Women and literacy: a Nepal perspective

International Journal of Educational Development 20 (2000) 349–364www.elsevier.com/locate/ijedudev

Women and literacy: a Nepal perspective

A. Robinson-Pant42 North Way, Lewes, Sussex BN7 1DT, UK

Abstract

This article looks at adult women’s experiences of literacy and literacy learning in a remote area of Western Nepal.As part of a research degree at Sussex University, I spent eight months living in a small village community where anAmerican aid agency was implementing a development programme, comprising of a literacy class with follow-upincome-generating activities for women. Drawing on an “ideological” approach to literacy research, I investigated howwomen and men of differing ages and economic backgrounds used literacy in their everyday lives. My research aimedto move away from the simple polarisation of women and men, traditional and developed, to analyse what meaningsof literacy and gender were shared or disputed between different groups of people and how they reacted to literacyinterventions by a foreign aid agency.

By looking at three main kinds of literacy practices which so-called “illiterate” women participated in—existingeveryday practices such as religious reading; new everyday practices such as account keeping introduced by the aidagency; and the literacy class which ran every evening in the village—this article analyses how women reacted todifferent kinds of literacies and what they gained from attending a literacy class. Everyday literacies tended to be seenas separate or even in opposition to the literacy class or new practices since they were learnt informally in the home.Many new literacy practices, such as form filling or keeping minutes, were viewed by both men and women as symbolicof the agency’s authority but not necessarily useful. The literacy class introduced women to new roles as “class parti-cipants” and more participatory methods of teaching, but they preferred the kind of education seen in local schools soencouraged the teacher to adopt chanting methods and mirror the hierarchical teacher–pupil relationship.

Though the women contested the dominant model of literacy and gender presented to them by the aid agency—thatreading and writing would help in their existing role as mothers or wives or were useful for income generating—theywanted to become “educated” by attending the literacy class. They felt they gained a new identity through becomingliterate and valued the additional social space that the class gave them as a group of women from differing backgrounds.Certain new practices like creative writing, though imposed by the aid agency, were welcomed by women at the classas enabling them to have a new voice. 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:Adult literacy; Gender; Development; Adult education; Ethnography; Nepal

There is a notice stuck to the tree with mud(hand-written) and I tried to read it—it’s fadedand not very clear writing. Two women were

E-mail address:[email protected] (A.Robinson-Pant).

0738-0593/00/$ - see front matter 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.PII: S0738 -0593(99 )00080-2

passing on their way to cut grass [for fodder]and I asked if they knew what it was about:“What do we know, we are just like buffalo, wecan’t read. How can we know what it says?”They look at my book where I have been copy-ing the notice [in Nepali] and one says “Look

350 A. Robinson-Pant / International Journal of Educational Development 20 (2000) 349–364

how her language is”. The other said, “No,that’s Nepali letters. English is different”. Iasked if they went to the adult literacy class:“How can we go there, we don’t know any-thing”. A small school boy was there and theyasked him what the notice said. It was very highup so he could hardly see it but he didn’t eventry to read it, shrugged his shoulders. Thewomen went on at him, saying, “What’s the useof studying if you can’t read?” Eventually hesaid, “It’s about trees” (without looking at thenotice—he had obviously read it or heard aboutit before). When pressed further, he said, “Itsays not to cut the young trees”. The womenburst out laughing and said, who would be stu-pid enough to cut young trees and then theypicked up their loads and went off. A man wassitting in the house opposite reading an Englishtextbook and watching the proceedings. I askedhim whether he could read the notice for me.He came over and started to read it out, thoughsome words he couldn’t make out either. It’sfrom the VDC (Village DevelopmentCommittee) in Chisopani (over the river) askingpeople from here not to cut their trees—it hada big heading saying “Notice Notice Notice”. Iasked him if he was studying for IA [Intermedi-ate of Arts degree], but he is doing SLC [schoolleaving certificate]. (Extract from researcher’sfieldnotes: 20/11/95, Arutar.)

The encounter that I describe above took placein Arutar, a small village in Western Nepal whereas an academic researcher from a British univer-sity, I was conducting field research on adult liter-acy. I have started with this extract from my fieldnotes at the time to show how contested assump-tions around both “literacy” and “gender” were atthe local level. The two women I spoke to herepresented a caricature of themselves as buffalobecause they couldn’t read, whilst also discussingwhat kind of script (English or Nepali) was in mynotebook. Throughout the encounter, they con-tinued to mock the “educated”—whether pro-fessional development workers who tended toregard the illiterate as “ignorant as buffalo”, or thesmall school boys who considered themselvessuperior to older illiterate women, or the village

men who had written and erected the notice(stating the obvious—telling women, the usualfodder/fuel collectors, not to cut down youngtrees). What comes across most is the women’ssubtle attack on the commonly held assumption (bymany educated people) that literacy equals knowl-edge and that illiteracy means ignorance. Theydidn’t need to go to a literacy class to know theinformation contained in the notice, nor to tell thedifference between English and Nepali scripts.Interestingly, even the high school-educated mancould not decode all the words (as the notice waswritten in a high form of Nepali) and the noticewas stuck up too high for the boy to see clearly.So even the assumptions around what a notice wascould be disputed. This notice was not reallyintended to be read and understood, as I hadassumed when I first saw it: it seemed to be therefor symbolic reasons—perhaps asserting the auth-ority of the neighbouring village elders—ratherthan actually giving information. The two women,by laughing at the stupidity of the statement thatthey should not cut young trees, were also con-testing the very idea of the notice as a symbol—stressing that it should be there to give useful infor-mation.

1. An ideological approach to literacyresearch

During my 8 month stay in Arutar, encounterssuch as the above helped me as an outsideresearcher to begin to understand how women con-tested models of literacy and gender presented tothem both by staff from aid agencies and by edu-cated people in the community. In particular, adultliteracy was considered by the American aidagency implementing the programme in Arutar askey to women’s greater participation in develop-ment: whether raising healthier families or becom-ing more economically active (Robinson-Pant,1997). This approach to women’s literacy is com-mon in Nepal and other developing countries(Robinson-Pant, 1995) and has resulted in mostresearch consisting of quantitative correlationsbetween literacy rates and indicators such as childmortality or fertility rates (e.g. Le Vine, 1982).

351A. Robinson-Pant / International Journal of Educational Development 20 (2000) 349–364

Carter (1996, p. 17) refers to the “productionist dis-course” of such works which assume that “formalschooling and literacy are standard processes thatproduce uniform results” by ignoring the con-sumers’ perspective (rather than concentrating onthe “producers” of education).

Rather than regarding “literacy” as a neutraltechnical input and assuming that the term held onemeaning for all in the community, I approachedmy research with an “ideological” model of liter-acy (Street, 1984): this emphasises the importanceof understanding the cultural context of literacypractices and recognises that there may be several“literacies” in a society. The belief that literacypractices are “aspects not only of ‘culture’ but ofpower structures” has led to studies of “social prac-tices, rather than literacy-in-itself” (Roberts andStreet, 1995). The terms “dominant literacy”(Street, 1987) and “imposed” versus “self-gener-ated” uses of literacy (Barton, 1994, p. 39) havebeen used to explore situations where “a dominantgroup within a society ... is responsible for spread-ing literacy to other members of that society andsubcultures within it” (Street, 1987, p. 50). Thishierarchical relationship may centre on the liter-acies of school and everyday life, Western andindigenous literacies and languages or on the dif-ferent literacy practices of men and women. Street(1999), for example, describes how many peopledrop out of classes run by large Western-sponsoredliteracy campaigns because “they are the literacypractices of an outside and often alien group”.Research such as mine then has an ideologicalfunction in “making visible the complexity oflocal, everyday, community literacy practices andchallenging dominant stereotypes and myopia”(Street, 1999).

In my research in Nepal, I thus began by askingquestions such as: what kind of literacies and lang-uages were used by different groups in this com-munity? What kind of everyday literacy practicesdo women participate in and which are theyexcluded from? What does literacy mean towomen, to men, to younger people, etc.? How doesall this relate to women’s reasons for attending theliteracy classes that were run by an aid agencyevery night in Arutar? In my opening example ofa notice on the tree, this meant looking at what

literacy meant to the two women, the school boyand the more educated man, as well as analysingwhere their assumptions had come from. In the restof this article, I will be looking at women’s experi-ences of literacy learning in Arutar in relation tothe “meanings”1 of literacy and gender held bydevelopment workers, myself as researcher, liter-acy class participants and other people in the com-munity.

2. Women contesting what?

I began this article with an idea of a model ofliteracy and gender that was contested by thewomen walking past the notice on the tree. Beforegoing on to see how women contested such mod-els, it is useful to look in more detail at what couldbe seen as the “dominant” model of literacy. UsingStreet’s terms, this could be described as an“autonomous” view of literacy, where writtenforms are privileged above oral communicationand the “schooled” variety of literacy dominates(Street and Street, 1991). In my research context,the aid agency staff asserted this model of literacymost explicitly, but similar assumptions about liter-acy being synonymous with knowledge and havingcognitive implications for the individual (Ong,1982) were held by many school-educated localmembers of the community (women and men).

To turn first to the development agency, theyhad a specific agenda in running literacy classes inthis area, as one of the educational staff explainedto me on my arrival:

The objective of the literacy class is to make awoman’s group ... and a reading centre. “Theyneed literacy for taking loans, discussion pur-poses (for noting the main points) — they can-not do arithmetic without literacy”. (Fieldnotes:11/10/95, Arughat.)

The assumption here was that oral numeracy did

1 Rockhill (1993, p. 362) notes that “literacy and educationare sometimes used interchangeably when the reference is tothe symbolic ... associated dimensions of literacy”.


not take place or was not accurate enough and thatliteracy was necessary for fuller discussion: inother words, written forms of communication wereprivileged over oral forms. As I describe later, theArutar women group members could recite theaccounts very efficiently, but from memory ratherthan from the accounts book. In training pro-grammes, the agency staff put a lot of emphasis onthe ideology that written communication is fuller,more permanent and even truer than the spokenversion:

She [director] spoke about how writing in theregister is like a mirror as everyone can seethemselves in it and things will be clear. (Fieldnotes from a workshop for ‘neo-literate’women’s group leaders to learn record keepingskills: 10/1/96, Arughat).

The women attending this workshop alsoresponded to the messages about literacy being putacross in training programmes:

Trainer: I have experience of working in manyplaces and women say so well by mouth butthey can’t write it in the register. We canremember and say it by mouth, but if we writeon the paper, think how much you will be ableto read tomorrow.

Woman participant: That’s why we went to theliteracy class. (Fieldnotes: 9/1/96, Arughat.)

Thus the training programmes and the literacyclasses run by the development agency were notjust about teaching functional skills such as formfilling, but were designed to impart a certain ideol-ogy of literacy. They believed that literacybestowed certain benefits on the individual, regard-less of context, and was necessary for the func-tioning of an organisation like the women’s group.These beliefs reflect an ideology supported by writ-ers like Goody (1986, p. 90): “writing has tendedto promote the autonomy of organisations ...”.Although the literacy classes were run specificallyfor women, the agency staff had a less uniformapproach to their ideological position on gender

and literacy. The objective of introducing literacyto women’s groups was to encourage them to beindependent of men in the community (for writingletters, keeping records), as this extract from theabove workshop suggests:

Himali (assistant trainer): Now when you goback to your village, do the records yourself.Don’t let others do it, even if it takes longerfor you.

Saraswathi (trainer) puts up a new sheet withtraining objectives and says, you can say theaccounts by mouth, but you cannot write it onpaper. You don’t have the habit, so you getothers to write for you. But if you want womento go ahead, sisters, we can do this by workingas a group together. (Fieldnotes: 9/1/96,Arughat.)

The idea was that women’s groups could bestrengthened through improving their literacyskills, enabling them to work more effectively inincome generation activities and in empoweringother rural women. Though this was the ideologyunderlying training sessions held at the districtheadquarters, when staff went to meet classes andwomen’s groups in the villages, they tended tobring in their own experiences and understandingof gender roles. This approach was less radicalthan the “empowerment” ideal underlying trainingsessions and was a more realistic response orcompromise to the existing unequal genderrelationships with which the staff were also fam-iliar in their own personal lives. The followingextract is from a meeting between an agency staffmember (Nirala) and a class of young girls withtheir fathers present:

Nirala told the group she was glad they wantedto study but that she is sorry no “buharis”(married women) are coming to the class: ifonly young girls study, there will be no longterm benefit to the village as they will marryand go to the husband’s house. She told the menthat “buharis” cannot make a house “sukhi”(content) if they are uneducated and that they


can’t write letters to their husbands abroad. Allher discussion was with the men, then sheturned to the girls and told them to study wellto get a good husband. A man said that menalso need to study. (Fieldnotes: 12/10/95,Thumi.)

Rather than suggesting that the aim of literacyclasses is to empower women, Nirala emphasisesthe benefit to the family as a whole of having aneducated daughter-in-law or wife. She followed thecustom of addressing the men rather than womenwhen she spoke, except to tell the girls that literacycould help them to get a good man! By downplay-ing the gender conflict implicit in women learningto read, she presented the idea of women learningto please their husbands and for the benefit of thecommunity. Significantly, in this more remote area(Thumi), the men were also illiterate (see lastcomment) so there was some resentment thatclasses were provided for women and not men.How far Nirala believed what she said to this groupor whether she was subtly trying to appease themen is difficult to say: on other instances too, itseemed that the agency staff supported the existingroles of men and women and were reluctant to pro-mote empowerment of women that might entailconflict. Rather than promoting genderempowerment, the staff tended to agree with an“efficiency” gender policy objective (as outlinedby Moser, 1993) where literacy could enablewomen to become better wives, mothers anddaughters in their existing work.

In the local communities, the dominant2 genderand literacy ideology was therefore quite similar tothe agency staff’s outlined above: women were tolearn to read and write to support their men folkand children. This ideology was promoted mainlyby the educated elite of the community (men andwomen) who ran local institutions such as the for-estry committee or the school committee. Anexample was the annual school meeting when thecommittee sent a letter to every father in Arutar

2 Throughout this article, I am using the term “dominant” interms of authority/power, rather than to suggest that a greaternumber of people followed this ideology.

inviting them to attend (see Appendix A for a copyof this letter which was written in formal Nepali).Ironically, because literacy classes had been runfor women and not men, in some families, themother read the letter for the father (and in certainothers, the woman actually attended the meeting inthe husband’s absence). In the village context,much more difference was made between “edu-cation” (meaning the schools and college campus)and “literacy” (meaning the literacy class). The lit-eracy class had become the women’s domain, somuch so that an illiterate man joked to me abouthow maybe he should come to a literacy class asif this was unthinkable. The women who went tothe literacy class talked about it in functional termsas being about learning to read the letters that theAmerican aid agency sent to the women’s groups.By contrast, everyone talked about school edu-cation in terms of what it led to and there werevery bitter feelings from women who had not beenallowed to attend school in their youth:

As we slipped along the muddy paths [to theliteracy class], Laxmi [an adult class participant]took her sandals off and said she is such a greencucumber3 she should not be doing all this trou-ble (going to the class)—I blame my parents,she said.

Only a few local women had made it throughschool and campus and they, rather than supportingthe idea that education could lead to more indepen-dence as women, bemoaned the fact that they werestill sitting at home. Social restrictions meant thatthey could not travel further afield to find worksince they were obliged to live with the extendedfamily:

3 This phrase “green cucumber” is used by many olderwomen to describe the experience of learning when you are old.It refers to a Nepali saying “Why eat green cucumber at thetime of dying?”: cucumber is a delicacy in rural areas yet (likeliteracy) very hard to eat when you are old (Robinson-Pant,2000). In this context where life expectancy is much shorterthan in countries of the North, a woman might be classifiedas “green cucumber” quite soon after bearing children—Laxmi(quoted above) was 36 years old.


I asked if she [a girl who has just finished atcampus level] wants to teach afterwards. Shesaid, what is the point of wanting, there are nojobs left round here. She said the names of allthe young women in the village who are eligiblefor teaching jobs ... and said that is why she issitting crocheting. (Fieldnotes: 2/1/96, Arutar.)

To sum up then, beliefs about gender and liter-acy held by agency staff and by the educated ofthe village were quite similar: they took an auton-omous approach to literacy, where reading andwriting were privileged above oral forms of com-munication. Although literacy was said by agencystaff to contribute to women’s empowerment as agroup, on the ground, the development workerssupported local beliefs that education (includingschools) could enable women to work moreefficiently in their current roles, and not necessarilyentail major social upheaval or challenge existinggender roles. I have suggested that though thisideology was dominant, these views were notshared by many of the women participating in liter-acy programmes or those “illiterate women” con-sidered the target of development interventions(like the two women cutting grass in my openingextract). In the following section, I will look athow the dominant model of gender and literacywas contested locally and how this affected whatwomen chose to take from the literacy classes: aprocess of women “taking hold” of literacy (Kulickand Stroud, 1993, p. 55). I analyse women’sexperiences in the literacy class in relation to liter-acy practices outside the classroom—practicesalready existing in the community and those newpractices introduced by the aid agency.

3. Women’s experiences of literacy andliteracy learning

3.1. Everyday literacy events: religious reading

All the women coming to the literacy class inArutar, though termed “illiterate” by their neigh-bours and the development agency, had experienceof “literacy” in a wider sense. They participated in

“literacy events”4 in their everyday lives, even ifthey were not familiar with literacy learning in aclassroom. A major assumption behind the literacyprogramme was that women had been excludedfrom such everyday literacy events, because oftheir lack of literacy skills and that the literacycourse would be women’s first experience of “liter-acy”. (This could be compared to Freire’s attackon traditional pedagogies for assuming the learnersto be “empty vessels”, though the literacy pro-gramme in Arutar was described by the aid agencyas “Freirean” in approach). Similarly, as I men-tioned earlier, there was an assumption that womencould not do calculations because of their lack ofwritten numeracy skills. As an outside researcher,I too was not immediately aware of what kind ofliteracy and numeracy events women already par-ticipated in, but as time went on, I began to realisethat this could be because these events lacked the“public” nature of a literacy class. An example wasthe Hindu religious reading that went on withinhouseholds at certain times of the year:

While we were talking, a Sharma [high casteBrahmin] woman, named Shoba, came and satdown, carrying a bundle wrapped in an old cloth... She [Shoba] said she had gone to get areligious book from Tanka Maya ... as her fam-ily have to read it aloud every day for a month.I asked if she could read it — said yes and thatanyone can come and listen. They will read itin the early morning. Alina’s mother said theywere going to do this too, but have lost theirbook, it’s too old and torn. I asked if I couldsee the book — first Shoba said no, then theyall teased her and she opened up the cloth.Grains of rice fell out of the cloth and there wasa very old, black book. The pages were fadingand all torn, but the print quite clear. I asked ifI could come and listen one day — Alina said

4 Barton (1994, p. 36) describes a “literacy event” as “...occasions in everyday life where the written word has a role”.He makes the following connection between literacy events andliteracy practices: “Literacy events are the particular activitieswhere literacy has a role: they may be regular repeated activi-ties. Literacy practices are the general cultural ways of utilizingliteracy which people draw upon in a literacy event” (p. 37).


they would be reading it nearer my house tooand I didn’t need to go that far. (Fieldnotes:31/12/95, Arutar.)

In Arutar, the reading of this holy book was afamily affair and women were able to take anactive part, whether listening or actually decodingwords (I met one woman whose husband began toteach her to read every night at this time of theyear). In another village nearby, the reading was amore public social affair, with priests erecting aspecial canopy from where they read the story togreat cheers and joining in with certain lines fromthe audience of women, men and children. Thoughwomen attending the literacy classes also partici-pated in these religious reading events, they tendedto regard them as a different kind of literacy oreven in opposition. An example was Indira, anirregular class participant who justified her non-attendance in these terms to the facilitator whenasked why she had missed a class:

Then Indira said actually she had to stay athome for the month’s reading of the holy book(each evening someone reads it aloud)—shesaid her husband said, what’s the point of yougoing to the class if you can stay here and readthe holy book (7/1/96).

The literacy class was thus not seen as relatedto this everyday reading, though Indira had told methat she could not read all of the holy book,San-sthani, because she was not familiar with com-pound letters (which were taught in the literacycourse). This was partly because the genre of thecourse book was completely different and unfam-iliar to both the teachers and students. In otherwords, the experience of going to the literacy classwas as much around learning a new literacy prac-tice as about acquiring specific reading and writingskills. Whereas the religious reading was an eventthat took place in their own homes and they learntthese skills in context, attending the adult literacylesson implied adopting a new role as a “student”as well as participating in a new kind of literacyevent.

3.2. The literacy class

The following extract from my fieldnotes givesan insight into a typical literacy class in Arutar.The class took place in the local school from 7 to9 pm and was taught by a local woman, Alina. Shewas a student at campus level and came from thericher business caste in the village, in contrast tothe majority of adult literacy students who werefrom the poorer fishing caste (though there were afew richer women too).

She [Alina, the facilitator] now asks questionsabout the passage (see the original storyattached in Appendix B)—what sort of tree isit? What did a man do beneath the tree? (Sit).She answers her own questions then tells thestory again in her own words.

Alina: Whose sweat came? The tree’s?

Women participants [in unison]: Man’s. Gotburnt in the sun.

When Alina talks about the tree crying (in thestory) they all burst out laughing and Urmillasays jokingly, didn’t you see that big tree out-side crying when they cut it down? (There is alarge tree that’s just been cut outside theschool) ...

Alina: ... Have you understood? The treecouldn’t give ...

All: Shade

Alina: What did the tree do?

All: Start to cry

... They all seem interested in the story and say,what about cutting it for wood. Alina says theyshould read what happens on their own.


The women all start reading in groups again ...Next Suryamaya gets up to read aloud. Shemakes some mistakes but spells out each worduntil she recognises what it could be. Three chil-dren are asleep on the benches—Alina says notto bring them tomorrow. Suryamaya keeps get-ting stuck and saying—I just don’t know it,Miss. Alina tells everyone to clap but this timethere is no response.

Alina: No one bothers clapping, are you allasleep?

... Lurimaya and her neighbours keep laughingand rolling around—say it’s because their bookshave fallen apart again. Alina says she has notgot her stapler with her.

Alina: You can’t talk and read. Just listen.

She tells the story in her own words—When itwas a jungle, how did the tree feel?

All: Happy

Alina asks for someone else to read. They allsay they are too tired.

Alina: Why are you so scared to read? I’ll tellyou if you don’t know a word.

Chinimaya agrees to read. At the end, Tankashouts, That’s the end, and starts clappingloudly. Pyoli starts laughing. She is trying towake her daughter but can’t get her up.

Alina starts reading again and keeps stopping toask questions like “who said it (tree or man)?”She reads and explains every sentence. Sari-

maya makes comments as Alina explains, like,“yes it’s just the right time when it rains”. Atlast Alina finishes (9.30)

Alina: Did you understand it? I said so muchmyself, I don’t know if you understood. Tomor-row don’t bring any children. And study athome.

All the women laugh—no time.

Alina: If you can’t study, how can I teach? Gohome and study in any free moment you have,here and there.

Suryamaya: (laughing) then she will ask tomor-row what it is about.

Alina calls the register and they leave as shecalls their name. (Fieldnotes: 31/12/95, Arutar.)

This account shows how Alina tried to adopt therole of school teacher with the women, though theywere all much older than herself and there werethe additional constraints of young children asleepin the classroom and the women’s lack of time forstudying at home. The women to a certain extentenjoyed playing the new role of school student(calling Alina “Miss” and clapping), but there wasalso a lot of humour around this role, particularlyreading the course book. The genre of the text wasunfamiliar to the women—hence their joke aboutthe tree talking and having feelings—but they alsoenjoyed the story as they were familiar with theissues about cutting down trees for firewood.Though Alina tried to introduce individual ques-tions and reading (as she had been trained to do),the women resisted this and answered in chorus.Alina ended up talking and explaining more herselfthan she had intended—and to a greater extent,mirroring the teaching methods used in localschools (even calling the register before theyleave). Though the aid agency had trained the facil-


itators in more participatory Western methods ofliteracy teaching, most of the classrooms ended upadopting traditional chanting methods, largely inresponse to the women’s expectations that the liter-acy classroom should be like school.

Looking at the women’s jovial banter, it wasclear that though they enjoyed certain aspects ofthe class (not least being together and joking aboutthe stories in the book), they contested the facilita-tor’s idea that they should leave their children athome, clap, read individually or do homework.They stressed the constraints they faced in this kindof formal literacy learning. Alina understood theirsituation well as she came from the same com-munity, but was also aware that the aid agencyexpected her to play the role of teacher and encour-age regular alert attendance. There was thus anunderstanding between Alina and the women thatthough the class introduced new literacy practices,it was shaped increasingly by practices which werefamiliar to the community, such as school literacyand chanting in unison. Relating this back to myearlier discussions, it is clear that the literacy classbuilt more on other “academic literacies” (Lea andStreet, 1996) like the school literacy, than it drewon women’s everyday experiences of literacy, suchas religious reading or a forestry notice on a tree.The women, like Alina, do not question whethereveryday literacies (“real literacy”, Rogers et al.1994, 1999) should enter the classroom becausetheir assumption is that becoming a literacy learneris largely about learning an academic discourse.However they also valued the class as a socialevent and Alina responded to this by finishing thelesson early once a week to have singing and danc-ing instead (several women only attended on a Fri-day for this reason!).

3.3. Outside the literacy class: new literacy andnumeracy practices

The aid agency did not just implement literacyclasses in this area, but was involved in otherdevelopment activities which introduced new liter-acy practices, such as form filling or account keep-ing. All the women who attended the Arutar liter-acy class were part of a women’s group, set up bythe development agency to establish savings and

credit schemes, as well as income generatingactivities like goat rearing and weaving cloth. Asdiscussed earlier, the agency assumed that the liter-acy class would provide the functional literacyskills necessary to run a group with formal meet-ings and record-keeping procedures. When I beganto explore how women used literacy skills withintheir group, it seemed however that these new liter-acy practices (agenda setting, keeping writtenaccounts and registers) were seen as “imposed”(Barton, 1994) rather than self-generated (like thereligious reading above). As such, the womentended to regard learning these tasks as necessaryto enter the developers’ discourse5 (i.e. to becomea recognised women’s group and receive funding)but not really a substitute for their existing waysof keeping track of finance.

The following discussion I had with Sansara, thetreasurer of the Arutar group, shows how she keptthe accounts book as part of her official group pos-ition but was unable to write in it (or read it). Shewas one of the weaker students at the literacy class,since with seven young children and an absent hus-band, she was rarely free to attend.

I said I had heard that Sansara is the treasurerof the group and wondered if I could see thebooks that she held—if outsiders are allowed tosee them. She didn’t seem to be worried aboutme looking and she came out with two big regis-ters. I asked her what was in them and she saidshe had no idea. Other people write in it, nother, and she just has to carry them to the meet-ings. Her daughter said, you won’t have to carrythem up the hill on the 10th, will you? (for thebig meeting of six women’s groups). Theyexplained that each group had to appoint aleader and that person had to go right up high(further than Arughat but “up”) to attend a meet-ing of all the local women’s groups ... Sansarasaid it would be all right if they would let hersend her daughter in her place as she can readand write, but they won’t allow that. I asked

5 I am using Hobart’s terms “developer” (meaning bothNorthern and Southern development workers) and “developed”(referring to the local “target” communities): (Hobart, 1993).


her who wrote in the books—Sharmilla, Alina,Rudra [class facilitator and development agencystaff]. I asked her what the position of treasurerentailed—said nothing. All the letters come inChinimaya’s [the group chairperson] hand—shejust has to carry the books there and back. Shenever wanted to be a treasurer as she knew shecouldn’t do the work, but the “miss” from [theoffice] said she had to be. (Fieldnotes:14/1/96, Arutar.)

Although Sansara appeared to regard her role astreasurer purely in terms of carrying the heavyaccounts book up the hill, I discovered that shedid actually perform the role and had a reasonablemental record of transactions:

I asked Sansara how much is in the fund andshe said 7000 rupees. I said, aren’t you worriedabout keeping that much in the house? She said,oh no, we have only 80 rupees in the house asthe rest has been taken in loans. She recitedfrom memory: Monmaya took 500, Lurimaya500, Sarimaya 100, Misra 2400 (hers is bigbecause she never paid it back from last year),Chinimaya 1000, Chandra Bahadur 2000 (hiswife Suryamaya is the member, not him). Shedidn’t mention herself so I asked if she hadtaken any—yes, 2500 for buying gold [her hus-band is a goldsmith] and she had to return it bythe 10th. I asked if she can manage that—yes,will have to, we will get it from somewhere.Pyoli had taken 900. The only person whohadn’t taken any was her sister-in-law who livesin Arughat [half an hour away] so never comesto meetings. I asked if they could take it at anytime or just at the meetings—said sometimesthey come and get it from her house. I askedwhat the interest rate is, said it is 2 rupees permonth for every 100 taken. She thought againand said, I said it was eighty left in the house,actually it is eighty and five left. (Fieldnotes:14/1/96, Arutar.)

These conversations show how Sansara was ableto perform the duties of treasurer in terms of calcu-lating loans and remembering who had taken what,but that she recognised that the aid agency

expected her to write all this down in the book. Inother words, as I discussed earlier, writing wasvalued above oral calculations and memory.Though it took Sansara some time to work out theaccounts from memory, eventually she seemed toreach an accurate account which was more reliablethan her book version. Even her idea of using herschool-educated daughter to keep the accounts wasnot acceptable to the aid agency (within theextended family, it was usual to rely on youngermembers to read and write for older illiteratemembers) as they stressed Sansara’s role as anindividual women’s group member. When I cameto look at the books, it became more apparent thatthis kind of “imposed” literacy, which could beassociated with Western record keeping, empha-sised new values and symbolised the authority ofthe aid agency over local women:

I looked in the registers—one seemed to beminutes of meetings with signatures of atten-dees, the other was accounts but neither seemedup to date. I looked at the minutes of the lastmeeting which they said were written by Alina.One point said everyone should build a toilet bythe 15th of next month. The daughter laughedand said, well no one has done that one. I askedwhy they decided to do that and Sansara said,Rudra [aid agency worker] said we had to. Shesaid we have dug a pit here, but the problem isthat there is nowhere near the house to build oneand I can’t go far away because of the children.(Fieldnotes: 14/1/96, Arutar.)

The agendas and records of meetings thereforetended to reflect what the agency staff felt womenshould be doing, rather than the reality of their con-versations (ironic in view of earlier commentsabout writing being as true as a mirror!). Ratherthan disputing the records, the women group mem-bers accepted that the books were largely for thebenefit of the agency rather than themselves, sothey simply signed the minutes and ignored thecontent.

This analysis has shown that, rather thanenabling women to keep better accounts or recordsof meetings, the new literacy practices introducedby the aid agency were regarded as symbolising a


new authority or discipline. The women continuedto keep their accounts of savings transactionsorally and by memory, but participated in the newpractices in order to keep in with the aid agency.Though this group of women were keen to becomemore economically active through access to loansand new income generating activities, they did notsee literacy as a necessary part of this. For them,the literacy class served a different more personalfunction which was more directly related to gender“empowerment” than the “efficiency” approachpromoted by the aid agency.

3.4. Literacy learning: what women felt they hadgained from the adult class

I have so far suggested that the literacy classprovided skills and familiarity with new genreswhich were of dubious use to the women attending.I have highlighted the ways in which women con-tested this new development discourse: whetherfailing to keep written accounts or laughing at theidea of trees speaking. However, there were certainaspects of the programme which women didrespond to positively and which were the reasonswhy they continued to sign up for literacy classes.Though they rejected the functional literacypresented to them by the development agency, theywelcomed the space provided to them as individualwomen: whether to chat and laugh in the classroomor their feeling of empowerment in being able toread and write.

In my discussions with Sansara above, the onlypart of the records book that she pointed out to mewas where they signed their names: she was proudof her signature and could read her friends’ names.I noticed on another page that there were thumbprints—these were the thumb prints of their hus-bands who had attended in their place one day. Thefact that a wife could sign in place of a thumb printwhen her husband could not was in itself a power-ful indicator of how literacy and gender were inter-twined. Surprisingly, in this area, most men did notsee this as a threat to their authority, however, as(like Sansara talking about her daughter doing herwriting for her) they tended to see writing as justone skill which one member of the family neededfor functional reasons. For the women however,

signing their names was more than this and consti-tuted a new identity: when I attended the annualmeeting at Arutar school, I discovered that the fewwomen who came did so partly to assert their pos-ition in a public arena through signing the agendain the register book.

An incident I observed at a literacy class alsomade me realise that some women were beginningto use literacy for their own purposes:

I sat next to Misra and glanced at her book—she had written something about herself. Shecovered it with her hand when she saw me look-ing. Alina asked her what she had written—something that was in my mind, she answered,but still refused to show it. Alina said there iseven more reason to show that as it is good towrite on your own. Later I noticed she showed itto Suryamaya who was next to her. (Fieldnotes:7/1/96, Arutar.)

I was intrigued to think that Misra—who had adifficult existence with a husband who refused tolet her come to the literacy class on a regularbasis—was now perhaps expressing herselfthrough writing. The idea of privacy associatedwith writing is more common in the West(Robinson-Pant, 1996)—as a researcher in Arutar,even my own notebooks were openly handedaround meetings and offices without asking mypermission, as writing was considered a publicactivity—so I was surprised at Misra’s reaction tothe teacher wanting to show her work. It seemedthat writing (and reading) might provide a privatespace for women to reflect on their experiences.As a follow-up to the literacy course, the aidagency ran workshops for women to write articlesor stories which were then published as books forother “neo-literates” to read (termed “learner gen-erated materials”). These books were read enthusi-astically by women and men in the community (notjust the class attenders) as they were interested inreal-life issues and experiences. Again, the popu-larity of these books suggested that, though a newliteracy practice and like record keeping “imposed”by the agency, creative writing had found a placein some people’s lives.


4. Conclusion

This article has looked at women’s experiencesof literacy and literacy learning in a remote areaof Western Nepal. I drew on an ideologicalapproach to literacy research to investigate thekinds of literacy practices taking place in Arutarin relation to groups of people situated differentlyin gender and class/caste hierarchies. Starting fromexamples of women contesting dominant modelsof literacy and gender at the local level, I went onto explore in more detailhow and what exactlywomen were contesting (and what they accepted).Particularly in gender and development dis-cussions, there can be an assumption that we(researchers/developers) understand women’sstarting point and the complexities of their situ-ations are denied. My research aimed to moveaway from the simple polarisation of women andmen, traditional and developed, to analyse whatmeanings of literacy and gender were shared ordisputed between different groups of people andhow they reacted to literacy interventions by aforeign aid agency.

The educated male elite within Arutar held simi-lar beliefs about literacy to the aid agency staffwho were implementing literacy classes in thearea: they privileged written forms of communi-cation above oral practices and felt that literacywould help women to become more knowledge-able, more efficient in their roles as mothers andwives. As Carter (1996) describes, this “pro-ductionist” discourse typifies an approach towomen’s literacy which has become dominant indeveloping countries. Within the local communityin Arutar, many people made a distinction between“education” (meaning the schools) and “literacy”(meaning the literacy class). A school educationcarried more status and was believed to lead some-where, whereas an adult literacy class was simplyfunctional, enabling women to write letters or readsignboards. At first, it seemed to me that many ofthe female adult literacy students also seemed toshare these views of literacy, the dominant modelof literacy and gender.

By looking at three main kinds of literacy prac-tices in which so-called “illiterate” women partici-pated—existing everyday practices (such as

religious reading), new everyday practices (such asaccount keeping introduced for women’s groups)and the literacy class—I was able to analyse howwomen reacted to different kinds of literacies andwhat they gained from attending a literacy class.Everyday literacies tended to be seen as separateor even in opposition to the literacy class or newpractices, since they were learnt informally in thehome and often through husbands, brothers or chil-dren teaching women. New literacy practices, suchas form filling, reading official letters, keepingminutes and accounts, had been introduced towomen by the aid agency. These practices wereviewed by both men and women as symbolic of theagency’s authority and not necessarily functionallyuseful, since many of the functions were alreadyperformed orally or by memory. The women’sgroup members saw these practices as necessary toget a loan from the aid agency (in order to keep agood relationship going) but did not share the viewthat literacy itself was a useful skill for improvingtheir income. They therefore did the minimum interms of record keeping and there was a great gapbetween the written version and the reality.

The literacy class introduced women to a newgenre in terms of the textbook and a new role asa student. The women often enjoyed the textbookstories and took the meaning, whilst joking aboutthe form and their new relationship with Alina asteacher, rather than neighbour. There was anunspoken agreement between them and her that theclass should build on the academic literacy prac-tices with which they were more familiar from thelocal school—chanting syllables and mirroring thehierarchical relationship between pupils andteacher. This was in opposition to the participatoryapproaches that Alina had been trained by the aidagency to use, and also moved away from a func-tional approach which might have drawn on every-day literacies, such as religious reading. Thewomen at the class therefore preferred to narrowthe gap between school and literacy class, perhapsbecause their main reason for attending was tobecome “educated” rather than specific functionalreasons such as learning to keep accounts.

The class participants appeared to contest thedominant model of literacy and gender presentedto them by the agency: they did not see reading


and writing as necessary in their existing roles asmothers or wives or that it could lead to newemployment opportunities. However this did notmean that they rejected completely the new literacypractices being introduced by the aid agency. Inparticular, they welcomed the chance for self-expression, to have an individual voice throughcreative writing practices such as Learner Gener-ated Materials. They felt they gained a new identitythrough becoming literate, learning to sign theirnames, and above all, they valued the new socialspace that the class gave them for discussion, rec-reation and sitting with women of differing castes.In other words, literacy for many of the womenwas viewed as an empowering process, in contrastto the aid agency’s “efficiency” objective.

The experience of researching women’s literacypractices in Arutar made me understand some ofthe complexities implicit in gender, literacy anddevelopment discussions. It is not simply a matterof replacing old gender relations with a new model,or former oral traditions with written practices, butof first exploring existing social practices and howdifferent groups or individuals view these prac-tices. I found the concept of “multiple literacies”gave me a tool to analyse how women “took hold”

of new practices being introduced by aid agencies,giving a more complex view than the commonassumption that new practices replace old. Certainnew literacy practices, though “imposed” (such asLGM), were welcomed by women participants asenabling them to have a new voice, whereas others(e.g. the literacy class itself) were transformed intoa more familiar, traditional academic literacy prac-tice (mirroring school). Other new literacy prac-tices, such as account keeping, were rejected altog-ether as not useful. Ethnographic research such asthis study can thus show the importance of under-standing not just where people are coming from,but how development interventions support or holdthem back from where they intend to go.

Acknowledgements

This article is based upon fieldwork conductedin Nepal from 1995 to 1996 as part of my D.Philcourse, for which I received funding from theEconomic and Social Research Council and invalu-able academic support from Professor Brian Street.This article also owes much to the friends and col-leagues with whom I lived and worked in Arutar.


Appendix A

Copy of the letter sent to fathers in Arutar inviting them to the annual school committee meeting. Mostof the recipients were unable to read it, especially as it was written in difficult formal language.


Appendix B

Copy of the lesson “Story of a Tree” extracted from the adult literacy textbook used in the Arutar class


described in the article, published by Save the Children USA Kathmandu. The learners’ book was in Nepalilanguage only—the English translation is however included here.

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Documents

Women and literacy: a Nepal perspective