Girls about town: educated subjectivities, gender and the urban public space in India

作为一名人类学家，我对高等教育的个人经历是如何累积起来带来女性在社会中角色的变化很感兴趣。我研究大学教育如何改变年轻女性的性格和生活期望，以及她们的家庭和社会如何看待她们的新个性。我在德里以东30英里的加济阿巴德（Ghaziabad）的一所非精英公立大学工作，我跟踪的许多年轻女性都是家里第一个接受大学教育的人。在我的博士田野调查中，我采访了即将上大学的年轻女性，了解她们的教育经历，并对她们进行了较长时间的观察。这种深入的参与表明，在印度小城镇的大学里，大部分的学习都是在课堂之外进行的，而不是来自教科书。年轻人重新定义了教育，设计了感性的方式来认识和生活在这个世界上。教育的重点是学生性格的情感转变和生活更自由的实际知识。我对这些研究问题的兴趣始于担任英国《金融时报》（Financial Times）驻德里记者期间，当时我报道了印度对2011年至2012年大规模青年抗议活动的反应，抗议活动是针对进入公共场所的性别问题。我的研究表明，高等教育改变了性别权力关系，受过教育的年轻女性在印度各省的集市、购物中心和麦当劳与男性独立交谈时更加自信和果断。对此的警告是，年轻女性被期望在婚姻中放弃这些性和社会自由。结婚后，他们中的许多人都被他们曾经认为自己可以成为的样子所困扰。我的研究强调通过教育的情感发展，使年轻女性能够在父权社会中要求社会和性自由。最近媒体对印度强奸案的恐慌，自相矛盾地限制了女性进入公共场所的时间，仅限于白天的某些时间和晚上的某些地方，尤其是在德里和孟买等大城市以外的小城镇。我的研究的一个政策含义是说明年轻女性如何在没有恐吓威胁的情况下进入公共空间。在奖学金期间，我计划发表2-3篇强有力的学术文章，以影响一系列教育研究人员和政策制定者。此外，我计划在北方邦政府教育部门进行为期2个月的实习，与邦一级教育决策者就印度女性接受高等教育和公共空间的挑战进行知识交流和学习。此外，通过与Satendra Kumar博士在西姆拉印度高等研究院（IIAS）举办研讨会，我将把这些发现转化为可为决策提供信息的发表文章。我对公共空间中妇女运动的研究为当代印度保障进入公共空间而不受恐吓威胁的政策提供了证据基础。报告认为，削减公立大学的学费直接限制了女性接受高等教育的机会，这将有助于就印度高等教育的扩张展开辩论。它还将强调大学学习经历在塑造情感倾向和性别实践中的作用。与政府资助的技能发展项目和不受监管的技能发展机构相比，这些学生的经历在改变印度北部男性主导的公共文化方面发挥了更大的作用。我的工作展示了排名较低的公立大学在提高女性就业能力方面所发挥的作用。它们使妇女能够进入印度城市的服务部门工作，例如呼叫中心和零售。总的来说，它将强调以教育为主导的性别关系变化和重新定义公共空间的重要性。

As an anthropologist, I am interested in how individual experiences of higher education accrete to bring about a change in the role of women in a society. I study how college education changes young women's characters and life expectations, and how their families and the society perceive their new personalities. I worked in a non-elite government college in Ghaziabad, 30 miles east of Delhi, and many of the young women I followed are the first in their families to receive a college education. During my doctoral fieldwork, I interviewed college-going young women about their educational experiences and observed them over a longer period of time. This in-depth engagement makes visible that most of the learning at the colleges in small towns of India takes place outside of the classrooms-and is not derived from textbooks. Young people redefine education and devise emotional ways of knowing and being in the world. The focus of education is on the emotional transformation of a student's character and on the practical know-how of living a freer life. My interest in these research questions began as journalist for the Financial Times in Delhi when I reported on India's response to large-scale youth protests over gendered access to public spaces in 2011-12. My research illustrates that higher education changes gender power relations and educated young women are more confident and assertive in independently speaking with men in the bazaars, the malls and the McDonald's in provincial India. The caveat to this is that young women are expected to give up these sexual and social freedoms on marriage. Upon marriage, a number of them are haunted by what they once thought that they could become. My research emphasises the emotional development through education that enables young women to claim social and sexual freedoms in a patriarchal society. Recent media panic over rape in India has paradoxically restricted women's access to public spaces to certain hours of the day and certain places at night, notably in the small towns outside of the metropolitan cities of Delhi and Mumbai. A policy implication of my research is to illustrate how young women access public spaces without threat of intimidation. During the fellowship, I plan to publish 2-3 strong academic articles to influence a range of educational researchers and policymakers. In addition, I plan to undertake a 2-month long internship at the Education Department of Uttar Pradesh State Government, to conduct knowledge exchange and learning with the state-level educational policymakers on the challenges for women's access to higher education and public spaces in India. Further by facilitating a workshop at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS), Shimla with Dr Satendra Kumar, I would translate these findings into published articles that can inform policy-making. My research on women's movement in public spaces provides an evidence base for policy safeguarding access to public spaces without threat of intimidation in contemporary India. It will contribute to debates on the expansion of higher education in India by arguing that cuts to state-funded universities directly constrict women's access to higher education. It will also emphasise the role of a university learning experience in shaping emotional dispositions and gender practices. These student experiences have a more powerful role in transforming broader male-dominated public culture of north India than government-funded Skills Development Programmes and unregulated skills-development institutes. My work showcases the role low-ranking public universities play in enhancing female employability. They enable women's entry into service sector work, such as call centres and retail, in urban India. Overall, it will underscore the importance of education-led changes in gender relations and the redefining of public space.