The significance of family and community dynamics to educational outcomes is widely recognised in the literature. Along with class/poverty and ethnicity, gender is one of the most important factors that affects children’s education. Gender equality is internationally recognized as a necessary condition for universal education. For example, the European Union prioritizes gender equality in education and beyond (Council of Europe 2018) and aims to empower women and girls not only in Europe but also in other regions of the world. In this paper we focus on West Africa and consider intersections of gender and socio-economic status as it occurs over time in the everyday lives and schooling experiences of children in a selected sample of rural communities in Sierra Leone.

Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries of the world and has an adult literacy rate of 32% with a Gender Parity Index (GPI) in adult literacy of 0.60 (UNESCO 2018). Since the end of the civil war in 2002, serious efforts have been made to improve access to primary education and enhance gender equality in schools. Enrolment rates have grown significantly in recent years with a current Gross Enrolment Rate of 121% (UNESCO, 2018). However, despite enhanced educational opportunities for girls, equal access to education remains a challenge, especially in rural areas of the country (Galloway & Cannonier, 2019). The literature shows that significant gender disparities in average years of schooling and quality and types of education persist in the country (Menzel, 2019, Schneider, 2019, Ahene et al. 2019, Williams & Opdam 2017)), connected with wider patterns of gendered inequality in the society at large. (Schneider, 2019; Coulter 2009). 

Improvement of gender equality in access to education is widely seen as a crucial element of achievement of the sustainable development goal of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education for all (Chou et al. 2010; Gyimah-Brempong et al. 2006; Schultz, 2004). However, this equality remains a challenge in the majority world (Unterhalter, 2019) and is frequently measured with respect to attendance rates without sufficient consideration of the complex socio-cultural dynamics at play in roles and positioning within local communities. With respect to gender and education, while there is a rich and growing body of literature on gendered experiences of school in majority world contexts (Dunne 2008) absent is a focus on how this intersects with children’s out of school lives. Further, research with children in rural communities is limited, including those who are in the earlier years of their schooling. This paper addresses these gaps, examining the intersection between family, community and gender dynamics in the everyday lives of primary school children across home, village life and school. Drawing on the work of Bourdieu as well as gender theorists in the global North as well as global South, it explores the dialectical interplay between gendered and generational orders (the Seniority system), underpinned by a collectivist orientation that sets the groundwork for children’s gendered dis/positioning, and ultimately capacity to engage with schooling. 

We document how schooling and education is framed within the context of deeply embedded cultural norms related to both gender and children’s contribution to everyday family and community survival and the challenges which arise given the growing strigmatization of rurality in contexts of abject poverty and (neo liberal) modernisation.  

The paper draws on a mixed-methods three year study of wellbeing, gender equality and literacy across 100 village communities in rural Sierra Leone, part of an evaluation of a large scale intervention by an Irish NGO in these communities. Qualitative data comprises interviews and group discussions conducted in four case study villages in the first two years of the study. This also comprises 16 inter-generational family studies (4 families in each case study community, with 2 boys and 2 girls) to include child, sibling, parent, grandparent/Elder). Such an approach facilitates deeper insights into intergenerational dynamics and perceptions on well-being, education and gender roles across time and communities. In addition, group discussions with elders and youth provides valuable information on the social, economic and political context of the research sites that affects the lives of the children. Group discussions with children from class 1 (aged 6-8 years) helped to gather additional children’s perspectives on education, well-being, gender and everyday practices in their local communities. Child friendly research methods including walking tours and photo voice were used. In addition class and head teachers were interviewed. In total 108 individual interviews and 43 group discussions were conducted, with the assistance of local interpreters to facilitate the fieldwork. Ethical approval was obtained through the UCD human ethics research committee. The research also draws on questionnaires distributed to 3,000 children in Class 1 across 100 primary schools in the district. These quantitative interviews were conducted face-to-face by a trained interviewer using the mother tongue of each child. Questionnaire items related to social background, religion, daily activities, exposure to violence, as well as children’s views on their parent’s expectations regarding their education, including expected attendance, school completion, perceptions of academic ability and levels of everyday support for school activities. Our focus in analysis for the purposes of this paper is upon the gendered dimensions of responses across both data sets, and how these can be understood in the context of the socio-cultural dynamics of the children’s everyday family and community lives.

Gendered norms were evident across the study communities in the expectations key adults had for the contributions of boys and girls to family and community life. Children are actively involved in contributing to the household, with household chores an integral part of the everyday life of Class 1 children. While both boys and girls complete domestic work, girls tend to spend more time (mornings, afternoons, weekends) doing so. Qualitative fieldwork suggests that longer working hours may lead to the reduction of time girls spend doing homework and studying at home. Early pregnancy was evident across the district and emerged as a consistent area of concern in our qualitative fieldwork. In spite of being illegal in Sierra Leone, physical violence/corporal punishment is a feature of children’s everyday lives and appears equally widespread for both boys and girls. With respect to education, Class 1 boys were found to be consistently more positive in their perception of family/parent expectations for their education, while Class 1 girls were more equivocal. Similarly, boys perceived teachers to have more positive expectations of their ability / ‘brilliance’ in school. These results suggest that boys are perceiving more positive expectations in comparison to girls, particularly regarding their competence in school. At the same time, preliminary results indicate that girls generally perceive lower favouritism from their families in all areas. The data are contradictory however, with mixed messages evident. In this respect, both boys and girls also suggested that teachers were more inclined to prioritize girls’ completion of schooling. Our analysis also suggests complex dynamics at play as children (and their families) negotiate tensions between increasing expectations for schooling and the delayed return on investment implied, in a context of relatively rigid gender and generational norms, underpinned by collectivist family survival practices in the immediacy of the present.

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