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EGM/DVGC/2006/EP.13
______________________________________________________________________________
United Nations
Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW)
in collaboration with UNICEF
Expert Group Meeting
Elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence
against the girl child
UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre
Florence, Italy, 25-28 September 2006
Teacher identities and empowerment of girls against sexual violence
Prepared by *
Fatuma Chege
* The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of the United Nations
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Introduction
Exploring teachers’ gendered lives and how these influence teacher-learner relationships
and pedagogical practices offers valuable insights into the broader understandings of how
schools could play a meaningful role in empowering not only girls, but all children and young
people in establishing violent-free relationships within and outside formal educational
environments. In doing this, it is important to examine closely how teachers talk about their
experiences as women and men generally, how they interpret their professional lives and how
they perceive their relationships with their female and male colleagues and with the learners in
gendered ways. Such exploration would enable us to understand how teachers, as gendered
beings construct non-cooperation between the genders, thus enhance or reinforce sexism, which
provides fertile grounds for gender-based violence against girls and women in particular. Using
various studies in countries of the Eastern and Southern Africa Region (ESAR), the author
contends that professional behaviour –including that of teachers- is determined not just by
institutional cultures and contexts, but also by a person’s life history and experiences that are
continually and variably transforming Self and Other through dialogue, within and outside their
places of work (Maclure 1993, also see Potter & Wetherell, 1987: 1