ABSTRACT
This part of the book brings together case studies of literacy programmes from India, Uganda, Mexico and South Africa, analysing how processes around literacy learning in the classroom and in everyday life interact with changing gender roles and relations. The writers in Part III take a gendered perspective on innovative approaches to literacy teaching (such as ActionAid’s REFLECT programme), as well as exploring how individual women view literacy in their daily lives. Khandekar refers to the ‘multidimensional’ oppression faced by women who are low-caste and poor – as in the earlier accounts in this book (e.g. Bulman, McCaffery), coping with violence is an integral part of many women’s lives which influences how and why they participate in development programmes. These first-hand accounts of how various innovative literacy approaches were implemented illustrate how the participants ‘took hold’1 of the intervention and in most cases, transformed the programme’s intended strategies.
