Between Returns and Respectability: Parental Attitudes towards Girls' Education in Rural Pakistan

Purewal, Navtej; Hashmi, Naimatullah

Abstract

This article focuses upon perceptions of girls’ education in the family context within which decisions around children’s education and opportunities are made. The article presents a framework showing how parental attitudes to girls’ education are shaped by an objective logic framed by the notion of returns, relating to potential benefits of daughters’ education, and respectability, relating to girls’ modesty and threats that education may present to normative expectations for girls. Drawing upon data collected in 2011 in rural areas of the districts of Faisalabad (Jaranwala town) and Chiniot (Tehsil Chiniot) in the province of Punjab, the study highlights how assumptions around the liberating effects of
education implicit in global education programmes fail to take into account cultural values around gender norms that are central to informing parental attitudes towards their daughters’ prospects for education.

Citation

Purewal, N., & Hashmi, N. (2014). Between Returns and Respectability: Parental Attitudes towards Girls' Education in Rural Pakistan. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 36(7), 977-995. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2014.883274

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 2, 2014
• Publication Date: Feb 26, 2014
• Deposit Date: Sep 26, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 12, 2025
• Journal: British Journal of Sociology of Education
• Print ISSN: 0142-5692
• Electronic ISSN: 1465-3346
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 36
• Issue: 7
• Pages: 977-995
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2014.883274