abstract: 'Despite decades of focus on gender and skills training, the Technical

  and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) landscape in Sub-Saharan

  Africa remains deeply gendered and rooted in wider structures of

  patriarchal inequality and exploitation. Engaging with recent

  theoretical moves toward gender-transformative and genderjust TVET

  programming, this paper explores how a gradual revisioning of TVET can

  be mobilised to challenge broader gender inequality and discrimination

  in precarious settings. Bringing together insights from feminist

  scholarship and the UN''s decent work agenda, which seeks to align fair

  and secure working conditions with the aspirations of workers, we ask

  what a gender-transformative future for TVET might look like where

  labour rights, sustainable livelihoods and wellbeing are incorporated

  from the ground up. Drawing on findings from Cameroon and Sierra Leone,

  from the innovative `Gen-Up'' project which aims to investigate possible

  gender-responsive TVET programmes and policies in collaboration with the

  TVET provider, the Don Bosco network we ask what is both possible and

  permissible in the fractious economic climate, where the focus on basic

  survival and income generation inhibits a genuine challenge to

  entrenched gender norms and stereotypes. For young women especially

  whose aspirations are multiply damaged by persistent discriminatory

  frameworks and who become further vulnerable at times of economic and

  social crisis, we ask whether current TVET programming is helping them

  escape the multiple forms of marginalisation they face. Even in cases

  where women may be portrayed as successful entrepreneurs or achieving

  sustainable livelihoods, the evidence suggests these individualistic

  narratives are leaving many young women behind. In this context of

  instability, precarity and increasing global and local socio-economic

  and gender inequalities we argue that only holistic TVET programming

  based on social and moral values and empowerment and proposing diverse

  pathways to decent work, creating forms of solidarity, collaboration and

  a contextualised enabling environment can act as both a lever for gender

  transformation and also an engine for broader socio-economic change

  fitting the `Decent Work'' vision and a constantly changing world of

  work.'
affiliation: 'Wignall, R (Corresponding Author), 5 Redvers Rd, Brighton BN2 4BF, England.

  Wignall, R (Corresponding Author), Oxford Brookes Univ, Oxford, England.

  Wignall, Ross, 5 Redvers Rd, Brighton BN2 4BF, England.

  Wignall, Ross; Piquard, Brigitte; Joel, Emily, Oxford Brookes Univ, Oxford, England.

  Piquard, Brigitte, 39 Chemin Mezeau, F-86000 Poitiers, France.

  Joel, Emily, Bottom Flat, 3 Granville St, Aylesbury HP20 2JR, Bucks, England.'
article-number: '102850'
author: Wignall, Ross and Piquard, Brigitte and Joel, Emily
author-email: 'rwignall@brookes.ac.uk

  bpiquard@brookes.ac.uk

  ejoel@brookes.ac.uk'
author_list:
- family: Wignall
  given: Ross
- family: Piquard
  given: Brigitte
- family: Joel
  given: Emily
da: '2023-09-28'
doi: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2023.102850
eissn: 1873-4871
files: []
issn: 0738-0593
journal: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
keywords: TVET; Gender; Youth; Employment
keywords-plus: 'VOCATIONAL-EDUCATION; SOUTH-AFRICAN; TRAINING TVET; POLICY; YOUTH;

  FEMINISMS; EQUALITY; ISSUES'
language: English
month: OCT
number-of-cited-references: '97'
papis_id: ba56cebb9ae6515fa951ef84c590f0cb
ref: Wignall2023upskillingwomen
times-cited: '0'
title: Up-skilling women or de-skilling patriarchy? How TVET can drive wider gender
  transformation and the decent work agenda in Sub-Saharan Africa
type: article
unique-id: WOS:001049247300001
usage-count-last-180-days: '1'
usage-count-since-2013: '1'
volume: '102'
web-of-science-categories: Education \& Educational Research
year: '2023'