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

作为一名人类学家，我感兴趣的是高等教育的个人经历如何带来社会中女性角色的变化。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人格。我在德里以东30英里的加济阿巴德的一所非精英公立大学工作，我跟踪的许多年轻女性都是她们家族中第一个接受大学教育的人。在我的博士实习期间，我采访了即将上大学的年轻女性，了解她们的教育经历，并对她们进行了更长时间的观察。这种深入的接触表明，印度小城镇的大学里的大部分学习都是在教室之外进行的--而不是来自教科书。年轻人重新定义了教育，并设计出了解和存在于世界上的情感方式。教育的重点是学生性格的情感转变和过更自由生活的实际诀窍。我对这些研究问题的兴趣始于我担任英国《金融时报》驻德里记者的时候，当时我报道了2011-12年间印度对大规模青年抗议活动的反应，抗议活动针对进入公共场所的性别歧视。我的研究表明，高等教育改变了性别权力关系，在印度各省的集市、商场和麦当劳，受过教育的年轻女性在与男性独立交谈时更加自信和自信。需要注意的是，年轻女性应该在婚姻中放弃这些性自由和社会自由。结婚后，他们中的许多人都被他们曾经认为自己会成为的人所困扰。我的研究强调通过教育来发展情感，使年轻女性能够在父权社会中享有社会和性自由。最近印度媒体对强奸的恐慌自相矛盾地限制女性在白天的特定时间和晚上的特定地点进入公共场所，特别是在大都市德里和孟买以外的小城镇。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场所。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两个月的实习，与邦一级的教育政策制定者就印度妇女接受高等教育和公共空间面临的挑战进行知识交流和学习。此外，通过推动在印度高级研究所(IIAS)希姆拉与萨登拉·库马尔博士举行的研讨会，我将把这些发现转化为可以为政策制定提供信息的出版文章。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威胁的政策提供了证据基础。它将有助于印度关于扩大高等教育的辩论，因为它认为削减国家资助的大学直接限制了女性接受高等教育的机会。它还将强调大学学习经历在塑造情感倾向和性别实践方面的作用。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，这些学生经历在改变印度北部更广泛的男性主导的公共文化方面具有更强大的作用。我的作品展示了低排名的公立大学在提高女性就业能力方面所起的作用。它们使妇女能够进入印度城市的服务部门工作，如呼叫中心和零售业。总体而言，它将强调以教育为主导的性别关系变革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.