Structural determinants of gender inequality: Examining belonging in educational settings among marginalized girls in India

Tiwari, Ananya

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/120522 Copy

Description

Title

Structural determinants of gender inequality: Examining belonging in educational settings among marginalized girls in India

Author(s)

Tiwari, Ananya

Issue Date

2023-04-25

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Ruedas-Gracia , Nidia

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Ruedas-Gracia , Nidia

Committee Member(s)

• Hopson, Rodney
• Goodnight, Melissa
• Andrade , Flavia
• Schonert-Reichl, Kimberly

Department of Study

Educational Psychology

Discipline

Educational Psychology

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

school belonging, adolescent girls, belonging dissonance, India, mixed-methods, access to educational resources, COVID-19

Abstract

Belonging refers to a sense of connection to a social group in which a person feels valued. School belonging significantly influences well-being, academic performance, and adolescent engagement in educational settings. However, scholarship regarding its conceptualization and association with the context lacks representation from the Global South. For instance, belonging among historically marginalized rural adolescent girls attending schools remains unstudied. Moreover, psychological literature has largely examined belonging as an individual trait. As a result, critical structural factors such as drivers of gender inequality have been overlooked to completely explain school belonging in marginalized populations like KGBV school girls. KGBVs, or Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas, are special residential government schools meant to provide access to quality education to girls belonging to the most underprivileged communities in the country. My mixed methods dissertation takes place with five KGBV schools in Haryana, north of India, and answers three main questions: 1. What does school belonging mean to girls? (Study One) 2. How is belonging to a school associated with access to educational resources? (Study Two) 3. How was school belonging impacted during COVID-19 when the residential schools were closed for two years? (Study Three) Findings of Study One show that girls experience high belonging within school settings, which is deeply enmeshed with low belonging outside-of-school settings. Furthermore, a state of “belonging dissonance” among girls exists in which a high and a low sense of belonging plays out simultaneously that speaks of their inclusion and exclusion at the same time. Study Two shows that sense of belonging to school, self-esteem, and grit are positively associated. Moreover, sense of belonging to school and grit were strongly linked among relatively advantaged students, whereas self-esteem and grit were strongly linked among relatively disadvantaged students. Study Three speaks to the intersectional experiences affecting school belonging during COVID-19, greater stiffening of gender roles within family structure that affected school belonging during the pandemic, and residential schools like KGBVs emerging as spaces where young girls experienced a greater level of belonging compared to their homes. Using a three-paper structure, this dissertation illuminates our understanding of sense of belonging to school by focusing on a historically marginalized community of girls. This work argues for policies and interventions in the gender equity space to target belonging to school as a crucial component and approach it with a comprehensive understanding of structural drivers that underpin gender inequalities.

Graduation Semester

2023-05

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2023 Ananya Tiwari

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