Instructions in Inequality: Development, Human Rights, Capabilities, and Gender Violence in Schools

Authors

Erika George, Boston University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Summer 2005

ISSN

1052-2867

Publisher

University of Michigan Law School

Language

en-US

Abstract

This Article argues that the international community's gender equality targets will not be realized by 2015 because the problems associated with sexual violence against girls in schools are situated at an intersection of contested conceptual divides between human rights (civil and political liberties) and development aims (social and economic needs). Cracks in the conceptual foundations of both the liberal and utilitarian theories of justice and equality, which support traditional human rights advocacy and economic development plans, respectively render each approach inadequate to fully identify and address the grave danger sexual violence and harassment in schools pose to educational equality. In the end, this Article posits that development policy debates and human rights advocacy addressing the issue of gender equality in education could be advanced more constructively by the application of a "capabilities approach."

Originally conceived as a challenge to classical development economics by Nobel Laureate in Economics Amartya Sen, "capabilities theory" at its core emphasizes human development as the main foundation of economic development.⁹ Principally, the "capabilities approach" attempts to combine ethics and economics to explicitly acknowledge the value judgments that are inherent in development policy and societal structures. As advanced most recently by Sen and enhanced by legal philosopher Martha Nussbaum, the capabilities approach is a normative framework to inform social policy,¹⁰ maintaining that economic, political, legal, and other social arrangements should be evaluated according to how they expand people's capabilities-"what people are actually able to do and to be-that is, their actual freedom."

Specifically, this Article explores the capabilities approach as applied to the experience of gender equity and school safety against the backdrop of current international development goals. Violence against girls in South African schools is discussed as a case in point.¹² Part I of the Article describes how South African girls' educations are impeded by various forms of sexual harassment and violence at school. Part II outlines present international development initiatives and priorities concerning women's education and reviews South Africa's progress toward gender equality. It also discusses limits of the utilitarian conceptual framework of development economics and shortcomings of the indicators used to measure policy progress and evaluate success. Part III explains how, in addition to compromising development objectives, gender discrimination in South African schools, as manifested by inadequate state responses to sexual violence, serves to deny girls' access to education on equal terms with boys and violates international human rights law. It also discusses some of the limits of the liberal conceptual foundations of human rights law in addressing violations of social and economic rights and in defining the substantive content of a right to education. Part IV presents capabilities theory and then explores its potential contribution to conversations on gender equality in education by using the capabilities approach to understand the effects of sexual violence against South African girls in their schools. Finally, Part V explores the relationship between capabilities theory and the competing conceptual frameworks animating human rights law and development policy to show that a capabilities approach could advance both development objectives and social justice by providing an enriched understanding of the role of education in eradicating gender-based violence, achieving gender equality, and giving positive content to social and economic rights.

Recommended Citation

Erika George, Instructions in Inequality: Development, Human Rights, Capabilities, and Gender Violence in Schools , in 26 Michigan Journal of International Law 1139 (2005).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/3866