“Time traveling” researcher says education doesn’t equal empowerment for women

“A” is a professional woman. Having taken a tailoring program in her younger years, she starts out in the working world at a tiny clothing manufacturer — in fact, she’s its first employee, working out of a house. She begins by cutting fabric, graduates to tailor, then quality control manager, and eventually becomes a supervisor. By the time she ascends the ladder — focusing on career, making a deliberate decision not to get married or romantically involved, or to have children — the company has 300 employees, she has a steady salary and significant status in her community, and has built herself a house in her village. But as the company expands, a new general manager is appointed, and he bullies her relentlessly. The company’s owners do nothing to address her concerns. She resigns, knowing full well that her chances of finding paid employment in the village, or even nearby city, that pays more than one or two dollars a day is next to impossible. What does she do now? And how?

In low-income countries, layers of colonial history and patriarchy can plague generations, especially women and girls. They work, they strive, they struggle, but lack of resources, quality education and opportunities — even the idea of opportunities — combine to oppress them and their futures.

In her research and her long and ongoing commitment to a small group of women whom she met as girls in one such nation, Prof. Shelley Jones aims to dig through the strata of politics, religion, economic policies and often misguided approaches to development under which they toil to raise them up — and, more importantly, to help them see how they can raise themselves up.

The head of undergraduate programs in Royal Roads University’s College of Interdisciplinary Studies, Jones first visited Uganda in 2004, when she was a PhD student. Her initial research there involved 15 secondary school girls, studying the challenges, opportunities and their emerging identities related to secondary school education. Her planned three-month stint turned into a year because the more questions she asked, the more she found there was to ask about.

Now, two decades later, she continues to explore the latest chapter in these women’s lives, and in her work. 

“In every study, I’m considering various policies and global initiatives and other research that has been done in the area of women’s empowerment in low-income countries,” Jones says in an interview from a community centre in Uganda’s Masaka District. “I think this longitudinal study adds quite a bit to our knowledge of how we can better serve the needs of women globally.”

Jones’ current research focuses on how women understand empowerment in Uganda, and the resources, institutions and structure that women deem necessary to support their empowerment. Together, Jones and the participants developed a Resiliency and Empowerment Framework as well as a Resiliency and Empowerment Plan that can guide women on the path to empowerment. 

Previous research with these participants, in 2021, supported the women — all interested in being entrepreneurs — in conducting research where they learnt from prominent businesswomen how they established and sustained businesses in a context where gender discrimination, amongst other roadblocks, work against women’s success and empowerment.

The women, as participant-researchers, helped design the project, then conducted in-person interviews about the challenges of setting up a business, collected the data and analyzed it together, she says.

“This, I think, for them, felt very empowering, in that they had felt a little timid initially or a little reticent to approach these successful businesswomen before,” Jones says.

It’s understandable, she says, given that “the multiple challenges they face in their lives are largely due to dysfunctional systems and institutions that are the tattered remnants of a brutal colonial legacy.” She says this legacy is compounded by “neocolonial layers of global policies, economic systems, and development aid that have negatively interfered with and influenced traditional cultural practices and have served to disempower all, especially women.”

Education & empowerment

“B” had dreamed of being a doctor. Top of her class among girls and boys at her secondary school, she nonetheless has trouble finding work. She works as a house girl, or maid, far from her village, but those jobs end. Moving back home, job opportunities she pursues come with an expectation she will provide sexual favours in exchange for being hired — she refuses. She becomes involved with a man and they have a child, but the father leaves them both behind to go to university. She finally gets a job at a local clothing manufacturer; she has no training but she’s a fast learner and quickly moves from cutting fabric to tailoring, then, by following repair technicians around, makes herself valuable by teaching herself to fix sewing machines. She has a second child with a second man who leaves, and the child has cerebral palsy (CP). She has little or no support — medical, social, psychological, financial — and she knows she must learn more to care for her child, so each time she visits the hospital, she asks questions to broaden her knowledge. Eventually, acting upon suggestion from Jones, she connects with the national CP association and starts her own local group, where moms support one another, learn from guest speakers, hold outdoor clinics and hospital consultations with doctors and physiotherapists, raise money and — most importantly — raise awareness of the needs of disabled children. As a registered charity, the group is now eligible to receive international donations and funding, such as a recent donation of wheelchairs from the U.S.

In 2018, 14 years after that original research trip to Uganda, Jones returned. “I wanted to find out from the women themselves how they understood the relationship between education and empowerment, especially given their context.

“I came out feeling that the assumptions that education is automatically going to lead to women’s empowerment, that employment is going to lead to girls’ and women’s empowerment — especially in developing or low-income countries — didn’t ring true to me at all from the experiences that these women had shared with me.

“I see so many women and girls who haven’t received the support, the guidance, the resources that they need to really fulfill their potential — and this is everywhere but, especially, in my experience, in low-income countries, where it’s so lacking and where I don’t think girls and women are encouraged to value themselves and what they have to offer.

“They have a lot of questions, goals and desires, and they’re not sure how to go about getting the information they need, or how to go about doing the things they need to do,” she says. “I’m trying to determine: What do they need to get there? What information do they need? What kind of supports do they need?”

Now, looking at entrepreneurship and empowerment, hopes that the framework and plan she developed with the participants will be helpful to women in low-income contexts.

Resilience & a focus on the future

For “A,” the woman who quit a coveted salaried job as a supervisor with a clothing manufacturer, what she needed was another job. She created her own, Jones says, opening a small general store in the local trading centre just as the pandemic hit. The last two years have been a struggle but she is slowly getting her business established. She also has plans to diversify and earn money from agriculture.

More importantly, Jones says, “A” is happier and remains ambitious despite the setbacks she has faced. “She’s a very determined, steady young woman who has made very conscious, deliberate decisions in her life.”

“B,” meanwhile, hosted 34 moms at an outdoor clinic for the support group, where a doctor and nurse consulted with each disabled child and their mother. 

“Her leadership has sparked this initiative,” Jones says. “She’s really made incredible strides here in terms of awareness and inclusion and acceptance of children with disabilities. And she’s really supported these mothers who felt so desperately alone.”

Of all 11 remaining high school girls with whom she continues to conduct research, Jones says: “I’m so impressed with them. They’ve lived through some very difficult times… They’re strong, they have been resilient, but they’re also still looking forward, still looking at possibilities for the future. We are, in a sense, travelling through time together.”

Shelley Jones, who earned a PhD, master’s and bachelor’s degrees in education as well as a BA in English and History, joined Royal Roads in 2015. Prior to that, she was an associate professor at the Aga Khan University-Institute for Educational Development, East Africa, where she taught courses in gender and education, literacy and educational research in the Master of Education program, supervised master’s students, and conducted research. From 2009 to 2013, Jones was assistant professor in the Master of Education program at the State University of New York, College at Potsdam.

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