negated Third World women's choices of paths of political activism which used the
local prevalent ideologies and were often located within religious or maternal
discourses".
So the object of this collection is to "bring Third World women to the centre of the
political analysis, "and to illustrate that, "Their forms of negotiation with the state must
not be equated with weakness nor should their strategies be classified as either
temporary or unimportant." Contributions to this volume fall into two categories: those
that are global or regional, and those that are country specific. The first, comprising
four chapters includes three broad analyses of roles played by women in the Third
World political arena, while the fourth concentrates on their resistance to
authoritarianism in Latin America and South Asia. The country-specific chapters
therefore form the majority of the book, but concentrate on just four cases, three of
which are from Asia with two chapters each (China, Iran and Palestine), leaving the
remaining chapters to a Nicaraguan subject.
The quality of the contributions is everywhere of a high order and sub-themes range
across a number of issues, including: the politics of aid (Nicaragua); the politics of
reform (China); fertility behaviour (China); fundamentalism (Iran); constraint (Iran);
the national struggle (Palestine); the Intifada (Palestine). Given the title, the absence of
African discussion, except in the global papers to some extent, is unfortunate and
renders the title somewhat misleading. South Asia - the other major poverty zone - is
also hardly represented.
Nonetheless, some of the excellent discussions have possibilities for generalising across
the Third World, and in any case, the main objective is to point up the political
dimension, and the significant involvement in it by many women in developing
countries.
BAGLA-GOKALP, Lusin (1990) Les femmes et l'éducation de base. Étude spéciale
pour la conférence mondial sur l'éducation pour tous, Thaïlande mars 1990
UNESCO, Paris.
Chapter 1 of this wide-ranging survey examines the arguments for women's rights to
education. The impact of female education on birth-rates, for example, is discussed,
with evidence of the disparity between the experiences of various parts of the world and
the contributory influence of numerous other social factors, apart from education. The
"inter-generational effect" of women's education is examined in terms of the well-being
and health of children, their cognitive development, and their schooling (particularly
that of girls). Chapter 2 La Situation des femmes dans l'éducation de base is a good
source of facts and figures on literacy rates for women and girls, the impact of world
economic recession on basic education, and drop-out and wastage. Chapter 3