Why Educating Girls Is More Important? : Human Capital, Human Rights and Capability approaches to the Importance of Girls’ Education

Abstract: Girls’ education is one of the main attributes that contribute to the development of a nation and society. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the girls’ education is discursively constructed by the development agencies promoting girls’ education. Furthermore, the thesis also aims to explore how these discourses reflect the concepts of gender equality, equity, and empowerment in the policy texts in relation to girls’ education and what similarities and/ or differences are found by the produced knowledge in relation to girls’ education by the development agencies in correspondence to the three theories: Human Capital Approach (HCA), Human Rights Approach (HRA), and Capability Approach (CA). The study’s theoretical perspectives include the three theories of education: the human capital approach, the human rights approach, and the capabilities approach. To examine how development agencies policy texts discursively construct girls’ education, an analysis informed by interpretive and qualitative approaches to critical discourse analysis is conducted. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) as the research method contributes to analyze how discursive practices or texts are produced, described, and interpreted particularly in the policy documents. The analytical framework of Carol Bacchi (2009) ‘what’s the problem represented to be’ (WPR) as an analytical framework contribute to understand; 1.how something is presented as a problem and phrased in a specific policy text; 2. provides a systematic way to critically investigate problem representations in the policy texts to see what they include, what is not included; and 3. to retain the validity of the study quite high. The questions addressed in this study are: 1. what is the problem represented; 2. what solutions are provided to this problem; 3. what effects are produced by the representation of the problem; 4. what is unaddressed/silenced in the problem representation of girls’ education? The study compares policy texts published between 2010 to 2020 sampled from some the biggest foreign aid donors such as Japan, United Nations of America, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Australia, Italy, Finland, and France working in areas of development assistance and support specially focused on gender and education of developing countries. The analysis suggests that the development agencies primarily views the importance of girls’ education in instrumental terms even though discourses harmonizes with the human rights and capabilities approach discourses. The discourses of the three theories are compatible with each other and the underlying message remains quite the same in all the development agencies. The human capital discourses to a large extent followed discourses on women and gender equality. The discursive constructions of girls’ and women structured around economic development and efficiency thus sustain hegemonic gender power structures and gender inequalities rather than challenging them. The current discourses of the development agencies of dominantly constructing the importance of girls’ education as economic actors should address the root causes that hinders the girls’ education and agency which otherwise the consequences of only constructing women only as economic agents and as passive subordinates will be most likely to increase gender inequalities and poverty continue to exist further rather than ending it.