ABSTRACT
This article focuses on the educational dispositions, aspirations and outcomes of schooling of the rural poor in Pakistan. We ask what possibilities and obstacles do young women and men from families who are living in poverty encounter when trying to use education as a means of social mobility, either within the rural social structure or as a means of leaving it. The relationship between rurality, gender and education is complex not least because it is often viewed through the lens of urban realities or through hegemonic gender discourses that privilege interpretations from the Global North (Arnot and Fennell 2008). Empirical research on gender and rurality, for example, is often focused on advanced economies such as New Zealand (Powell, Taylor, and Smith 2013), Australia (Pini, Price, and McDonald 2010) and Norway (Haugen and Lysgård 2006). From such perspectives, not only are rural families in the Global South seen as the most disadvantaged but, from a gender perspective, they are often portrayed as the most hidebound by oppressive patriarchal traditions (Kenway, Kraack, and Hickey Moodey 2006; Connell 2007). Thus, although there are many educational interventions in developing countries to improve girls’ education,
especially through financial and other initiatives (Unterhalter et al. 2014), as Moletsane and Ntombela (2010) point out, the educational experiences of girls living in rural poverty are barely understood.
