ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to explore the complex web of forces and factors that shape gender relations and education in ‘countries in transition’ – particularly countries that have moved through major economic, political and cultural transitions. These transitions may be the result of economic modernisation and progress might be relatively smooth. In other cases, these transitions are the result of occupation by another country, civil war, aggressive dictatorship and social upheaval. On the whole, gender studies of education in the context of development have tended to assume relatively stable social formations and smooth economic and political transitions (particularly in relation to the goals of Education for All). This stance is deeply problematic, not least since it can involve misunderstandings of the reasons for existing patterns of gender relations and their connections to educational systems, and also ignore or fail to notice the structures and processes of opposition represented by women’s actions within such societies. Transitions within a nation state will impact differently on men and women and gender power relations will be disturbed by such transitional stages, sometimes metamorphosing into new temporary shapes. Transitional gender relations are not normally the focus of international gender studies in education, concerned as they often are with access and outcome patterns, or with conventions, traditions and cultural patterns that pertain to Western capitalist societies whence they originate. In the event, these studies can represent either restricted models of analysis that demonstrate a superficial causal relationship such as access, outcomes and performance or else they fail to address, or find wanting, the cultural and religious specificity and economic realities of nations in transition, or the cultural norms that frame gender relations.
