A+| A| A-
The Making of Girlhood
A significant divergence characterises girls’ socialisation at home and at school, on the one hand, and their intellectual development through education, on the other. Although both home and school are agencies of socialisation, the two do not converge in the case of girls. This article analyses data from several different domains of girls’ lives ranging in ages from five to 18 years.
This article is based on a study financially assisted by the Indian Council of Social Science Research.
This article is written with two major objectives in mind. The first was to examine whether the socialising and intellectual capacity-building functions of education develop coherently in the case of girls. The second objective was to examine the relationship between girls’ socialisation at home and in the school to ascertain whether these two processes of socialisation are symmetrical. Our attempt was aimed at drawing a rich portrait of girls’ everyday lives in both rural and urban settings. This portrait shows that girlhood, as a gendered state of being (Kumar 2017), extends to more facets of personal growth and starts earlier in childhood than is generally realised. We argue that the opportunity to avail institutionalised education introduces contradictory pulls that are often too weak to encounter the established forces of gender socialisation.
Education and Socialisation
Dear Reader,
Or
To gain instant access to this article (download).
(Readers in India)
(Readers outside India)
