Education Research Gender, Education and Development - A Partially Annotated and Selective Bibliography

that "despite the state's verbal commitment to gender equity, during the period of post-
colonial socialist reconstruction, [it] has, through its education policies and practices,
continued its gendering and male protecting role", (p135). In other words, gender
neutral policies have masked "a strong bias against women", (p136).

Economic structural adjustment since 1989 has made the situation worse. Although
macro-economic policies appear to be gender neutral, their impact is gender
differentiated. Austerity programmes affect women negatively because of the reduction
in their access to employment, the limiting of access to services, and the increase in the
demands on their time and labour to compensate for the gaps created by the cuts in
services. These developments lead to more constraints on their daughters' access to
education.

Sudan

BERNAL, Victoria (1994) 'Gender, Culture and Capitalism: Women and the remaking
of Islamic "Tradition" in a Sudanese village', Comparative Studies in Society and
History, 36 (1), 36-67.

The negative view of observers of North African and Middle Eastern societies who
generally identify Islam as "the primary determinant of women's status and the obstacle
to social and economic changes which might benefit women", (p. 36-37) is described
by Bernal as "Islamic determinism", (ibid). She sees this perspective as a
misapprehension of Islam and in her in-depth and thought-provoking analysis examines
gender and religion in the Muslim world by identifying the links between "religious
transformation, gender relations, and the integration of Muslim communities into the
capitalist world system", (p. 37). Bernal argues that contemporary Islamic
fundamentalism should be seen as a modem development connected to socio-economic
transformations rather than as a return to tradition. Her analysis is illustrated by data
from fieldwork in a northern Sudanese village, Wad al Abbas, 1980-1982 and in 1988.

Experiences in Wad al Abbas would seem to indicate that economic changes such as in
agriculture & labour migration (mainly to Saudi Arabia), have had unplanned outcomes
resulting in new gender relationships and that these relationships are being
institutionalised by new religious sensibilities and traditions in the form of Islamic
Fundamentalism. Bernal concludes-

"the intensification of social restrictions on women and the emergence of
new secular and religious notions of gender difference are direct results
of the community's growing integration into the world economy", (p61).

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