#47 Claudia Milena Adler | How Education Can Empower Women and Girls to "Become"
Beyond Schools and Jobs - Video Podcast with Joni
Honouring the Hispanic Heritage Month, Claudia Milena Adler, PhD, joins the podcast to tell her powerful story of her Colombian heritage, starting with the bright upbringing of her grandmother to the darker times of her mother’s, leading up to a long struggle to bring a large family to the UK, where Claudia, the daughter, slowly but surely finds her way towards the pursuit of a fruitful life and career.
The PhD thesis "Beyond Schools and Jobs: How Education Can Empower Women and Girls to 'Become'" is a a deep journey and a powerful result of this story, and most likely only the beginning of the heritage that Claudia herself will leave to the generation of her children and beyond.
Claudia is a lecturer on the MSc in International Humanitarian Affairs (MIHA) and Deputy Programme Lead. Claudia’s research critically examines learning approaches that empower girls and women from marginalised and rural backgrounds from South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. Currently, Claudia is engaging with ancient wisdom from the Global South to learn solutions to modern challenges including climate change. Her work focuses on raising awareness of the implications on health and wellbeing and non-mainstream pedagogical approaches within the context of disasters, conflict and uneven development...
https://www.york.ac.uk/healthsciences/our-staff/claudiamilena-adler/
To join the conversation with Claudia directly, please refer to her LinkedIn profile.
Story intro:
Abuela learned to read, write, and do basic mathematics by peering through her brothers' primary school window. Her father had dismissed the idea of her going to school. The belief about girls’ education at that time was that they did not need schooling. Schooling was for the men who had to seek employment outside in a market economy. It was a waste of time, in his view. Sixty percent of the population in Colombia were illiterate: education was an excessive privilege... Abuela did her best to present her case to her dad. She pleaded with him to send her to school. Turning to his daughter he replied with bewilderment, unable to understand why school would be attractive to her: “Para que mija?' (For what dear?), he said. He was always calm, always gentle, never angry, unable to imagine that his daughter’s life would be met with deprivation or require her to seek the help of anyone besides a devoted husband, who would provide and care for her and her children as he had always done.
Claudia's full PhD thesis is available at: https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/33236/
Below follows the abstract.
Abstract
Over the past 75 years, the development agencies in the Global North have been delivering unrequested interventions to empower women and girls in the Global South through various programmes, including education. However, women and girls in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East continue to suffer through vulnerabilities produced by structural uncertainties and dangers created by the same system that delivers these interventions. This is inherently connected to the colonial and neo-colonial projects, which have destroyed the rich philosophical and knowledge structures of the Global South. This thesis critically examines modern philosophies and ancient wisdoms to formulate a framework that can facilitate the empowerment of women and girls by answering the question: do educational experiences empower women in non-Western societies? This thesis critiques the mainstream empowerment and development discourse and relevance of ancient wisdom by addressing the coloniality that persists in development programmes and educational approaches that erroneously assume a deficit of empowerment and prior knowledge. This research adopts a qualitative research approach with a three-method process that includes both mainstream and ancient analytical and theoretical frameworks. The insight generated by this research has contributed to new knowledge in academia, policy, and practice in this field by identifying the interconnected importance of; a) informal education, b) traditional knowledge systems, c) ancient wisdoms, and d) the meaning of empowerment and wellbeing for women through their lived experiences. The key findings indicate an intricate relationship between wellbeing and empowerment. The findings further show women are already empowered. As part of the recommendations of this thesis, a proposed framework grounded in humility, co-creation, and self-governance advocates for an alternative engagement to facilitate the realisation of empowerment. In addition, one can manage the external world with joy through the realisation of inner strengths, which is true empowerment in an uncertain and dangerous world. "
Please enjoy the powerful conversation with Claudia Milena Adler, PhD.
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The above content was first published at the YouTube channel of the EdTech Journeys podcast "Hasta la educación finlandesa y más allá" - the first bilingual podcast in Spanish and English on Finnish education, digital pedagogy and beyond. For more information please visit edtechjourneys.substack.com.