Higher Education and Global Gender Equity

American University of Sharjah

Addressing the audience at AAC&U’s Annual Meeting last January, Kavita Ramdas, former president of the Global Fund for Women, stressed the importance of “an education that is fully cognizant of the profound inequalities that exist on our planet” (2011, 9). In making her impassioned case for global education of this kind, she pinpointed one brand of disparity as “perhaps the most significant”: gender inequality. Indeed, as Ramdas asserted, gender inequality remains “deeply entrenched” around the globe, with profound consequences for women and their communities. And if women’s disenfranchisement has ripple effects, so, conversely, does their enfranchisement. Indeed, as Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn have argued, “Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution” (2009). As they elaborate, “focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism.”

If this is true—and the evidence suggests that it is—higher education would be remiss to ignore what Kristof and WuDunn have termed “the paramount moral challenge” of the twenty-first century. This is why global gender equity is one key area that AAC&U’s Program on the Status and Education of Women, on celebrating its fortieth anniversary in 2011, identified as an essential goal for higher education in the next forty years. With the world’s global interconnectedness made ever more apparent by quick communications and rapidly changing technologies, it is critical that US higher education help establish gender equity both within and beyond its borders.

This issue of On Campus with Women illustrates how faculty, students, and administrators are doing just that with initiatives grounded in global concerns. Nelly Stromquist of the University of Maryland contextualizes this work by describing the factors that prevent women around the globe from participating in education and the benefits accrued when women are educated. Karen Torjesen of Claremont Graduate University reflects on her pathway to collaborative global work. Representatives from Michigan State University’s Center for Gender in Global Context share their academic approach to globalizing women’s studies. Faculty from Smith College describe a recent interdisciplinary project on global perspectives on women’s education. And Campus Women Lead member Lupe Gallegos-Diaz reflects on global interconnectedness in the context of Chicana, Latina, and indigenous women’s success in higher education.

Taken together, these articles by no means fully address the wide range of contexts in which women’s inequality, educational and otherwise, continues to occur around the globe. But they do offer a glimpse into what US higher education is doing to build a more equitable world for women and their global communities through research, teaching, and action. The Program on the Status and Education of Women invites readers to consider the efforts of our contributing authors in light of their own institutions. We hope you will find inspiration in this publication’s pages for addressing this century’s “paramount moral challenge” and providing students with an education that acknowledges and works to eradicate entrenched gender inequality around the globe.

—Kathryn Peltier Campbell, editor

References

Kristof, Nicholas D., and Sheryl WuDunn. 2009. "The Women's Crusade." New York Times, August 23. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html.

Ramdas, Kavita N. 2011. "It Ain't What You Do, It’s How You Do It: Global Education for Gender Justice." Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, San Francisco, CA, January 2011. http://www.aacu.org/meetings/annualmeeting/AM11/documents/
KavitaRamdasSpeechAACUJanuary2011.pdf.