Indigenous Women and Adult Learning

The book examines contemporary education policy and questions the dominant deficit discourse of indigenous women as vulnerable. By contrast, this publication demonstrates the marginalisations and multiple discriminations that indigenous women confront as indigenous persons, as women and as indigenous women. Chapters draw on ethnographic research in Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Mexico, Nepal, Peru and the Philippines and engage with indigenous women’s learning from the perspectives of rights, gender equality and cultural, linguistic and ontological diversity. The book investigates intergenerational and intercultural learning and indigenous women’s agency and power in the face of complex and dynamic changing social, physical, economic and cultural environments. The grounded ethnographic chapters illustrate indigenous women’s diverse historical and contemporary experiences of inequalities, opportunities and formal education and how these influence their strengths, learning aspirations and ways of learning, as well as their values, demands, desires and practices.

Chapters 1– 6 and 8 in this book were originally published in a special issue of the journal Studies in the Education of Adults.