Journal on Education in Emergencies Volume 8, Number 2

JEiEVol8No2 CoverThis issue of the Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE) offers an in-depth analysis of the unique gendered effects humanitarian emergencies have on boys and girls. It adds to more than two decades of EiE research that demonstrates how conflict and crisis exacerbate existing political, economic, and cultural barriers to education access and widen the gender gap in educational attainment.

Spurred by the commitment G7 leaders made in the Charlevoix Declaration on Quality Education for Girls, Adolescent Girls, and Women in Developing Countries to advance gender equality in education through sex-disaggregated data and evidence-based systems of accountability, this issue brings attention to the role scholarly research can play in improving access to and parity in the quality of education for learners affected by displacement, political fragility, and violence.

JEiE Volume 8, Number 2 includes five research articles, one field note, and three book reviews. The contributing authors reveal new evidence on gender-based violence as experienced by students in high-, middle-, and low-income countries; explore the intersection of race, gender, and displacement as refugee students encounter new learning environments; and interrogate gaps between boys and girls in education access and the learning they reported achieving during the school closures and lockdowns related to COVID-19. Some of the authors trace the effects increased domestic responsibilities and the perceived safety of their host communities have on refugee girls’ ability to access secondary education. They also offer innovative approaches to collecting, disaggregating, and analyzing data on program outcomes in emergency contexts. One of three book reviews in this issue documents the implications for the EiE field of a century-long evolution of what it means to be an educated girl in India and Pakistan. The two other reviews report progress in support for girls’ and refugees’ education, as described in high-level interagency reports and by the facilitators of tertiary education in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp.

The contributing authors share learning from research and field work conducted in varied contexts, including North America, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. This special issue of JEiE ties the crisis of girls’ unequal access to quality education with the worldwide impact of COVID-19 in several ways and brings into stark relief the vulnerabilities of education systems that are simultaneously confronting existing inequalities and novel emergency situations.

By NCThe Journal on Education in Emergencies, published by the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE), is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

28 June 2022 Research Publication Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Journal on Education in Emergencies Volume 8, Number 2

This special issue of JEiE offers new insights into the gendered experiences of girls and boys seeking quality education in contexts of conflict and crisis. The featured authors demonstrate the role scholarly and practice-based evidence can play in keeping education systems and providers accountable for gender parity in education access and quality for children and youth affected by emergencies.

28 June 2022 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Peacebuilding Education to Address Gender-Based Aggression: Youths’ Experiences in Mexico, Bangladesh, and Canada

Drawing from teacher and student focus group discussions in 11 urban public school contexts, authors Kathy Bickmore and Najme Kishani Farahani find that GBV is a shared concern, but that curricula and classroom practices don’t sufficiently address the issue or create space for transforming local experiences of gender conflict as a way to support sustainable peace.

28 June 2022 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Barriers to Refugee Adolescents’ Educational Access during COVID-19: Exploring the Roles of Gender, Displacement, and Social Inequalities

Nicola Jones and coauthors share insights they gained from 3,030 student surveys and 40 key informant interviews on the compounding effects COVID-19 has had on existing legal and cultural barriers to education access for Rohingya and Syrian refugees. They specifically note the exacerbating effects the pandemic has had on girls’ enrollment.

28 June 2022 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Girls’ and Boys’ Voices on the Gendered Experience of Learning during COVID-19 in Countries Affected by Displacement

In a study of ten countries, Nicole Dulieu, Silvia Arlini, Mya Gordon, and Allyson Krupar suggest that displaced boys who reported learning “nothing” or “a little bit” during COVID-19 school closures tied these perceptions to feeling sad or worried, and to increased violence at home. Girls more often connected their feelings about learning less during COVID with material and economic barriers.

28 June 2022 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Intersectionality: Experiences of Gender Socialization and Racialization for Iraqi Students Resettled in the United States

Flora Cohen, Sarah R. Meyer, Ilana Seff, Cyril Bennouna, Carine Allaf, and Lindsay Stark detail how intersecting gender and race identities, resettlement status, prior experiences, and parental expectations created a different route to gendered socialization for adolescent girls and boys from Iraq in education spaces in Virginia and Texas than for their US-born counterparts.

28 June 2022 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Refugee Girls’ Secondary Education in Ethiopia: Examining the Vulnerabilities of Refugees and Host Communities in Low-Resource Displacement Settings

Shelby Carvalho conducted regression analyses of factors that affect refugee girls’ and boys’ access to secondary school, and that of refugee girls and girls living in nearby host communities in Ethiopia. She found that refugee girls seeking secondary education are more disadvantaged than their male or host-community peers by domestic responsibilities and the perceived safety of the community.

28 June 2022 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Data Disaggregation for Inclusive Quality Education in Emergencies: The COVID-19 Experience in Ghana

In this field note, Abdul Badi Sayibu considers the phone-based surveys that Plan International used to assess the reach of and participation in its Making Ghanaian Girls Great Program. He suggests this is a viable method for collecting sex-disaggregated data in vulnerable and hard-to-reach contexts, and for facilitating rapid analyses of data for EiE program decisionmaking.

28 June 2022 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Book Review: UNESCO’s GEMR Gender Report 2019: Building Bridges for Gender Equality, and INEE’s Mind the Gap: The State of Girls Education in Crisis and Conflict

In her review of UNESCO’s GEMR Gender Report 2019 and INEE’s Mind the Gap report, Nora Fyles comments on the status of the evidence base on girls’ education and the progress the EiE field has made in responding to the ambitions of the 2018 Charlevoix Declaration.

28 June 2022 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Book Review: Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia by Shenila Khoja-Moolji

In her review of Forging the Ideal Educated Girl, Laila Kadiwal comments on why an EiE audience will be interested in author Shenila Khoja-Moolji’s historical analysis and efforts to dismantle monolithic understandings of Muslim women and girls seeking an education.

28 June 2022 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Book Review: Borderless Higher Education for Refugees: Lessons from the Dadaab Refugee Camps edited by Wenona Giles and Lorrie Miller

In her review of Borderless Higher Education for Refugees, edited by Wenona Giles and Lorrie Miller, Spogmai Akseer affirms the contributing authors’ argument for increasing access to college and university education for refugees. Higher education is a tool for navigating and overcoming the systems of inequality and the social, political, and economic barriers refugees face.