Springer Gender Justice, Education and Equality: Creating Capabilities for Girls' and Women's Development (Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education)

This book reframes gender and education issues from a feminist and capabilities perspective through a multi-generational study of women as teachers. It explores how different understandings of gender, equality and education generate a variety of approaches with which to pursue gender equality in education. Through employing the capabilities approach in a critical and innovative way to question justice, agency and well-being  and also to evaluate valued functionings and capabilities, freedoms and lack of opportunities in women’s lives in Turkey it highlights the need for constructing a gender-just society. The book takes a closer look at these women’s memories, in order to understand how gender roles were created, negotiated and contested, and how the transition to modern ways of socialising and existing was shaped and women’s emancipation was guided by women teachers as social actors, rather than as passive onlookers or oppressed individuals. It provides important insights and critical evidence to be used in the planning and implementation of education and social/gender policies. Review “Firdevs Melis Cin provides an original and innovative account of what three generations of Turkish women teachers have reason to value for their well-being and agency as teachers and in their lives. Drawing on rich and fascinating life history empirical data from the women’s experiences in their families and neighbourhoods, in school as students and then as teachers, and in their personal lives we are given a vivid account of the continuities and changes in women’s lives.  We see the persistence of gender inequality even as new spaces of freedom have opened up for women, and we see a closing of political space and commitments compared to the energy of republican times and struggles against authoritarian rule in the later period. Through all this Firdevs Melis Cin skillfully weaves the voices of her participants in context and in history for a compelling and pathbreaking account of women’s actual lives and lived gender injustices in Turkey.” (Melanie Walker, Distinguished University Professor, University of the Free State, South Africa) “Firdevs Melis Cin has undertaken a thorough and scholarly analysis of what constitutes being a woman and a teacher in Turkey. It is a timely and welcome addition to the literature, creative in the theoretical framework, and ambitious in its aims because it reaches three generations through a historical sequence. The book offers a series of detailed, insightful critical explorations of the key themes of feminism, education and society and constitutes a remarkable contribution to the debate.” (Dr. Aurora Lopez-Fogues, Assistant Professor and Researcher, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain) About the Author Firdevs Melis Cin is Assistant Professor of Education at Istanbul Ticaret University, Turkey. Her research focuses on gender and education, women’s development, in particular the intersection between human development and gender.