 30-49 comprised of 71 percent of the women who can read words used in everyday sentences, in comparison with 29 percent of the age group of 18-29 having similar ability. A similar trend is manifested in the written and oral numeracy test where the age group of 30-49 achieved better results than the age bracket of 18-
29.
Intuitively, one would expect the age group of 18-29 to have better results across the literacy and numeracy test relative to the older age groups since they have had far better physical access to schools and also this group too arguably enjoyed higher value for schooling by parents relative to the older age bracket. A myriad of factors might, however, explain the tiny difference in literacy and numeracy attainment between the older and younger age groups but the one evident in the data (see Table 5) shows the age groups 30-39 and 40-49 as having among them respondents with formal schooling as far as form 4, which is now equivalent to grade 10 of
103 senior secondary school in the current educational system. In comparison, the majority of respondents in the age groups of 18-24 and 25-29 dropped out of school somewhere between the seventh and ninth grade. That slight difference in grade attainment might have accounted for the advantage of the older age brackets in the literacy and numeracy test.
Also, in several of my discussions with the study participants about their own education and that of their children, the idea came up that the quality of the current educational system has declined tremendously relative to what it used to be when every student wrote the national common entrance certificate in order to determine placement in high school. Their argument is that since a mass promotion strategy is currently being adopted for automatic placement in junior secondary school, teachers have become lax in their strict enforcement of the curriculum to ensure that students learn how to read well before they write the common entrance examination in the sixth grade. This perception might be a possible explanation of the low literacy and numeracy competence of the study participants with more than six years of schooling and particularly among the youngest age group. This perspective however requires further security as there is no empirical evidence to support it.
The age groups of 30-39 and 40-49 were found in my observations and interactions to have been the most affected by the problem of literacy retention. There were several cases of women in those age groups who attended formal schooling and said they were able to read and write at least a little at some point in their lives, but at the time of the study, they could not read or write at all, not even a syllable.
The overall low levels of literacy and numeracy competence of the study participants depicts the picture of the global literacy landscape, with women representing 64 percent of non- literates. A similar trend prevails in sub-Saharan African which is among the Millennium
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Development Goals (MDG) regions with lowest literacy rates. At the national level, the countries in sub-Saharan Africa have the lowest literacy rates. Less than half of the adult population was literate in ten countries – Mali (adult literacy rate 26%), Burkina Faso and Niger (29%), Chad
(33%), Ethiopia (36%), Guinea (38%), Sierra Leone (40%), Benin (41%), Senegal (42%), and
Gambia (45%). There is however a staggering picture of gender disparity in these countries with women forming the majority of the non-literates. In The Gambia, as a case in point, the literacy rates for male in the age group of 15-24 was 10 percentage points higher than for females in the same age group in 2010 (World Bank, 2013). Gender disparity in national literacy rates between older males and females for which there is no current data is likely much higher in favor of the male population.
Oral and Written Numeracy Competence
Numeracy is becoming increasingly important in the everyday lives of women with the rudiments of literacy skills who reside in the peri-urban areas of The Gambia due to their high involvement in petty trading activities. It must be stated here although the numeracy ability test used is not enough to gauge the participants’ numeracy practices, it serves as prelude to understanding their levels of competence in written numeracy and how they employ numerate skills in everyday lives.
In the written numeracy test (results in Table 9 below), 24 percent of the study participants demonstrated no competence: they could not perform written mathematical functions including simple addition and subtraction without carryovers. Fourteen percent of the study participants performed simple addition and subtraction without carryover (level 1), 28 percent performed task involving simple additions and subtractions with carryover (Level 2), 21 percent can carry out mathematical problems requiring multiplication and division without carry over
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(Level 3) and only 12 percent of the women performed the highest level per this test, involving multiplication and division tasks with carryover.
Table 9: Numeracy competence by grade attained in school
Oral Math Competence Written Math Competence Age Nb. at Tested Level Nb. at Tested Level Group 0 1 2 3 4 TOT AV. 0 1 2 3 4 TOT AV.
18-24 0 1 9 10 8 28 2.9 10 3 7 8 0 28 1.5
25-29 1 4 5 6 3 19 2.3 3 2 7 3 4 19 2.2
30-39 1 3 7 17 9 37 2.8 8 6 11 7 5 37 1.9
40-49 0 0 6 18 12 36 2.8 8 6 9 8 5 36 1.8
TOTAL 2 8 27 51 32 120 2.9 29 17 34 26 14 120 1.8
The results of the written numeracy test, similar to those of the reading and writing test, are unfortunate given that a majority of the women had more than six years of schooling and more than a quarter of them had some secondary school education.
Oral numeracy was tested in addition to written numeracy to avoid under-assessing the numerate abilities of the study participants and to also compare results of the participants’ written numeracy competencies with their oral numeracy skills. A similar reason was the basis upon which oral numeracy was tested in a literacy survey for Bangladesh (see Greaney, et al.
1998 as cited in Schaffner, 2005).
Quite fascinating from the findings was the fact that the majority of the women in this study with some level of competence in oral numeracy could not perform written numeracy. For instance, only two out of the 120 women could not perform simple addition and subtraction without carryover in the oral numeracy test whereas 29 of the 120 women could not perform a
106 similar function in the written numeracy test. Additionally, 42% of the study participants could perform problems of multiplication and division without carryover in the oral numeracy test
(Level 3) but only 22% of the women could solve a similar task in the written numeracy test.
The written and oral numeracy test shows that the respondents enjoyed a relatively stronger advantage in these areas over reading and writing when examined by levels. Stated differently, many women manifest higher functional and competent numeracy abilities than in reading and writing. It would appear that while some of the study participants forgot how to read and write, they have been able to maintain some of their numeracy skills and perhaps by virtue of everyday dealings with activities involving numeracy.
Evidently, people who attended formal school have prior knowledge of oral numeracy even before beginning to learn written numeracy, reading, and writing. Women in the age bracket of 30-49 comprise of the largest share of petty traders among the women. The nature of their income-generating activities might have perhaps contributed to their higher average score in both the oral and written numeracy than the younger age brackets of 18-29.
The exclusion of the oral numeracy test from the study would have been tantamount to ignoring the indigenous knowledge that a vast majority of women in the study use to circumvent difficulty in writing, finding the practice to be more convenient than using written numeracy in their petty trading activities.
Comparison of Literacy and Numeracy Competence by Grade Attainment
The cross tabulation between grade attained and level of literacy and numeracy competence suggests that the number of years the study participants spent in school did have positive influence on literacy and numeracy abilities. It is quite ordinary for the women with 7-
9 years of schooling to out-perform those who for instance drop out early from primary
107 schooling as shown below in Table 9. A similar finding was reported in a study on literacy practices in Mozambique by Esposito, Kebede, and Maddox (2011) in which the authors found out that the percentage of people who achieved the literacy practices they were tested on increased with years of schooling. However, their data yielded an interesting contrast to the aforementioned finding with some of the literacy practices being attained by the majority of the respondents even those with no schooling. For example, 78 percent (of those with formal schooling) and 66 percent of respondents without any schooling can do calculations and use mobile phones, respectively.
Findings from this study and those of Esposito et al., (2011) suggest that some literacy practices do not necessarily require formal schooling and might be more of a product of an individual’s informal and self-directed learning efforts.
Notwithstanding, however, the seeming correlation in the cross-tabulation between levels of educational attainment and literacy practices illustrates that a certain number of years of schooling may prove essential for lasting reading, writing, and written numeracy skills
(Wagner, 2011). However, that assumption might be problematic first because of a lack of longitudinal studies that document the literacy and numeracy abilities of school leavers over time. Secondly, it is problematic to pin down an exact number of years of schooling that would endow an individual with literacy and numeracy competences due to several factors such as school quality, educational levels of parents and the length of period that elapsed since they attended school. These factors among others have been reported in the scholarly literature as having the potential to shape the dynamics and results of schooling outcomes such as literacy and numeracy competences.
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Table 10: Comparison of literacy competence by school grade attained
School Reading Competence Writing Competence Grade Nb. at Tested Level Nb. at Tested Level Attained 0 1 2 3 4 TOT AV. 0 1 2 3 4 TOT AV. 1-3 5 2 1 0 0 8 0.5 6 2 0 0 0 8 0.3
4-6 6 9 14 5 2 36 1.7 6 13 13 4 0 36 1.4
7-9 1 7 6 11 4 29 2.3 0 9 9 9 2 29 2.1
10-12 0 1 4 7 3 15 2.8 0 2 3 5 5 15 2.9
TOTAL 23 34 27 24 12 120 1.8 28 36 27 22 7 120 1.7
Table 11: Comparison of numeracy competence by school grade attained
School Oral Math Competence Written Math Competence Grade Nb. at Tested Level Nb. at Tested Level Attained 0 1 2 3 4 TOT AV. 0 1 2 3 4 TOT AV.
None 2 2 16 10 2 32 2.3 19 5 6 1 1 32 0.8
1-3 0 0 1 6 1 8 3 3 4 1 0 0 8 0.8
4-6 0 6 7 16 7 36 2.7 7 5 13 8 3 36 1.9
7-9 0 0 2 14 13 29 3.4 0 1 11 12 5 29 2.7
10-12 0 0 1 5 9 15 3.5 0 2 3 5 5 15 2.9
TOTAL 2 8 27 51 32 120 2.9 29 17 34 26 14 120 1.8
Comparing Literacy and Numeracy Competence by Types of Trade
From the analysis of literacy and numeracy competencies of the study participants by their type of trade, it seems that the ability to read and write was higher among petty traders than those who did menial jobs. However, and as shown in Table 12, petty traders have lower average scores than those women who were not involved in any type of trade at the time of this study. As
109 mentioned earlier, a lack of financial resources for investment in business was a major factor that affected the participation of some of the women in petty trading activities and not a lack of literacy and numeracy skills. As an example, 13 percent of the study participants who are petty traders are able to read a paragraph of simple sentence about everyday life whereas only 4.2 percent of the women who do menial jobs have that reading ability. Similarly, in the writing test,
10 percent of the study participants who are petty traders could write simple paragraph of sentences about everyday life and comparatively, only 4.1 percent of the menial jobs have that ability. The inability to read and write might perhaps be additional constraints for participation in petty trading activities.
Table 12: Comparing reading and writing competences by type of work
Reading Competence Writing Competence Type Of Nb. at Tested Level Nb. at Tested Level Employment TOT AV. TOT AV. 0 1 2 3 4 0 1 2 3 4 Petty Trading 12 16 17 13 9 67 1.9 15 18 19 8 7 67 1.6
Menial Jobs 8 7 6 2 1 24 1.2 9 5 5 4 1 24 1.3
Unemployed 3 11 4 7 4 29 1.9 1 2 11 10 5 29 2.6
TOTAL 23 34 27 22 14 120 1.7 25 25 35 22 13 120 1.8
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Table 13: Comparing oral and written numeracy competences by type of work
Oral Math Competence Written Math Competence Nb. at Tested Level Nb. at Tested Level Type of Employment 0 1 2 3 4 TOT AV. 0 1 2 3 4 TOT AV.
Petty trading 0 5 12 28 22 67 3 15 10 17 14 11 67 1.9
Menial Jobs 0 4 4 13 3 24 2.6 4 5 10 3 2 24 1.8
Unemployed 1 2 11 10 5 29 2.5 10 2 7 9 1 29 1.6
TOTAL 1 11 27 51 30 120 2.8 29 17 34 26 14 120 1.8
In both the oral and the written numeracy test as shown above in Table 13, petty traders manifested a higher ability level to perform both oral and written numeracy competence than those women who do menial jobs as well as those who are unemployed. As an example, 22 of the petty traders could perform oral numeracy tasks that required multiplication and division with carryovers and as a comparison, only three of the women who do menial jobs have that ability level. Similarly, in the written numeracy test, 11 of the study participants who are petty traders could perform tasks that required multiplication and division with carryovers and as a comparison, only two of the women who do menial jobs have that ability level. Average test scores for oral and written numeracy of the petty traders were also higher than those of the women who do menial jobs and as well as those women who are not currently working.
Summary
This section of the demographic characteristics of the study participants avails some key background information about the study participants in terms of their socio-economic status, their educational attainments, and levels of literacy skills they currently possess. More especially, the background information gathered also illuminates the criteria of modest
111 educational attainment for participation in the study by illustrating the myriad of avenues through which the study participants acquired literacy skills and the levels of literacy and numeracy competence they have in fact attained.
This demographic information, educational history, and literacy and numeracy competence levels of the study participants offer an initial basis for understanding some socio- economic characteristics of the study participants and their abilities in reading, writing, and numeracy before beginning to analyze their uses of literacy and numeracy skills in the succeeding stages of the research.
As revealed from the data on the socio-economic characteristics of the study participants, the women who participated in this study are from very low socio-economic status. This finding is in line with those in studies that illuminate the socio-economic characteristics of a vast majority of women in developing societies such as The Gambia (Chant, 2006; Cohen, Bloom &
Malin, 2006).
The fact that the study participants are of very low socio-economic status and live in a society where gender inequalities are still persistent might in fact explain their low educational attainment, their overall low level of literacy and numeracy competences, and their employment pattern that is overwhelmingly skewed towards petty trading activities. Numerous empirical studies have linked low economic status to poor educational outcomes in developing societies such as The Gambia (see for instance, Filmer & Pritchett 1999).
The gender roles of the women and their employment patterns as mainly petty traders preempt their possibilities and limitations to effectively apply whatever literacy and numeracy skills they have acquired in the conduct of their petty trading activities.
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CHAPTER FIVE
WOMEN’S USE OF LITERACY AND NUMERACY IN
THEIR REPRODUCTIVE ROLES:
THEMES AND TESTIMONIES FROM THE FIELD
Introduction
This chapter discusses the Reproductive (gender) roles of women with limited or no formal education in peri-urban Gambia, how these shape women’s uses and needs for literacy, and the meaning that they assign to those functions within their gender roles that require uses of literacy and numeracy.
The data presented here and in the discussion of two other gender roles - Productive and
Community Management - result from a focus group discussion with twenty women, extended interviews, and observations with five of the study participants during the ethnographic phase.
Participants for both stages of the study are rich sources of information regarding their variety of daily gender roles that involve the needs and uses for literacy and numeracy. The selection of the focus group participants was informed by lessons learned from the quantitative data. Similarly, interaction with participants during the focus group discussion guided the selection of those who participated in the ethnography phase of the study. Data from the focus group discussion, individual interviews, and observations all support, supplement, and confirm perspectives and actions relating to literacy and numeracy practices of peri-urban Gambian women.
Peri-Urban Gambian Women’s Reproductive Roles
The Reproductive roles of women in developing societies encompass all the activities that they carry out to support the maintenance and reproduction of the family (Moser, 2004).
Moser defined women’s reproductive roles to include not only biological reproduction, but also
113 the care and fortification of the work force -- male partner and working children, and the future work force -- infants and school-going children. This work is also classified under the household economy because it requires time and labor. However, women are rarely if ever remunerated for their Reproductive work, even in western societies (Coltrane, 2000; Cohen, 2004; Moser, 2004).
Gender roles are socially constructed, however, and are by no means static as they depend upon time and culture. In this study’s setting, many women are now more involved in economically productive functions to keep the family afloat financially, a role that hitherto belonged to men. Silberschmidt (2001) found similar changes in the socio-economic patterns of gender relationships in East Africa where women became invaluable contributors to the household’s economy, not to compete with or take over men’s traditional roles but because men were not able to perform their breadwinner functions.
This enormous economic burden does not, however, excuse women from their socially assigned caregiving functions and home management responsibilities. That women’s reproductive roles are culturally ascribed was a preponderant theme of the focus group discussions. One participant clearly stated, “It is the women’s role to manage the household; we take care of the children, the laundry, and clean up. These chores take up a lot of our time and leave us with very little time for activities outside of the home.” All in the focus group unanimously shared this perspective, that women are the only ones responsible for duties on the domestic front. They also recognize Reproductive gender roles as their socially assigned responsibilities, including the care of children’s health and wellbeing, participation in education, the effective running of the household, and child bearing. These household tasks are carried out concurrently with their other gender roles, and as described by many participants during the
114 focus group discussions and ethnography phase of the study, women’s reproductive duties are unbounded.
Women’s assertions about their time-consuming, laborious, and inexhaustible reproductive duties was confirmed in Phillott-Almeida’s (1994) findings that such duties in The
Gambia can stretch from dawn to dusk, and consist of activities such as twice to thrice daily preparation and cooking of meals, water collection, laundering, cleaning, child-minding, and shopping.
Education and improvements in technology have enabled women to negotiate gender division of labor, however. More educated women are likelier to participate in work outside of their Reproductive gender roles than less educated women (Sikod, 2007). Put differently, highly educated women who have formal employment devote less time to household chores. The increase in women’s labor force participation is also attributed to the increasing availability of labor-saving devices that reduce the hours women used to spend on household duties (Cohen &
Bianchi 1999; Uttal, 2002), although access to such technology remains limited and unaffordable for most women in developing countries.
Discussions by the study participants highlighted and confirmed assertions in the gender division of labor literature, cited above, that women do not share a common identity as far as their Reproductive gender roles burdens are concerned. The focus group participants, as low literate and non-literate peri-urban women, distinguished their work in the household from the work that more educated women and rural counterparts perform. They conceded that rural women are more engaged in arduous and timeconsuming domestic duties, like the gathering of firewood and the processing of grains for flour. Grains are manually pounded with wooden
115 mortars and pestles, because mills are lacking in many rural communities in The Gambia, and can take up to three hours or more depending on the amount to be processed.
The focus group study participants also noted that highly educated women are less likely to perform household chores all day relative to women without formal sector jobs. Although they still bear domestic responsibilities, it was understood that they can afford to hire other (less economically privileged) women to perform those culturally assigned responsibilities:
Household chores are never done. I wake up at 5:00 a.m. My girls and I would clean up the house and cooking utensils before they go off to school. Then I prepare the food stuff that I sell. By 11:00 a.m when I am mostly through with selling, I go to the market to prepare the day’s meal. I would then do the laundry and ironing of my husband’s clothes, at least twice in the week. Non-literate women and those with low schooling attainments work very hard this way. I would like to call up on the girl child to work hard at school so as to improve on their lot – I mean for them to do better than their illiterate parents. If they work so hard in school and get a good job, they don’t have to be housewives like their mothers; they can have the option of hiring someone to do household chores for them [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Figure 4: A study participant tending to two of women’s domestic works
It was noted during the focus group discussion that a few men now participate in household chores to lessen the work burden on their spouses. Such benevolent gestures are
116 however not carried out without resistance from society at large. In instances where men have tried to brazen-out such socio-cultural norms and exercise gender equity in the care of the family and the management of the household, they are reproached by both men and women for demeaning their masculinity. The study participants provided examples of how men suffer from both men and women when they take on (women’s) domestic roles:
I know a family man who helps his wife with the household chores. When the wife goes to market, he cleans the house and when the wife returns she starts to cook. Once though, a female family member found the man cleaning the house and taunted him for being a sissy because he was doing women’s work. He eventually stopped helping the wife [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Men who have succeeded in lessening the burden of their spouse’s domestic chores are socially compelled to do so behind closed doors, in order to avoid been socially castigated:
When we started out my husband used to help me with chores but my mother-in-law thought this was a bad omen for the family. We had to lock ourselves in every time he helped out. He used to clean, cook, and wash clothes. My husband helps me take care of the home. He cleans house and takes care of the baby; he even mills the grain we cook. Any time I am running late to go to sell, he takes over whatever it was I was doing. Now that the children are older they help me instead. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law used to say that I must have cast a spell on him [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Literacy and Numeracy Utilization in Women’s Reproductive Gender Roles
In this study, many instances of women’s literacy utilization and needs in their
Reproductive gender roles were identified. A broad range of themes emerged from the focus group discussion and individual in-depth interviews, all of which elucidated the diverse uses and needs for literacy and numeracy in women’s everyday work that pertain to the care of their families and the effective management of their households. These themes are discussed below.
Women’s Participation in Children’s Education
Women’s reproductive responsibilities include their contribution to their children’s schooling. They have done so mainly by serving as financial sponsors, acting as liaison between
117 school and the community, and in many cases, monitoring their children’s schoolwork (as they remain at home most of the time). Phillott-Almeida (1994) confirmed the roles and contributions of women in education in The Gambia by noting that in households where the children attend school, the mother is regularly at the center stage of efforts to monitor the regular attendance and thorough application of their children’s scholastic responsibilities. Educated mothers are however, better positioned to monitor their children’s schooling by virtue of their familiarity with the requirements of formal schooling as compared to non-lettered women. This study also confirms Phillott-Almeida’s (1994) observation that women contribute financially toward their children’s schooling from their meager cash income earned from petty trading and home craft.
Such financial contributions are fueled by their ambitions to give their children a comparative advantage in a rapidly changing knowledge-driven economy.
Women as financial sponsors of their children’s education. The study participants emphasized the equalizing role of education among their reasons for financially supporting their children, and cited how education has successfully raised the socio-economic status of some families. Such sensational stories like the one portrayed below have served as a stimulus for more parental financial investment in education.
We don’t have any other choice but to do petty trading because we need to earn a living and support our family, pay school fees, pay for extra classes and provide lunch money to the children. Some of our children are in private schools and their fees are exorbitantly expensive. After this entire struggle, it is our hope that at least one child will succeed in life and in turn help his/her parents. I have known of a poor family whose lives were changed because one of their children was successful in school, has a good job now and is helping out with the family’ financial needs [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Some of the women are motivated to invest in their children’s education because they desire a better life for them than the one they currently live. These parents have attributed their
118 material poverty to their lack of higher educational attainment and hope that their children will break that cycle of poverty for their future lives:
I am poor and I want a better life for my children in the future. By investing in education, they will have a chance to be educated and can in the future compete for better wages to support themselves and their families and not languish in poverty like they did growing up [translated from Mandinka to English by the researcher].
Some study participants also raised awareness of the abundant cases of unemployment among educated people in The Gambia, however, and pointed out that formal schooling alone is not adequate to radically change one’s socio-economic status due to limited job opportunities and nepotism that has plagued civil service employment. As one study participant eloquently expressed:
Another problem affecting job prospect for students is that in this country, “it is not what you know but whom you know”—meaning that you have to be connected with the right people in civil service work places to stand a chance of getting employment. For example, if I was looking for a job at a workplace where I have a cousin in a key position, he or she will find or create a position for me. It doesn’t matter if the position was advertised or there are other more competent applicants for that particular position. This is what defines some people chances to access a job for the most part and not their knowledge and credentials. This mentality is dangerous and that is why there are many square pegs in round holes in many public institutions. Nepotism can also demotivate young people who are going to school if they learn that hard work counts for little as far as job opportunities are concerned [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
While the study participants overwhelmingly recognize the promise of formal schooling, others have pointed out that economic prosperity is not a result that can be taken for granted.
Both perspectives feed into the socio-economic context where all people who have acquired literacy and numeracy skills are naively assumed to exercise them.
Literacy Uses: Paying School Fees and Filing Receipts
As financial sponsors of children’s schooling and even those whose spouses cover the fees, women are responsible for keeping the receipts and pulling out these important documents
119 in case their children are erroneously expelled for non-payment. Many of the study participants with responsibility for school children mentioned a practice of reading or asking for help to read receipts of school fees and other documents from school. One participant emphasized this perspective during an in-depth-interview:
School fee receipts and other documents from the school are important to keep. I for one keep all of the important papers my children bring from the school. For those that I can’t read or understand well, I seek the help of other people. I recall one term when my children were sent away from school after I had already paid their fees. I wasted no time in proving the financial secretary of the school wrong by showing her the receipts. She apologized and my children went back to continue their lessons. Parents who don’t keep receipts are often duped this way. I am not very educated, but it does not take a lot to keep track of receipts. I know how to read the dates on the receipts and in that way I could identify the most recent [translated from Mandinka to English by the researcher].
Some participants also mentioned how their ability to read and write saved them from having to pay for falsified bills from teenage children who try to take advantage of their parents, as one of the focus group participants contended below:
I know of numerous cases where teenagers tamper with school receipts or present false bills for payment. I therefore attempt to read whatever bills my children bring home, to make sure that I am giving them money for the right purposes. This is an important literacy practice, and every parent with teenagers who are going to school should ask for help to read bills that the children bring home [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Literacy and Numeracy Practices for Children’s School Work
Women with low or very limited schooling may participate from time to time in their children’s homework and only if such assignments are within their ability. They believe that in this way, they can reduce the financial cost associated with their children’s schooling. The study participants lamented the high cost of schooling, and the inability of many parents to meet the cost of supplementary or tutorial classes for their children. Therefore those with some reading and writing skills have no option but to support their children in homework by themselves.
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Women with some literacy skills do help their children with school work. It is very expensive to pay for extra classes that the children need to cope with the lessons taught at school. School is already very expensive and these extra burdens can be defrayed if poor people could provide the support themselves. Education is always good, and I do not hesitate to help my children with the little I know, when they come home with schoolwork [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
During the ethnographic phase of this study, some participants with low literacy and numeracy abilities were observed helping their children with schoolwork up to their ability level.
For children in grade levels superior to their parents’ abilities, the norm is to delegate tutorial responsibilities to older siblings or seek the help of more educated community members.
Two participants in particular during the ethnographic phase of the study were observed to have frequently participated in their children’s schoolwork. The first was Isatou who has schooling barely above grade five. Isatou has five children and all are currently enrolled in school. Given her very limited literacy and written numeracy ability, she can only study with two of her children, a boy in nursery school and a girl in grade three. The remaining three are in grades six, eight, and ten. For those in grades higher than her own scholastic ability, she declared that she hardly ever knows what they are learning at school, as noted below from an excerpt of our interviews:
The first problem with helping my children do their schoolwork and to study at home is the difficulty in getting the textbooks that they need for reading and math. Textbooks are very expensive nowadays. As you have already found out, I am very poor in reading and worse in writing, because I dropped out of school very early [fifth grade]. I however do help my children with numeracy up to a point, only up to point. I can do simple addition and subtraction. For multiplication, I cannot go beyond 6x. I am therefore not of much help. For the older ones, I hardly know what their school lessons are. There is an educated neighbour, though, who is very passionate about education, and he will gather many of the children in the neighbourhood, including mine, on Saturdays and offer them extra classes. I know my children would do a lot better academically if I were resourceful in their schoolwork [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
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Figure 5: Isatou during one of her study sessions with her children
The second ethnographic participant who studies with her children is Ida. She dropped out of school at the last grade of junior secondary school. Ida continues to pursue her own self- directed learning. For example, she owns a dictionary and consults it when she is particularly challenged with spelling in keeping records of her business transactions and personal text messaging. Ida disclosed (with a dazzling smile on her face) that she often asks other (more educated) people to help her spell words as well as answer questions about word definitions:
I am laughed at in many instances. My step dad is in his 70s, but he has a pretty good memory and because he went to school, I often rely on him to help me out with spelling and synonyms of “big” words that I encounter. Just the other day, a neighbor came and asked if I could spell for her the word “judge” as in the law profession, but I spelled the name “George” instead. When the neighbor insisted on the spelling of judge, as in lawyer, I could not quickly come up with the spelling but asked my step dad who was on his prayer mat and has just finished praying. He wasted no time in spelling the word for us with so much ease [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
From my observation of Ida’s interaction with her children during study time, she could help them at their current level of studies, but expressed the fear that she might not be able to render such help as the children advanced in their schooling:
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By the time my eldest son, Assan, reaches grade eight, which is a very critical level of schooling, I will no longer be able to study with him. If our family’s deplorable financial condition does not improve enough to engage a private tutor, he may end up lacking in his scholastic abilities. Assan’s academic performance is excellent. He has always been in the top 20 percent in his class from grade one through six. The inability of poor parents, like me, to hire private tutors is why our children seldom progress in their educational pursuits [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Figure 6: Ida helping her children with school homework
Apart from the acute constraints imposed by limited literacy and numeracy, the lack of textbooks was strongly expressed as a major hindrance to parental support of schoolwork. The focus group participants contended that in order to be able to effectively study with their children, they need the corresponding textbooks. “Otherwise it is like a blind person trying to figure out the road to a place without aid,” one of the focus group participants said.
The Use of Computers in Children’s School Work
Most of the study participants do not know how to operate a computer, although they may be aware of its use for their children’s homework. However, one of the study participants
123 who owns a computer mentioned helping her child with homework and occasionally using
Google search for answers from the internet. It is premature to prognosticate if such practices will grow among women with limited education in the near future, because very few households currently own a computer. However, the proliferation of affordable computers and increased knowledge of technologies may craft opportunities for more parental involvement in children’s school work. One of the study participants who has already begun reaping such technological benefits noted:
I may not be well educated as a grade eight dropout, but I try to monitor my children’s schooling on a daily basis when I am through with the cooking and cleaning. For answers to matters I don’t know, I search on the computer. This is possible because of my access to the technology and the literacy skills that I acquired from school [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher]
Non-literate and Non-numerate Women also Monitor Children’s School Work!
Although the majority of study participants lamented their inability to monitor their children’s schoolwork due to inadequate or no competence in literacy and numeracy, one of the study participants who was never enrolled in formal education and has no reading and writing but low written numeracy ability fervently argued that she does monitor her children’s schoolwork. She shared her approach with her fellow focus group participants:
Women who are not literate are increasingly participating in their children’s schooling due to the high value that we have assigned to formal schooling and particularly girls’ education. I am illiterate but I pay a lot of attention to my children’s schooling nonetheless. I always jot small circles by the last exercise of the day so that the next day I can tell they had been in school when I find new exercise after the circles I had drawn the previous day. Even the teacher was amazed at my monitoring skills. It is a big handicap to be illiterate, but we need to find ways to be sure that the resources spent on a child’s education are not wasted, ensuring that children are going to school, attending classes and doing school work [translated from Mandinka to English by the researcher].
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Figure 7: A non-literate parent’s strategy for monitoring children’s schoolwork
Literacy Uses and Health Care Responsibilities
The focus group discussed the consequence of reading to understand and act upon health care information for themselves and their families. As the primary caretaker of the sick and the elderly, women must comprehend a lot of health care information particularly as it relates to oral administration of medicine (in timely and correct doses). I have observed non-literate women succeed fairly well in administering medicine, using a simple but commonly employed strategy as one of the ethnographic study participants, Nyima, who has no literacy, clearly explains:
The labeling of medical prescriptions using strokes (Roman Numerals) to represent I for once daily, II for twice in the day and III for three times in the day makes it easy for us to understand. Like other non-literate women, I look at the inscription on the bottle and know how a particular medicine is suppose to be administered. For instance, the medicine in this bottle is paracetamol; using the labels on the bottle, here is how I am supposed to administer it to my child. This particular medicine is supposed to be taken three times a day. The doctor told me that I should give the child one tablet after breakfast, then
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another one after lunch, and the last one after dinner. When I am not sure about how to use a particular medicine, I ask for help to read the instructions, but that is very rare; at least my children and I have never suffered from over-dosage [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
The importance of reading more than the instructions for administering medicines was highly emphasized. The focus group generally agreed that the ability to read prescriptions for names of medicines was important, and that many illiterate women cannot carry out such functions. These women, they argue, therefore stand a greater chance of being exploited by local pharmacists who might occasionally include medicine that is not included in the prescription:
At the pharmacy, they try to make you buy items not listed on the prescription. Women who are literate therefore check the prescription to ensure that they are only sold the medication they need. For non-literate women like me, it is not rare to come home from the pharmacy with one or two other medications not written on my list. I have learned from experience to ask and confirm before leaving a pharmacy if I am taking home only the medicine the doctor has prescribed. Sometimes, I ask the doctor how many different kinds of medicine I should buy. In that way I know before going to the pharmacy what to expect [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Numeracy for Computing Daily and Monthly Expenses
It is becoming a common and growing practice for women to budget for their family’s daily and monthly expenses, particularly if they receive a bulk of the finances for food, water, and electricity at the end of the each month. The immigration of men to more affluent western societies has caused the women who are left behind with their children to be the financial managers of substantial amounts of money for monthly expenses.
Even women who do not manage such substantial funds mention the uses and needs for literacy and numeracy in their roles as financial managers in the family. One study participant noted, “When we go to the market, we have to compute our expenses. With several children, one has to calculate the lunch money to be given every morning. One has to be able to read bills and
126 know how much to pay. A little literacy and numeracy make life easier in the conduct of such responsibilities.” Good financial management is important to avoid running out of money and to be organized, as noted by one study participant whose husband immigrated to Europe for better financial prospects:
When I receive the monthly allowance for the family, I first check the water and electricity bill to know how much I need to pay. Each month’s bill is different. Sometimes the bill is low and other times it is high. I will then put the money for the utility bill aside and note that down. Then I will move on to the family’s daily needs. The major expense is food. I have a fixed amount that I take to the market, so I need to calculate that amount by 30 days. Next are the children’s school lunches. The amount spent on school lunch is fixed, and I multiply that monthly expense by the number of children. The rest of the money is kept for miscellaneous expenses such as health care. My husband sends money separately for the children’s school fees. I used to do all these calculation mentally but there were times that I would run out of money before the end of the month or forget what and where I have spent the money on. One of my friends advised me to do a monthly budget. Keeping a written record definitely helps me to be better organized in managing my family finances and also to have records to show my husband, in case he wants to know how I have spent the family’s financial resources [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
The focus group generally recognized women who carry out such financial responsibilities effectively without ability in reading, writing, or written numeracy. These women completely rely on their oral numerate skills to calculate food expenses, children’s daily school lunches, and other miscellaneous expenses. However, they noted that dealing with large amounts could be more challenging for those who manage small scale businesses, and that it takes a lot more time to calculate mentally particularly if they have to do this day-by-day. At any rate, most women do not have enough money to warrant very specific and detailed budgeting; they get whatever they can buy with their meager financial resources.
Literacy and the Use of Shopping Lists
Closely connected to the practice of daily, weekly, and monthly budgeting is the use of shopping lists at the market. This practice was notably observed among the youngest age bracket
127 of study participants. In order to buy all of the necessary groceries, and to maximize their time management, women with limited literacy and numeracy enumerate the items needed and the amount of money they intend to spend on the items. In this reading, writing, and numeracy practice, they would often switch between English and local languages. They would list items in
English, if they knew the name, even if not the correct spelling. Other items were in local languages. The goal is not correct spelling, noted one study participant who prepares her shopping list before going to the market, but to remember what to buy at the market without forgetting important items.
Figure 8: A study participant preparing her shopping list
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Figure 9: An example of a shopping list
Reading the Expiration Dates on Canned Food and Other Imported Food Items
In the study’s setting, markets and local shops have become places where expired and almost expired imported food items are sold at reduced prices. Such food items include biscuits, fruit juices, candies, and other canned foods. Most women who are unable to read the expiration date of these items may unwittingly buy expired food for their families, as noted during the focus group discussions. Some focus group discussants with some literacy mentioned their habit of reading the expiration dates on such food items before making their purchase. Those who cannot read expressed the need to be able to at least decipher the expiration dates on such items, noting the potential impact on their families’ health. None of the participants mentioned any reading of the ingredients of such items, or if they are even concerned about such information.
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Figure 10: One of many stalls on the streets of Serekunda selling imported food
Mobile Phone Usage and Application of Literacy and Numeracy Skills
The ownership of mobile phones is arguably a status symbol in The Gambia, and its use has become widespread in both rural and urban areas of Africa. In a survey of nearly 400 users of mobile phones in The Gambia, it was found out that 83 percent of the mobile users owned the device, 82 percent used their mobile phones mostly for calls, 12 percent used their phones mainly for texting and 3 percent use their device mainly for internet browsing (Badjie, 2010).
It could be estimated in this study that nearly 80 percent of the study participants owned mobile phones; those who do not possess one have an opportunity to share with other family members. Almost all the 120 women who took part in the survey provided a mobile phone number as part of their contact information. In many homes, mobile phones have replaced landlines, due in part to more flexible payment options. “When you buy credit for your mobile phone from a service provider, you can regulate how many minutes to use. When the credit is finished, you don’t have to refill it immediately and can continue to receive calls until a later date,” reported one study participant.
The majority of study participants used their mobile phones for calls; very few of the
130 women could maneuver the technology to send text messages. The pattern of cell phone use differs by age bracket, with the 18-24-year-olds being more knowledgeable than the older women. Young people have more interaction with mobile phones, and can quickly learn from their peers. For the older women, it was common to own a mobile phone without knowing how to place a call. However, non-literates make much use of other people, including family, friends, and even strangers, to store, retrieve, dial numbers, and read text messages should the need arise.
There were many occasions that I was asked by study participants to save my phone number in their mobile phones. This is one way that non-literate mobile users gather and save contact information in their mobile phones. Similar help is sought to make calls.
A study participant narrated an encounter with a woman on her way to the market. The woman abruptly stopped her and asked for help to check if a certain message had been received on her phone. That message contained information about a bank transfer. As soon as the narrator read the text message and translated it to Mandinka, the woman told her that she had been on her way to collect those funds. The reader also noted that such requests to read text messages are very common. Having someone else read private text messages, said the focus group participants, is a risk to one’s privacy. This theme of privacy in the use of mobile phones emerged several times during our discussion of the associated uses of literacy and numeracy, and was clearly expressed by one discussant:
Reading, writing and calculation skills are all important functions that we can quickly and effectively carry out from our mobile phones if we know how to use it. Many people own cell phones but unfortunately can’t use it without the help of other people. I am however particularly concerned about people asking for help from strangers on the streets to read their text messages or dial phone numbers for them. Being able to read one’s messages by oneself is important; it is better to ask your own child to read and help safeguard your privacy [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
There was however a counter perspective from some women who believe that asking
131 complete strangers to read text messages is sometimes better than having a child or relative read it, particularly those messages from abroad regarding money transfers. One focus group participant noted that “as soon as family members know that you have a little money, they would try to get you to give them some of it; that is the time all financial problems of family members would come up.”
For those who could compose and send text messages, chat vernacular is mostly employed. Apart from the uses of chat vernacular, there is a lot of code switching from local languages to English as seen in Binta’s text message below. Her text message contains one
English word, with the rest in Wolof. The text message is a simple greeting to a friend and a question of whether the recipient was at school.
Texting has become more enticing to many mobile phone users because it is cheaper than making calls, and more convenient to communicate. In addition, the use of mobile phones is more confidential particularly when with other people. “It just feels good to be able to text; I don’t know how I would have felt if I was left behind in such a technological development,” said one participant.
Figure 11: Binta enthralled by her text composing activity to a friend
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Figure 12: Binta's text message blended with words in English and Wolof
It is not certain that text messaging on mobile phones would stimulate the spelling skills of participants, but it might have a positive impact on their interaction with modern gadgets and technology. The use of common chat vernacular instead of spelling words in their entirety, a common practice among young people and school drop-outs in particular, might have negative implications on their ability to retain modest English writing skills. As shown in Chapter 4, the worst results of the writing, reading, and numeracy categories confirm such tendencies.
Summary
First, in the functioning of women’s Reproductive roles, those who lack the necessary literacy and numeracy skills often seek the help of more literate family or community members.
Similarly, Juffermans (2009) corroborated evidence of collaborative literacy practices (letter writing) in one rural Gambian community. Generally, literates in the study’s setting serve as literacy brokers (Perry, 2009). Where women do not have access to literacy brokers, a sense of 133 inadequacy seems to have stigmatized them.
Second, the ethnographic study participants were observed to be coping with their domestic chores fairly without much need for reading, writing or numeracy. The lack of much uses and needs for reading, writing and numeracy for the most part in carrying out their
Reproductive gender roles have a potential negative weight on their ability to utilize, practice and retain literacy and numeracy skills.
Third, the narratives of the women on the performance of their Reproductive roles suggest that such activities deplete their energies and critically reduce whatever time they might have to practice the minimal literacy and numeracy skills acquired after dropping out of school.
Finally, the problem of literacy retention, experienced by many of the study participants, raises a critical question on the unilateral economic development of schooling effect in the
Human Capital theory (Becker, 1993; Psacaropolous & Patrinos, 2004; Schultz, 1961). The human capital theory about the independent socio-economic effect of schooling is flawed but pervasive. One must question whether the need and opportunity for literacy and numeracy activities exists in women’s everyday routines, or if they have opportunities to benefit from the manipulation of literacy and numeracy skills. The salience of this topic warrants a separate discussion, and thus is featured in Chapter 8 that deals with the contextual and gender related factors that compromise the ability of women to apply, maintain and embrace even rudimentary literacy skills that they may have acquired after dropping out of school.
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CHAPTER SIX
PRODUCTIVE GENDER ROLES OF WOMEN IN PERI-URBAN GAMBIA
AND LITERACY AND NUMERACY UTILIZATION
This chapter presents findings pertaining to the use of literacy and numeracy practices in the Productive gender roles of women in peri-urban Gambia. Productive activity, according to
Moser (1989), is the production of goods and services for consumption and trade. Both men and women partake in productive activities but there are apparent gender differences in such work.
Moser (1989) asserted that women’s productive activities are often less visible and less valued than those of men in many societies. Her affirmation of gender differences in productive work remains relatively applicable to many developing societies, including this study’s setting. The productive activities of most peri-urban Gambian women with basic or no literacy skills are restricted to the informal economy,11 where they largely serve as petty traders. In comparison, men with lower educational qualifications are able to access more valuable skilled jobs, acquired through local apprenticeships; men’s work often requires rudimentary literacy and numeracy skills that they have acquired at school while women’s jobs do not seem to have such requirements.
Defining the Informal Economy
Millions of people throughout the developing world fend for their livelihood everyday
on the streets. Describing this facet of economic activities, Coletto (2010) notes that in the
metropolitan areas of Africa, Latin America and Asia, street walks, marketplaces and small
harbors represent critical spaces for the exchange of goods and services. Economic activities in
this sector are by no means uniform and can be, at best, described as heterogeneous with trades
11 Numerous definition of the term informal economy exists. In this study it is employed to mean ( drawing from Kahasnobis & Ostrom, 2006) to refer to that sector of a country’s economy which is not registered and exist legally outside of the tax net. 135 and occupations ranging from those of street vendors, to artisans, shoe-shiners and garbage collectors.
No single definition of the phenomenon exists but the formal-informal dichotomy is prominent in economic analyses and particularly those of the International Labor Organization
(ILO). Guha-Kahasnobis and Ostrom (2006) asserted that there is neither a clear, nor a consistent definition of the concept across a range of theoretical, empirical and policy analyses.
They noted that there are numerous definition of the term, however, and those can be grouped into two strands of thoughts. First is the notion that informal enterprises are those “that are not registered and are legally outside of the tax net” (p.4). The second strand has to do with the structural arrangement or organization of informal enterprises. In this respect, informal enterprises are described as lacking structure or organization compared to formal enterprises.
Formal enterprises, for example, have officially employed, conscripted, salaried and organized workforces.
Within the informal economy, there are generally two kinds of activities. These are those associated directly or indirectly to industrial and service work in more formal settings.
Examples include micro-enterprises and subcontracting arrangements, survival activities organized at the household level and itinerant workers like street vendors (Benería, 2001). The later categories characterize the bulk of peri-urban Gambian women’s economic activities in the informal economy, with the majority of them serving as mainly street vendors.
Despite the lack of consensus on the meaning of the term “informal economy,” this sector has experienced growth worldwide and is also affected by global economic processes that include liberalization of trade, investment and capital flow and technological changes
(Coletto, 2010). However, the global processes that Coletto (2010) identified as affecting
136 informal sector work have not been fully felt by the majority of peri-urban Gambian women whose informal economy activities mainly revolve around small scale vending of basic commodities and comestibles.
Women’s Participation in the Informal Economy in Developing Societies
Although there are historical sources on the development of the informal economy in developing countries (see Sparkes & Barnett, 2010), they report little concerning the historical circumstances that account for women’s participation in it. Some studies point fingers at the
Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) that were introduced by the IMF and World Bank in the 1980s and 1990s. It is worth noting that even such analyses are without problems. Baden
(1993) explained that it may be problematic to empirically examine the role that SAPs had played in women’s participation in the informal economy given the lack of gender disaggregated employment or economic activity data for many countries ( lack of data is more so the case in sub-Saharan Africa).
The bulk of studies available on women’s participation in the informal economy, however, tend to buttress the argument that there has been increased participation of women in economic activities and to emphasize women’s dual economic contributions at the family and national levels (Chant, 2007; Dolan, 2005). These studies also tend to point out the fact that despite women’s increased participation in income generating activities, their productivity level is low compared to men. Several causal factors for this phenomenon are evoked: women’s primary responsibility for reproductive and care-giving functions and their overall lack of access to and control over valuable economic resources and human capital, to cite only two.
Becker (2004) outlined several factors that may have given birth to the development of the informal economy in emerging economies and all of these factors might have either directly
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or indirectly triggered women’s participation in this sector of economic life. The factors
include: (1) the limited capacity of agriculture and the formal economy to absorb surplus labor,
together with increasing numbers of job seekers, (2) the weak capability of formal institutions
to provide education, training and infrastructure as well as other incentives for structural
reforms has contributed to the growth of the informal economy and (3) Structural Adjustment
Programs during the eighties and nineties have fuelled the growth of the informal economy in
developing countries. Factors (2) and (3), mentioned above deserve further explanation, as they
are frequently mentioned in the literature.
The weak capability of formal institutions to provide education and job training
opportunities that are linked to the formal economy could itself exert pressure on women to
assume economic functions in the informal economy. In many countries of the global South,
women have relatively lower educational attainments than men. High educational qualification
are an essential element for participation in formal sector jobs but many women do not possess
that level of qualification (Chant, 2007). Women with low educational qualifications are
nonetheless faced with numerous economic responsibilities in caring for their family and thus
their motivation to participation in income generating activities outside of the formal economy
is strong.
Numerous scholars have asserted that Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) during the eighties and nineties contributed to have sparking the growth of the informal economy in developing countries and women’s participation in this sector of the economy (Chant, 1994;
Deshpande & Deshpande, 1992; Hobbs, 2007; Onyenechere, 2011). First, the dismissal of public servants due to the downsizing of the public sector and the promotion of private enterprises by
SAP measures impelled many women to assume more visible roles transcending their
138 reproductive and family care functions in order to ensure the livelihood of their families. In a similar vein, Perry (2005) claimed that in Senegal and The Gambia the market fluctuations brought about by Structural Adjustment in the 1980s and 1990s led women to assert their rights to attend the Louma (weekly market) and achieve more economic autonomy. Additionally. Patel
(1994, p. 30) described the negative consequences of SAPs on women in India and their impact on women’s participation in the informal economy thus:
“Reduction in paid work of women makes women hunt for the cheapest resources for sustenance of the household. Casualisation of urban working class women in the organized manufacturing industry (textile is a glaring example) has forced thousands of women to eke out their subsistence through petty trading activities (officially known as an 'informal sector occupation)”.
Second, although gender inequality in developing countries certainly existed before the
introduction of SAPs, the effects of SAPs and the policy climate they create were inimical to
the promotion of social programs and measures to address gender inequality issues (Cliff, 1992;
Jere-Mwiindilila, 1994; Mehra, 1991; Patel 1994; Tsikata, 1995). With women constituting the
poorest of the poor in developing countries, the SAP measures brought immense suffering to
them because of increases in the prices of goods and services as a result of the devaluation of
local currency (see Jere-Mwiindilila, 1994, on the case of Zambian women; Cliff, 1991 for a an
overall analysis of the impact of SAPs on South African women and Tanski, 1995, on the
situation of Latin American women). These effects were particularly severe in the case of
female-headed households since the women involved are responsible for providing all of the
household’s basic needs (Due & Gladwin, 1991).
Empirical research cited above has established a nexus between the Structural
Adjustment Programs (SAPs) and women has increased participation in the informal economy,
motivated in good part by the need to for generate income for basic household survival.
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Women continue to play significant economic roles in the family through their participation in the informal economy. Perry (2005) noted that around the world, in both urban and rural locales, women are shifting into petty trade, factory work, and service jobs in order to ameliorate the poverty in their households. Women's access to the cash economy in Ghana, as a microcosm of other Africa countries, contributes significantly to the economic standing of households in which children are being brought up (Lloyd & Gage-Brandon, 1993) and thus their economic contributions have lessened the extent to which poverty would have cost poor households. Their contributions are not only limited to the family but also affect national economic growth. In developing countries, there is in fact, a significant overlap between being a woman working in the informal sector and contributing to national growth (Chen, 2006).
Currently and in The Gambia, the hike in the prices of basic commodities such as food and other fundamental needs like shelter and education has been the driving force behind women’s increased participation in income generating activities to bolster their family incomes.
Levels of Women’s Participation in the Informal Economy in Sub-Saharan Africa
Throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, women’s Productive gender roles are mainly restricted to the informal economy, where they commonly earn income as domestic workers, helpers, street vendors, and cleaners (Finnegan & Singh, 2004). It is estimated that in Sub-
Saharan Africa overall, 84 percent of women participate in the informal sector in non- agricultural employment (Dolan, 2005). In Tanzania, for instance, it is estimated that 34 percent of women are engaged in informal sector activities at any given point of time in the year. The proportion is however much higher in urban areas such as Dar es Salaam, with 55 percent of women employed in informal jobs (Becker, 2004). In Ghana, female participation in the informal economy is a common phenomenon throughout both urban and rural areas and is
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an issue of survival, due to the high cost of living and educational expenses (Sackey, 2005).
Similar patterns were observed in Cameroon, where a high proportion of women participate in
the informal sector and juggle their Productive responsibilities with their roles as homemakers,
mothers, and income earners (Fonchingong, 2005). In Benin, in a survey conducted in 1992 in
10 major cities, street vendors constituted 80.7 percent of all economic units enumerated in
urban areas; women constituted 75.2 percent of all street vendors; and female street vendors
represented more than a quarter of the urban informal labor force (Charmes, 1998).
In the case of peri-urban Gambian women, and as discussed in Chapter 4, this study reveals a high level of women’s participation in paid work, mainly through self-employment in small scale and low-income-generating businesses in the market and neighborhoods. This characteristic is consistent with Baden’s (1998) affirmations and in her poignant highlighting of the disadvantage that pertains to women’s petty trading activities. Baden (1998) asserted that women and men have different positions in marketing systems and the difference manifests itself in the marketing chain and organizational form. She further noted that in West Africa (Ghana and Guinea) women dominate private food trading, and are a tiny although highly visible minority of wholesalers. This situation is echoed in Tanzania, where women are found in low profit, small-scale food marketing, and processing, and in Zimbabwe, women control retail marketing of fresh produce bought from male wholesalers in central urban markets (Baden,
1998).
Although the number of women entrepreneurs who own manufacturing enterprises is increasing in Africa, there is wide variation across countries. For instance, fewer than 10 percent of women own manufacturing enterprises with at least 10 employees in Kenya, Morocco,
Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania, but this number rises up to 40 percent or more in Botswana,
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Cameroon, Cape Verde, and Mozambique (Bardas, Blackden, & Gunzman, 2007). None of the women who participated in this study own a manufacturing or service industry that employs other women, given their low economic status. However, a similar pattern observed by Bardas
(2007) may prove applicable to The Gambia.
Women’s participation in the informal economy in Africa is mainly limited to buying and selling at a small scale, because they don’t have access to the capital that enables men to purchase processed food in urban markets at wholesale prices for subsequent retail and profit.
Stein (2009) observed that:
Gambian markets are hives of activity, but the women often have only a handful of goods to sell. Small clumps of tomatoes, chili peppers, tiny bananas, garlic, plants from the forest and ground nuts are spread out on plastic rice sacks and burlap bags in the hope that they will be purchased by the end of the day (p.22).
Figure 13: Archetypical market offerings and inventory of women in peri-urban Gambia
Stein’s observation was in rural Gambia but arguably, both urban and rural women suffer from the poverty of cash that limits women to small-scale trading activities. All three sources of data (survey, focus group discussions and in-depth interviews) of this study reveal a wide variety
142 of peri-urban Gambian women’s petty trading activities in the market and in their neighborhoods. Overall, more than three-quarters of the survey respondents fend for a living from the informal economy and about a quarter of them are not working. In the case of petty trading activities, 56 percent of the women are participants. Further analysis shows that of those women in petty-trading, 72 percent sell comestibles and local beverages, including seafood and vegetable vendors. A small percentage are in the locally-made soap and tie-dye business, or are frequent travelers to Senegal where they buy clothes, shoes, jewelry and cosmetics for re-sale in
The Gambia (18 percent). Outside of petty trading activities, 20 percent of the women work as domestic servants in hotels, offices, and households of affluent community members. Only 24 percent were not participating in any income-generating activity during the time of this study due to lack of capital to start-up a business. A focus group participant typified women’s productive activities in peri-urban Gambia and advanced a rationale behind women’s participation in productive work:
The role of women has changed. Formerly women had a lot of leisure time to relax at home in the evenings. This is hardly the case anymore. Mostly women are in the retail business as petty traders. We sell everything from cooked food, smoked fish, fresh fish, meat, incense, rice, cosmetics, low cost sewing materials to firewood, and the list goes on and on. Some men leave the family upkeep to the women. Nonetheless women keep on working hard. I wake up at 5:00 am every morning; mostly, only women are up that early. Women are everywhere plying some trade, at the market, at schools and at home. Business is not easy as goods are very expensive, and it is very difficult to make a profit. However, we do take care of some expenses in the household, like giving lunch money to the children [translated from Mandinka to English by the researcher].
Another study participant echoed the interest of women in financially contributing towards their families’ wellbeing. She describes her productive activities accordingly:
I rise at 5:00 am to prepare food to sell. My main motivation is to earn enough to contribute D100 daily to a saving scheme. Work is on a daily basis; Saturday is my only day of rest. I have nine children with my husband of a family-arranged marriage, and we lived in an extended family setup with his parents and several siblings. I started selling very early on to support this family and endured a lot of criticism due to rivalry from my
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husband’s brother’s wives. We moved to our own home after he opened up his own workshop but matters only eased up a little. I continue to sell food and support the family by providing transport fares, school lunch money to the children, and some of the food that I make to sell. I buy twelve cups of rice every day for the family lunch and charcoal for cooking. Men learn to depend on their hardworking women to provide for family needs, and sometimes stretch this benevolence to the limit [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
A persistent theme throughout this study’s discussions with study participants is the hardships the women endure as they contribute economically to their families -- for the sake of
God and for their families, but not for a husband’s pleasure. Many married women live in an extended family set-up, where they are expected to provide nutritious food for the whole family from the proceeds of their petty trading. “In spite of all the efforts and sacrifice, the women receive little or no gratitude from the members of an extended family set-up,” a focus group participant asserted.
Results of the survey also reveal that women’s involvement in informal sector work is linked to whether they are married, single, or are responsible for supplementing the family’s income. For instance, single women formed the majority of the study participants who do not perform productive work compared to married women as reported in Chapter 4.
Women’s Literacy and Numeracy Practices in Productive Activities
The everyday literacy and numeracy practices of the women observed in their Productive gender roles are those geared towards the running of petty trading activities. The increased participation of women in the informal economy has to some extent expanded their interaction with literacy and numeracy. Within the informal economy, and as noted below by one focus group participant, the practices mostly revolve around record keeping of their petty trading activities.
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Some women write. In my shop I record sales and keep track of stock on a daily basis. Women who don’t write are very gifted in keeping records mentally. They keep detailed records of every transaction. It is however better to keep written records of those business transactions as some default in payments. Sales are mostly on installment basis. Records will show any down payment and every partial payment up to the end for each and every transaction. The bigger the business the better it is to keep written records. When we travel overseas (mostly Senegal), we mostly have to make written declaration of goods at customs posts at borders. Unless the quantities are recorded, you could misdeclare the amounts and end up in trouble with clearing your goods [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
The focus group participants also surmised that many women are now mobile hawkers – a more aggressive strategy than relying on families and friends to sell items. One focus group participant explains this new business strategy among petty traders and how literacy and numeracy skills neatly fit into that strategy:
I am a mobile hawker. I sell perfume, soap and cheap basic necessities on a credit basis. I visit the markets and homes and give out credit and go around daily to collect partial payments, which I have to record in order to know the status of each transaction. With my earnings, I take care of my needs and those of my children [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Study participants confirm that those women who are not literate and numerate do manage their petty trading activities through mental records, and they have been very effective in it.
Other women seek help from others if they must read, write, or perform written calculations.
The five women who took part in the ethnographic phase of the study provide fodder for the uses and needs, or lack thereof, for literacy and numeracy in executing productive activities.
Their cases also situate literacy and numeracy practices within the daily reality of the women concerned.
Isatou, a Grade Five School Dropout and a Janitor
Isatou, 39 years old, like many women of her age who participated in this study, has limited formal schooling. She dropped out of school in grade five because she was asked to repeat the grade, due to poor results in the promotion examination to grade six. She has very low
145 reading and numeracy skills, as shown by survey results and confirmed by my own observation.
Apart from spelling her own name and a few of her children’s, Isatou can hardly remember how to read or write. She worked as a waitress for her first job, and was able to take orders from customers and prepare bills at that time. Reminiscing, Isatou explains:
I did not do well in school and was told to repeat grade five, but I chose to drop out instead. I got a job as a waitress, at which I did quite well. I prepared my own bills for customers, adding up and listing the drinks served. Now I have forgotten all of that. The longer you stay away from using literacy skills the more you forget. It would take us back to learning in any adult learning program for many women of my situation to recall lost skills [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Currently, Isatou works as a janitor at a government office. Her husband earns a meager income as an auto mechanic in a local garage. She is swamped with financial responsibility and needs an additional source of income to support her family. Consequently, she has decided, with the financial support of her elder sister, to run a shop at her house where she sells basic items such as food seasoning, batteries, sugar, green tea, and candies. Managing both jobs proves harder for her than women who live in an extended family set-up and can occasionally enjoy the support of extended family members in carrying out household chores. Isatou has to juggle both
Reproductive and Productive activities by herself, since she lives in a nuclear family. Her daily routine includes cooking meals for the family after her cleaning job. She described her daily routine thus:
When I wake up, I wash up and give my children a bath, and then I rush to get on a certain transport that takes me to Banjul for work at a lower cost than the public transport. At the office, I clean, that is sweep the offices, corridors and stairways. It is then breakfast time and depending on my shift, I close at 12:00 or at 2:00 pm. When I get home I clean the house and start to cook the day’s meal. After, I open the shop [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Although she currently possesses low reading and writing abilities, Isatou interacts a lot with print materials at the office where she works as a cleaner. She explains that her work offers
146 her the opportunity to speak English with co-workers and to also recognize the titles of documents, to decide their importance while cleaning offices. “I have been doing this job for so long; therefore I am familiar with the titles of our important documents in the office,” she noted.
She claimed that she is sometimes sent to other offices in her department to request a certain file or document and when asked to bring a file, she makes sure that she remembers the names of such files until the task is done. I could tell from my interaction with Isatou that she has amassed quite a dense vocabulary from her job as a cleaner. One such word is “gratuity” which came out many times in our discussions about retirement. Isatou enunciate this word quite well and knows its meaning. At the social security office where she works, “gratuity” and pension are everyday words, she stated.
Isatou has a bank account as required for receiving her monthly salary, as is now the case at many institutions that have transferred monthly payment activities to banks for efficient administration. Although she is quite familiar with banking procedures, she does not know how to write check. At the bank, she seeks help to write her checks, but not anybody in the open hall because she does not wish to be known as illiterate. “I wish to be counted as literate. I have at least been to school and I wish through my own effort to improve on my status,” she stated.
As a novice in running a store, Isatou lacks business management experience and with low numeracy skills, she is incapable of accurately keeping account of the sales from her store.
During one visit to her store, we discussed record keeping for her business and she responded:
I have not yet started keeping records of the shop’s business transactions because I don’t have the ability to record sales and stock of items that need purchase. Although a lot of women without literacy and numeracy skills can do mental calculations without any writing, I would sooner or later need someone to help me keep records of the business. It is hard for me to know the profit made on each item or even the overall profit made from sales, since I am selling different things in this store, as you can see. I can tell by looking at the store, though, that the business is improving since I only started out with a few items and the store is growing. I have tried many businesses like the selling of food for
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dinner in the neighborhood but I have always failed in those. Hopefully, this store will keep improving [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Figure 14: Isatou at her shop
One of the greatest challenges facing school drop-outs like Isatou is the lack of avenue to practice and retain basic literacy and numeracy skills. The nature of their productive activities does not often oblige them to perform literacy and numeracy activities as they can fall back on mental calculations and recording without problem. As Isatou noted above, many non-literates have not been able to maneuver tasks involving reading, writing, and written numeracy in their petty trading activities. In running their businesses, they have successfully resorted to mental calculations. Although Isatou’s goal is to expand her business and actually retire from her other job as a janitor if she is successful in it, she relies on chance rather than wield the financial literacy and numeracy tools that many would consider necessary to ensure the smooth running and growth of her business.
Ida, the Emerging Businesswoman
Ida’s case contrasts with Isatou in portraying a situation where reading, writing and numeracy skills are frequently applied in the productive activities of a school drop-out. Ida is 23 years old. Her mother told me that Ida had been gifted in school. Her father passed away when
148 she was in early primary school, leaving her mother as the sole breadwinner of the family. Ida dropped out of school in the ninth grade, after passing the national examination for senior secondary school because she lacked financial sponsorship.
Ida got married two years after she dropped out of school. As a young mother of three, she has learned to financially support her children’s education in order to give them a chance she never had. She is actively involved in the informal economy as a petty trader to ward-off financial difficulties. Ida explains that her husband is poor, because he too is from a poor family background. Given her financial situation and that of her spouse, she wasted no time engaging in income-generating activities for her family. From the beginning of her business adventure, she takes goods from women who are already well established in their businesses (like those who go to Senegal, Dubai and China to buy goods) and she then goes house-to-house to sell those items to the people she knows for a markup of D5 dalasis on top of the price on each item. Ida explains that the uses of reading, writing, and numeracy are vital in her petty trading activity.
She disclosed her business strategy and its high demand for literacy and numeracy thus:
When I receive the goods, the owners write down the name and prices of the items they are giving me, and I note down that same information on my record book as well. Then I take the goods to my clients. Some women will pay for the goods they have taken from me right away, and others will credit them from me until at a later day when they have cash to pay. I need to keep records of those who purchased on credit, and the prices of the goods they credited. It takes about two weeks for me to finish selling the goods to my customers, and I return the money to the women from whom I got the items for sale. I am always careful when it comes to getting the women their monies. I have to maintain credibility at all times, because a little mistake might lead them to stop giving me their goods [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
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Figure 15: Ida at her store
Figure 16: Ida’s record book
Ida asserts that her ability to read, write, and perform numeracy activities greatly aids her in her business. She needs to record business transactions to avoid forgetting from whom she
150 received goods and respective prices, since she works with different wholesalers. More importantly, she needs to know who has paid off the credit, which she identifies (as seen in
Figure 16) by scratching off the names in her book. Ida has been quite successful and decided to open her own store where she sells basic goods, ribbons and threads, and second-hand clothing and cookware from Europe.
Ida also applies literacy and numeracy in her second-hand goods business. During one of my visits, she received a phone call from the second-hand store regarding a new consignment.
Ida wasted no time in getting ready and invited me to accompany her to the store, where she moved around with her calculator while negotiating the prices of cartons of dinnerware that she wanted to buy. Before she buys any goods, Ida exercises numeracy skills to ensure that her retail prices (with profit margin included) will remain within the purchasing power of her customers.
When we returned to her house, Ida recorded the store prices of the items she had bought. She does not separate the money she earns from the sale of the second-hand goods from those of her consigned goods for easy cash flow, but insisted that this does not confuse her.
Fatou, Mother of Nine, Food Seller and President of a school’s Mother’s Club
Fatou, a forty-six year old, had completed four years of primary education when she was withdrawn from school to help her elder married sister. She reasons that her parents, like most others, did not see any point in educating a girl child at that time. They were also poor, so could hardly afford the cost. Her mother sold foodstuff to supplement her father’s meager earnings. “It is often said that I take after my mother’s love for petty trading,” she noted. She is a food vendor at a school, and president of the Mother’s Club.12
12 The Mother’s Club is a brainchild of the Forum for the African Woman Educationalist (FAWEGAM) Gambia chapter. It was formed for increasing parental participation in the educational system as stakeholders. 151
In addition to her limited formal education, Fatou has participated in an adult literacy program. After her group of school vendors joined the Mother’s Club, she started to appreciate the utility of education in daily activities. For instance, learning to recognize numbers could enable her to make phone calls on her own. She would also be able to read text messages, through literacy classes in Wolof or Mandinka. Due to her keen interest in this program, Fatou learned to read and write in Wolof. At an event that showcased adult learning at the National
Assembly, Fatou was randomly selected to read aloud from a second grade English book, which she reportedly did very well. The literacy class Fatou attended was in Wolof and Mandinka, and participants had to choose one of the languages. Later on, some adult learners thought it wise to learn to read in English, because few official documents are written in Wolof or Mandinka. She reported that the regional Education Office agreed to the community proposal for English literacy classes.
As the result, Fatou is able to read a paragraph of sentences used in everyday life, and can also multiply and divide with remainders (as the survey results on literacy and numeracy has shown). It was not clear how much her test performance is confounded by her early participation in formal schooling, although her ability to read in Wolof is apparently a recently acquired skill.
As a mother of nine, and given her husband’s unstable job and meager income, Fatou is resolved to provide for her family’s daily bread. She continuously emphasized how hard times have made women work harder to help supplement the family income and to give their daughters a chance for schooling to avoid the economic dependence or struggles within the informal economy faced by themselves.
Women are involved in all sorts of petty trading. This is because parents were not keen to educate the girl child, and only aspired to getting them married at the first opportunity. Work is now necessary to take care of our families in circumstances that become increasingly difficult every day. Families are larger, girls as well as boys are in school,
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the father’s income does not suffice for all these needs and times are harder. The women therefore must do something to supplement the family income. Even at the fish landing sites, women work as off-loaders [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
When her house flooded due to heavy rain, Fatou moved with her family to another community in Serekunda where she found herself a stall on a busy highway to sell breakfast and lunches. She claims that her character does not allow her to sell anything but food, thus:
All the petty trading I have done is selling food which I cook at home, and prepare fruit juices to go along. I don’t think my character will let me do other types of business, like buying goods from Senegal and selling these on credit. I easily feel sorry for someone in need. With the food sale business, the prices are affordable and the occasional borrower can easily pay [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
She sells a variety of comestibles which include rice, beans, sauces with liver and
“accra”- snacks made out of beans. Fatou serves coffee and tea when the weather is not hot, but mostly serves local fruit juice (wonjo) and cold water. She is a shrewd petty trader, particularly in her marketing strategy. Fatou changes her menu every other day to sustain her customers’ appetites – learning from two decades of experience in the local food industry. She also understood that her business involves meeting people of all types, so she was patient, open, and humble in her interaction with clients.
At her stall, Fatou has many clients who regularly gather for breakfast and lunch. She did not employ any visible literacy and numeracy skills (e.g. use of calculator) in her business transactions, even when returning change to her clients who gave her big denominations sometimes. Fatou employed mental calculations in her business transactions and never even recorded her credits. She committed every business transaction to memory and was very confident and comfortable with her mental calculation and recording skills. Although it took her
153 some time to mentally calculate her customers’ change, it appeared that Fatou would continue to cling to her mental calculation technique.
Figure 17: Fatou at her store
Fatou also does little writing in her role as the president of the Mother’s Club and in her personal life. Although the group has a book listing all members, and another book for fines and late charges, the group secretary handles those matters. Fatou reckons that the kind of business she does can be effectively carried out without any literacy or written numeracy skills. She noted, “It feels good to be literate but I have not found much use for it in my trading activities.”
Kaddy, the Seamstress
Kaddy is 47 years old and never had formal schooling. She noted that when she was young, the prevailing cultural climate did not accommodate Western education, particularly among Muslim families. Thus, her parents never sent her to school. However, through her persistent efforts, she learned how to read by attending night school from 8:00 to 10:00 pm, and
154 by joining her neighbors in receiving reading lessons from her neighbor’s father, a fire service officer. Kaddy’s self-directed learning is largely spurred by her desire to understand more about her Islamic religion and how to serve God.
Kaddy was also determined to learn some livelihood, since she had never gone to school.
She taught herself how to sew clothes at a very early age. Kaddy explained her love for sewing and how she learned the trade:
I was not taken anywhere to learn how to sew clothes. When I was very young, I would take my personal clothes and cut them into pieces, and would later join the piece to create a beautiful design. When one of my wrappers went missing, my mother would keep asking for it. I wouldn’t say anything to her for fear of a beating, until I had sewn it into a different style. My sister was the one who closely monitored my passion for sewing and fashion design. She gave me my first hand sewing machine. That was how I started sewing clothes by machine, and learned from experience as I continued sewing. Presently, there is no style that I have difficulty in sewing. I continued sewing even when I was married and stayed in Senegal with my husband [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
In addition to sewing, Kaddy used to braid hair and work in a salon. She stopped the salon work, however, when she gathered from an Islamic sermon that braiding, and particularly the addition of synthetic hair, is sinful; and that such a sin would be shared equally between the customer and the hairstylist.
While in her 40s, Kaddy attended an adult literacy program in her community sponsored by a development institution through the Women’s Bureau. In order to accommodate the busy schedule of its participants, classes were conducted from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Kaddy focused on the interesting program through which she was able to improve her literacy and livelihood skills. She lamented that not all the members of the literacy program could attend the livelihood skills portion. She was however the only one selected from her group (of thirty women) to attend regional livelihood skill training, and was tasked with
155 transmitting that knowledge to other group members. In that training, Kaddy received skill training in tie-dyeing, pepper sauce-making, and bag weaving. She explains that the program ceased due to the high attrition rate:
The program stopped because people stopped attending at some point. I heard that the attrition rate was high because the adult learners did not think the program was important. They had joined the program thinking that participants would be loaned money to start a business. Some of the drop-outs returned when officers from the sponsoring institution came with some funds to loan to women. After the participants got their money, they never returned to the adult literacy class. Some of them have paid back their loans, but most women defaulted in their loan payments. At some point, it was only my sister-in- law and I who were attending the class. It was closed because it was not cost efficient to teach only two people in a program designed for 20-30 people. The program was in Wolof and Mandinka [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
The above excerpt confirms what many scholars have perceived to be a fundamental problem affecting literacy programs: high attrition rates and the perceived irrelevance by adult learners. In Kaddy’s explanation above, participants were drawn to the program not by the need for literacy skills but to access capital to improve or start a business. Kaddy was offered a loan, but did not take it because she learned that Islam forbids loans with interest. She further reveals that some women who were given a D4000 loan ended up paying D6000 whether they had profited from their business or not.
When the researcher requested to see the literacy program textbooks, Kaddy laughed and confessed that she had long misplaced them. “The books are good, but I know almost everything that was written in the textbooks, and they do not contain information that I would need to go back and check,” she stated.
Some days preceding the Eid Adha celebrations, Kaddy was swamped with orders to sew for the celebrations. She lamented that some customers bring their fabric to her two days before the feast and expect her to sew them, when she needed at least two weeks. She found sewing to
156 be very tiring and had been known to sleep the feast away in the past, because she had overworked herself to satisfy her customers.
Figure 18 : Kaddy takes measurements of one of her customers
In addition to her sewing business, Kaddy also makes and sells tie-dye and woven bags, although she profits more from her seamstress work. She contends that running a business in The
Gambia is constrained by a lot of factors, including the “credit menace.” She explains that customers would buy goods on credit and never pay in full or pay very slowly on an installment basis. To avoid giving away her goods on (non-paid) credit she now takes orders only from people who pre-buy all the materials needed for tie-dye. She is thus able to earn a commission.
In her seamstress work, Kaddy uses some basic literacy skills. Before sewing any clothes, she first takes the customers’ measurements and cuts their fabrics accordingly. She boasts about her gift in measuring, and is proud that customers hardly need to return for a fitting when she has finished sewing their clothes:
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Measuring and recording goes together. I note down the measurements I am taking to avoid confusion and sewing clothes for my customers using the wrong measurements. I keep a book for recording the name of customers, the date they brought in their textile, and the type of textile and color they gave me. The reason for all those details is that I sew clothes for many customers, particularly before the celebrations of big feasts like Eid Mubarak and Adha. My ability to record and read measurements helps my business. I can’t imagine how anyone can be a good seamstress without good measurement skills [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Kaddy also applies literacy in her tie-dye business. She has to measure the number of meters she needs from the fabric to be dyed, as well as the amount of dye and caustic soda needed. She also has to measure all of the patterns drawn on the fabric, to make sure that they are of the same size. Kaddy stated that precision in measurement is key in the tie-dye business, and recalled the year when her women’s group was invited to showcase products for sale during the celebration of International Literacy Day. In this event, her tie-dye sample stood out; the judge declared her product as one of the best not only for color combination but also for the patterns of equal size across the fabric that she had designed. She stated that even in making soap one has to measure the amount of soda needed and other chemicals to use. To emphasize the essence of measurement, she stated:
Measurement is important in many of our daily activities. It takes so little literacy and numeracy competence for one to be able to measure and record accordingly. These are the little things I believe women need to learn [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Concerning her personal uses of literacy, Kaddy reads an English translation of the Quran when she has finished the day’s tasks. “I want to know more about my religion; that interest made me fond of reading the Koran,” she stated. Kaddy also has a habit of organizing her medical papers in a file. She does that because she wants to know exactly where to find them when they are needed. “I love to see myself organized, and I strive to organize my personal documents to keep them in good condition,” she noted.
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Figure 19: Kaddy discussing her uses of literacy and numeracy
When questioned on her self-directed learning, Kaddy noted that her strong will, self- determination, and passion to learn were contributing factors. She also disclosed that she has valued literacy since she was a child:
I have long associated literacy and education in general with high class status. When I saw my playmate going to school and speaking English, I told myself that I too would learn how to read and write so that I could feel important. I was lucky to have met a good guy whom I called my father, because he was my childhood friends’ father. He was the one who taught me how to read and write; he basically set the foundation for my learning and encouraged my endeavor to learn. He even went to the extent of punishing me if I refused to learn or caused noise in the study room [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Kaddy stated that she is progressing in her learning by habitually reading her books on
Islam. She also asserted that since she is very inquisitive and often consults her dictionary, she is not forgetting the words and their spelling. She listens to the news in English and claims that this also aided her acquisition and development of English language vocabulary.
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Binta, Secondary School Drop-out and Market Vendor
Binta is 24 years old, and one of seven children in a polygamous family. She and her siblings all attended formal schooling, but she was the only one among three sisters who has some secondary school education. One sister wasn’t doing well in school, and her father transferred her to Arabic school but she eventually dropped out. Her elder sister got married before going to secondary school, and dropped out immediately as a result. Her brothers also attended school, but only one of them reached secondary school and is yet to graduate.
While in secondary school, Binta also got married -- to one of her extended family members residing in Europe. Binta was yet to have a child in a marriage that was in fact complicated by the time of the study and she was not sure if it would last. She disclosed that she did not like being married to a family member, moreover to someone she doesn’t know, but was compelled by an uncle:
When they were marrying off my sister, his attention was shifted to me. My first reaction to that marriage proposal was that I am going to school and want to further my education. No one would listen though. My uncle said that I was too young to decide about my life, particularly with regards to whom and when I should get married. When I could not continue my schooling, I got frustrated. At some point, I decided to sell fruits and vegetables with my mother, in hopes of raising some money to take care of my daily expenses and also to help the family. That was how I got more acquainted with my mother’s business. Before this time and when I was going to school, I helped her to sell vegetables during school holidays [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Prior to her petty trading at the market, Binta taught children at a kindergarten in her community. At the school, she had the opportunity to receive English classes from the school principal. The school closed, however, when the proprietor returned to the United Kingdom.
Compelled to financially assist her mother, Binta became a market vendor and sold vegetables, mainly tomatoes, carrots, cucumber, salads, green bell pepper, or any vegetable that the women gardeners bring to the market. She lamented the denigration that she suffers from her
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(former) school friends who consider her income-generating activity to be a trade for the non- educated:
Girls often consider themselves above market women because they are educated. Market women live quite well and eat very well. You have access to money all the time to take care of your needs. Unemployed women can only resort to begging, borrowing, or prostitution to meet their needs. If you drop out of school or can’t get office work, you are better off starting a little business of your own rather than relying on family for assistance [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
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Figure 20: Binta at the market setting her table to begin the day’s sales
Given her (partial) secondary level of schooling and having had to devise her own strategy to evade unemployment, Binta had lucid ideas of the problems affecting school-drop- out, and potential government measures to reduce youth unemployment:
Government is the biggest agency for development. They can place limits on tuition fees to make schooling affordable. Public school education for girls is supposedly free, when the cost of textbooks and other school needs are not included. However, if you cannot afford the D10, 000.00 fees and external exam fees charged in foreign currency after secondary school, then education is not free for girls. Parents can hardly afford to send their children to school after grade nine. Government needs a vast pool of educated youth to carry out its development agenda and thus should invest more in education [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
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Neither at home nor at the market did Binta make any use of literacy and written numeracy skills. As a small-scale retailer, she claims to not have written transactions to keep.
She has been observed in mental calculations for her petty trading activities. Unlike Ida who uses her literacy and numeracy skills for recording credit transactions to her customers, Binta does not work with credit from her customers. Her only literacy practice is to record her weekly contributions to a saving scheme organized by market vendors. Also, at the market, non-literate women occasionally ask her for help in calculating the cost of a product, something that she can do with the calculator on her cell-phone.
She acknowledges that she used to be more competent in reading when she was going to school. Currently, she can only follow and understand newspaper content with some difficulty.
Will her reading speed and ability decline further over time if she continues to lack the avenue to apply them? This is a critical question with a huge theoretical implication and for which empirical evidence is lacking, despite the empirical claims that point to the need for sufficient practice before a student can acquire automaticity, or the ability to read fluently without problem
(See Abadizi, 2006).
Summary
The findings presented here on the peri-urban Gambian women’s use of literacy and numeracy in their productive roles point out numerous instances of women’s uses of literacy and numeracy, albeit with some limitations. Although a few women in the study have the means to keep track of their business transactions using written numeracy, most women often resort to mental calculations. Some women admitted to mistakes and failure in their business endeavors, due to their lack of expertise in financial literacy.
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Throughout Africa and each passing day, women of Isatou’s socio-economic status are more involved in the informal economy to survive economic hardship. In some cases, the use of numeracy and particularly efficient record-keeping skills have added efficiency in managing a small-scale business as it expands. For example, Ida practices much writing and numeracy in taking goods from multiple wholesalers and noting the items and their value. She also needs numeracy to quickly calculate how much profit she will be able to generate before taking those goods to be sold to her neighbors.
Additionally, although many women entrepreneurs have good intuition of the kinds of business they should invest in, such as Nyima who chose to invest in tie-dye as a high-demand item, women tend to copy one another’s business ideas, thereby reducing the likelihood of making large profits. This problem may be attributed to the women’s lack of skills to creatively innovate ideas and strategies to run a business.
Women with low educational attainment are also constrained in their micro-financing and banking activities, due to lack of literacy and numeracy skills to monitor their financial transactions. This theme arose frequently in focus group discussions, as problems encountered by women in their economic activities. One participant noted:
Nowadays women are very much aware, compared to when they were not involved in banking at all. However, some women still face difficulties. For instance, you can be in business for twenty years without knowing your current account status. You may have a balance of D15,000 before taking out a loan of D30,000, and not know the interest charges on the loan. Getting a large loan is exciting, but you will end up servicing this loan for the next five or six years. Without basic literacy, one cannot understand simple banking. I have been in business for more than 15 years. I opened an account with a micro-financing institution and took a loan of D18, 000. From time to time I made withdrawals, not knowing the balance. When I needed money for my mother’s funeral, I asked for a withdrawal, only to be informed that I had a zero balance. I cried that day [translated from Mankinka to English by the researcher].
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This declaration illustrates the predicament of some women who are now participating in banking and micro-financing activities without the basic literacy skills needed for them to balance their accounts and to avoid the frustration and disappointment.
The five cases have added to understanding of women’s Productive activities and the related needs and uses of literacy and numeracy. The cases also justify the need for adult literacy and other types of learning opportunities for women to tap into the local socio-cultural and economic sources of knowledge. This is crucial for identifying women’s local needs for literacy, and particularly those skills to which they have assigned high value, those that fit their emerging commercial practices or add greater efficiency to existing ones.
Ida and Kaddy assigned higher value to literacy and numeracy skills in their petty trading activities than Fatou, Isatou and Binta who perform their productive activities without any need for literacy and written numeracy. This is astounding, particularly in the case of Binta, a secondary school drop-out. Her case argues against the high expectations of human capital theorists whose analyses seem to suggest that people with secondary schooling in developing countries are already set up to automatically find uses for literacy and numeracy. On the contrary, the research participants show that literacy uses do not automatically create themselves; these opportunities are created both by the nature of women’s work and the value that they assign to literacy and numeracy in the exercise of those functions. The nature of the work and the value of literacy and numeracy are arguably couched in socio-cultural context. For instance, although Fatou is literate and can undoubtedly apply it in her food business, she seems content to let her cultural knowledge guide her business transactions, something that she has acquired from her mother who was a food vendor as well.
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Additionally, this study finds that circumstances and personal ambitions create needs for literacy, as was the case of Kaddy, whose only source of motivation to keep learning was religion -- to better serve her God. Her case affirms one of Knowles’ (1973) four assumptions about adult learners – that their motivation is directed to more socially relevant learning. The challenge to the provision of relevant adult learning therefore lies in understanding not only how adults learn, but also their passions in life and how literacy and numeracy fit them.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
LITERACY AND NUMERACY UTILIZATION IN
WOMEN’S COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT GENDER ROLES
In this chapter, I provide an analysis of women’s community management gender roles and locate within this framework women’s uses of literacy and numeracy in those community management functions. The first part discusses the nature of women’s community management gender roles across Africa in order to provide a broad contextual background that would yield greater insights into the commonalities which feature in the contribution of women in their communities. The second part of the chapter then addresses the research question on what uses women have for literacy and numeracy in their community management gender roles. The chapter concludes with a summary of the key findings and lessons learned.
Women’s Community Management Gender Roles
Women’s Community Management gender roles incorporate all their endeavors towards the collective organization of social events and services. These social events broadly described involve ceremonies and celebrations, the mobilization of community resources for the improvement of communities, and the support of members’ wellbeing (Moser, 1989). Moser further noted that although these activities do take up a lot of time on the part of women, such engagements are often outside of the focus of most policy analyses that seek to improve the lives of women. The role of women in community management in Africa was vividly depicted by
Dimandja (2004) who asserted that the African mother is the bedrock upon which all the family and community structures rely. Her work transcends her reproductive roles of managing the household. Her work in a way involves the management of her entire community.
In this study, the participants asserted that women have always played important roles in their communities. As mothers, they assume and extend their nurturing and caretaking activities
166 beyond their households and into their communities. I observed that such efforts serve as a social support mechanism for dealing with the difficult circumstances women do face in their reproductive gender roles and for fashioning new relationships with other women in their communities from which they can gain mutual support. In explaining the rationale behind women’s community management gender roles, one of the focus group participants stated thus:
It is in the interest of every woman to contribute to the improvement of the community where she lives and especially those that concerns the wellbeing of her children. By coming together, women with less experience in managing a home can discuss with other more experienced women about how to manage trying times in their households and about the general wellbeing of our families. The lessons derived from such conversations are mostly didactic. At times also, women marry outside of the communities where they were born and thus one way of filling the vacuum family members would have filled if they were close is to forge new social relationship with other women. Some good relationships do later turn out into a family relationship. There is a common saying in our local languages that what one can do, two can do better. Therefore there is a genuine reason each time we make effort to collectively organize ourselves [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
The above perspective of the roles Gambian women play, relative to men, as mentors and community organizers demonstrates women’s strong sense of community. From a sociological perspective, Gambian women manifest a higher sense of group solidarity and participation in communal functions than their male counterparts (Phillotte-Almeida, 1994). Peer groupings tend to be very strong among men during adolescence but such social ties become quiescent during adulthood. On the other hand, the female social clubs mushroom into strong occupational or other interest groups such as vegetable growers' cooperatives and thrift and savings societies
(Phillotte-Almeida, 1994). Now that I have discussed women’s participation in community functions, I shall turn to the fundamentals of how they have applied literacy and numeracy in those communal functions.
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Literacy and Numeracy Uses in Women’s Community Management Gender Roles
Three overlapping themes relating to women’s community management gender roles and literacy and numeracy uses in this study were identified. These socio-economic functions entail the uses of literacy in the planning of social ceremonies; the accompanying record-keeping of financial contributions of family members, friends and neighbors for these social ceremonies; the uses of literacy and numeracy in the functioning of women’s weekly saving contributions; and women’s group activities of fund raising to mobilize resources to solve financial problems of collective concern. I first discuss from an anthropological perspective the essence of such socio- cultural and economic activities in the study’s setting and the uses of literacy and numeracy that were observed and confirmed in these domains. These themes are discussed below accordingly.
Women’s Participation in Social Ceremonies
The central roles that Gambian women play in social ceremonies cuts across all the ethnic groups that reside in the Gambia-from the Wolof to the Mandinka and from the Mandinka to the Fula to name but a few. Social ceremonies include naming, wedding, and funeral rites. In each of these types of ceremonies, it is customary for women to converge and render both financial support and services for family members, friends, or neighbors. Participation in these activities is socially compelling as one must participate for a similar gesture to be reciprocated when it is one’s turn. Failure to participate often results in a sanction of some kind and marked by community members’ blatant refusal to attend a social ceremony for anyone who has a record of being conspicuously absent. One of the ethnographic participants who was not feeling quite well on a particular day explained why she had to attend a naming ceremony:
As a member of the community, it is a part of my responsibility to attend social as well as religious ceremonies. Normally since I am not feeling well today, I could have sent someone to attend on my behalf. This particular woman who has a naming ceremony today had invited me to attend a wedding ceremony for her niece that was hosted at her house but I never was able to attend. If I repeat the same thing, she may think that I am 168
ignoring her and might deliberately choose to not attend any social event I may host in the future [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Contributions have traditionally taken the form of community members gathering at a host’s house and rendering assistance in food preparation, serving food, and cleaning utensils, as well as bringing financial contributions. In all the cultures of the ethnic groups noted above, it was customary for women to cook and bring food to ceremonies as their individual contributions, similar to the “potluck” custom in the United States. This gesture undoubtedly lessens the burden of the host to provide all the food for the gathering. One of the study participants noted that such practice is, however, dying out and only practiced by the Fulani:
Preparing food to take to ceremonies is a dying culture, which remains mostly with the Fulani. They contribute support of food of various kinds to any social event. Other ethnic groups are losing out more and more to conspicuous display of their financial contribution which is more for showcasing than to offer real support. The host would now rather hire a caterer and pay for the preparation of snacks than allow volunteers to prepare these [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
In order to confirm this perspective, another participant identified another variation in the dynamics of women’s participation in social ceremonies while noting that the cost of attending such social events can be very financially taxing on women. Hosts of social ceremonies nowadays distribute some amount of money to would-be guests, particularly for naming and wedding ceremonies. Guests who received this money are expected to bring an amount that multiplies and at least doubles that which they had received from the host during the time of the notification. These contributions are very often noted down. Some people do go as far as video recording the event just to know who attended and how much money they have contributed.
Life is more difficult and social contributions to events made very complicated. Notice of an event is made by distributing amounts to would-be guest who is expected to bring in moneys commensurate with multiples of the amount they had received at the time of notification. Matrons are selected in advanced of a wedding ceremony from many friends
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of the bride’s mother. Sisters of the groom also try very hard to outdo each other in a display of their wedding presents to the bride. All these are at a great cost and disadvantage to the selected/ appointed mother and sister for an event [translated from Mandinka to English by the researcher].
The changes highlighted by study participants that pertain to social relationships that govern community members’ interactions during social ceremonies and as well as the transformation of the nature of such ceremonies portray in a sense rapidly changing societies.
For instance, whereas in the past hosts of social ceremonies prepared food in their homes with the help of family, friends, and neighbors, many now opt for catering services to provide food for their events. I relied on a deeper understanding of such changes in social trend to observe and analyze the uses of literacy and numeracy in social ceremonies.
Literacy and Numeracy Uses in Social Ceremonies
The host’s budgeting of food and drinks was observed to be central in social ceremonies in the study’s setting. This entails conducting investigations on the current prices of key ingredients that are mainly imported food. Once that assignment is carried out, the next activity is to enumerate all the items and their current prices. The amount is then totaled up to gain an estimation of the cost of the items needed. A focus group participant noted the salience of this literacy and numeracy practice:
It is a common practice nowadays for people to calculate the cost of social ceremonies before they begin inviting people. This is very helpful in ensuring that an event’s host has an idea of the finances they would need to have an event covered. By doing a market research on the current prices of food items that we do not often buy in our daily cooking, it averts a situation of under budgeting and running into financial problems. Mostly people do understand that we live in hard times and will not be bothered if they are invited to a ceremony that they were told was going to be conducted at a low key and not served food and drinks. However if you invite people for a ceremony and make them believe that it would be extravagant, one must be prepared to serve enough food and drinks to guests to avoid becoming a laughing stock in the community. Many hosts have therefore resorted to budgeting for a better event planning [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
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I was invited by one of the study participants to observe one such budgeting activity for a naming ceremony. The event was conducted at the host’s house and attended by some of her immediate family members and a friend. The atmosphere was characterized by a lot of debating about the kinds of food to be prepared - what to include and what to omit from the menu - and how much money was needed for the event overall. Once an item was suggested to be included in the list of the things to buy, others would discuss whether that particular item was needed before it was listed. Due to the heavy volume of the budget to be prepared, a calculator was used.
Again, as it was always observed to be the case, the recording was done by one of the people present. In this case, it was the host’s sister who hardly went beyond grade 9 but has the most number of years of schooling of the group present. Although she was able to get most of the spellings of the items right, there were many times she had asked for help to spell the names of items. Collaboration was observed to be the norm in brainstorming for the correct spellings of the word. The spellings for one word (baking powder) however stirred-up some controversy and a prolonged argument ensued. It took the women several minutes before they finally settled on
“barking power.” In order to get past their argument of whether the item was correctly spelled, one of them remarked thus:
We should not waste our time on this (trying to get the spellings right). After all, the way it is spelled whether right or wrong would sound exactly like what we want to buy and whoever goes to the market with the list will remember [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
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Figure 21: Women budgeting for a naming ceremony
Figure 22: A copy of the shopping list
Recording of Financial Contributions from Family Members
In addition to the uses of literacy in event planning and budgeting, another use of literacy and numeracy was observed in the recording of contributions from family members, friends, and neighbors on the day of the ceremony. Contributions are recorded in a notebook with detailed information that includes the names of contributors and the amount contributed. As a common practice, contributors put their money in an envelope and write their names on it. The envelopes
172 might be presented by oneself or given to griots - a social class of people who are traditionally praise singers and transmitters of important messages for ceremonies and other social happenings in the community - who would then announced the names of contributors and the amount they have enclosed in their envelope. Often griots are asked to add congratulatory messages and words of gratitude when presenting envelopes. The presented envelope is then received by the individual who is assigned by the host to record the names of contributors and the amount they have brought.
Figure 23: A griot assigned to present financial contributions
Figure 24: A friend of the host recording financial contributions
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Figure 25: The contribution list
The recording of financial contributions provides a mnemonic device for hosts to remember who attended their function so that they could reciprocate with a similar gesture when it is their turn. I learned from my interaction with the women that there is also a new social code, though not written anywhere, for reciprocating a contribution. It is becoming socially unacceptable nowadays to give financial contributions less than what one previously received from community members. The amount that one contributes in such events is also defined by the type of relationship one has with a host and hence the importance of keeping a written record in order to avoid undervaluing one’s relationships with other people.
The uses of literacy and numeracy in the planning and administration of social ceremonies demonstrate that literacy and numeracy practices are embedded in socio-cultural life.
Thus they can be most effectively understood through the adoption of a socio-cultural lens for observing, analyzing, and documenting the relationships that guide the decorum in the
174 functioning of social ceremonies, the social uses of literacy, and the meaning people have assigned to literacy and numeracy in carrying out those functions.
The Dynamics and Functioning of Women’s Groups
As a reminder, women’s groups served as the principal hub for the selection of the study participants. Consequently, a lot of valuable information was garnered from this experience, the kind of information that is very sparsely represented in the literature on African women.
The work women perform in their social groups is one of the most pervasive and ubiquitous women’s community management responsibilities in the study’s setting. As a primary function, women’s groups offer the social structure for pooling household resources of members for collective saving and redistribution among members. From my observation of the dynamics of women’s groups and my interaction with the women themselves, women’s groups have other social functions; women serve as mentors to each other in discussing family life and events that affect them and their communities.
In peri-urban areas and throughout The Gambia, women’s groups have been vibrant and resilient in their mission to deliver various kinds of communal assistance to members. Seven of the ten women’s organizations who took part in the study are registered with the government and affiliated with the Federation of Gambian Women. These groups have access to government institutions and that contact sometimes materializes in their favor, particularly when there are opportunities for livelihood training and other benefits like occasional gifts of food, party supporter’s clothes, and accessories from the government. The government habitually uses the social infrastructure that already exists within women’s organizations to dispense resources for some social and livelihood programs that target low income and low literate women, such as adult literacy programs. One drawback to women’s groups being affiliated with the government
175 is the countless number of political rallies and other public functions organized by the government they have to attend. Their attendance at these functions is one way they seal their allegiance for more patronage. Women’s groups which are apolitical have far fewer opportunities to access such paybacks from government but are seemingly under no pressure to attend political gatherings.
The membership of these social groups varies by age and size and ranges from ten to more than hundred members per group. The group with the least membership in the study has twenty-five members. However, it is very atypical for there to be full attendance at any given meeting. Although the age group of 18-24 does have some presence in women’s groups, they were found to be the most underrepresented age group. Women in the age brackets of 30-39 and
40-49 formed the majority of members of most women’s groups in the study’s setting. It would appear that the subordinate position of young people relative to their elders might play a part in the underrepresentation of young women in women’s organizations. Another factor that may explain the older age of typical members is that older women carry heavier loads of economic burdens than younger ones and therefore their participation in women’s groups gives them access to a network for multiplying their savings through a revolving saving scheme locally called Oususu. Women’s groups generally serve as a platform for older and married women to discuss family and marriage and business strategies, thereby benefitting from funds of knowledge of their groups. Groups are mainly founded on common principles, shared values, and interests. Some groups comprise members of the same occupation while others mainly consist of neighbors and acquaintances. Only two of the women’s organizations who took part in the study are based on occupational affiliation: mother’s club of a school and association of
176 health workers mostly janitors. All the remaining eight groups are either family or neighborhood- based.
As a financial contribution for the Oususu scheme, weekly dues are collected. Weekly dues of the groups also vary and range from fifty dalasis to one hundred and fifty dalasis per week and higher. Some groups include basic needs for the family such as soap for laundry and cleaning as part of their contributions. The fixed amount for contributions depends on the group members’ types of economic activities. A characteristic of all the groups in this study is low economic status, with the majority of members earning a livelihood as petty traders who make very meager profits, if any. Thus their weekly dues are relatively smaller than other groups with members that have higher economic standing. Some groups contribute their dues weekly rather than monthly; however, monthly contribution takes longer for all the members to collect their funds.
Every week and through a raffle draw, one group member normally will receive the total amount that is collected for the week. Some groups however share the total amount collected between two group members to lessen the number of months it will take to complete a saving cycle. Also, some groups deduct about 10 percent of the total amount collected for emergency funds that members can loan amongst themselves. Members who have received their funds will have their names removed from the raffle jar and will continue to pay their weekly dues until all group members collect theirs. Members can then choose if they would like to participate in another round. Saving funds are used for a variety of purposes that include the general financial support of households and the sponsoring of their children’s education. A more in-depth discussion of the modus operandi of women’s groups is woven around the theme on the uses of literacy and numeracy and discussed below.
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Literacy and Numeracy Utilization in the Functioning of Women’s Weekly Oususu
The most prominent literacy practice in the functioning of women’s groups is evident in the recording of the weekly contribution of members and in their entries for a weekly raffle that consists of names of all members. These two literacy practices are highly indispensable in the functioning of women’s groups. This is because money is involved and needs to be recorded to avoid creating room for distrust amongst members. Also with groups with large membership, the contributions of members can stretch for more than a year thus making it hard to commit to memory the entire group’s financial management and transactions. In line with the factor of safeguarding the trust that exists among members that necessitated the recording of weekly dues, a participant stated, “The financial management of group funds is a highly sensitive matter. Once there are mistakes in our handling and recording of dues, mistrust is bound to set in and what holds us together in our groups is trust.”
When a group is formed, the first literacy practice is to write down all the names of group members on a paper and cut them out individually. These individual names are then stored in a transparent jar or container. Every week, the container is shaken to reshuffle the names before a child is called upon, for neutrality, in most cases, to do the draw. The name of the winner is read and announced by the group’s secretary who will then pass around the paper to ensure reliability.
The money collected is then handed to the winner and if there is a some balance of payment as a result of late payment of dues by group members, she is informed of the outstanding balance and would normally receive the balance in the following week.
Members can sometimes legally negotiate the time when they receive their funds even if it is not yet their turn. A member can receive funds if they are faced with unprecedented economic hardship that requires immediate financial assistance to mitigate the negative impact.
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Another special condition that would qualify a member to have group approval for collecting funds “out of turn” is when that person or an immediate family member has a christening or a wedding ceremony. The decision, however, has to be made unanimously by all group members.
Although contributors to the Oususu scheme only get the equivalent of the amount they contributed, they get that amount in a lump sum which can then be used for solving bigger financial problems that they could not have handled on their meager daily income. Another incentive that the women identified for participating in Oususu is to avoid lavishing their meagre profits on trivial financial matters.
It is the flexibility in negotiating for Oususus funds and is the freedom from interest payments that explain why many women prefer this saving scheme to the financial banking system. As one of the focus group participants noted:
The Oususu scheme is more useful because it is interest free and access to one is easier. Banks and macro-financing institutions place a lot of interest on micro credit and charge other hidden cost. Businesswomen now shy away from micro credit and prefer their Oususu [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Another shared literacy practice among group members is bookkeeping for the purpose of recording weekly dues. A typical format across all the ten groups for the keeping of such records is to write down the names of all the members on the left column and the remaining columns on the right consist of the date and amount paid. As a practice and to lessen inaccuracy, secretaries call the register for attendance and members one by one hand in their contributions when their names are called.
When all the contributions are collected, it is now time for secretaries to review their notebook and keep count of the names of members who are absent and whose contributions were never received. These members pay some penalty in the form of a fixed amount of money, often
179 not more than 25 percent of their weekly dues though. This money is saved separately and distributed among members at the end of an Oususu cycle or used for whatever needs members may collectively determine. In one of the groups, a fire destroyed the house of one of their members. The group wasted no time in using penalty fees to lessen the hardship the fellow member was experiencing.
Essential information that is also recorded in the group’s book is the name of weekly raffle draw winners. That information occupies the top most columns of the entries for each week as seen below in Figure 26. Every week, names of members who receive their funds are noted down usually in separate book or are indicated through the use of an asterisk or whatever sign that secretaries could decode. In the example shown in Figure 26, below, the secretaries would scratch off numbers assigned to members who have already received their funds.
Figure 26: A typical example of a record book used by women's groups
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Figure 27: Collection of weekly dues in progress
Figure 28: Group secretary reviewing her notebook
It is obvious from the pictures in Figures 26, 27, and 28 that to effectively manage
Oususu funds, at least a rudiment of literacy and numeracy skills are required. When secretaries finished collecting all dues and review absentees, the amount contributed is calculated and summed up. Every week, groups have an expected total of amount of money their contributions should tally up to depending on whether all members attended or pay their dues on time. The money collected is then calculated in the presence of all of members and the sum is announced
181 before it is given to the weekly raffle winner. Beneficiaries may or may not calculate again to ensure they are given the exact amount they are entitled to receive.
In a case where there are outstanding payments from members the overall amount owed is calculated and the balance is noted so that recipients know the outstanding balance from their funds. Sometime, mental calculations are applied and in other cases, calculators are used in order to quickly sum up the dues. Although the use of calculators took less time than mental calculations, I did not observe any difference with regard to accuracy between the two different approaches. Mostly, women’s dues are paid using big notes and as a practice, these notes are counted by the hundreds. This makes the process of mental calculation easier. Also, the majority of the women have frequent interaction with numeracy by virtue of their economic generating activities as petty traders, they often are very efficient in this particular numeracy practice.
I observed in my study that reading, writing, and numeracy are an integral part of the functioning of women’s organizations and particularly in the administration of the saving scheme
Oususu. Women without literacy who contribute to Oususu expressed concern about how wearisome it is for them to keep a mental record of the names of people who have already collected their funds. Although it is very uncommon, there were some cases described of nefarious dealings on the part of financial secretaries who would manipulate the names of members during a raffle draw so that their relatives and close friends can have their funds first before the rest of the other members. It is only one’s ability to read and write that can allow members to be aware of and avoid such instances. Along this line, a focus group participant noted in a rather vulnerable attitude:
All we can hope for as non-literates involved in Oususu is to trust that whoever is assuming financial roles does it without fear and favor. I for one cannot tell if for instance
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during a draw my name came out and read as another member’s name [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
A focus group participant who has a first-hand experience of a manipulative financial secretary explained that some women who manage these weekly or monthly savings tamper with the draw in order to favor themselves or their friends. At the office where she serves as a cleaner, the cleaners have a revolving scheme whereby they contribute D1000 each monthly and the turnover is D18, 000. The group coordinator however inflated the membership by one, so that she would have one extra turn before the end of each round. “There are a lot of unfair tricks being played on these schemes that one can only understand with some basic literacy skills,” she stated.
I observed from the facial expressions of some of the participants that the discussion was becoming barbed as it was quickly changing into that of mistrust directed against people who are literate in general. However, before I could switch topics, one of the participants wryly noted
“illiterate people often mistrust even their educated relatives, even their children; often because they feel the latter are smarter.”
A lesson to be drawn from this dialogue is the remarkable role literacy and numeracy play in the functioning of women’s groups. Although non-literate women can take part in such activities and have done so quite well, it is not uncommon for some of them to occasionally feel being cheated or manipulated by more educated group members because they are not literate.
Women’s Fund Raising Activities and the Uses of Literacy and Numeracy
Women in the study’s setting are frequent organizers of fundraising activities. Such programs are organized with the goal of harnessing financial resources for use in common causes which might include paying children’s school fees or for augmenting the womens’s savings to
183 increase their petty trading activities. One such event takes the form of Tanabir, a musical performance involving the use of drums, or Zimba, a cultural performance with a masquerade.
Both cultural performances are very highly treasured and often well attended by community members.
Both events involved a host of literacy and numeracy activities in the planning and the aftermath of the event. In planning for such activities, the first step involved writing an invitation letter. A study participant noted that in the past, invitation letters were mainly hand written but they are nowadays typed up with a space provided for the name of invitees. Once the invitations are printed out, members would then distribute them among family members and friends.
When I had just begun visiting women’s groups and soliciting their participation in my study and even before an informant consent form was signed, this particular literacy practice became the first I stumbled upon. This incident served as an ethnographic “rich-point” (Agar,
1996, p.26) for me in the sense that although I had hunches prior to setting out in the field about women’s likely literacy practices, this one did not feature in my intuition. It also happened too soon in the research process to begin analyzing it as a frequent practice. It however, turned out to be a frequent literacy practice.
The largest of the organizations that participated in my research was going to hold a fundraising event in about three weeks. Each member was given about ten invitations so as to expand their chances for having many invitees to attend. It was going to be strenuous for the financial secretary to collect ten patrons’ name from each member and write them on the invitation letters. She would have filled out more than a thousand invitation letters. In order to reduce the workload on the group’s financial secretary, it was agreed that each member should find a way to fill out their own invitation letters. The women decided to do this in one day and all
184 together. The moment was intriguing to observe and did serve as an antecedent for more exploration into the nature of such hidden literacy practices.
As an organization with many non-literate members, I observed members struggling to accomplish the task before them but ended up being co-opted into the activity. Those who had modest writing and some spelling skills took on the task by themselves with frequent inquiries of how to spell particular names. Those with poor handwriting admired fellow members with legible handwriting and sought their assistance. Those who were not lettered also sought the assistance of those among the literate who were through with theirs. Not even my research assistant was spared from carrying out this literacy task as some members solicited her assistance as well.
It wasn’t clear to me why all the women wanted to complete the task at once as there was three weeks to the event and they had three days to finish distributing all their letters. However they might have been compelled to do so by the group synergy that was present and the sense of camaraderie that those with modest literacy skills displayed throughout this process. By the time it was getting dark, the women were through with that task. One of the women whom I had helped in filling out her invitation letters confided to me that she could have actually filled out her own invitation letters had she tried. Because she had not written anything for quite a long period of time, she wasn’t sure about how her writing would turn out and that it was more respectful to have those forms neatly filled without mistakes and scratches.
A month did not pass however before another group was involved in a similar fund raising activity but in this group, the secretary filled out all the forms because the group wasn’t as large as the other group. The only thing that members who were not lettered did was to submit orally the names of their invitees. Those who could write filled out their own invitations letters.
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In addition to filling out invitation letters for invitees, the next literacy and numeracy event that followed the fund raising activity was the summing up of the amount received from patrons and comparing that with expenses to see if they have had any gains. Although such literacy events only happen once in a while, it does avail women with some literacy skills to have the opportunity to apply them.
Summary
First, although reading, writing, and numeracy is essentially linked to the effective functioning of women’s groups, it was observed that not all members can carry out such functions. Consequently groups’ members rely on other literate members to control and manage financial activities on behalf of their groups. Group secretaries deserve commendation as the service they offer is purely voluntary and out of good will. An intrinsic reward to financial secretaries though pertains to the roles they play that offer them opportunity for the practical application and development of literacy and numeracy skills. Such opportunities are very rarely present in women’s everyday gender roles. Financial secretaries also were observed to be accorded high social status by virtue of their crucial contributions. As McKeown (2006) observed in the Sumburu village of Papau New Guinea, the ability of people to write texts in the study’s setting serves as a visible symbol of an individual's success in acquiring a valued aspect of modernity.
Second, in some of the groups, I observed that members take turns assuming such responsibilities in instances where there are many members with literacy and numeracy abilities.
In the other groups, financial secretaries mentioned serving their groups for many years.
Although their continuity in holding such positions doubtless positively impacts their literacy and numeracy skills, lack of opportunity for other literate group members to serve may limit the
186 transfer of knowledge of such literacy and numeracy skills from which other members may potentially benefit. Another effect of a few members monopolizing the administrative functioning of the group is to deter the interest of other members to learn how to perform such literacy and numeracy functions. Those who are not literate entirely rely on the literate skills of follow group members to perform such functions and with hopes that their contributions are aptly recorded.
As an overall benefit, peri-urban Gambian women like Mein’s (2010) northern Mexican women are employing literacy and numeracy in their women’s groups as a concrete action to surmount specific social and economic circumstances. In this case, socio-cultural and economic circumstances were the driving force behind literacy and numeracy application.
Third, I have observed that adult women were very practical minded and action oriented when it came to their uses of literacy and numeracy. In the case of the budgeting event for the naming ceremony, it was obvious that the women knew exactly what they wanted to have on their list. Thus they were successful in circumventing whatever barriers they faced due to limited literacy through group effort and particularly accepting that what was important was not to get the spellings right but to be able to buy the item they had intended when they wrote their list.
One lesson to be derived here is that adult learning is most meaningful if practical and directly related to the need of adults. Although reading, writing, and numeracy was not a consistent practice in the case of social ceremonies compared to its uses in weekly Oususu, women do involve themselves in literacy and numeracy practices when it is significant in their socio-cultural activities through collaborative effort or whatever route it would take them to accomplish such task.
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Fourth, it is not certain if the practice of keeping a written record of the financial contributions made during social ceremonies will survive in the long run given that many people have begun videotaping their social events and therefore the purpose of keeping a written record would logically become superfluous. This supports the fact that some literacy practices do die out while new ones are constantly emerging. This makes a regular investigation on the uses and needs of literacy for women worthwhile for addressing current learning needs.
However, it is currently the case that reading, writing, and numeracy of the kind discussed above occupies a center stage in the planning of social events such as naming and wedding ceremonies.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
CONTEXTUAL AND GENDER RELATED FACTORS AS IMPEDIMENTS TO
LITERACY AND NUMERACY ACQUISITION, USES AND RETENTION
Literacy and numeracy acquisition and uses never occur within a vacuum. They are the product of a variety of factors and notable among those factors is the socio-cultural context of literacy acquisition and uses. In order to effectively discuss the socio-cultural context of literacy application of the study setting, I use the concept of literate environment, employed in Easton
(2013) as an expansive tool for effectively examining factors within the study’s context that shape literacy acquisition, uses and retention by peri-urban Gambian women with low educational attainments.
The literate environment induces and shapes the kind of literacy that is acquired. It also prevails in defining crucial matters regarding who uses literacy and numeracy and for what purposes, or if literacy and numeracy skills will be utilized at all. Thus, failure to sufficiently consider how the literate environment and other factors within it impinge on peri-urban Gambian women’s literacy and numeracy acquisition and uses and their retention of these skills will almost inevitably affect interpretations of the findings discussed in the preceding chapters.
This chapter presents a contextual background analysis of the literate environment that shapes the acquisition and uses of literacy and numeracy by peri-urban Gambia women of low educational attainment. Here I identify and analyze the nature of the literate environment and the extent to which it allows the acquisition and uses of literacy by these women.
Themes that emerged from the data collected in this study reveal some complex patterns of literacy and numeracy utilization and problems of retention among the study participants.
Three patterns were observed overall:
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1. Some women who attended formal schooling have either minimal or no basic
reading and numeracy skills. A possible explanation is that they have not
acquired strong enough literacy and numeracy skills to apply them over time due
to several factors that will be discussed in this chapter.
2. Some of the survey respondents have gone far in their education and have
acquired at least than nine years of schooling. However, some women in this
category claim they were able to read and write at some point and have proven
this by virtue of their previous job histories, but now are barely able to read or
perform written numeracy functions.
3. A small minority could read and perform mathematical functions, but in the
succeeding phases of the study, I found these participants rarely had an
opportunity to gainfully employ their literacy and numeracy skills, and especially
in their productive activities.
An assessment of these problems requires a scrutiny of the literate environment and other factors relating to gender that jointly disrupt, impede, and curtail women’s acquisition and application of literacy and numeracy skills in their everyday gender roles. The qualitative data collected suggest evidence of the substantial influences the literate environment plays on women’s literacy and numeracy utilization and retention.
This chapter starts with a discussion of the literate environment in Africa. Here I examine the extent to which its supply side13 is adequately furnished.
13 Whatever provides resources and services that support literacy acquisition and uses (Easton, 2013). 190
The Concept of the Literate Environment
Numerous definitions of the concept of the literate environment exist. In a UNESCO
(2011) publication titled Creating a Sustainable and Literate Environment, it is argued that paying due attention to the literate environment of developing countries would be an indispensable approach to addressing the literacy challenge. This concern is borne out of the understanding that certain individuals are in danger of losing their literacy and written numeracy skills if no attempt is made to furnish an appropriate literate environment. Several cases in this study suggest that the problem of literacy retention is related to a lack of abundant opportunities for sustainable literacy practices.
The concept of a literate environment denotes that when several components are present together, these are expected to yield sustainable literacy and numeracy practices among people in any given society. An analysis of a literate environment should examine the extent to which literacy and numeracy supplies are found in homes and in communities. Literacy and numeracy supplies available at home may be in the form of books, magazines, newspapers, mobile phones or anything else from which people can read written information for whatever purposes. At the community level, supplies that may promote the acquisition and uses of literacy include signs, posters, billboards, schools documents, libraries, documents from banks and offices (Easton ,
2013; UNESCO, 2006).
In examining the contextual factors that affect women’s acquisition, substantial uses and retention of literacy and written numeracy skills, I explored the factor of supply of the literate environment to specifically discuss the condition of literacy and numeracy supply in the study setting and how it limits women’s uses of literacy. The gender factors that bear on women’s acquisition and uses of literacy in the study setting are also discussed.
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Assessing the General Picture of the Supply-Side of Literacy in The Gambia
The literate environment of peri-urban Gambian communities and of The Gambia in general is characterized by a dearth of literacy supply. This is not only true in The Gambia but it is a highly recognized fact about Africa’s educational challenge. Schools are the most common channel for access to literacy supplies in many African communities and thus, school libraries have critical roles to play in learner’s acquisition, development and the uses of those skills
(Mchombu and Cadbury, 2006). The deprived conditions of libraries in Africa have been addressed in Montagnes (2001) who noted that that majority of schools in Africa possessed no library and in cases where one exists, it was housed with very few shelves that carry outdated materials. Book Aid International, the major source for books for many African countries including The Gambia, astutely emphasizes a similar problem. The authors wrote:
While the West manufactures and ingests a glut of information every day the vast majority of Africans subsist on very little. Media is underdeveloped, Internet access is limited to a privileged few and the most basic tools of literacy and learning, in the form of books, must often be shared between six or more pupils. Few schools have a school library and an under-developed local publishing sector produces books that only a middle class minority can afford. Meanwhile library services lack the budget to stock their shelves or indeed to provide services to reach all the poor communities that they would hope to serve (Mchombu and Cadbury, 2006).
In the study’s settings, libraries are not a common sight, and even if they exist they are often under-resourced. In The Gambia as a whole, two libraries are most commonly used, but these two libraries also are under-furnished relative to Western standards. One is The Gambia
National Library Service that caters to the wider Gambian society and the other is the University of The Gambia Library and Information Services which allows only its students and affiliated institutions to have access.
The National Library Service offers monographs, academic textbooks, reference texts, maps, magazines, newspapers, and audio-visual recordings. However, the reference materials are 192 hardly current. The national university’s library is more academically oriented and holds a wide variety of academic literature for its students.
Additionally, in the communities and neighborhoods where this study was conducted, only three community libraries exist and they are geographically dispersed. These libraries contain a great variety of books: comic books for children, academic textbooks, journals and newspapers. These libraries are specifically established for students in order to bolster their taste for leisure reading. However, they are not places much frequented by students. Internet cafés are more prevalent and more popular throughout the study sites than are libraries. Although the internet can be used for information and academic purposes, users are more interested in communicating with family members and friends via social media than they are in academic work.
Several factors might explain the small presence of students in community libraries.
Often students do not find the materials in libraries engaging enough to merit their attention, particularly if they have textbooks to use at home. Also, the relatively long distances between place of residence and the locations of these three libraries is a factor. Finally, there is a general lack of a culture for leisure reading in The Gambia.
Reading newspapers was not a common literacy practice observed because newspapers are hardly accessible by the women. Those who confirmed they do read newspapers do it seldom and disclosed to me that papers are mostly borrowed from acquaintances and not bought with their hard-earned money. Major source of news for the women are television and radio. In the absence of these news outlets, women rely on families, friends, and neighbors to be informed of current happenings.
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Assessing the Supply-Side of Literacy within the Formal Schooling System
Another problem relating to the lack of supply for literacy material is the acute shortage of textbooks among school children. Public education is free, and for girls, the package excludes other indirect costs of schooling such as textbooks. Some schools do provide book rental to their students for the academic year, but students are charged rental fees and many parents cannot pay.
Thus in many of the households I visited during the ethnographic phase of the study, the children rely only on their notebooks to study. During the discussion of this topic in the focus groups, a parent (as reported in Chapter 5) described how hard it is to assist children with their schoolwork without access to the required textbooks at home. She compared the burden to help a child study without the required textbooks to that of a visually impaired person who is trying to locate an address without an aide.
In cases where textbooks are available for a child, the majority of women in the study setting who often spend longer hours with their children cannot read the texts and are therefore unable to assist their children to learn to read.
Parents’ education (even when only one is literate) does have an effect on a child’s literacy ability and this effect has been observed in The Gambia’s Early Grade Reading
Assessment where children with at least one literate parent scored higher across all the items measuring reading ability. Notably, when the results were disaggregated by gender, boys outperformed girls across all the items measuring reading (see Sprenger-Charolles, 2008). From this finding, it appears that girls’ learning difficulties start very early in their education.
In the current study, the research questions did not include the assessment of classroom environments with regard to supply of educational resources. Nonetheless, empirical reports about the challenges that continue in The Gambia’s educational system (despite huge
194 improvements over the years) point to a depressing picture of the educational system. The
Gambia’s educational system is still grappling with problems of quality and relevance (The
Republic of The Gambia Government, 2008). These educational challenges span across a broad spectrum and include insufficient trained teachers, inadequate teaching material, retention of qualified teachers, and weak management of schools. The combination of these problems lowers the quality of education received by the majority of poor Gambian children who are stuck in low quality public schools.
The problem of low quality education is specific to public schools in particular at the lower basic (elementary) and junior secondary school level when compared to private schools at the same level. This is a problem that economically disadvantaged parents, such as the study participants, have come to terms with and many parents are forced to deprive themselves of their wants to support their children’s costly education in private schools. For these parents, and as presented in the perspective of one of the study participants below, their preference for private school over public is to give their children a chance to succeed in their schooling and a chance the parents never had:
It is a known fact that teachers in public schools are not motivated. Their salaries are low and they cannot discipline the children because of the ban on corporal punishment. They paid attention only to smart kids. Also, teachers in public school find it very hard to handle big classes unlike private school where there are often fewer students in classrooms. Therefore public school teachers can hardly give the required attention to each student and know their individual learning needs. I work hard as a petty trader and use my savings to sponsor my children to attend private schools so that they can have a chance to succeed in their education; a chance that I unfortunately did not have [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
The quality of private secondary schools relative to public schools is confounded by low quality private secondary schools in The Gambia that outsource public school students with very low scores in the national examination for entry into senior secondary school. Some of the
195 impact of poor educational quality of schools on students is the prevalence of school dropouts at varying levels and graduates who leave school with very little or no literacy and numeracy skills for use in their daily living activities. The Gambia’s educational context is somewhat plagued by both adverse scenarios.
Assessing the Supply Factor in Adult Literacy Programs
Graduates of adult literacy programs face far more challenges in their access to supply materials than students who may have access to other resources such as school libraries. The only reading and written numeracy supplies available to participants of literacy programs is the textbook they have used in their classes. Some of the women who attended literacy programs stated that they had not opened their learning materials since the last day they attended classes.
When asked why that was the case, a participant noted that she did not find much use for the material and stated that she would rather read the Quran instead. To some extent, the adult literacy curriculum is not relevant to the everyday lives of adult women.
Further, the lack of calibration of local language policy in adult literacy programs with the availability of printed materials in local languages in the study’s setting (and particularly in official documents) further complicates continuous learning efforts of neo-literates who received their training in local languages. The shortage of literacy materials in local languages continues to marginalize neo-literates in developing and using literacy skills, and at the same time obstructs their access to critical information that are contained in official documents.
Assessing Supply-side-Opportunities for Continuing Learning in the Study’s Setting
There are few opportunities for school dropouts to pursue learning after they drop out of school. Mostly it is women who dropped out of school with very limited schooling who do not return to any kind of formal learning for the acquisition and development of literacy skills.
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Insights from the study participants revealed that vocational education in The Gambia is not highly valued, and particularly in schools that are not tertiary institutions. There is a general perception that vocational schools are for the less academically inclined and that notion serves as a demotivating factor for many school dropouts. Additionally, vocational education is not free and many families cannot afford the fees. While discussing the subject of further learning opportunities available to school dropouts, a study participant noted:
There are few vocational schools that are available for school dropouts but the fees too are not affordable by many poor families and the problem of school dropout is relatively prevalent among poor families. You will hardly find children who are from well-off families who drop out of school or even opt for a vocational schooling [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
A study participant who dropped out in the 8th grade shared her experience of working hard for some number of years as a petty trader in order to raise funds to attend a vocational training school to study home economics and food-catering services. She was enrolled in a vocational training school for two years, and graduated but could not find a job. Although she has learned the skills to be able to work in a hotel setting and in food-catering services, her low educational attainment puts her in a disadvantaged position relative to those who attained higher educational levels.
The most common form of schooling outside of the formal educational system for skill development in The Gambia is through local apprenticeship, (i.e., a situation where a child is placed under the care of a skilled acquaintance or neighbor to learn a livelihood skill). However, vocational training through local apprenticeship is more common among young men that it is for young women. Most of the skills for which local apprenticeships are available (e.g., carpentry, welding, engineering and auto-mechanics) are perceived to be men’s jobs. Thus, parents of girl dropouts hardly ever thought of sending their daughters to learn such skills. As was reported in
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Chapter 4, only 17.5 percent of the study participants participated in vocational skill training programs through a variety of formal and informal training. However, those who participated in this training received education that was limited to specialization in what is socially construed as women’s jobs. Skills acquired by the few women who participated in vocational training programs included seamstress, catering, and hairdressing. Although these skills do help women earn some income, they do not require much reading, writing, or written numeracy.
Adult literacy programs are spreading slowly in the peri-urban Gambian community and mainly have women as participants. However, very few of the study participants benefitted from these programs even though the majority were potential adult literacy participants. The most common form of access to adult literacy programs is through membership to a Mother’s Club comprised of parents of students, school cooks and food vendors. Many lower basic schools in the greater Banjul area now have well-established Mother’s Clubs whose members receive literacy and numeracy training during weekends. Two of the ten women’s groups who participated in the study have had experiences with adult literacy programs, and of these two groups, one was a Mother’s Club member. The other group benefited from an adult learning program through the support of a non-governmental organization. Some of the remaining eight groups expressed interest in adult learning but at the time of this study, they lacked basic information about how to access support to participate in adult literacy programs.
Assessing the Gender Factors that Limit Demand for Literacy Acquisition and Uses
As discussed in Chapters 6 and 7, the opportunities for literacy and numeracy applications in women’s productive and community management responsibilities are limited. In some cases, women with low educational attainment have been able to find uses for literacy and numeracy in their productive activities. In other cases, even when the women possess some
198 literacy and numeracy skills, those skills are hardly applicable in their productive activities.
Although women’s community management responsibilities do involve uses of literacy and numeracy and particularly surface in the financial activities of women’s groups, such functions do not provide opportunities for all the women with some literacy and numeracy skills to apply such skills. Most of the tasks involving literacy and numeracy uses are carried out through a few of the members in the capacities of group treasurer, secretary and president. An annual election or rotation of members for positions requiring uses of literacy and numeracy is not common.
Some group secretaries have been managing the financial activities of their groups since the group’s inception. Consequently, their acquisition and uses of literacy is low and can be explained by the following factors.
The problems some women encounter in their efforts to acquire education and capture the benefits from their educational investment start very early in their lives. These problems are largely a product of social conditioning that often results in gender inequality to the detriment of females. Gender inequality places women in subordinate positions relative to men. It affects women’s equal access to resources, power and opportunities for bettering their lives. Harding
(1986) conceptualized gender as a fundamental category within which meaning and value are assigned to everything in the world. In other words, gender is a way of organizing human social relations. Gender is learned behavior and acquired through the process of socialization and via the societal curriculum of a particular society. These learned behaviors are then performed at particular times and specifically in instances where gender actions are highly expected (Butler,
1999). Gender scripts as contained in the societal curriculum are sometimes blatant but much of them are tacit. Such learned behaviors have huge implications in every aspect of a woman’s life but in this chapter, the scope is limited to how gendering affects women’s acquisition, uses and
199 retention of literacy and numeracy skills. Here I examine problems relating to the value assigned to schooling for girls and problems relating to gender that are encountered during schooling and post-schooling.
The Low Value Assigned to Girl’s Education
During the focus group discussions about the impediments to female education, participants’ perspectives illuminated the gender context within which school takes place. One of the themes was the low value assigned to women’s education relative to their male siblings.
Their bias against Western types of education was not supportive of girls’ education. Girls’ education was thought of as an assault to traditional cultural values, restricting women and their daughters to the domestic sphere. Moreover, education was seen as an avenue to compromising female chastity. The study participants asserted that such opinions were harsher in rural areas than in urban areas because many urban folks were already blended into Western cultures and embraced many Western values like education and Christianity. One of the focus group participants stated.
Western education was more favorably received in the urban than rural areas and particularly among the Aku14 who are mainly Christians. The admiration for western type education and its access would later spread across urban areas. Rural folks were adamant to send their children to school and particularly girls. You know about the history of Armitage High School? That was the first high school in rural Gambia and was historically a school for boys and mainly sons of chiefs. The interest in formally educating girls is a recent phenomenon and don’t be surprised that there are still some communities in rural Gambia that are adamant to send their girls to school [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
The low value assigned to girls’ education was not only limited to formal schooling. A participant argued that a negative attitude towards girl’s Quranic education persisted. She gave an example of being pulled out very early out of her Quranic school education because of the
14 A minority ethnic group in The Gambia and descendants of freed slaves who were taken to Africa. 200 perception that if she was versed in the Quran, she would become subversive and might challenge men’s authority. She argued fervidly thus:
Even in Quranic education, girls were not expected to master beyond certain verse like TABARA among some ethnic groups. A reigning societal misperception was that if girls and women are allowed to master the whole of the Quran, they would no longer respect/obey their husbands and particularly if the husband is not educated. They would as a result stop a girl’s Quranic education abruptly and I am a victim of that gender discrimination. My aunty said to my parents one day that my parents should stop me from going further with my Quranic education and buttress that all what a female should know in the Quran is how to pray and a mastery of couple of verses for use when praying. I have made it my duty now that I am independent to learn more about my religion and my rights within the context of Islam [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
The above perspectives on the low value assign to women’s knowledge acquisition are widely documented in the empirical literature on the gender hindrances to girl’s education in
Africa. Scholars of the socio-cultural factors on the hindrances to girls’ education maintain that the practice of early marriage and preservation of female chastity were two cultural factors that affected the rate of girls’ enrollment and retention in formal education in Africa (Swainson,
1995; Owusu, 2000; Sutherland, 2008).
However, a point deserves to be emphasized here on the progress thus far in girl’s education in The Gambia. Access to education has increased in the study’s settings, and as revealed in the results of the survey, there is a relatively higher mean of years of schooling of the youngest age bracket (18-24) compared to the older age groups. This may suggest an upsurge in people’s preference for schooling. Many of the study participants supposed that education is the most reliable means for their daughters to have access to better job opportunities and thus enjoy a lifestyle the parents could not live. Notwithstanding, and similar to the situation of girls in other sub-Saharan African countries, some gender inequality factors continue to override investments
201 in girl’s education despite many girls enrolled in school. One such gender factor is the domestication of girls in preparation for their future ascribed gender roles.
Socio-cultural Practices and Shaping of Girl’s Formal Educational Outcomes
A dominate theme pertains to the gendering of girls by society at large and mainly through mothers in molding girls’ attitudes, behaviors, and values for their ascribed future gender roles. Girls, particularly those from poor socio-economic background, are participating in formal schooling but at the same time are saddled with prohibitive household chores that negate their ability to acquire high scholastic abilities. A study participant whose education was affected as a consequence of too many domestic chores shared with the rest of the focus group participants the reasons why she could not succeed in school:
It is most unfair to impose household chores on the girl child and to exempt boys from it. In that given situation the girl spends all her time this way and can hardly do well in school. The only hope and prayer is for her to get married to a man who will take good care of her. This kindness however only lasts for a little while after which she takes up some small business to support herself and the family. She is now left with little time to look after herself or her husband. The husband soon begins to complain that the wife is neglecting him, but she is too busy surviving. In short, that was like me; my schooling was compromised due to too much work in the household [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Another focus group participant voiced her support of the above perspective and emphasized the problem further by citing familiar cases she knows:
Mostly education of the girl child is adversely affected by too much work in the household. I know of a girl who cleans her parents’ house, does the laundry, goes to market and cooks. This girl child is over-burdened with home chores and can hardly concentrate on schoolwork. As a result she fails her grade nine exams, and eventually drops out of school. I know of a child who was trained to cook very well and so was assigned all the cooking all the time. She missed learning to read and write and her younger sibling, a boy, knows she cannot spell simple words. Her parents opted to send her to Arabic School hoping perhaps she would do well but her performance was equally dismal. She was then placed on apprenticeship to learn a trade [ translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
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In both of the perspectives, the study participants link the enormous number of household chores some girls perform to girls’ low educational performances. In the focus group discussion, participants also highlighted that household chores are gendered. Although in some households women have begun to astutely create a gender sensitive environment where both boys and girls are given equal treatment in the conduct of household duties, household chores continue to be assigned only to girls in many households in the study’s settings.
Girls’ work unquestionably contributes toward the household production and notably by mothers tapping from girl’s free labor to reduce their workload. However, too much of this work places them at a disadvantage in their quest for education. Many of the focus group participants voiced awareness of the debilitating effect of gendering in household chores but acknowledge that they are, as women, key participants in the gendering process. One focus group participant contended that culturally, when a girl is married and cannot fulfill her reproductive gender roles, the management of the household in this respect, the mother is culpable. Thus women try to avoid being blamed by teaching their daughters to learn to effectively perform household chores and related responsibilities. That perspective not only serves as an exposure to the social reason behind gendering in household chores (and much to the disadvantage of girls) but it also exposes the dynamics of how a particular gender culture is reproduced and women’s roles in it.
Another perspective advanced by a study participant suggests that gendering in household work to an extent that it affects girls’ education is more pronounced in the households of the non-educated:
I wish to contribute on mostly the factors that disrupt learning, prevent some girls from concentrating on their schooling, and why they fail their exams. At home, where you live with parents who are uneducated and don’t know the value of education, the child is
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assigned so many chores. As a result the child is fatigued, cannot concentrate in class, is sleepy, cannot study, and cannot therefore pass her exams. At grade nine, you are bound to fail, and then drop out of school and stay at home where you have no time to go over school work. Overwork at home also causes girls to have interrupted schooling [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
While some consensus was reached regarding the burden of household chores on girls and its attendant effect on their education, particularly as they move higher up in their educational pursuits, two focus group participants identified another complex factor that effective explained the household chores theme as a process in which girls are disadvantaged.
One stated:
I choose to speak on poverty, and on how it affects education. I am a neighbor to a girl who passed her grade nine exams well and is currently out of school because her parents are too poor. Gambians are generally poor and secondary schooling can be very expensive. It requires great effort to send one’s child to school. A child who is kept at home for reasons of not being able to afford to pay fees soon forgets what she had learned. An idle girl child is tempted to engage in vices. I also know of another girl, a grade twelve student who had a credit passes in all subjects but could not get a sponsor to meet the university fees. When I saw her later this year she informed me she was about to be married. Once she gets married, there are very high chances that she would soon forget about school and the desire to further her education [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Another focus group participant shared the story of a young girl who goes around selling locally made soap before she goes to school in the afternoon. The girl also confided in her that she also does chores in the evening after school. She then threw a rhetorical question at other focus group participants:
How would such a girl learn at school after roaming her neighborhood and beyond from Monday to Friday before going to school? So many children are street vendors and they are mostly girls. They also risk acquiring criminal behavior in the street and risk being victims of abuse. Children are better off selling at one point than roaming if they must [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
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She continued further in stating that unfortunately many parents of low educational qualifications cannot afford housemaids to assist with housework so that their girls can better concentrate on learning. The study participants therefore highlighted that the economic status of families is central in the disparity in educational attainment of children from affluent families and those from less economically privileged family background. These perspectives are important in elucidating the intersectionality between socio-economic status, gender, and education. By implication, being a female and being poor in the study setting are added factors to be at risk of dropping out of school early and acquire very little or no literacy and numeracy skill when supply factors are adequately present. These factors in addition to many others are the reasons the study participants’ low education achievements and low literacy and written numeracy abilities are birthed and they partially explain the reproduction of poverty among women in the study’s setting.
The problem of literacy acquisition, uses, and retention within the context of formal schooling therefore stem partly from the short life span of schooling of girls, the acquisition of few literacy and written numeracy skills due to the gender and socio-economic factors cited by the study participants.
Gender Impediments to Women’s Uses of Literacy and Numeracy Skills
Some of the study participants who attended literacy programs also noted several gender- related factors that affected their participation in adult learning and hence the high attrition rate among adult literacy participants. The issue of time constraints was recurrent in my discussions with women as a hindrance to their participation in such programs. They emphasize that women are generally very busy with their income-generating activities and are therefore occupied for most of the day. Therefore lack of leisure time severely hinders women’s desires to participate in
205 literacy programs when they do have access to such organized learning opportunities. In addition to the problem of time constraint, low literate women are swamped by huge responsibilities in the household and are occupied with more urgent and pressing matters regarding their family well-being. A study participant stated:
Many women are nowadays full of not only reproductive responsibilities but financial responsibilities as well. It is very possible for them to be in class while their minds are fixed on how to manage certain situations in their household and for instance questions about what to cook for dinner for the family and how to manage whatever little profits they have from their petty trading for children’s school lunch. In such a situation if a teacher asked you to say A, you might easily forget how you were instructed to read that [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
The impediments to women’s non-formal learning activities involving literacy and numeracy skills as it relates to gender factors can perhaps be more effectively understood from the perspective of one of the study participants, Kaddy, who never received formal education due to the low value assigned by her parents to girls’ education. During one of my interviews with her, she clearly stated to me that in her generation, neither education for girls nor their participation in the work force was conceived to be essential. She cited her own case that all her male siblings attended school and went far in their education. The few women who were educated during this time did not aspire to attain attractive and high profile professional positions like medicine and law like a few men from well-off families had had opportunity to pursue. Such professional development in that period required further training from abroad. She also affirmed that, for the most part, many of the women who attended school did not work, thus:
Some women too who were educated did not work at all because their spouses maintain that they should not and they have to abide by those rules. So it was common and until today to see educated women only serving the roles of housewives in their families regardless of their educational attainments. That kind of gender discrimination has now lessened a great deal. In fact some educated men nowadays want to marry from the professional class. In those days, men don’t want women that are educated or working to earn income. They were not very smart because there is nothing better than both spouses
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earning income. To justify their advantage over women to not work, men would say “fibenne tubay morfi am tee gorr bee koi sol” meaning “there is only one trouser15 in the house and it is the man in the house that would put it on” [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Another factor cited often in the study by participants that affects women’s acquisition uses and retention of literacy skills is lack of opportunities to practice. Given the intense and time-consuming nature of women’s reproductive gender roles, women hardly have an opportunity to practice. Speaking about this during the focus group discussion, one of the study participants stated:
Many women of low socio-economic status are overburdened with trying to meet the basics of life for their family. Imagine having to start a day at 3:00AM every morning. Many women go out early and stay away at home till late in the night. I know a woman who goes out at dawn and stays out all day and even spends the night out in search of goods for resale. This handwork leaves women little or no time for learning. She like most of her type is a non-literate. She relies on me to read her receipts and other banking documents [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
In support of the above perspective, another participant echoed the theme of women’s lack of time to engage in learning and that this puts whatever little literacy and numeracy skills women acquired from school in jeopardy. She stated thus:
The first thing married women do when they wake up in the morning is to plunge straight on into managing their household. I for example wake up early in the morning and start to clean up, and then I prepare the children for school. After that, I am off to the market to do business and when I am through, I would shop for food. By the time I finished cooking, I am too tired to do anything else, not even to read the water bill when it gets in [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
I have analyzed and discussed the lack of opportunity for many women to practice their low level literacy and numeracy skills in Chapter 6 due to their lack of time and more
15 The trouser as used here symbolizes the power of masculinity and particularly men’s control over critical decisions that affect woman’s life choices.
207 importantly the nature of their productive gender roles. The nature of women’s reproductive gender roles is such that they do not compel them for the most part to apply their skills. Many women can easily navigate through their reproductive gender roles without much need for literacy or written numeracy.
Women have been able to effectively carry out their economic transactions through mental calculation and recording. Mental calculation is simplified by the fact that many of the women only have small-scale businesses to manage. This theme was evident both in the case of
Binta, the secondary school dropout, and Fatou the neoliterate from adult literacy programs and both had prior basic formal schooling. These women represent a vast majority of peri-urban
Gambian women who could go for months without reading or holding a pen because literacy and written numeracy have not featured prominently in their daily realities and vis-à-vis in their triple gender roles, as discussed in Chapters 5, 6 and 7. A study participant wrapped-up the discussion of this theme in a striking way:
We forget what we have learnt because we don’t always return to learning. If we kept revising what we had learned or make a habit of writing, then we would hardly forget. Many women of low educational qualifications hardly get to write, read or even speak English. We forget because our concentration is now on raising a family and not on our books. I used to help my son, Sankung, with his homework then but I no longer can assist his younger siblings. Overtime, I have lost both basic reading and writing abilities [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Summary
Drawing from my observations and interviews with the study participants, I identified the problems that negatively impact literacy acquisition, uses, and retention by the study participants. The problems of women’s education spans supply factors and extend more to gender factors, but in all cases, both factors combined can effectively explain women’s educational predicament.
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In the mainstream research on girls’ and women’s education, attention has been mostly placed on literacy acquisition while neglecting critical questions of how such skills will be applied and if the avenues and opportunities for literacy and numeracy application are present.
Attention devoted to girls’ and women’s education also ignores the high risk of losing such skills particularly when girls and women leave school with weak literacy and numeracy skills and lack, as they most likely would, opportunities to enhance those skills and avenues for sustainable practice.
From the problems discussed earlier on the contextual and gender related barriers to women’s literacy and written numeracy acquisition, uses, and retention, it can be safely argued that girls and women often miss attaining the highly generalized anticipated effect of education, a result of a host of intricate factors that are interwoven with demand and supply factors. These findings have some practical policy implications on the provision and support for girls and women’s education. First, enhancing girls’ and women’s ability to acquire strong literacy and numeracy skills for application in their everyday gender roles (where literacy and written numeracy skills are much needed) requires giving due attention to both supply and gender factors embedded within the socio-cultural environment of literacy application. Second, a genuine effort is required in forming a deeper understanding of how these forces interact to shape the educational outcomes of girls and women in diverse ways in developing countries. Third, with women having very few financial resources to manage large-scale businesses, their demand for literacy and numeracy skills in productive activities are minimal.
Given these gender and problem of literacy supply, the primary incentive for literacy uses, development, and retention of skills is fundamentally lacking. Each of these problems
209 constitutes fundamental areas that planners and providers of literacy programs have to be cognizant of and strategize pragmatic ways to address them for positive outcomes.
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CHAPTER NINE
CASTING LIGHT ON THE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
OF NEW LITERACY STUDIES
This chapter discusses the strength of the socio-cultural practice theory of literacy and its inherent loopholes as the major theoretical framework that has informed the current study. These themes are analyzed in connection to the findings that emerged from the study on women’s uses of literacy in their gender roles in peri-urban Gambia. The chapter begins with a background discussion of the earlier conceptions of literacy in the works of scholars such Goody (1977),
Olson (1977), and Ong (1982) whose works have had huge implications on how literacy came to be perceived in terms of its independent effect on cognitive thinking and as a catalyst for human and societal development. The chapter continues with a discussion of research and notably those published under the framework of New Literacy Studies (NLS), a body of theoretical claims that have contested the generalized attributes of literacy. As a final analysis, I discuss the strengths in the NLS scholarship drawing from this study’s findings and as well as elaborate on some of the loopholes of the theory. Some of those loopholes continue to be debated within the NLS tradition.
Earlier Conceptions of Literacy as a Cognitive Set of Skills
The association of the independent effect of writing on cognition and logical thinking in the field of anthropology was sparked by the series of publications by Jack Goody (Maddox, 2007) who has been touted by Halverson (1992) as one of the leading advocates of the literacy thesis.
Goody’s principal claim about literacy is focused on a somewhat causal effect of writing on mode of thought or cognitive process.
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Halverson (1992) in his criticism of Goody’s works presented a linear progression of
Goody’s conception of literacy and I its attendant effect on cognitive processes. The first publication of Goody towards this end was The Consequences of Literacy, which he authored with Watt (1963), a publication that concerns the causal relationship between alphabetic literacy and Greek enlightenment in the Fifth and Fourth century B.C (Halverson, 1992).
More specifically, and to further differentiate between oral and literate societies, Goody and
Watt (1963) posited that oral societies are characterized by face-to-face communication and thus the content of communication tends to be forgotten overtime or some part of the traditions that are unnecessary or ceased to be relevant are transformed. By comparison, literate societies cannot abandon or transform the past. Rather, in literate societies, communications made in the past are separated from those of the present and thus, render historical inquiry possible. It could be deduced from Goody and Watt’s (1963) assertions that written words are autonomous and everlasting whereas the communicative traditions of non-literate societies lack validity and are in essence often comprised of distorted facts.
Goody would continue exploring and justifying the connection between the written word and logical thinking in his publication, The Domestication of the Savage Mind, where he further qualified writing as an instrument of analytical procedures. Goody (1977) noted that the act of writing helps man to clearly separate words, to manipulate their order, and to develop syllogistic forms of reasoning (p. 11). In a similar vein, Goody pursued the same subject in The Interface between the Oral and the Written (1987) in which he favored literacy as a tool that breeds skepticism and thereby promotes critical thinking since written records make fact finding possible. He argued that such is not the case in oral societies because the oral mind tends to forget many exceptions and thus, favors generalities.
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Halverson (1992) criticizes Goody and by extension the proponents of his literacy thesis for not being able to establish unquestionably if there exists causality between literacy and logical thinking. He therefore opined that the attempt by Goody and Watt to establish such a connection is dubious and even if what they said about writing and literacy is true, the relevance of their argument remains vague.
Jack Goody was not the only scholar in whose arguments literacy was favored over orality but Halverson (1992) noted that Goody was the most reactionary and responsive to criticisms against his “literacy thesis” and he was also proactive in his continuous expounding of his literacy thesis unlike Ong and Olson.
Goody (1977), Olson (1977), and Ong (1982) shared similar views of literacy (text) as regards its logical power over utterance and its independent effect on human consciousness.
Olson (1977) differentiated text from utterance based on the independent ability of text to stand alone and make sense. Whereas he considered utterance to be true only if it relates to what a listener already knows, the truth of a text on the other hand is independent of knowledge of context. Olson’s argument also supports that literacy has an effect on cognitive thinking and social development associated with modernity (Olson, 1977).
In the case of Ong, the advent of writing did not reduce the essence of orality but enhanced it by organizing the “constituents” of oratory into a “scientific art” (p.77). Ong (1982) further noted that without writing, even the literate mind would not and could not think, even when composing thoughts in oral form. In his own words, writing more than any single invention “transformed human consciousness” (p. 77).
Conflating literacy with advanced cognitive effects and by extension the cause of human development evident in the works of scholars reviewed above continues to be broadly applied in
213 a generalized way in literacy studies. Barlette (2003) for instance charged that traditional literacy inquiry tended to neglect the socio-cultural context of literacy acquisition and utilization of that technical skill in people’s lives. Instead, literacy is treated as a neutral technology that can by itself transform human lives irrespective of the context of acquisition and uses. This same flawed assumption, Barlette (2003) explained, is prominently featured in contemporary research coming out of the quantitative tradition. Consequently, a series of studies in anthropology and socio- linguistics began reconceptualizing literacy by focusing on the ways in which reading and writing are socio-culturally situated.
Reconceptualizing Literacy and the Role of New Literacy Studies
Street (1984) dubbed the approach to studying literacy as an independent catalyst for development as the autonomous model, and in its place, he proposed the ideological model.
Street (2002) posited that the autonomous model is conspicuously present in the conception of schooling and development programs. Embedded in the design of most of these programs is the assumption about the unilateral effect of literacy on certain development proxies. For instance, it is usually assumed that introducing literacy to poor and non-literate women will affect their cognitive skills and social and economic development regardless of the contexual barriers that are in fact the causes of their lack of literacy skills. Street (1984) argued against the imposition of the western conception of literacy onto other cultures:
The rich cultural variation in these practices and conceptions leads us to rethink what we mean by them and to be wary of assuming a single literacy where we may simply be imposing assumptions derived from our own cultural practice onto other people’s literacies. (p. 430)
The ideological model that Street (1984) proposed acknowledged the fundamental role of culture and context in shaping people’s literacy practices. By implication, people of different
214 cultures and context may have differing needs and uses for literacy. Hence, literacy and literacy practices based on Street’s conception can at best be conceived as ideological. Ideological literacy practices and meaning are deeply entrenched in a particular world-view with the potential to dominate and marginalize others.
In Chapter 2, I have shown how NLS and particularly those studies carried out through the lens of the socio-cultural approach demonstrated numerous cases that have contested the independent effect of literacy on cognitive development and particularly in the myopic sense of the concept as the mere ability to read and write. These studies have also successfully contested the idea of a single literacy by broadening their conceptualization to include other non- conventional modes of communication and meaning making as couched in the concept of multi- literacies. Thus, it is has become quite acceptable to speak of literacy and numeracy as plural form.
The concepts of literacy events (Heath, 1983) and literacy practices (Street, 1984) help in distinguishing the act of reading or writing a text as warranted by a specific occasion (literacy event) from literacy practices - “the socio-cultural framing that gives significance to particular act” (Prinsloo & Braynham 2008, p. 4).
In highlighting the contributions of NLS in the field of literacy research, Prinsloo and
Braynham (2008) noted that from a methodological point of view, the concept of a literacy event provides an empirical unit of analysis for studying literacy uses. On the other hand, the concept of literacy practices gives socio-cultural researchers the tool to dwell more into the philosophical underpinnings of why people read and write and for examining more specifically the social and power relationship that underpin the uses of reading and writing.
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The Strengths of New Literacy Studies
The strength of the NLS scholarship as it pertains to this study can be understood from the point of view that: (a) literacy is far more than a set of cognitive skills that are independent of the individual; (b) literacy practices are embedded in socio-cultural life and patterned by power relationships and social institutions; (c) literacy learning can best be programmed through an understanding of the local needs and uses for literacy rather than on the generalized benefit of its effect; and (d) literacy practices are gendered.
Literacy is not a Set of Cognitive Skills that are Independent of the Individual
The analyses of the NLS scholars have led to an increased appreciation that literacy is not only a skill that is learned and one that is independent of the individual but a practice that is dependent on its social context (Barton and Hamilton, 2002; Heath, 1983; Norton, 2007; Street,
1984, 1995). In order to illuminate the roles socio-cultural context plays in literacy uses, NLS scholars typically employ an ethnographic approach that allows for a rigorous fieldwork observation focused on a particular community whose literacies are being studied. In so doing, they have successfully moved the discourse of literacy premised on generalized attributes of the skill to an analysis of how people have in fact used literacy in everyday real life situations that require the uses of the skill.
My research with peri-urban Gambian women of low educational qualifications demonstrates that literacy goes beyond its limited skill view attribute, a conception prevalent in numerous discourses that present literacy as a decontextualized basic skill. What made literacy and numeracy to be employed or not in women’s gender roles was not determined by the skill they possess alone, but by the social and economic functions literacy events served and in which reading and writing were important in the interaction between the women and their interpretative processes (Heath, 1983). 216
The women’s literacy practices were patterned by values, beliefs, and social relationships.
Certain functions requiring the uses of numeracy and literacy, for instance, the recording of women’s weekly Oususu contributions the recording of their petty trading activities and the recording of financial contributions during social ceremonies, have all proven that literacy practices are embedded in socio-cultural life and patterned by social relationships.
Recording the business transactions of women’s petty trading activities that mainly operate on a credit basis was used to preserve their social relationships with the people, mostly family members, neighbors, and friends, with whom they do business. In order to avoid mistrust between clients and preserve their social relationships, petty traders have found the keeping of records either mentally or by writing each and every partial payment clients made until they finish making their payments paramount in stabilizing their social relations. Although mental recording of business transactions does serve its purpose, the women mostly prefer to keep written records even if they have to carry it out through the help of others. Following the importance of social relationships in understanding literacy as a social practice, Barton and
Hamilton (1998) asserted “literacy practices are more usefully understood as existing in the relationships between people, within groups and communities, rather than as a set of properties residing in individuals” (p. 8).
Increased the Understanding of the Local Needs and Uses for Literacy
The uses of literacy and numeracy in the women’s weekly oususu differ from those in the formal schooling curriculum. That curriculum, with its goal of training individuals to assume bureaucratic functions and for promoting employment and economic development, tends to ignore the everyday cultural practices that make reading, writing, and numeracy meaningful for
217 many who would never have a chance to work in a bureaucracy, particularly women in developing countries.
Consequently, NLS scholars charged that non-formal education, often modeled on formal schooling, hardly ever prepares its participants to acquire the literacy and numeracy competence they require to deal with their own literacy and numeracy needs. Given the importance of taking into account local needs for literacy and numeracy, NLS scholars proposed a bottom-up approach to designing adult literacy programs. In order to address the problem of lack of relevance in the designing of such programs, NLS scholars suggested the adoption of an authentic learner’s center approach (Purcell-Gates, Degener, Jacobsen & Soler, 2002). A genuine learner’s centered education would draw from real life literacy and numeracy needs as a cornerstone for literacy instructions.
NLS scholars have also promoted the idea that there exist varieties of literacies that should be applied to varying social, economic, and political functions. As a practical application to the field of education, NLS scholars have contributed in important ways to understanding low school achievement and the failure of some children and adults to profit from formal schooling
(Prinsloo & Baynham, 2008). Studies in this area have tended to show a lack of congruence between the home and school culture of disadvantaged children in their accumulation of the values they need to succeed in formal schooling (Purcell-Gates & Dahl, 1991).
Literacy Practices are Patterned by Power Relationships and Social Institutions
NLS scholars have debated fundamental questions about whose literacies are dominant and whose are marginalized or resistant. They have done so by paying due respect to critical literacy perspectives such as those of Freire (1970), whose conception of literacy came to be understood as not a mere cognitive skill for reading and understanding text but for reading the
218 world. The reading of the world here implies deconstructing power hierarchies and relationships that can sometimes be embedded in text.
In this study, I have observed that there is an element of literacy that is embedded in power relationships at play in the study setting and particularly evident in language policies. Although the uses of local languages have become recently enforced both at the first three grades of primary schooling and in adult literacy programs in the study setting, there is an apparent lack of attention to the development of such local languages into widely used written codes. The distribution of such codes continues to be affected by a lack of infrastructure for its spread, as well as limited availability of print materials in these local languages, and particularly in official documents and daily newspapers. Whereas language policies support the empowerment of local languages, in practice there is a disempowerment of these local languages as their development continues to be placed on the backburner while the English language continues to be the dominant medium of literacy acquisition and use.
Because of the low regard for the development and uses of local languages in written forms, people have continued to believe in the power of the English language as a valued aspect of modernity, a status symbol, and a tool for greater economic prosperity. In essence, literacy continues to be associated with the English language in the study setting. A literacy class I observed chose to continue their classes in English and not in the local languages in which they were supposed to receive their instructions. They have done so for the reason that the uses of such codes in print materials are not widespread or a common sight. Therefore, the question of whose literacies and in what languages are important remains germane within the socio-cultural practice of literacy research.
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The use of critical literacy theory as a lens for examining language policies in the context of this study illuminated issues of access to other local languages, and in this case in printed form. The continuing dominance of the English language in a setting where people are overwhelmingly native speakers of languages other than English justifies how language as an artifact of colonial policies has patterned literacy practices. Hence, there is still a great divide between speakers of these local languages and those who have become literate in English language through formal schooling. The divide between non-English speakers and readers manifests in unequal access to important information which they should by right be able to obtain.
Literacy Practices are Patterned by Gender Relationships
NLS scholars have also successfully identified in their studies the interplay between literacy and gender and demonstrated that literacy practices are patterned by gender relationship.
The connection between literacy practices and gender has been manifested in this study and particularly in my observation and comparison of the domains of women’s literacy and numeracy uses with those of men. Whereas women’s literacy practices are mostly applied in their productive gender roles - mainly petty trading activities - men‘s uses of literacy and numeracy are by comparison more extensively applied across their productive activities where the uses of literacy and numeracy are mostly indispensible and to some extent, in their personal lives as well. Almost all the professions, often termed as men’s work, in the study setting require some application of reading, writing, and numeracy. The carpenter, the welder, and the tailor, to name a few, were all observed to have practically applied literacy skills in their profession. On the other hand, the women in the study are marginalized due to lack of skills and capital into low scale petty trading activities that make it possible for the majority of them to commit all their
220 business transactions to memory. A comparison of women’s and men’s uses of literacy in the study setting has therefore demonstrated that men are more predisposed to using literacy and numeracy by virtue of the kinds of livelihood skills they have and the demand for literacy and numeracy in those professions.
Agnaou (2004) identified similar patterns of socio-cultural factors that affect women’s education in her study where she investigated the learning needs of Moroccan women enrolled in adult literacy programs and the factors that often lead them to drop out. The participants reported socio-cultural factors such as domestic duty and husband opposition among others as causes of dropping out of literacy classes. In both cases, one implication for educational policy is recognition of the fact that literacy acquisition and uses are all a product of the social and cultural context. Thus, certain forces within the social context might negatively affect educational inputs invested in any kind of literacy learning program for women, the process of literacy acquisition, and consequently, the expected outcomes.
Literacy Practices are Never Static
Lessons learned from this study have taught us that literacy practices are never static as
Barton and Hamilton (1998) acknowledged. Literacy practices do change and new ones are consistently emerging. For instance the practices of writing letters has considerably lessened with the emergence of telephones and other means of communication in the study setting.The proliferation of technologies that support different modes of communication have had huge impacts on people’s literacy practices across societies of different context and the study setting is no exception. Technological invention and innovation will continue to be defining forces in how people communicate. With increased access to telephones, the practice of writing letters will eventually fade away. A similar phenomenon relates to the use of online applications, notably
221 for jobs, that is slowly being introduced into the study setting. Although the filing of paper forms are currently a literacy event particularly for securing offical jobs, there are very high chances that such literacy events will eventually become obsolete. These examples are evidence of how literacy practices do change and in their places, new ones are often emerging. The impact of technological development have not only affected modes of communication and literacy uses in
The Gambia but the world at large.
Identifying the Weakness in New Literacy Studies
New Literacy Studies (NLS) as a field has been very successful in offering different perspective of literacy, one that challenges the mechanistic view of literacy as a tool that is conflated with cognitive and societal development. However, the framework has been criticized that it has minimized certain aspects of literacy. This apparent weakness could be traced first to the development of the model to challenge the autonomous model (Brandt & Clinton, 2002). By dismissing the conception of literacy as a deterministic force, Brandt and Clinton (2002) suggested that NLS criticisms of the autonomous model tend to be too limiting. In what follows,
I discuss some of the loopholes in the NLS scholarship and draw references from the experiences garnered from this study and from studies that have pointed out shortcomings in the NLS scholarship.
These shortcomings include (a) Overconcentration on people without formal schooling;
(b) irresponsive to current and important educational research topics; (c) the overemphasis and limitation of the “local” context ; (d) confusion around what literacy actually is and what it is not; and (e) blatant disregard of the consequences or potentialities of literacy in the lives of humans.
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Over-Concentration on People without Formal Schooling
NLS concentration mainly on subjects who have never been to school but claim they perform literacy and numeracy that have resemblances with graduates of formal schooling helps us understand a variety of literacy practices outside the formal education system. These practices can be co-opted in programs that support literacy learning and particularly for adult learners. It also effectively argues against the outright condemnation of anyone who does not read and write in the conventional form and recognized written languages as illiterate for the point of view that people can be illiterate in one context but literate in another. This approach has been a successful rebuttal to the theories about the independent effect of literacy and those that assumed a great divide between oral and literate societies. However, the entire focus on non-schooled literacy practices to the exclusion of those with formal schooling does signal some confusion around whether local practices only evoke literacy and numeracy uses by people who have never been through formal schooling rather than implying potential differences in the way literacy is used across different socio-cultural settings. The uses for literacies and numeracy across societies of different cultural groups is understandably the crux of the socio-cultural practice theory and that interest should allow for more expansion in our sampling, whether study participants are purposively or randomly selected.
Including people with formal schooling in our studies will expand our knowledge in important ways by illuminating how those people who have gone through formal schooling employ whatever literacy and numeracy skills they have acquired and retained from their participation in formal schooling. An essential investigation into the generalized statements about the effect of education and of literacy in particular on individuals and national economic development could be more effectively conducted if NLS researchers deal directly with the
223 products of formal schooling. More specifically, the inclusion of participants with formal schooling offers a formidable way of evaluating what benefit people have accrued from formal schooling against the alleged deterministic views of its outcomes. The incorporation of people with formal schooling in our analysis of uses of literacy, as was the case in this dissertation research, will make our theoretical claims stronger and not weak. It should help NLS researchers to breach areas that we do not focus on but about which we continue to make inferences.
Irresponsive to Current and Important Educational Research Topics Relating to Literacy
NLS research is often weak in providing information related to current educational research and specifically on topics that have much connection with literacy uses. Maddox (2007) charged that the division between the autonomous and the ideological models of literacy has resulted in certain themes being associated with one camp and not the other. Unfortunately, this polarization has led to deliberate disregard of questions about the consequences and relevance or utility of literacy and numeracy and particularly its role in progressive social change (Brandt &
Clinton, 2002). This polarization certainly renders the impact of NLS research on educational policies somewhat limited.
As an example, NLS has failed to garner knowledge about the factors that support literacy retention and its flip side, literacy relapse. Given that the problem of literacy relapse has gain enormous attention as one of the challenges afflicting efforts to improve schooling outcomes in developing countries (UNESCO, 2011), NLS has not yet stepped up to the call for investigating viable means for addressing this educational problem. In this study, perspectives about the causes of literacy relapse were gathered but that was rather accidental. After discovering some study participants who claimed that at some point in their lives they were able to read at least a bit but can no longer perform functions relating to reading and writing in the study, they were
224 asked to explain the causes of their literacy loss. This study did not fully explore this topic as it was outside the purview of the research questions. This weakness was not only reflected in this study but is common in NLS where the central focus of investigation is on literacy uses.
The theme of literacy uses is prominent in NLS to a point of overshadowing critical factors such as constraints to literacy acquisition and further learning needs. Although the central focus of NLS is on uses of literacy in everyday socio-cultural life versus the cognitive effect of literacy on people, NLS studies are nonetheless limited in eliciting the etic perspective of the people they study on what needs if any they have for reading, writing and numeracy and the constraints they face. These areas constitute important data for educational policy makers to tailor opportunities for literacy and numeracy acquisitions with the daily realities of their targeted demographies.
Hence, how NLS might move beyond the aforementioned theoretical gridlock for contributing more effectively to current educational topics must continue to be debated within the field. Brandt and Clinton, 2002; Collins and Blot, 2003; and Luke, 2004; all of whom have used the socio-cultural practice theory in their studies of literacy, have all come to terms with the blindspot of the theory and have offered their perspectives on how to more effectively deal with those shortcomings in the scholarship.
As an addition to the voices of these scholars, I submit that for the theoretical framework to continue to be responsive to current educational problems it must be malleable enough to embrace topics that have been traditionally and deliberately assigned to the autonomous theoretical camp since the emergence of the social-practice theory. I suggest that that polarity between the autonomous and the ideological model should be centered not on topics but on the philosophical and methodological orientation that guide how research on literacy and related subjects be pursued.
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The Over-Emphasis of the “Local” Context and its Limitations
I join Brandt and Clinton (2002) in their suggestion that local literacy practices are never entirely local but to some extent, products of global processes. According to these scholars, literacy practices could sometimes be global rather than local. Numerous cases of domains of literacy application and purposes of literacy and numeracy uses in the context of this study have validated the assertion of these scholars and make the transcontextualized potential of literacy relevant and one that has to be given due recognition in the field.
In this study, the women’s use of literacy in their reproductive gender roles such as helping children with school work, the use of shopping lists and monthly budgets, the reading of prescriptions on medicine bottles, the reading of expiration dates on canned food, and uses of cell phones are all literacy events that are undoubtedly characterized by global influences.
The literacy events observed among parents helping their children to study with whatever rudimentary level of literacy skills or non-literate parents’ participation in their children’s schooling are not confined to western schooling. The parents whether literate or not have learned, appropriated, and internalized that value aspect of formal schooling and have therefore incorporated it as part of their routine practices involving literacy and numeracy within the context of formal schooling. Although children enrolled in school are mostly enrolled in religious education as well, study sessions as observed literacy events were mainly common within the context of formal schooling. Literacy practices within the context of formal schooling are a product of colonialism and more especially, the introduction of formal schooling.
Similarly, the emerging literacy practice of the use of shopping lists among young women might be considered as a transcontexual phenomenon. Older generations of women go to the market without grocery lists. They acquire the culture of shopping without a written note early
226 on in their lives and grow up not needing shopping lists to remember the things they need from the market. Because of formal schooling participation, the younger generations, who are not very much culturally programmed to shop off the top of their head have found value in writing a shopping list before going to the market for the purpose of convenience and efficiency. The burden of returning to the market when one forgets to buy a key ingredient has compelled many young women with basic literacy to embrace the culture of keeping a shopping list. This emerging practice transcends the socio-cultural context of its application and it is for the most part of western origin.
The literacy practices of reading of expiration dates on canned food, which are mainly imported commodities, further supports that literacy practices are not a typical invention of practitioners (Brandt & Clinton, 2002). Without the importation of canned food, the need for reading the expiration date on canned food would not have been present because there was no canned food previously. Put differently, the literacy practice of reading canned food did not precede its importation into the study’s setting. With the local markets currently serving as avenues for the selling of imported food items that are removed off the shelves of supermarkets because they are close to their expiration date, the reading of expiration dates on these items became necessary to avert the negative health consequences of eating those food items. These literacy practices are arguably not confined within a so-called localized context. They are a product of global exchanges. Brandt and Clinton (2002) have wisely detected the tendency for the local to interact with the global forces, causing them to rethink the weaknesses that are inherent in the emphasis given to the local context in the socio-cultural practice of literacy studies. The scholars astutely noted this while reacting to the oversimplification of literacy as embedded in local context:
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Further, literate practices depend on powerful and consolidating technologies – technologies that are themselves susceptible to sometimes abrupt transformations that can destabilize the functions, uses, values, and meanings of literacy anywhere. In truth, if reading and writing are means by which people reach – and are reached by – other contexts, then more is going on locally than just local practice. (p.338)
That assertion is particularly relevant to the uses of cell phones. The prevalence of cell phones in the study setting has provided a need for literacy application in using that device. In the study setting, owning a cell phone is a status symbol and the ability to use such device further promotes one’s social standing. Among the younger generations and those who have access to cell phones, learning to manipulate and navigate through the features of the phone has been a transcontexualized literacy practices. The cell phone is used for sending instant messages that would have been in the past sent in a form of a handwritten letter. Youngsters are enjoying the ease of communicating with friends through text messages and particularly in keeping up with social happenings. Text messaging has also been adapted to the local context. Despite the fact that the local languages that are spoken in the study settings have not been programmed for use, text messages are hardly ever composed entirely in English. The use of chat lingos that transcends the study locale and other local languages are more conveniently employed in text messages. In order to economically use credit purchased for cell phones, young people have learned to send texts instead of placing a call. They have also learned to use chat vernacular to compose short text messages that makes complete sense to receivers who are also immersed in the culture of text messaging. Chat vernacular such as BTW (by the way), TBH (to be honest),
SMH (shake my head); YW (you’re welcome), to name but a few, are all employed in a transcontexualized way. Such use of writing is arguably supported by development in technologies and particularly given more weight by social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
These examples reveal the contextualizing potential of literacy.
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I further agree with Brandt and Clinton (2002) in the light of findings from my study that some literacy practices that are influenced by the process of globalization and particularly embedded in the diffusion of technologies can disrupt local life. The study participants’ mothers have voiced concerned about their children’s uses of technology such as cell phones and in grieving that teenage daughters’ access to such devices have rendered them less active in taking control of their children and in managing who they communicate with. These concerns emerged when one telecommunication company decided to offer free calls and text messaging between midnight and 5:00 a.m. This marketing strategy has led many school children to sit up late in the night text messaging with friends. Parents opined that in the past, it was easy to monitor the activities of their teenage daughter and particularly their social relationships but such is no longer the case.
Much like the impact of cell phones on literacy practices, access to computers, mainly at cyber cafés in the study setting, has led to increased literacy practices among young people as they constantly engage social media sites such as Facebook, Viber, Twitter, and Skype to connect with the wider world. This particular literacy practice has received much attention from young people who associate such activities with identity. The use of Facebook for instance is a social happening that assigns users with importance and relevance among their peer groups. The attention it has garnered has led to many including non-literates to learn to use Facebook through other peers and operators of cyber cafés. This is perhaps one of the most conspicuous locally organized efforts to learn to read and write in the study setting but one that is particularly more pronounced among boys than it is for girls. This instance of using reading and writing should perhaps challenge educators and policy makers to rethink the essence of formal schooling and focus schooling more to the real needs for reading and writing.
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The Consequences of Literacy in Human Lives is Generally Ignored
Arguably, there is little or no benefit from any literacy studies on uses of literacy that deliberately shy away from discussing the effects of literacy in the lives of the people and what those effects mean for their individual and societal development. Blindly following the NLS agenda in refuting the independent effect of literacy is the cause of disregard to the question of whether literacy is important to the individual and to societal development or not. As a result,
Maddox (2007) suggests a revisionist approach to the way NLS frames the concept of literacy and the way ethnographic accounts are analyzed to include broader, yet salient accounts that recognize cross-cultural patterns of utility and the significance of literacy in human lives overall.
Certainly, NLS can be expanded to accommodate a new theoretical perspective that would still give primacy to the social context of literacy uses while also embracing topics that deal more generally with the potentialities of literacy. All of these important themes can be subsumed in the emerging “situated” perspective (Barton et al., 2000; Maddox, 2007) and analyzed within the context of how global processes bear on literacy uses and meanings both globally and in local context (Brandt & Clinton, 2002).
In the context of this study, the women whether they were formally schooled or not held high values about education and used the word interchangeably with literacy. The study participants understood the consequences and specifically, the lack thereof of the skill. They associated illiteracy with deficiency and a cause of marginalization. They also illuminated what uses and needs they have for literacy. Consider for instance the perspective of one of the study participants:
Education is good for a nation. It is often said that learning is better than silver and gold. Reading is good but writing is equally important. One who cannot read is almost like a blind man. By reading your own messages one guards one’s privacy. Writing gives one the opportunity to keep record of one’s transactions. For full participation in our women’s
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group and in our micro credit (Oususu) schemes literacy is important. Some women have innate skills to commit important matters to memory for a long time but one is better off being literate [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
Although it should be acknowledged here that women’s literacy acquisitions and uses are without challenges and that such challenges may limit the benefits to be derived from the tool, the women’s perspectives, overall, point to the value of literacy learning and uses. Literacy and numeracy abilities have given the women the tool to efficiently manage their weekly Oususu contribution, a process by which they multiply their meager savings and earned agency and as a result can solve financial problems in their households like feeding the family and paying children’s school fees. Literacy programs as Maddox (2007) suggests can tap from such emerging social roles to tailor literacy learning to the daily realities of its participants.
Confusion around What Literacy Actually is and What it is Not
The mystification of the concept of literacy is perhaps one of the most striking insights conveyed by the ideological model. This insight challenges conventional notions about the meaning of literacy and its inherent powers. The extension of literacy to include non-textual forms has created some confusion about what “literacy” actually is and in what form it should appear. The idea of multiple literacies argues for a broader vision of literacy, including, for example, the ability to deconstruct meaning in a visual sense. It would still be useful, however, to have a unifying characteristic other than the simple ability to make meaning of the world, which proponents of multiple literacies have argued confounds literacy as traditionally interpreted -- the ability to read and write -- with other forms of literacy based on images, sounds, colors, signs and even body language. Although the expansion of the traditional understanding of literacy as essentially textual allows room for considering other cultures and particularly oral traditions that may have literate characteristics, the expansion of the concept to accommodate other modes of
231 communication and meaning-making potentially strips the concept from its essence to the point where literacy may mean anything.
The call for a comparative approach to literacy studies across contexts requires a common working definition of the concept even within the realm of multi-modal literacies. For instance, women who are able to observe weather patterns and make rainfall predictions might have been successfully able, via their knowledge of cosmology, to decode the meaning embedded in the clouds. This knowledge, as a form of verbal and observational art, is essential in modern society but feeds better into the concept of entextualization employed by Ruth Finnegan than it does into literacy. The use of entextualization to refer to such practices may lessen the fuzziness between textual literacy practices and those that qualify as verbal arts. So far, there is little consideration of these issues in NLS literature, but it is certainly a topic worth addressing.
Summary
In this chapter, I outlined and discussed the strength of the NLS theoretical framework by discussing how the concept of literacy as a socio-cultural practice has sparked a new turn in literacy studies and thereby changed the perspective of many literacy researchers who approach the subject as a socio-cultural practice rather than a mere ability to read and write text.
The NLS theoretical framework has also caused researchers to be cautious about treating literacy as an independent catalyst for human and societal development and to understand that different forms of literacies exist.
However, the framework is not without its limitations as discussed above. Hence, there is a continuous discourse about revisiting the socio-cultural theory to more effectively shape and inform educational debates relating to literacy. Such discourses have been along the lines of how
NLS might move beyond its traditional theoretical concerns of challenging the autonomous
232 model and contribute fully to solving global educational topics that significantly bear on topic of literacy.
This is a necessary step to add value to the essence of the theoretical framework and more specifically to make it more responsive to current needs and demands within the field of comparative education research in literacy. For instance, the proliferation of technologies will continue to shape literacy practices. It is in noting these global processes and their roles in creating opportunities for new forms of literacy and numeracy practices that a comparative analysis of these transcontexualized practices are possible.
The emphasis of the local context reduced the space of NLS scholars, within the socio- practice theory framework, to compare the convergence and divergence of literacy practices across contexts. Literacy studies have much to offer to the field of comparative education.
Barlette (2003) for instance advanced that much could be shared from the literacy practices of differing contexts that might offer lessons of practical application for language policies and planning and literacy instructions and practice. She further noted that for this to be possible there is a need to get beyond the staunch beliefs on localism. Literacy studies could adopt qualitative comparative methods that would allow a comparison of literacy practices across different contexts.
To close the loopholes in emerging NLS scholarship, studies should embrace the socio- cultural context of literacy acquisition and uses and examine the value, meaning, and consequences of literacy for human development and social change. That research direction would also allow for an analysis of how such practices are linked to wider global processes despite the possibility of some literacy practices to be purely a product of local contexts. This seems to be the direction NLS might continue to take in the future.
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CHAPTER TEN
CONCLUSIONS, THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS, DIRECTIONS FOR FURTHER
RESEARCH, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Conclusions
Analysis of the survey data on the demographic characteristics of the study participants as discussed in Chapter 4 suggests participants in the study have several similarities and differences. Their diversity manifests in level of schooling attained and degree of literacy and numeracy competence acquired or maintained. The survey data also show that the study participants shared a number of characteristics. The majority of the women in the study are married; they have low educational qualifications overall, and are of very low socio-economic status. Other socio-economic characteristics the study participants share are lack of ownership of valuable properties such as land, a lack of livelihood skills, and acute shortage of financial capital. These factors combined among others have compelled a majority of the women to live off of the informal economy and work as petty traders and domestic servants.
The chronic shortage of capital for investment in the commercial activities of the women was obvious and one that has critical bearing on their needs for and uses of literacy and numeracy in the running of small scale businesses.
Poverty continues to create inequality in access to education and that too results in differential access to formal sector jobs. This research confirms that discrepancy in higher levels of education and inequality in employment opportunities are among critical factors that define the low socio-economic status of a vast majority of women such as those of my study participants. These women live in the margins of society and are fighting poverty through
234 participation in the informal economy. They have done so by managing very small-scale businesses, although they earn very little from their proceeds.
I turn now to the research questions posed in Chapter 1 and the answers to them can be drawn from the qualitative and quantitative findings presented in Chapters 4 to 9.
R.Q.1. Level, Type(s) and Languages of Literacy and Numeracy Acquired
This research determined that the literacy and numeracy levels of the study participants are weak overall, yet quite varied. Some women have no literacy and numeracy skills at all whereas a few of the participants have managed to acquire and maintain relatively competent or functional abilities. Overall, levels in both areas were extremely modest, however. Less than a quarter of the women could read and write paragraphs that consisted of sentences about everyday life and the same low ability in reading was observed in the written numeracy test results. Less than a quarter of the women had the ability to perform written mathematical operations involving multiplication and divisions.
In the area of oral numeracy, this study found that a vast majority of non-literate women could mentally perform mathematical functions they could not carry out in the written test. That finding suggests that when it comes to basic numeracy, people can acquire that knowledge outside of organized learning avenues such as formal schooling. Arguably, oral cultures too have systems of mathematics (addition, subtractions, multiplication and divisions) similar to those of written cultures and that cultural knowledge is passed onto their cultural groups and derived for the most part from commercial activities - buying, selling and crediting of goods.
As an implication, studies that assess numeracy skills and particularly in oral cultures need to specifically state what type of numeracy- oral or written – they are measuring as it is incorrect to designate someone as non-numerate just because they lack the ability to perform
235 those numeracy functions in writing. Also as an implication on the pedagogy of numeracy learning, indigenous knowledge for use in learning basic numeracy already exist in oral cultures and can provide a strong foundation if used for learning a higher level of written numeracy.
The study participants for the most part speak a variety of local languages as they live in a multicultural and multilingual setting. These languages are acquired as mother tongues and through interactions with community members who speak different languages. However, the development of these oral languages into written forms has been slow.
There is evidently an “unequal regime of literacy languages” at play in the study’s setting as Juffermans (2011) noted and captioned in the title of that particular article. The majority of the respondents favored English language over the use of other local languages in their literacy practices. There is a very strong association of English language with literacy in that some of the participants who attended literacy programs and attained some levels in the local languages, though minimal, in reading did not consider themselves in the beginning of the survey to be literate when they were asked if they could read or write. However, generally, a majority of the women who could read and write at least a little did so in English. Their attitude relating to their uses of local literacy manifested lack of confidence.
My observation of one adult literacy program in the greater Banjul area taught in
Mandinka and Wolof confirms that participants do nurture attitudes and belief that the literacy skills they are learning in the two local languages are lesser in value than the literacy skills in
English language. The literacy program participants eventually presented their demands to switch the languages of instruction to English and threatened withdrawal from the program if the instructors did not concede. The instructors wasted no time in implementing the demands put
236 forth by the adult learners. Attitudes and beliefs about the value of the English language vis-à-vis other local languages affect local perceptions, values, and beliefs about what constitute literacy.
The favoring of the English language over local languages but more importantly the limited availability of text in local languages, particularly in the case of official documents, may have dismal consequences for the valuing, development, and uses of these local languages in multilingual and multicultural settings such as The Gambia. The prospect for the development and uses of these languages in written forms will depend on some kind of reimaging and the extent to which print materials such as government dossiers are made available in these local languages and are widespread.
R.Q.2. Mode of Acquisition of Literacy and Numeracy Skills
The women participated in a variety of educational activities: formal, non-formal and/or informal types of learning. Formal schooling however was the most common avenue for literacy and numeracy acquisition with more than 70 percent of the women having had formal schooling experience albeit with mixed grade attainments - less than 40 percent of the women barely had more than six years of schooling. This picture is reflective of the general trend in Africa where for instance, in 47 out of 54 African countries, girls have less than a 50 percent chance of completing primary school. In Guinea, only 26 percent of girls enrolled in the last grade of primary education actually enter secondary education compared to 34 percent of boys.
(UNESCO, 2012).
A majority of the study participants experienced Quranic education, in conformity with the norms of Muslim tradition in the study setting and on a non-formal basis. However, that non- formal educational training did not endow many of the women with reading and writing skills in
Arabic, nor did it avail them with numeracy skills. The study participants reported that
237 memorization of the holy Quran for use in praying and in other religious practices was the primary benefit of their participation in Quranic schools. Only the women who attended formal
Arabic schools had basic reading and writing skills in Arabic.
Vocational schooling is an uncommon educational route for the study participants due to several factors that include the high cost associated with vocational training and the low value assigned to it in for the reason that the employment prospects from vocational training other than self-employment endeavors is limited. Thus, more than 80 percent of the study participants have no livelihood skills, which they could use to expand their employment opportunities and thus enlarge their earning capabilities.
In an educational system where the drop-out syndrome continues to impede investments in formal education, a failure to give value to second-chance schooling for livelihood skill development will result in both immediate and long-term problems. These problems include the persistence of acute poverty currently rampant among many women in the study setting due to the lack of the required educational qualifications and the absence of relevant skills that affect their chances to access job opportunities in both formal and informal employment sectors.
R.Q.3. The Women’s Triple Gender Roles
The women of peri-urban Gambia perform a variety of roles – Reproductive, Productive, and Community management gender roles - that could be broadly categorized using Moser’s
(1989, 1993) framework of women’s triple gender roles. Reproductive roles are those roles that women perform in their responsibilities as mothers and caregivers of their families. Productive gender roles are tendered towards women’s income-generating activities. Community management responsibilities are an extension of the aforementioned reproductive roles into the communities.
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On a typical day, the women navigate through their duties beginning with the provision of food for their families and other chores such as housekeeping. Particularly tedious of these tasks is the daily preparation of food and daily housekeeping. Married women carry out these reproductive roles single handedly and in some instances, some part of the burden is transferred onto their daughters.
The remaining time women have left after performing their reproductive roles is devoted to earning income to support their families’ financial needs and for participation in social events of family and community members. In addition to women’s participation in community social events, another special marked community activity is their weekly participation and financial contributions in women’s groups, a process by which they harness financial resources from the proceeds of their petty trading activities to support each other’s economic endeavors.
The roles women perform are not fixed; women are breaking barriers by moving beyond their two traditional assigned roles - Reproductive and Community management gender roles - through increasing participation in productive work as breadwinners of their families.
I observed that the study participants’ participation in productive undertakings is limited by gender inequality and stereotypes that continue to negate efforts that aimed at improving their economic prosperity. Women, like some men, serve as breadwinners for their families but unfortunately, and unlike men, they are the only ones who also shoulder the reproductive burden with its enormous labor time burden. From the framework of the women’s triple gender roles, I shall now restate the uses of literacy and numeracy that were observed in those roles and then follow that discussion up with a recap on the gender and contextual barriers that affect literacy and numeracy uses in the women’s gender roles.
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R.Q. 4. Principal Usages of Literacy and Numeracy Skills
The study participants sometimes used the tools of literacy and numeracy in their
Reproductive, Productive, and Community management gender roles. However, in some instances, contextual barriers and profound gender inequalities limited their abilities to acquire literacy and written numeracy skills in the first place and to maximally apply those skills in their
Reproductive, Productive, and Community management gender roles where the women asserted those tools are mostly needed.
Women who are mothers and are charged with child care responsibilities use literacy and numeracy when assisting their children who are in early grades in their school work as they cannot afford private tutoring for their children’s education. Since women frequently stay home with the children, the responsibility of assisting the children with their school work falls to them.
Women’s participation in this area, however, tended to reduce as their children move up into higher grades, due to the limited literacy and numeracy skills the women themselves command.
Literacy uses in the women’s reproductive gender roles also included the reading of expiration dates on canned food and the decoding of medical prescription information for administration to their families. Some women also do monthly budgeting for their family expenses. This was particularly true in the case of women with spouses in the diaspora. The women who budgeted explained that the practice is important to ensure that the money they received is efficiently spent on the family’s needs and also to be able to account for it should they be accused of mismanagement of financial resources by their spouses. The younger age brackets found the uses of shopping list practical to avoid going to the market and leaving some ingredients out that might require a second trip.
The use of mobile phones in the study setting constitutes a recent use of literacy by the women. Knowledge of operating cell phones, particularly for composing text messages, was, 240 however, more common among the younger women than it was among older women. This is because the older women lacked the technical knowledge to operate cell phones but they nonetheless sometimes use them with the assistance of people around them.
Despite possessing moderate literacy and numeracy skills, women were found to be using these skills in their productive activities. Sales of goods are mostly on credit basis, so literacy and numeracy skills are integral for those who operate small-scale businesses. The nature of some of the women’s petty trading activities required them to keep an inventory of the goods they receive from wholesalers as well as the goods they provide on credit to customers. The extra cash women earn from these kinds of petty-trading activities is often the bulk of the income they have to use in the financial upkeep of their household as a married women and whose spouses earns very meager incomes.
The emergence of mobile hawkers among women who participated in the study has largely been possible due to some level of literacy and numeracy competencies. The fact that mobile hawkers deal with many customers on a daily basis and operate their businesses mainly through credit makes daily recording of installment payments and outstanding balances indispensable in the running of that kind of business. Mobile hawking of basic goods such as lotion, perfumes and cooking utensils, has traditionally been male-dominated in the study setting and run by a Fulani male class locally called “Berchek” but the women being affected by economic hardships are increasingly gaining a foothold in such productive work.
From the examples provided in this study on women’s uses of literacy in their productive activities and notably in Chapter 6, it is evident that not all women use literacy and numeracy in their petty trading activities. The ones who do are either mobile hawkers or take goods from wholesalers to resell in their neighborhoods. Women who take goods from wholesalers are
241 likelier to record their business transactions to avoid a potential misunderstanding with wholesalers. On the other hand, women who had very little to sell, particularly food vendors, were not observed to have applied literacy and numeracy in their petty trading activities because they were not relying so much on credit. Also it was confirmed during the focus group discussions that such activities do not require literacy and written numeracy.
Women’s uses of literacy and numeracy are prominently featured in their community management functions in the planning and recording of contributions for social ceremonies, in fund raising activities, and operation of their saving schemes. Given the continuous hike in food prices, the women found event planning and budgeting necessary for the successes in social ceremonies. The uses of literacy and numeracy were integral in these events. Hidden cultural understanding for reciprocating financial contributions equal to or more than what the host of social events received from family, neighbors and friends has been the basis for the recording of financial contributions to avoid devaluing one’s relationships by giving them a lower amount of what they had contributed.
Women’s organizations, and particularly in their harnessing of financial resources through their cultural saving programs, have produced new uses and needs for literacy and numeracy. With some women’s organization receiving weekly financial contributions from more than one hundred members, weekly recordkeeping of those contributions have adder greater efficiency in the management of women groups’ financial activities. Without literacy and numeracy skills, the financial transactions of large groups would have been difficult, as the recording of pertinent information is necessary to ensure timely payment, to charge fees those with outstanding payments, and to make sure that no single member received more than the number of shares they have.
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The practice of recording the financial contributions of groups was observed across the ten women’s groups that participated in this study and in fact was central in the groups’ financial activities. Through the uses of literacy and numeracy, the women have found ways of working around their severe shortage of financial capital by harnessing group resources to support each other’s economic needs. Would the women have been able to run the administration of their cultural savings scheme without uses of literacy and numeracy? Certainly they would as some women’s groups with very few members do not keep record of their saving activities since they can remember without much difficulty those with outstanding payments and those who have received their funds. The existence of large groups as is most commonly the case of the groups that participated in this study requires the uses of literacy and numeracy for the efficient running of groups’ financial transactions. The women’s ability to read, write, and perform numeracy have thus increased the women’s capacity to augment earnings from their petty trading activities as larger groups yield colossal financial reward from the women’s savings for group members. It must be noted here that the uses of literacy and numeracy in the women’s community management activities and notably in their cultural savings scheme was performed by the few women with such abilities. A vast majority of women who participate in women’s groups do not possess the ability to read, write, or perform written numeracy functions. They rely on the competent literacy and numeracy abilities of the few group members who assume leadership positions because they possess such skills.
Challenges Encountered in Literacy and Numeracy Uses by Women
International development agencies in their push of the literacy and numeracy agenda assume that the mere ability to read and write will automatically translate into improved economic benefits for women in developing societies (Maddox, 2007; Robinson-Pant, 2004;
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Street, 1993). However, this study illuminated evidence that indicate that these broad claims about the benefits of literacy and numeracy in the lives of women are not necessarily the whole story. Such irregularities in the patterns of literacy and numeracy uses in the women’s
Reproductive, Productive, and Community management gender roles suggest that no straight line exists that connect literacy and numeracy competence with probable uses in the lives of these women. The factor that limits women’s ability to acquire, use, and retain literacy skills are discussed below.
Minimal Uses of Literacy and Numeracy in Reproductive Work
This study determined that most of the work that women do in their reproductive gender roles - cleaning, daily cooking, and laundry for example - did not require them to use literacy and numeracy and the women were able to successfully trek the boundaries of those functions.
The conduct of their Reproductive gender roles also often leave women with very little time to participate in productive activities or even in other literacy and numeracy learning programs.
Thus, whatever literacy and numeracy skills they possess have not been successfully channeled into productive uses and that often leads to problems of retention of skills as was found to be the case with some of the study participants. The negative effect of lack of practice on literacy retention is perhaps remarkably severe among the study participants who dropped out of school with weak literacy and numeracy skills. The women have pointed out the lack of opportunities for perpetual practice during the focus group discussions as one of the reasons why retention of literacy skills prove difficult for many of them.
Lack of Financial Capital
In this research, it was found out that women’s acute lack of financial capital to expand their productive activities as petty traders in the informal economy limits their possibilities for
244 expanding their productive activities and consequently narrows their opportunities for using literacy and numeracy skills. Consider for instance the cases of Fatou and Binta, discussed early in Chapter 6, as food vendor and vegetable seller at the market, respectively. As participants in the ethnographic phase of the study, both women have a high score of literacy and numeracy abilities per this study’s test. My interaction with the women and observations on their income generating activities however show sparse uses of literacy and numeracy.
Binta’s lack of financial capital to expand or diversify her fruits and vegetable business makes her literacy and written numeracy skills unessential in this respect. She does not experience much crediting from her customers and therefore did not find the need to record her transactions. She hardly has a full basket of tomatoes and vegetables to sell in a day and therefore the chances to engage her literacy and numeracy skills to account for her business naturally are rare.
Fatou’s case is similar to Binta’s in that the lack of financial capital to diversify and branch into petty trader activities that required uses of literacy and numeracy affected her uses of those skills. However, there was more to Fatou’s case that speaks to a theme of resistance in her lack of uses of literacy. Fatou sells comestibles and has learned the trade from her mother since childhood. Thus she has amassed quite a wealth of experience in that trade to an extent that she needs not calculate her expenses to ensure she is profiting from her business. She can estimate how much profit she will get after a day’s sales by just looking at the quantity of the food. She continues to be wrapped in her cultural knowledge of food vending and thus lacks the incentive to apply her skills in this aspect of her productive activities and particularly in recording information about daily credits, though few, from her customers. She was however comfortable in keeping that information in her head.
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Arguably, Fatou and Binta might have had more productive uses for literacy and numeracy if they had access to financial capital to use to expand their business or diversify into new trade with more profits and more incentives to apply those skills.
A Weak Literate Environment
The negative influence of a low literate environment in shaping low demand for literacy and numeracy practices was observed. The fact that the literate environment of most
African countries such as The Gambia is weak limits the transformative power of literacy and numeracy (Easton, 2013) and particularly as it regards application in women’s reproductive, productive, and community management responsibilities. Lack of literacy materials correspondingly affect demand for literacy and numeracy practices as the study participants reported. These limitations also affect women’s development of literacy and numeracy skills and also narrow their abilities to find more valuable uses for their skills. Even those women who reported they read newspapers mentioned that they have to borrow them from other people. The acute shortage of printed materials for reading and writing in the environment where the women live impede the opportunities for literacy and numeracy practices.
Furthermore, shortage of literacy and numeracy materials in local languages despite the uses of these languages in adult literacy programs further restricts the ability of women who participated in literacy programs to continue reading beyond the curriculum and other reading materials they had used in literacy programs.
The findings on peri-urban Gambian women’s uses of literacy and numeracy in their
Reproductive, Productive, and Community management gender roles as well as the constraints they countered to effectively usurp the tools of literacy and numeracy do certainly have some theoretical significance in New Literacy Studies as discussed below.
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Theoretical Implications
The above conclusions support the socio-cultural practice theory of literacy studies as a critical lens for understanding literacy and numeracy and particularly in rethinking the unilateral development effect of the skills on women’s development. The unilateral development effect of literacy on women’s development is a flawed assumption that has traditionally been assigned to literacy and numeracy competences in many discourses about its effects (Maddox, 2007; Street,
1993; Robinson-Pant, 2004). New Literacy Studies, particularly drawing from the conceptions of
Street (1984), Barton, and Hamilton (1992), as discussed in Chapter 2, stress that literacy and numeracy practices are socio-culturally situated. These scholars defined literacy as a set of social practices rather than mere cognitive skills. They also asserted that literacy practices are purposeful and embedded in broader social goals and cultural practices among other tenets of the
NLS theory. Some of the findings from this study confirmed that literacy and numeracy competences were not mere cognitive skills that endowed the study participants with a broad range of development effect. They were rather found to be set of practices that were highly dependent on the socio-cultural context of their application and entrenched in broader social goals. For instance, the women have found the uses of literacy and numeracy valuable in running their cultural saving scheme and have been manipulating the tools for efficiency in that cultural practice. Literacy and numeracy were in essence the actual ways in which the study participants applied those skills in their everyday lives and dictated by their context-specific needs. These local practices sometimes do not follow the generalized patterns of what needs and uses women might have for literacy and numeracy but are nonetheless meaningful to the women who practice them.
The New Literacy Studies theoretical framework although effective for understanding the concept of literacy and numeracy is flawed in its focus on only uses to the exclusion of effects 247 and also in its conception of literacy as entirely local practice. It is therefore important to embrace the hybridity of effects and uses (Maddox, 2007) in the New Literacy Studies agenda.
That framework is necessary for linking research interest on uses of literacy with those of cognitive benefits and as well as for re-conceptualizing literacy and numeracy practices as not only a product of local practices but sometimes influenced by global processes (Brandt &
Clinton, 2002; Maddox, 2007). Evidently, there are benefits to literacy and numeracy in the lives of women who participated in this study. However, the women did not entirely harness all the benefits claimed about the power of literacy due to several contextual and gender-related factors that limit their literacy and numeracy levels in the first place and as well as what they can possibly do with those skills. All of these important elements can be incorporated in the agenda of the NLS for an effective study of literacy and numeracy across a variety of contexts.
A contribution of this study lies in its depiction of the contextual and structural barriers reported in Chapter 8 that limit women’s acquisition and uses of literacy and numeracy skills. By portraying the everyday struggles of the women in their gender roles and as increasingly breadwinners of their families, it becomes clearer that literacy and numeracy competence do not automatically create the need or the environment for its uses. Several other factors in the context of many developing countries such as The Gambia connive to restrict, suspend, and encumber literacy acquisition, uses, and retention of women with low educational qualifications such as those of my study participants. In environments where people are constantly worried about their daily bread, it is understandable that education becomes secondary in the their lists of priorities.
Another contribution of this dissertation lies in its demonstration that to understand women’s uses of literacy and numeracy is to in fact understand what gender roles women perform in the communities where they live. These roles are, however, never static; they are
248 constantly shifting and thus the study of literacy and numeracy must take into cognizant these shifting trends in women’s gender roles. The emergence of mobile hawkers, an economic activity that require uses of literacy and numeracy for efficiency among the study participants, is one case in point. This knowledge is relevant not only for the development of relevant literacy and numeracy programs for women but to gender planning endeavors within the context of development.
Recommendation for Future Research
The study has revealed practical and everyday situations in which women with the rudiments of literacy and numeracy skills have applied those skills in their lives and specifically in their Reproductive, Productive and Community management gender roles. It has also revealed some of the contextual and gender-related factors that impede women’s ability to wield the tools of literacy and numeracy to their benefits. The lessons learned from this study on women’s uses of literacy and numeracy in their gender roles should therefore serve as a foundation upon which future empirical investigations can be conducted on identifying women’s actual learning needs as informed by their own priorities not only as mothers but as income earners and active participants in the activities of their communities.
The over-concentration in centering literacy activities on primary schooling as evident in most national government and development agencies’ educational programs, though potentially effective in the long run for combating adult illiteracy, has grave consequences for many women and girls with interrupted schooling experiences (Hobbs, 2007). Findings from this current research suggest that there ought to be opportunities for second-chance schooling in order to harness gains from the educational investments of a vast majority of women and girls who dropped out of school in The Gambia and other countries in Africa. However, Knowles (1972)
249 reminded us that adults are both goal and relevancy oriented when it comes to their learning.
Thus future research might be beneficial if focused on the following:
1. Identifying the actual literacy and numeracy needs of girls and women early school
leavers for informing the development of relevant second chance schooling. The
adoption of a phenomenological approach might be one way of the documenting the
perspectives of girls and women early school leavers on exactly what they want to
learn. These perspectives are enriched by outside-of-school experiences and
encounters from which the women felt a lack of literacy or numeracy skills have
disadvantaged them.
2. Followed by a policy type of analysis that would examine what educational policies,
avenues, and resources exist locally for the development of learning programs for
early school leavers and especially for women and girls as the most represented of the
demography of early school leavers in The Gambia.
3. Followed by the designing and piloting of second-chance schooling programs for
early school leavers.
The first two research interests can be carried out concurrently if desired while the last one can be best informed by findings from the two preceding research agendas. These research questions when addressed and harmonized with the recommendations for policy and practice discussed below might contribute to valuable gains in girls and women.
Recommendation for Policy and Practice
The struggles within the context of women’s literacy and numeracy uses in The Gambia have implications for practice relating to a host of factors essential for a creating a valuable, sustainable, and positive environment for literacy and numeracy utilization by women. These
250 elements are discussed below in the context of the recommendations for the development of educational policies and practices for women early school leavers in The Gambia and other developing countries with similar contexts.
Supporting Policies for Second-Chance Schooling
Creating a positive literacy and numeracy environment for women requires policies that support inclusive planning, the kind that supports the aspirations of women and girls as beneficiaries of such programs. The development of pragmatic literacy and numeracy programs for girls and women early school leavers must include the perspective of women as productive workers for guiding the development of relevant learning needs. The women evidently want to learn but they want to learn something useful and relevant in their lives. According to Knowles’ theory of andragogy (1980), adults learn when they experience the need to learn in order to cope best with real life task or problem. Speaking on the need to provide relevant literacy and numeracy programs through second-chance schooling, Chuchaa, a focus group participant who was at some point in her life able to write but could barely read and write during the time of this study remarked:
Learning basics is good but it is somehow a waste of time for women who do not have problems with alphabets and basic numeracy. Women need education in banking to avoid the risk of being defrauded. Teach them [women] how to make deposits and withdrawals, how to draw cheques themselves and so keep their accounts secret if they choose to keep it to themselves. Teach them how to keep account of their business transactions. Teach them how to manage their time. These are useful to them and will therefore be interesting enough to keep them focused. They will concentrate in such learning and will retain the lessons. They can also then monitor their contributions to the saving scheme of their choice [translated from Wolof to English by the researcher].
There are valuable insights from the above perspective and one that has proven that women know exactly what they want to learn and they can effectively identify their actual
251 learning needs if given the opportunity. Thus, they will have genuine reasons to participate in second-chance schooling and retain the knowledge acquired since it will have a practical relevance in their lives.
Providing Relevant Second-Chance Schooling Opportunities
Literacy and numeracy policies that inform practice should bring about a sustainable positive literacy and numeracy opportunities for women. The first area that requires urgent attention is the establishment of formal and non-formal learning avenues for female early school leavers. Clearly many of the women as early school leavers need to upgrade their literacy and numeracy skills if they will ever be able to retain them. Second-chance schooling programs should be made accessible to women by making it free or charge less expensive fees the women can afford. The charging of expensive fees might pose barriers for participating as the women cited financial reasons as one of the factors for their lack of participation in vocational training programs. An additional incentive for women to participate in such learning programs can be found in rewarding their efforts with certificates that might correspond to levels in the formal schooling system.
Women’s groups can be used as a platform to start off these programs as they are already organized and many of these groups mainly consist of women with very low educational qualifications. There are evidently very large learning needs even within women’s groups and particularly with respect to building up the capacities of group leadership and members to effectively manage their financial activities in order to cope with growing membership and financial resources.
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The women lack the human resources needed to develop and improve on their financial activities and services to members but they have concrete ideas about their limitations as it relates to learning needs necessary for efficiency in managing their group financial activities.
The learning needs of women’s groups are enough of a curriculum that those interested in providing second-chance schooling can use it to start off their learning with the women while making judicious efforts to locate through the help of the women other learning needs for the development of more relevant learning programs all members can benefit from.
The provision of cash either through interest free loans or low interest rates to women so that they can expand their productive activities and thereby earn more profits should be strongly considered. Women do apply literacy and numeracy in their petty trading activities but since the majority of them have very small businesses to manage, they tend to commit their transactions to memory. For instance, the study participants have acknowledged that business women’s record keeping of credits off the top of their head is only feasible because they have very little to sell.
Therefore, an access to financial capital to expand women’s trading activities might support literacy and numeracy retention and uses when the skills are acquired.
Another area that deserves urgent attention is the need to increase the supply of learning materials, particularly in homes and in communities. That effort might accentuate the demand for literacy and numeracy uses. The acute shortage of literacy and numeracy supplies that characterize the study setting discourage efforts to acquire, use, and develop literacy and numeracy skills. Building community libraries and furnishing them with interesting reading materials for women may encourage a culture of literacy practices. The uses of local languages in adult literacy programs and in the first three grades of primary schooling calls forth the linking of local language policies with the availability of reading material. The lack of access to
253 printed materials in local languages hinders the ability of women whose literacy learning was in the local languages to apply whatever little literacy skills they have outside of the instructional materials they have received from literacy programs. Learning must continue even after women completed such programs. Thus, the literate environment they will graduate into needs upgrading with relevant reading materials to support women’s continuous learning activities.
Offsetting the time women spent in reproductive activities for more valuable uses in income-generating activities requires the concerted efforts of government and non-governmental organizations to support programs that address existing gender inequality and particularly stereotypical issues that label reproductive duties as women’s jobs. This can be achieved through partnership with men and particularly those in influential leadership positions in their communities to broker in the interest of women. This is particularly important in bringing about the much needed social change of reducing women’s work burden in the household. By persuading men to share household duties with women for instance, the women would have additional time left for participating in productive adventures.
Development programs that seek to enhance women’s capabilities and reduce poverty among them can only be successful if they devise strategies that would help women to spend less time in household chores and spend more of their time in income-generating activities and learning programs. The provision of valuable second-chance schooling for female early school leavers thus require comprehensive empowerment strategies rather than a piecemeal approach.
These women live in the context of numerous constraints that affect what they can do to improve their poor conditions of lives and what development agencies desire for them. All of these constraints have to be properly accounted and factored into the planning, design, and implementation of programs that seek to improve their conditions and those of their families.
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APPENDIX A
DEMOGRAPHIC SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES
LITERACY USES AND WOMEN’S GENDER ROLES: ETHNOGRAPHY OF LOCAL
PRACTICES IN A PERI-URBAN GAMBIAN COMMUNITY
1. Please tell me your name
2. What language did you grow up speaking? (for survey administrator please ask about level of uses ( Place of acquisition: mother tongue, Spoken at home, used in community, learned at school, learned elsewhere) (Level of Fluency: Fluent, functional , minimal, understands only, and none)
Mandinka : Place of acquisition ------Level ------
Wolof : Place of acquisition ------Level ------
Fula: Place of acquisition ------Level ------
Jola : Place of acquisition ------Level ------
Serehulie : Place of acquisition ------Level ------
English : Place of acquisition ------Level ------
Arabic: Place of acquisition ------Level ------
Other, please specify Place of acquisition ------
Level ------
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2.1 What language(s) do you speak at home? (Place of acquisition: mother tongue, Spoken at home, used in community, learned at school, learned elsewhere). (Level of Fluency: Fluent, functional , minimal, understands only, and none)
Mandinka : Place of acquisition ------Level ------
Wolof: Place of acquisition ------Level ------
Fula: Place of acquisition ------Level ------
Jola : Place of acquisition ------Level ------
Serehulie : Place of acquisition ------Level ------
English: Place of acquisition ------Level ------
Arabic: Place of acquisition ------Level------
Other, please specify Place of acquisition ------
Level ------
2.2 What other languages do you speak? (for survey administrator please ask about level of uses (Place of acquisition: mother tongue, Spoken at home, used in community, learned at school, learned elsewhere) Level of Fluency: Fluent, functional , minimal, understands only and none)
Mandinka: Place of acquisition------Level ------
Wolof: Place of acquisition ------Level ------
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Fula: Place of acquisition ------Level ------
Jola: Place of acquisition ------Level ------
Serehulie: Place of acquisition ------Level ------
English: Place of acquisition ------Level ------
Arabic: Place of acquisition------Level ------
Other, please specify Place of acquisition ------
Level ------
3. Please tell me your approximate age
18- 24
25-29
30-39
40-49
4. Have you ever attended primary school?
Yes No
5. Have you ever taken part in other types of instruction, like Koranic school, literacy programming or vocational training O Yes o No
[Now I would like to ask for a bit more detail about the various types of organized learning in which you have been involved].
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6. [ONLY FOR THOSE WHO ANSWERED “YES” TO PRIMARY SCHOOLING] If you attended primary school at some time, could you answer the following questions? 6.1. At about what age did you first enter primary school?
6.2. What was the highest grade that you completed in primary school?
6.3. At what age did you leave primary school?
6.3.1. Did you attend regularly up to that point, or did you have to take any years or major periods off during your primary schooling?
6.3.2. What was the reason for you leaving primary school when you did?
[ONLY FOR THOSE WHO COMPLETED ALL GRADES OF PRIMARY SCHOOL] – Ask an appropriate question about taking school leaving exam and/or obtaining primary school certificate, if that is relevant in The Gambia. 6.3.3. Did you write the primary school leaving certificate examination?
Yes No 6.3.4. If yes, did you pass the examination?
7. [ONLY FOR THOSE WHO SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED PRIMARY SCHOOLING] I’d now like to ask you a few questions about any formal schooling
258 you may have had beyond the primary level: 7.1. Were you able to continue your formal schooling at all after primary school?
Yes No 7.2. If not, what factors kept you from going further with your formal schooling?
7.3. If you did continue, at what age did you enter secondary school?
7.3.1. What grade did you then attain in secondary school?
7.3.2. At what age did you leave secondary school?
7.3.3. What factors caused you to leave at that time?
[ONLY FOR THOSE WHO RESPONDED “YES” TO QUESTION 5 ABOUT OTHER TYPES OF INSTRUCTION, WHETHER OR NOT THEY PARTICIPATED IN FORMAL SCHOOLING.] Now I’d like to ask you a few questions about the other kinds of training or learning experiences that you have had. 8. [RELIGIOUS OR KORANIC INSTRUCTION] Have you taken part in any form of religious or Koranic instruction?
Yes No
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8.1. If yes, how long have you been involved in that kind of instruction?
8.2. Where did the program take place
8.3. Who sponsored it?
8.3.1. Overall, what do you think you learned from your [religious or Koranic] instruction?
8.3.2. Did this training include any opportunity to develop skills of literacy or numeracy?
8.3.3. If so, what type or level of skills do you think you developed?
9. [VOCATIONAL OR TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION] Have you taken part in any form of vocational or technical instruction?
Yes No
9.1. If yes, how long have you been involved in that kind of instruction?
9.2. Where did the program take place
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9.3 Who sponsored it?
9.3.1. Overall, what do you think you learned from your [vocational or technical] instruction?
9.3.2. Did this training include any opportunity to develop skills of literacy or numeracy?
9.3.3. If so, what type or level of skills do you think you developed?
10. [LITERACY OR NONFORMAL EDUCATION PROGRAMMING] Have you taken part in any type of adult literacy or non-formal education programming?
Yes No
110.1. If yes, how long have you been involved in that kind of instruction?
10.2. Where did the program take place
10.3 who sponsored it?
10.3.1. Overall, what do you think you learned from this sort of [literacy or nonformal education] programming?
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10.3.2. What sort of literacy or numeracy training was included?
10.3.3. What type or level of skills do you think you developed?
11. What is your current marital status?
I am single
I am Married
Divorced
Widow
12. Do you have children?
Yes No
12.1. If yes, how many do you have?
13. Do you have a co-wife?
Yes No
13.1. If yes how many?
14. Do you own a house or a property?
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Yes No 15. What is your husband’s social roles and occupation?
16. Do you do some work to earn income either inside or outside of the home?
Yes No
16.1. If Yes, please specify
Thank you for participating!
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APPENDIX B
LITERACY ASSESESSMENT TEST IN THE DIFFERENT LANGUAGES
Literacy Test in English
Ba Yo
1 To Fu
Di Me
Market Donkey
2 Tired Savings
Library Drummer
Binta takes part in the meeting of her association.
3 After the storm, all the streets were full of water.
The price of millet has increased this year.
Many women living in Serekunda were born in rural areas of the country. Some moved into the city in order to seek work. Others came to marry men who were 4 already living there. As a result, one can hear all the different languages of the country in the city’s markets. Many of the women of the community speak several languages.
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Literacy Test in Wolof
Ba Yo
1 To Fu
Di Me
Bunta Caabi
2 Meew Raxas
Xaalis Mbéy
Binta am na xaalis ci anam gu Sella.
3 Fatou Jenda na Mburru ci bitik bi.
Mariama dem na cha tool ba.
Mbootaay yi Jigéen am na solor Sunu mbootaay bi daw jek lenu ko sus. Jigéen yu bari ci gox bi deng bindu. Deng dee waxtan nu nyor muna dimbalantee ci sunu birr. 4 Arjumma bun neka lee nu tek D100 pur ñatu. Ku tekgi ku nee dina am D5000. Xaalis bóóbu soxla yu bari lai faj. Dineñu jenda dundu, fey pur jangum xaleeyi ak jenda bargas pur yóoka jaay bi ak jënda bii.
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Literacy Test in Mandinka
Ba Yo
1 To Fu
Di Me
Marsewo Faloo
2 Bataa Maaboroo
kitaabu buŋo tantaŋ kosilaa
Binta diyaamuta le ì la kafoo la beŋo to.
3 Kabiriŋ samaa keta, mbedoolu bee le faata jiyo la.
Ñoo daa, seleta le ñinaŋ
Senelaalu ka turoo ñininkaa Senelaalu mennu be Janjambure a niŋ Kerewan bankoolu kaŋ, ye ì la woosiidaa yitandi n na kibaari saferilaa ye. ì ye a yitandi ala ko ì be suulariŋ turoo la baake, kaatu samaa kumaasita le.
4 Senelaalu ye ì la suuloolu fo n na kibaari saferilaa ye. Ñiŋ keta Juun karo tili 20 fo tili 30 kono. Kabiriŋ a be ala kisi-kisiroo kee kaŋ senelaalu la kuwo to.
Senelaalu ye a yitandi n na saferilaa ye ko, niŋ mansakundaa niŋ deemaari kafoolu maŋ maakoyiroo ke turu kuwo to, samaa koleyaa mim be kela 2012 saŋo kono, wole be tambila 2011saŋo ti.
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Literacy Test in Arabic
ي
ف 1
د
ْل ح ْل س
ت ْ في / ت ي م م ْ ع ب 2
ض ْل ف ْل ْ
بين تش في ج عي
بع لع ص ، ك نت ج يع لش م ب ل ي 3
سع ل خن/ ل شن ت ع ه لع
ل ز عين ا ل ي حث عن ب ل ز عين في ق يم سط لن م ف لش ل ين تح ث في ه ل ي ل سف عن ح ج م ل ل آ أكث من أ قت م حيث ب أ م سم لح د بش ل ج ، ل ز عين ق م بإع د ت ي من خا ي اق يم من ٠٢ - ٠٢ ي ني بإع لك جزء من ل ل ي ء ل ي ت ث ع ل ع لز عي. ف 4 ل ز عين ل ين تح ث في ه ل ي أنه فش ت لح م ل ن م لح مي في مس ع ت م ل في ب فإ ك ث ع ٠٢٠٠ س كث من ك ث ع ٠٢٠٠
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APPENDIX C
ORAL AND WRITTEN NUMERACY ASSESSEMENT
Oral Numeracy Assessment
Level 1: At least two of three questions have to be answered correctly [simple addition and subtractions without carryovers]
1. You have 6 cows, your brother has 3 cows, and how many cows do you have in all?
2. You have 5 goats and your mother has 5 goats, How many goats do you and your mother have in all?
3. Amie has 8 hens and sold 5 of them. How many hens does he have left?
Level 2: At least two of the three have to be answered correctly [simple addition and subtractions with carryovers] 4. Awa has D30 and she gave D7 to her son for school lunch How much money does she have left?
5. Isatou took D50 notes to the store to buy three kilos of onions for D21. How much change does she has left?
6. Jainaba received D15,000 from her monthly Oususu and an additional D7,000 from her other savings. How much money does she have in all?
Level 3: At least two of the three have to be answered correctly [simple multiplication and divisions without carryovers] 7. You have 100 notes to divide among 10 people. How much money will each one get?
8. Fatou received D500 that needs to be divided among ten women in her group. How much money will each of the women get?
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9. You have 3 baskets of tomatoes for sale and each basket costs D150. How much money will you have in total when you finish selling the tomatoes?
Level 4: At least two out of the three examples questions should be answered correctly [multiplications and divisions with carryovers]
10. Weekly contribution of your Oususu is D110 per week. There are 20 members in the group. How much money will you get when you receive your funds and if every member paid their contributions on time?
11. You save D320 every month. How much money will you have saved after 6 months?
12. If D100 earns D5 interest per month, how much principle and interest will you have after 3 months?
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Written Numeracy Assessment in English
LEVEL ACTIVITY GRADING SCHEME
1 8-5 = Respondent must read 15-8 = and solve correctly two 90-30 = of the three examples to attain level. 2 23 -15 = Respondent must read 16+16 = and solve correctly two 36-22 = of the three activities to attain level.
3 20 x 5 = Respondent must read and solve correctly two 100/20 = of the three activities to attain level. 1000/10 = 4 A woman got a bank loan of D 15,000 with 4% Respondent must read interest per annum and for a 5 year period. and solve correctly two A. How much interest would she pay in three of the three questions to years? attain level. B. How much interest should she pay by the end of the 5 years period? C. If the principal is added, how much money should she pay in all?
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Written Numeracy Assessment in Arabic
GRADING SCHEME انشط ل س
ج حل لن تج ل حيح من = 8-5 1 خا حل مس ين من ل س ئل = 15-8 لثاث ل ح يق ل س = 90-30
ج حل لن تج ل حيح من = -15 23 2 خا حل مس ين من ل س ئل = 16+16 لثاث ل ح يق ل س = 36-22
ج حل لن تج ل حيح من = x 5 20 3 خا حل مس ين من ل س ئل لثاث ل ح يق ل س = 100/20
1000/10 = ج حل لن تج ل حيح من ح ت م أ ع ق من بنك ب غ ٠٠،٢٢٢ بأ ب سن ي 4 خا حل مس ين من ل س ئل ت غ ٤٪ ل خ س سن لثاث ل ح يق ل س كم ل غ ل مل ل ي ن ت فعه خا ثا سن .A
كم ل غ ل مل ل ين غي ن فعه بع خ س سن .B ك د ل غ ل ئيسي كم ين غي ت فع ل أ .C ب اج
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APPENDIX D
FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSIONS AND INDEPTH INTERVIEW QUESTIONNAIRES
Focus Group Discussion Questions
The Meaning Women Assign to Literacy
1. What does being able to read, write, and perform arithmetic calculations mean to you?
2. How do you feel when you encounter a situation that requires you to use literacy and you could not perform the task?
Women’s Uses of Literacy and Numeracy in their Gender Roles
1. What are the most common uses of literacy and numeracy to women? [Note: This includes those literates/semi-literates carry out and as well as those uses that are carried out through other people].
2. What Reproductive gender roles relating to children’s care and household management do women carry out on a daily basis?
3. What are the uses/potential uses of literacy and numeracy in those responsibilities?
4. What kinds of Productive [income generating] activities do women mostly participate in?
5. What are the uses/potential uses of literacy and numeracy in those activities?
6. What Community management responsibities do women perform?
7. What are the uses/potential uses of literacy and numeracy in those responsibilities?
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Problems of Acquisition and Literacy Retention
8. What constraints do women experience when it comes to acquiring, using, and maintaining the literacy and numeracy skills they have?
9. What factors often contribute to women’s eventually loss of literacy skills?
The Women’s Concerns
10. What problems, issues, or concerns do women have whether it is about your well-being or your families’ and ones you might want to discuss here amongst yourselves and share ideas about their possible solutions.
Questions that Guided the Indepth Interviews
1. Could you please tell me some things about yourself [age, marital status and current occupation, etc.]
2. Please share with me your formal schooling experiences if you had any.
3. If you have never attended formal schooling what was / were the reasons why you did not?
4. If you dropped out of school, what grade did you attain and what were the reasons why you could not continue with your schooling?
5. Since you dropped out of school, have you had any opportunity to continue or catch up with your learning?
6. If you have never been to school, did you participate in any literacy and numeracylearning program?
7. If you have learned literacy and numeracy in the past, how would you rate your current literacy and numeracy skills [are they better now or worse than what you had when you just left school or the literacy and numeracy learning program?]
a. If your literacy skills are better now, what do you do, if anything to retain and improve on them?
b. If they are worse now than what they were at any one point in time, what do you think is responsible for your loss of literacy and numeracy skills?
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8. Do you have a family of your own or have any childcare or home management responsibility? If yes, please name for me all the activities you do in that respect.
9. What uses or potential uses of literacy and numeracy, if any, do you apply in carrying out those responsibilities?
10. Are you currently working to earn income? If yes, what is/are your current economic activity/ies?
11. Please name all the economic activities you have experimented with in the past.
12. Why is it important for you to work and earn income?
13. What uses or potential uses of literacy and numeracy, if any, do you apply in carrying out those responsibilities?
14. Do you participate in the activities of your community?
15. Please name for me the community activities you take part in.
16. What uses of literacy and numeracy, if any, do you observe in the organization and functioning of such community events?
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APPENDIX E
GRADING SCHEME FOR THE LITERACY AND NUMERACY TEST
The Grading Scheme for Reading
Level 0: No competence reading ability. Respondent does not have the ability to read separate single syllables (vowel-consonant combinations) frequently used in written language.
Level 1: Low reading. Respondent has the ability to read separate single syllables (vowel- consonant combinations) frequently used in written language. Respondent must be able to read four of the six syllables to attain this level.
Level 2: Minimal reading ability. Respondent has the ability to read and understand different entire words of two to three syllables frequently used in everyday life. Respondent must read correctly and understand four of the six words to attain level.
Level 3: Functional reading ability. Respondent has the ability to read correctly and understand sentences frequently use in written communication and to briefly explain meaning.
Level 4: Competent reading ability. Respondent has the ability to read with understanding a text of 4 or 5 sentences (50-75 words) and briefly explain its meaning.
The Grading Scheme for Writing
Level 0: No competence writing ability. Respondent does not have the ability to write separate single syllables (vowel-consonant combinations) frequently used in written language.
Level 1: Low writing ability. Respondent has the ability to write separate single syllables
(vowel-consonant combinations) frequently used in written language. Respondent must correctly write down four of the six dictated syllables to attain this level.
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Level 2: Minimal writing ability. Respondent has the ability to write different entire words of two to three syllables frequently used in everyday life. Respondent must write down correctly four of the six dictated words to attain level.
Level 3: Functional writing ability. Respondent has the ability to write sentences of 7-10 words in length (allowing for at least spelling error)
Level 4: Competent writing ability. Respondents have the ability to write a text of 4 or 5 sentences (50-75 words) (allowing for at least spelling error).
Written Numeracy Grading Scheme
Level 0: Non-numerate (written). Respondent is unable to solve simple problems of addition and subtraction without carryovers. Respondents were given three mathematical problems and were required to solve and write down the correct answers to two of the three examples to attain level.
Level 1: Low- level numerate ability (Written). Respondent has the ability to solve simple problems of addition and subtraction without carryovers. Respondents were given three mathematical problems and were required to solve and write-down the correct answers to two of the three examples to attain level.
Level 2: Functional numerate ability (written). Respondent has the ability to solve problems of addition and subtraction with carryovers. Respondents were given three mathematical problems and were required to solve and write-down the correct answers to two of the three examples to attain level.
Level 3: Minimal numerate ability (Written). Respondent has the ability to solve simple problems of multiplication and division without carryovers. Respondents were given three
276 mathematical problems and were required to solve and write-down the correct answers to two of the three examples to attain level.
Level 4: Competent numerate ability (Written). Respondent has the ability to solve problems of multiplication and divisions with carryovers. Respondents were given three mathematical problems and were required to solve and write-down the correct answers to two of the three examples to attain level.
Oral Numeracy Grading Scheme
Level 0: Non-numerate (oral). Respondent is unable to solve simple problems of addition and subtraction without carryover. Respondents were given three mathematical problems requiring mental calculation and were required to solve correctly two of the three examples to attain this level.
Level 1: Low- level numerate (oral). Respondent has the ability to solve simple problems of addition and subtraction without carryovers. Respondents were given three mathematical problems requiring mental calculation and were required to answer two of the three questions correctly to attain this level.
Level 2: Functional numerate ability (oral). Respondent has the ability to solve problems of addition and subtraction with carryovers. Respondents were given three mathematical situations requiring mental calculation and were required to answer two of the three questions correctly to attain this level.
Level 3: Minimal numerate ability (oral). Respondent has the ability to solve simple problems of multiplication and division without carryovers. Respondents were given three mathematical problems requiring mental calculation and were required to answer two of the three questions correctly to attain this level.
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Level 4: Competent numerate ability (oral). Respondent has the ability to solve problems of multiplication and divisions with carryovers. Respondents were given three mathematical problems requiring mental calculation and were required to answer two of the three questions correctly to attain this level.
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APPENDIX F
HUMAN SUBJECT APPROVAL LETTER & INFORMED CONSENT FORM
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Haddy is a graduate of the University of The Gambia with her first degree, a graduate of Ohio
University with a Master’s in International Affairs, concentration in African Studies. Her research areas are in education, gender and development in Africa. More specifically, Haddy’s research interests revolve around a gamut of development concerns in the African continent and these are: (1) the acquisition, uses and retention of literacy among girls and women with interrupted educational histories in Africa; (2) research and development of policies that support gender mainstreaming in addressing girls’ and women’s education challenges and poverty alleviation programs in Africa; and (3) research and development of programs that support the capacitizing of women’s groups for sustainable community development initiatives. All these research interests reflect in her choice of a dissertation and in her academic papers and conference presentations.
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