A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In Forging the Ideal Educated Girl, Shenila Khoja-Moolji traces the figure of the ‘educated girl’ to examine the evolving politics of educational reform and development campaigns in colonial India and Pakistan. She challenges the prevailing common sense associated with calls for women’s and girls’ education and argues that such advocacy is not simply about access to education but, more crucially, concerned with producing ideal Muslim woman-/girl-subjects with specific relationships to the patriarchal family, paid work, Islam, and the nation-state. Thus, discourses on girls’/ women’s education are sites for the construction of not only gender but also class relations, religion, and the nation.

This compelling book takes a novel approach to the complexities of girls’ and women’s education in the global South. To unravel the critical issues and processes behind educational advancement and to identify the factors that support the construction of educational well-being and agency from gender perspective, the book narrates the stories of women who have successfully built their educational careers to higher education. The book creatively applies the human development and capabilities approach to analyze and assess educational advancement and development. Mari-Anne Okkolin offers a fresh voice to the field of education, gender and development. The book draws on rich, in-depth evidence from Tanzanian women who have reached higher education, placing them amongst the very small percentage of women in the Tanzanian and sub-Saharan contexts. The book explores the women’s school experiences, everyday life practices and familial arrangements, and the values, expectations and assumptions associated with education and the schooling of girls and women. Due to the multi-disciplinary nature of the book, it will be of great interest to multiple academic audiences: post-graduates, researchers and academics. It is of particular relevance for all those interested in education, sociology, development studies, gender/women’s studies, and qualitative research methodology. The book will appeal especially to scholars working with the capabilities approach. It will also be of value beyond academia, for education practitioners in planning and implementing education and equality policies internationally.

The role of higher education, especially the international dimension, is given little importance in the discourse on achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Africa. This book aims to change that. The potential of higher education’s contribution to Africa’s development remains unrealized and often misunderstood. In today’s globalised world, which prioritises economic growth through liberalised trade and competitive market strategies, much emphasis has been placed on higher education’s ability to produce graduates to serve the labour market and produce new knowledge for the knowledge economy. While these are important contributions, the book argues that international higher education and new knowledge must go beyond economic purposes and serve the human and social development needs of the continent. It is against this background that the African Network for the Internationalisation of Education (ANIE) undertook research on the international dimension of higher education in Africa and its role in the achievement of the MDGs. Through empirical research, seven case studies address how international and regional higher education programmes and policies in African universities can address MDG priorities of promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment, combating HIV/AIDS and establishing global partnerships for development through academic mobility, joint research initiatives, curriculum innovation and policy development.