The Role of Subjective Motivation in Girls' Secondary Schooling: The ...

The Role of Subjective Motivation in Girls’ Secondary Schooling: The Case of Avoidance of Abuse in Belize

EILEEN P. ANDERSON-FY E Case Western Reserve University

As in other Latin American and Caribbean nations, young women in Belize have made remarkable strides in enrollment in and completion of secondary schooling. In fact, adolescent girls did so well during the 1990s that the usual explanations of increased access to schooling and governmental policy aimed at increasing girls’ education did not appear to fully explain girls’ success at the time. Here, Eileen Anderson-Fye argues that secondary schoolgirls’ subjective motivations played a key role in their educational experiences during the late 1990s. Based on data collected from a longitudinal study conducted between 1996 and 2001, Anderson-Fye suggests that many of the young women in this study saw education as a route to independence or as a way to avoid gender-based maltreatment for themselves and their future children. She asserts this “push” factor, combined with the “pull” factors of increased economic opportunities for young women with high school diplomas, led to increased educational outcomes for girls at this time. Through this case study of one cohort of girls in San Andrés, Belize, Anderson-Fye provides several important insights for educational researchers and practitioners working with young women today. The first regions of the developing world to achieve gender parity in terms of primary and secondary school completion were those of Latin America and the Caribbean (King & Hill, 1993). Though significant pockets of inequity remain within these regions—especially in the rural and lowest-income areas (Bustillo, 1993)—overall, girls in Latin America and the Caribbean have done better in their quest for equality than their counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa, South Central and Southeast Asia, West Asia, and North Africa. In fact, particularly in the Caribbean, girls have begun to outperform boys at the secondary level in some areas (UNESCO, 2010). While there are profound cultural differences within and between Latin America and the Caribbean, the Harvard Educational Review Vol. 80 No. 2 Summer 2010 Copyright © by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

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The Role of Subjective Motivation in Girls’ Secondary Schooling eileen p. anderson-fye

areas are usually combined in analyses of girls’ education. Belize, active in both Central American organizations and the Caribbean Community/CARICOM, is one of the few countries that considers itself, and is considered, part of both regions. San Andrés,1 Belize, located on the largest offshore caye, is a multicultural area that has been changing rapidly over the past twenty years due to the increasing influence of Western tourism. The only high school in this rural area, San Andrés High School (SAHS), has had an influx of immigrants from other parts of Belize and Central America who moved there for tourismrelated jobs. The school has expanded every year since 1995, building new classrooms yearly to keep up with its bulging enrollment. Young women of all eight distinct ethnic groups of Belize, and from at least seven additional countries, attend SAHS. Most remarkably, beginning in the 1990s, young women of all ethnic, class, and immigration backgrounds have attended and graduated from SAHS in rates substantially higher than the national averages (Vargas, 2000). This study examines the experiences of young women at SAHS who graduated at the end of the 1990s and comprised the first generation of mass secondary school-educated females in San Andrés. The trends toward female secondary school success that began with this critical historical cohort continue today. Based on five years of longitudinal ethnographic research in SAHS and its surrounding community, the data from this study suggest that while the case of San Andrés resembles others around the world, it has poignant variations, as yet undocumented, that are related to Western acculturation. For each young woman, subjective motivations within a particular local sociocultural context greatly affected by globalization played a role in the decision to attend secondary school, graduate from it, or both. In short, each young woman’s desire to escape or avoid gender-based violence for herself and her future children, her interaction with global media in ways that helped strengthen her resolve rather than undermine her well-being, and the actual opportunity for a new wave of feminized service-sector jobs requiring a high school diploma in the tourism industry created the opportunity for an individual story writ large in this community. This storyline convincingly helped account for young women’s exceptional educational attainment in San Andrés beyond traditional structural arguments.

Background and Context Gender and Education in the Developing World Around the developing world, girls—at the time of data collection for this study and today—have been less likely to experience formal schooling than boys (Mensch, Bruce, & Greene, 1998; UNESCO, 2010). Additionally, girls have been more likely to drop out when they reach puberty because of domestic work obligations, child-bearing responsibilities (Herz, Subbara, Habib, & 175

Harvard Educational Review

Raney, 1991), and sexual harassment in the classroom (Wible, 2004). Finally, researchers across many cultures have found bias against female education due to parents’ perceptions of indirect opportunity cost, such as mores regarding the “waste” of girls’ educations in light of their future roles as wives and mothers, especially when the benefit is perceived to go to the girl’s marital family as opposed to her natal family (Greene, 1997; Herz et al., 1991; Hill & King, 1993; LeVine, n.d.). Such gender disparity only increases in secondary schooling, as compared with primary (Kelly & Elliott, 1982). Conversely, research has overwhelmingly proved the positive correlation between the education of women and the quantifiable physical and psychological well-being of children. Furthermore, education has been shown to benefit both the women themselves and society overall (Jejeebhoy, 1995; LeVine, LeVine, & Schnell, 2001). On average, in the early 1990s, research demonstrated that every year of schooling increased an individual girl’s earning power by 10 to 20 percent (Summers, 1992). Despite such compelling findings for the benefits of female education, the universal education of girls remains far from a reality in most of the world, especially in large parts of sub-Saharan Africa, South and West Asia, and across the Arab states (e.g., Mensch et al., 1998; UNESCO, 2010). In this context, the successful pattern of female education that has occurred in most parts of Latin America and the Caribbean has been difficult to explain (Bustillo, 1993; King & Hill, 1993). For reasons still generating controversy among researchers, girls outnumber boys in their entrance and completion rates of both primary and secondary schooling (Bailey, 1997; Bustillo, 1993; UNESCO, 2010). During the mid-1990s, this pattern was especially striking, as girls had greater rates of attendance than boys through all grades of secondary schooling in the Caribbean countries of the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago (UNESCO, 2000). A similar pattern, slightly weaker and with more exceptions, was found in Latin America (Vargas, 2000). There are several factors that have been found to account for girls’ educational participation in the developing world. These factors include the availability of schools (often related to urbanization), the cost of education relative to family resources, girls’ home responsibilities as teenagers, the economic opportunity available for women (especially service-sector growth), social and cultural ideas and movements for women’s equality, and governmental policy aimed at increasing girls’ education (Heward & Bunwaree, 1999; Kelly & Elliott, 1982; King & Hill, 1993). Though these factors have explained some of the findings in Latin America and the Caribbean, they have not gone far enough. As Bustillo (1993) explains, “Other developing regions have [also] undergone rapid educational expansion, urbanization, and growth in the female work force in the past several decades without the gender gap in education shrinking as much as it has in Latin America [and the Caribbean]”

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(p. 176). Thus, the question remains: what else has been responsible for girls’ relative educational success in this part of the world? A compelling argument for the relative educational success of girls in the Caribbean has been that female gender roles are not as restrictive as in other parts of the world because of lower marriage rates and matrifocal families (Leo-Rhynie, Bailey, & Barrow, 1997). In cases of abandonment or abuse, adult women throughout the Caribbean have long gone to work to support their families. In addition, these women have not faced the social pressures of arranged marriages (especially prepubescent marriages) and patrilocal family patterns that exert a tighter rein on young women’s futures in parts of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. The situation in Belize is particularly interesting because both Caribbean matriarchal and Mexican patriarchal family patterns exist, often cobbled together in uniquely hybrid ways, depending on family history, exact locale, and individual personalities (Sutherland, 1998). In fact, I found the patterns described here regarding the intersection of adolescent females’ education and gender-based maltreatment across all ethnicities and family structures.

Gender-Based Maltreatment and Schooling in a Cross-Cultural Context Gender-based maltreatment of girls and women has been well documented in every region of the world (WHO, 2002). Korbin (1987) describes the challenges of defining and recognizing child maltreatment cross-culturally due to multiple levels of variation including structural maltreatment (e.g., poverty and malnutrition), intercultural differences in definition (e.g., spanking as accepted in one culture and illegal in another), and intracultural differences (e.g., spanking as accepted in some subgroups of a culture but not others). The challenges in defining and creating policy around child maltreatment only become more complex in contexts of cultural change where there may be intergenerational or multicultural conflict in defining what constitutes abuse (e.g., Anderson-Fye, 2002; Shweder, Minow, & Markus, 2004). However, across contexts and using current international standards (e.g., WHO, 2002), gender-based child maltreatment remains shockingly common for girls. When physical and sexual violence are included in the definition, typical prevalence rates indicate that up to one-third of female children experience maltreatment (WHO, 2002; WINAD, 2009). Educational institutions interface with child maltreatment in multiple ways. First, there have remained contexts in which girls as a class are not allowed to attend school, or are discouraged from attending, for a variety of reasons (UNESCO, 2004). Second, sexual assault and harassment of girls has been documented widely in schools (Wible, 2004). Third, gender-based maltreatment that occurs at home can have varied educational effects. It can make it more difficult for girls to stay in school (Ganju et al., 2004). Or, as I argue in this article and as mentioned elsewhere, depending on local circumstances, it

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can motivate girls toward educational achievement in order to escape cycles of violence. Finally, while gender-based maltreatment has occurred among girls from all educational backgrounds, educational success for women has been associated with their increased well-being and the well-being of their children (LeVine et al., 2001), including decreased exposure to future violence.

Emergent Conceptual Framework While I was unaware of the trends regarding gender-based maltreatment and education when I began this study, the effects of gender-based violence in girls’ lives were the most compelling and widespread set of findings that emerged from the data. Over time, it became increasingly clear that the educational successes of the young women in this study were related to their simultaneous desire to support themselves without being dependent on a man and to the opening of economic markets in San Andrés that made this independence possible. Not unlike other postcolonial nations, Belize, while an ostensibly peaceful country, has a long history of domestic violence (Henderson & Houghton, 1993; McClaurin, 1996; McCluskey, 2001; WINAD, 2009). The young women involved in this study were aware of, had witnessed, or had experienced violence in the home; in fact, this was true for the entire population of young women in the regional high school. Prior generations of women, including these young women’s mothers, had faced similar violence but did not have work opportunities out of the home to allow them to support themselves and their children. Due to the ballooning of the global ecotourism industry in Belize, and specifically in this community, young women living in San Andrés in the late 1990s had access to a host of new feminized service-sector jobs that paid above-subsistence wages if they had a high school diploma. Their motivation to escape or prevent domestic violence in their futures combined with this ability to secure employment was key to the educational success of women in this community. Thus, I began to see an emerging conceptual framework for understanding the school success of the young women in this study: these young women had a strong “push” motivation to remove themselves from or avoid violence and a “pull” toward good jobs and economic independence.

Research Design This research was part of a larger five-year, longitudinal, person-centered ethnography looking at girls’ development in San Andrés, Belize (Anderson-Fye, 2003, 2004, 2010; Anderson-Fye & Lin, 2009). Here I focus on the subjective psychological and cultural factors related to girls’ schooling in a case study of a pivotal cohort of girls. This work is not intended to be conclusive or to solve the myriad questions remaining about female secondary education. Rather, it intends to suggest another way to approach the problem, a way that centers the young women’s subjective experiences within a microexamination of 178


their sociocultural context. Such a person-centered approach might allow us to begin to explore the role of girls’ agency within the context of the cultural constraints and opportunities in which they live (Masemann, 1999). This case study is not meant to compete with demographic and economic analyses. However, as the present state of research reaches limits in understanding cross-cultural variation using broad, quantifiable brushstrokes, this sort of detailed ethnographic casework facilitates new realms of inquiry that suggest both innovative research topics and ways to build on existing strengths in support of girls and their education in the developing world (Stacki & Monkman, 2003; UNESCO, 2010). In this study, I used ethnographic data and interview data primarily to investigate young women’s reports of subjective motivations regarding secondary schooling.

Ethnographic Data To investigate factors leading to secondary educational access for young women, I conducted interviews with school administrators and teachers, the national minister of education, local politicians, and community members, including parents, high school graduates, and high school dropouts. I coded interviews for themes found in the literature relating to access, as well as factors not mentioned in the literature. I employed daily participant-observation in the high school and community for an initial calendar year and then for several months per year over the next four years. I conducted archival research using newspapers, government documents, and school documents in order to examine the demographic, political, and educational contexts leading to young women’s educational access. I also used demographic surveys in the school.

Longitudinal Interview Data I employed interview data in order to track young women’s stated motivations for attending and completing secondary school, their meanings of the schooling experience, and the effects of education on their lives. The interview portion of the project included three nested layers of interviews. First, I conducted open-ended ethnographic interviews with sixty of the eighty high school girls enrolled during the 1996–1997 school year. Secondly, I held thirtytwo in-depth cross-sectional interviews with eight girls from each of the four grade levels during the same year. Finally, I conducted at least four longitudinal interviews each with twelve girls over five years. I chose these twelve girls as representative of the diversity of ethnicity, class, and immigration status in the town, and they volunteered to be followed via ethnographic and interview techniques. I followed approximately one-half of the other sixty girls ethnographically and with less-structured interviews. I analyzed the thirty-two cross-sectional interviews for data regarding educational motivation, experience, achievement, and effects of education using techniques of open and thematic coding using ATLAS.ti (Maxwell, 1996; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Muhr, 1997). I then matched themes, such as “wanting 179


a good job as a motivation for schooling,” with corresponding ethnographic data, such as an “increased need for office workers,” in order to understand how individual and community-level dynamics interacted to form this unprecedented generation of educated young women. I read the longitudinal data with narrative analysis for change over time, since all but one of the twelve participants made the transition from schooling to work (Gilligan, Spencer, Weinberg, & Bertsch, 2003). I examined motivation (or lack of motivation) for schooling, perceived meanings of schooling, and the roles that schooling played in young women’s lives before they graduated, as well as postgraduation effects (and noneffects).

The Educational Success of Young Women in San Andrés, Belize, and Potential Contributing Factors Female Graduation Rates at SAHS San Andrés houses one public, Catholic regional high school (SAHS) that also serves students from a neighboring caye. SAHS was founded in 1971 by the same man who remained principal for thirty-five years. In 1986, the high school, with a population of 105, moved to its current location on the beach of the Western Caribbean Sea. At the time of this study, the simple cinder-block school had doubled its original building size and served more than 260 students. Currently, it is bursting at the seams with more than 400 students. SAHS teaches the standard Belizean curriculum based on postcolonial Caribbean content with Spanish language training as an additional requirement. In order to attend secondary school, which is not required, students must pass the Belize National Selection Examination (BNSE) at the end of primary school. It is estimated that 70–80 percent of students who take the exam in San Andrés pass and matriculate to secondary school. Students progress through four grade levels, called “forms” after the British model. In the third form, students at SAHS track into an academic (science-based) or commercial (business-based) curriculum for their final two years, with about 75 percent of students choosing the commercial track. At the end of high school, students can elect to take the Caribbean Examination Council Exam (CXC), which can help them gain scholarships for further education. Although girls’ education has not been a conscious priority at SAHS, girls have been doing better there since the 1990s. In its early years, more boys than girls attended and graduated from the school; however, the gender ratios began to even out in the 1980s, and by the 1990s more girls than boys were graduating yearly. In the decade from 1990–1991 to 1999–2000, 143 girls and 100 boys graduated from SAHS, though they entered the school at similar rates, with boys having a slight entering advantage (see Figure 1). Figure 2 displays the difference in the number of students graduated by gender (girls– boys) over the same time period. As can be seen by the figures, the overall

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number of graduates increased throughout the 1990s, with girls holding more than their half of the graduating spots. Girls outperformed boys in terms of graduation in two-thirds of the years between 1990 and 2002, with an even number15of graduates one year. In several of these years, the entering class was greater than 50 percent male, though full data were not available. During the duration of this study, total enrollment increased on average 10 3). Though much of this increase was likely due to the increasing (see Figure population of the island, educators and administrators reported that it was 14 12 12 partly due to increased enrollment of a wider variety of students. Population 10 10 5 statistics would second this assessment. By population growth alone, we would have expected a maximum of forty-eight additional students over the five years 5 5 2 enrollment grew by double that amount, indiof the study;2 however, the total 0 cating that other factors were likely at play. –3 –6 –4 Approximately equal numbers of boys and girls attended the school during the –5 five study years. Given that more girls graduated than boys during the same time period, we can assume that girls were doing better at retention in the school. For the years with complete data, the average longitudinal four-year –10attrition rate for boys was 45 percent, for girls 29 percent, with most 1990–who 1991–dropped 1992– 1993– 1995–in 1996– 1998– 1999– 2000– 2001– of the students out1994– leaving the 1997– first year. Cross-sectionally, I 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 found that 185 boys entered the high school and 83 graduated, while 170 girls School year entered and 100 graduated. Thus, we must ask, why were girls more likely to reach graduation? Figure 3 SAHS total enrollment by gender 300

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The Impact of Cultural Westernization in San Andrés, Belize Belize, which achieved independence from Great Britain in 1981, is a highly regionalized country with both Central American and Caribbean attributes; accordingly, it reflects complexity in its patterns (Sutherland, 1998). Belize’s population of 322,000 is approximately 50 percent Mestizo, 25 percent Creole, 10 percent Mayan, 6 percent Garifuna, and 9 percent other ethnicities, such as Chinese, Mennonite, East Indian, Middle Eastern, and Anglo-American, with all groups represented in San Andrés (Nuñez, 2001; Roberts, 2000; Statistical Institute of Belize, 2009). 3 Across these regions and peoples, Belize has achieved near-even secondary schooling of girls and boys from the 1990s through to the present, with girls having a slight advantage in attendance and, more recently (since 2001), in survival to last grade (UNESCO, 2001, 2008). San Andrés has a strong Latin history but has increasingly integrated Caribbean economic and social patterns into its Mexican family and social structures over time (Sutherland, 1998). San Andrés also underwent a considerable amount of cultural Westernization during the 1990s. With the advent and exponential growth of tourism in San Andrés during that period (Belize Tourism Board, 2001; Nuñez, 2001) came an increasing reliance on the United States in both economic and cultural forms. Anywhere from 140,000 to 170,000 annual U.S. visitors make up the majority of Belize’s tourist population, and a majority of tourists to Belize visit San Andrés (Belize Tourism Board, 2008). With the tourists and their dollars come ideas, behaviors, and market demands that serve to help shape the environment. For example, bars catering to Western tourists now line the streets (including to within one hundred feet of both the primary and secondary schools), making alcohol more accessible to everyone in San Andrés. In order to satisfy consumer demand, Western products such as food and reading materials are imported into San Andrés daily and have been since the early 1990s. Ideologically, the “good life” Westerners must lead, which allows them to spend the Belizean yearly per capita income in one or two weeks of vacation, is not lost on residents. In addition, the tourism industry of San Andrés has never been separated from “real life” in the town, as it tends to be in other Caribbean destinations. Rather, Belizean and U.S. lives and ideas have been woven together daily in unique ways in San Andrés. At the same time, fifty-two channels of U.S.-based cable television grew to near-ubiquitous status during the 1990s. Since this time, television has had a resounding impact on Belizean life (Sutherland, 1998; Wilk, 1993). A 1997 report on the status of girls’ and women’s health in Belize argued that American television programming promoted problematic behaviors among adolescent Belizeans by teaching them to deal with emotional and social problems by turning to drugs, alcohol, unplanned sex, and violence (Cameron, 1997). Drawing on nationwide workshops around the topic, the report pointed out that Belizean youth turn to cultural scripts from television for models, thereby devaluing local resources. Such sentiments about the influence of U.S. and 183


some Mexican television on youth are widely discussed in Belizean media and held to be part of “common sense” (Wilk, 1993). However, in national data (Cameron, 1997) and in the data from this study, young women also clearly articulated the role of television characters such as female lawyers (e.g., Ally McBeal) and college students (e.g., the characters of Beverly Hills 90210) in motivating them to aspire to careers in nontraditional gendered fields (Anderson-Fye, 2002). Tourism, tourists, expatriates, students, media, and specifically television all exert globalizing—usually Americanizing—pressure on San Andrés. Although Belizeans negotiate such influences differently, a wide array of Western resources are available for interaction. Many of these influences are thought by Belizeans to be negative; still, young women, in particular, have utilized them to their benefit, especially regarding issues of gender equity.

The Role of San Andrés Schoolgirls’ Ethnopsychology In another article about this San Andrés cohort (Anderson-Fye, 2003), I argue that these young women’s ethnopsychology—their local, culturally patterned psychology—was a key reason for their quick uptake of transcultural notions of gender equity. The same ethnopsychology allowed these young women to reject messages compromising their well-being (such as the pursuit of thinness)—messages that have been insidious in other contexts in which they have been studied (Anderson-Fye, 2008; Becker, Burwell, Gilman, Herzog, & Hamburg, 2002; Weisner & Lowe, 2005). This ethnopsychology, which I refer to as “Never Leave Yourself,” centers on notions of self-protection and selfcare. Its central presence in organizing young women’s lives and decision making was a robust finding among the young women, occurring across class and ethnic groups (Anderson-Fye, 2003). This gendered ethnopsychology appears to have originated among women when domestic violence was common but few alternatives existed; women had to be dependent on men, even abusive ones, in order to have enough resources to survive and care for their children. With few alternatives in prior generations, Belizean women from many walks of life garnered the remarkable psychological strengths of self-protection and self-care. The participants in the current study recalled hearing “never leave yourself,” or its variants, from female family members and close friends, starting at a young age, so that it became an implicit sort of knowledge. In the 1990s, when young women began to gain access to many more resources than their foremothers, the Never Leave Yourself ethnopsychology permeated many more domains of life (Anderson-Fye, 2003). In San Andrés, I found that this notion of self-protection and self-care mediated young women’s interpretations and incorporation of interaction with transnational ideas, images, and people (Anderson-Fye, 2003, 2004, 2010). Therefore, practices and beliefs related to gender equity—such as female education and condemnation of abuse—became valued and pursued by the young women in this study much more quickly and powerfully than did the notions that caused 184


self-harm, such as the pursuit of thinness (e.g., Anderson-Fye, 2008). This gendered ethnopsychology appears to have aided female upward mobility in San Andrés in the focal generation and may have set them apart from their Central American counterparts who tended to be more closely tied to traditionally feminine Latin American marianisma psychology.4

Structural Factors Affecting Girls’ Secondary Education in San Andrés According to the literature mentioned above, several dynamics may be at play that can explain girls’ secondary schooling success, such as that which was evidenced at SAHS. The factors most relevant in San Andrés—those that can be used to explain the changes at SAHS—include the cost of education relative to family resources, economic opportunity for women, social and cultural ideas connected to movements for women’s equality, and local policy changes. Despite the appearance of greater local wealth, school fees remained substantial for families during the 1990s. Increased revenue in San Andrés due to tourism did lead to a rise in per capita income over the 1990s despite the concurrent increase in population (San Andrés Town Board, personal communication, August 29, 2000). Given a smaller proportional increase in school fees over the same time, the cost of education in relation to family income fell on average, though there was significant variation (Nuñez, 2008). Still, the cost per student of one year of high school education paid out of pocket was just over one-fourth of the national per capita income, meaning that secondary education was still a sacrifice for most. Increasing job opportunities for women in the tourism industry service sector played a major role in girls’ education trends. An explosion of jobs such as gift shop attendants, hotel receptionists, and office workers provided educated girls a place to work. These jobs did not exist in the previous decade (Sutherland, 1998). Most of these jobs, considered desirable by the girls, required a high school diploma. Students who completed the commercial track in school got placed for several weeks into some of these community jobs for “office practice,” giving them an opportunity to make connections before they graduated, regardless of their family background and connections. Moreover, such jobs tended to be feminized in San Andrés, meaning women rarely had male competition for them. Recent graduates were also more successful in getting hired than older women, who tended to have less education. Most other jobs available to women were low-paying domestic positions, though educated women were also becoming more competitive in higher-paying and status jobs such as commercial banking. Social and cultural ideas about women’s roles in society have changed in San Andrés over time (Nuñez, 2008), leading to more common beliefs about women’s equality. Both intraculturally and in relation to cultural Westernization in the symbolic realm (due to U.S. television, magazines, Internet content, return migration, and tourist interaction), a wider variety of social and cultural models for women’s roles existed in the 1990s. In fact, this change 185


was evidenced even over the course of the study. Available models of alternative gender roles were a powerful factor in young women’s lives and helped to shape their aspirations (Cameron, 1997). More than half the young women in the cross-sectional interviews referenced television content or characters in describing their future aspirations; all but one of the girls who aspired to jobs that were not represented locally by women referenced television in describing their goals. Due to their ethnopsychological predispositions to rapidly and significantly incorporate goals consistent with self-care and gender equity, these young women may have had stronger internalization of nontraditional gender roles seen in global media than did young women in neighboring countries without this ethnopsychology. The young women did not report conflict between being traditionally feminine (which included self-protection and self-care) and being successful in the way that other young women in neighboring countries have been shown to do (e.g., Lester, 2005). In a survey of educators in San Andrés, Western media were uniformly named the top factor in shaping more gender-equitable social roles among youth in San Andrés (Nuñez, 2008). Locally, the educated women of prior generations became prominent role models in business and politics in the community during the 1990s, emphasizing opportunities for women that were previously not open except to the most privileged. The government of Belize also bolstered policies and programs for women’s status and opportunity throughout the 1990s via the office of the Ministry of Human Development, Women, and Civil Society. Though direct impact on women in San Andrés seemed to be limited, there is evidence that such poignant structural action must have affected girls, their educators, and their families in at least indirect ways. Such programs, particularly those related to reducing violence, began to receive increased funding and social acceptance after 2000 and are currently more mainstream in community life. In 2009, there were a wider array of policies and programs, and public education about them had vastly improved. For example, billboards touting nonviolence in marriage and related resources had been placed within close proximity to the high school. However, significant gaps—such as government programs to aid single mothers—remained. Other factors implicated in the literature did not appear to exert much influence on female secondary education in San Andrés during the time of this study. Availability of a high school has remained constant in San Andrés since 1971. Though enrollment surpassed building capacity in 1995, the school built new classrooms every summer and hired more teachers, making it possible to enroll the increasing number of students. The addition of a night school option in 2000 has been helpful for girls who have dropped out of SAHS for economic or other reasons, though the night school does not alter the SAHS graduation rates since it tends to serve a different population. The girls’ home responsibilities as teenagers also remained steep throughout this time, in some cases increasing due to the possibility of younger girls 186


getting paid jobs outside the home. With total fertility for these girls’ mothers’ generation at about six children, it was common for one of the older girls in a family to be responsible for child care and home maintenance while the others went to work or primary school. It remained a hardship for most families to lose the daily home or income-producing labor of a teenage girl. A few remarkable stories circulated of teenage girls who carried primary responsibility for the home, including cooking all meals and doing the majority of child care for younger siblings, and still managed to successfully complete secondary school (Ancona, 2002). Still, a more common theme was for girls needed at home to drop out of SAHS. There were no government policies or incentives for girls’ education per se in San Andrés, which is still the case today.5 However, due to frequent tourist visits, SAHS regularly receives one-time gifts from tourists, the majority of which have been allocated to scholarship programs. All three structural factors that significantly affected girls’ education in San Andrés during the time of this study were tied to globalization—effectively Westernization. A stimulated tourist economy with concomitant jobs and access to media with cultural notions of gender equity set the stage for the possibility of girls’ secondary education. As seen from the SAHS graduation data, girls participated in this opportunity for educational success, and they did so in proportions greater than their male counterparts. Such a result is not a given; it does not occur every time these factors are present (e.g., Bustillo, 1993). Education takes tremendous effort on the part of individuals, even when these social factors exist. Thus, even after an analysis of the compelling explanations offered by the literature, in the context of San Andrés, unanswered questions remain. We must still ask, what motivated girls of all ethnic and class backgrounds in San Andrés toward secondary schooling and graduation, particularly when their mothers and even older sisters had not chosen—or been able to choose—this path?

Subjective Motivation for Secondary Education: The Model of Education–Good Job–Economic Independence to Avoid of Abuse In interviews with SAHS schoolgirls during the 1996–1997 academic year, fiftynine of sixty young women listed education as one of their top two life priorities. When asked, “What is important to you in life?,” the majority of young women immediately named education as top on their list, though some spoke about the importance of their education before I even asked the question. The one young woman who did not mention education had severe family problems and dropped out of school that same year. Similarly, in the four longitudinal interviews conducted with each of the twelve young women, education remained top on every young woman’s list of priorities every year, until they became mothers. For the four mothers, education retained the second spot after “being a good mother,” though in two cases, education for self and child was included in what it meant to be a “good mother.” Moreover, all the 187


mothers reported that education was their top priority for their children, even if they themselves had dropped out of school, an intergenerational effect of mothers’ education found throughout the world (LeVine et al., 2001). The clarity and consistency of this value on secondary education (or beyond)—regardless of class background, immigration background, ethnicity, or parents’ educational status—was striking. In following the educational histories of more than half these young women over five years, I was impressed by how many of them achieved their educational goals in expected or unexpected ways. While many of them completed day school as planned, several had to drop out in order to work to support themselves or help their families or were expelled for pregnancy. With only two exceptions, among the young women who remained in San Andrés, those who dropped out later went back to night school, or in one case correspondence school, to achieve their diplomas. The young women not only expressed values prioritizing education, but made life choices to support those goals over time, indicating that their attitudes influenced their behaviors. Also remarkable among this group of sixty was the consistency found in answer to the follow-up question, “Why is education important to you?” Virtually all the young women answered like Belinda, a fifteen-year-old Creole and Spanish girl in the longitudinal study: “I want my education so I can get a good job.” When pressed, most young women (75 percent) defined a “good” job as an “office job,” though other prestigious jobs like pilot or lawyer came up a few times. These “good” office jobs were thought to have high salaries, stability, respect, prestige, and a sense of physical comfort (they were “easy”). Such jobs ranged from working as a cashier in a gift shop to a reservationist for a dive shop to a bank teller. The most common contrast to the office job was “maid,” a common job for women in San Andrés and one some of the young women had held. Several of the young women’s mothers had been maids throughout their daughters’ education. To be a maid meant having a low salary, low stability, low respect, low prestige, and physical discomfort, since it meant moving, bending, and having to deal with some “gross” situations. Generally, the girls thought physical labor was “hard,” while mental labor was “easy.” Several of the young women discussed their understanding that, if they did not complete secondary school, they would have no choice but to be a domestic worker, probably a maid. Consider Juana, a fourteen-year-old Spanish and Mayan young woman who explained: Juana: I have to complete my studies. That’s what I think about most. Author: Why? Juana: Because! (laughs) Because I have to get a good job . . . like an office job. Author: What would happen if you didn’t? Juana: Eh! (rolls eyes) Because then I have to be a job like a maid. You know, my mom worked as a maid. It’s a hard job . . . people don’t treat you good, you

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don’t get paid good, you have to work hard . . . eh! I don’t want that life. I want my good job, easy . . . I need my diploma.

Juana did become the first in her family to graduate from secondary school and ended up with multiple job offers in different offices. She, like most of the other young women, saw her graduation first and foremost as a direct means to a “good job.” Jeni, a fifteen-year-old Garifuna young woman reported her prioritization of education in a similar way, stressing the related economic outcome. Jeni: My school. My school is like the biggest thing to me. Author: Why? Jeni: Why? Because without school, I end up like my aunt selling cakes [walking the beach selling baked goods to tourists and locals out of a basket]. Or maybe cleaning a rich lady’s floors. Or worse, no job at all. Author: What happens if you have no job? Jeni: Ay! Then I’m a slave to a man. (laughs) I want my good job so I maintain myself . . . a job like a office worker.

Jeni, who lived with her aunt, saw the older woman struggle to sell baked goods around the community. She thought that job was undesirable, hard, and hot since one had to walk in the sun all day while producing less-thansubsistence income. For Jeni and many young women, any job was better than no job, but a “good job” was best. Though push-pull theory is predominantly used in migration studies to explain why people leave one place and resettle in another (e.g., Lee, 1966), it can be applied here to help us understand why young women and families would make enormous sacrifices in pursuit of educational attainment. The “good jobs” available to high school girls in San Andrés with a diploma promised a pull of a better future, not unlike the promise of migration to a place perceived to have better opportunities. This pull included more peaceable relationships, a more comfortable life, relative security for themselves and future children, and increased decision-making power in addition to status and personal fulfillment. The young men in the community as a cohort did not report the same kind of consistently strong pull factors, since they had access to relatively high-paying (e.g., construction) and high-status (e.g., tour guide) jobs with or without a diploma, though of course individual young men did pursue the additional opportunities provided by a diploma. When I began to explore why so many young women wanted good jobs in a context where most of their mothers had not achieved secondary education and did not work outside of the home, I was overwhelmed at the response. Consistent in surprising numbers in both the cross-sectional and longitudinal interviews, I heard a striking theme from the majority of young women: the desire to procure a good job in order to be economically independent from a

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man. Economic independence was important in order to escape abusive treatment or to avoid future potential abusive treatment, or both, for themselves and their future children. This theme emerged in one of three general forms that were based in the young women’s particular life experiences.

Escaping Current Abuse The first way in which this theme emerged was from those young women currently experiencing sexual, physical, or emotional abuse as they defined it (for fuller discussion of definitions, see Anderson-Fye, 2002). These young women cited their abusive experience, most often at the hands of stepfathers. Every one of these young women reported that the best way out of the situation was to graduate, get a good job, and become economically independent. With financial independence, they could not only take themselves out of the situation but also help other siblings, cousins, and possibly mothers. In addition, these young women reported feeling that there was real possibility that their future boyfriends or husbands could hurt them or their children. If a situation occurred where they or their future children were being hurt, economic independence would allow them to remove themselves and their children from the abuser. For example, consider the following interview excerpt with Jasmine, a sixteen-year-old young woman of predominantly Garifuna background. Jasmine had been beaten and sexually molested by her stepfather and beaten and “emotionally beaten” by her mother. By the time she was sixteen, she was working odd jobs to try to hang onto her schooling, though she encountered “bad” sexual harassment in the workplace, too, including an attempted rape by an employer. Author: Why is school so important to you? Jasmine: For my future. I don’t want to depend on no man—on no male to maintain me . . . If I have school, then I can get a good job and maintain myself, myself. Author: What is good about that? Jasmine: Then I don’t have to depend on no man . . . I wouldn’t worry about anything. Author: Do you have to complete school for that? Jasmine: Yes. Yes. Otherwise, I have jobs like that one [with the attempted rape] when I saw you [shortly afterwards]. I can’t do that. I’ll turn into a miserable person. I can’t do that . . . I need school, I need to maintain myself.

Jasmine was fully committed to schooling, though she ended up dropping out just before her last year due to a pregnancy resulting from her first voluntary sexual encounter. She had trouble finding work or support after giving birth and ended up pregnant with a second child. Her boyfriend began to

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beat her after the second birth, and she left him, moving to another part of the country where she had extended family she hoped would help her. Her goal remained to finish her education in order to get herself out of “the situation I knew would happen without my diploma”—that is, a single mother with no income and little support. As of 2001, she had signed herself up for night school to complete her final high school year and hoped she would find a family member to watch her children. In assigning her small income to education over basic necessities, she felt that choice would ultimately help herself and her children the most in the long run. Jeni also talked about her motivation to avoid being dependent on a man. Author: Why do you say “slave to a man”? Jeni: Well, that’s what happened to my mom. My stepfather beat her and hurt me too . . . lots of ways . . . and now I live with my aunt. I got away ‘cause I don’t want to be in that house no more. She can’t get away. She got no diploma. I still got my school and can get my diploma. Author: What then? Jeni: Well, then I can get a good job—like a good job in a office or gift shop or something . . . That’s why I come here [to school] every day—even when it’s boring (laughs).

Jeni saw how not being able to escape abuse trapped her mother in a relationship that hurt her. After being hurt by the same man, Jeni found an aunt who would take her in during her schooling. Jeni received a partial scholarship for uniforms and books, so she was able to attend school even though her mother lived in a different part of the country. Even when Jeni experienced the daily tasks of school as “boring,” she remembered the larger reason why she wanted to stay in school and graduate: independence. Jeni did become the first in her family to graduate and was immediately employed in the tourism industry. Her example also points to the role of one pivotal person in the community. In this case, the principal of the school was aware of and sympathetic to the issue of female education and went to great lengths to secure scholarships for young people with difficult experiences like Jeni. The remarkable abilities of these adolescent girls to remember the larger reasons why they attended school were echoed many times. For example, Ami, a Spanish and Mayan sixteen-year-old, and the first in her family to ultimately graduate from secondary school, said, “Yeah . . . my homeworks are hard, but my life is more hard. When I feel mad at my homeworks, I remember how I feel more mad at my uncle [who sexually molested her], and I always finish the homeworks.” Remembering painful maltreatment along with her emotional outrage at the event helped motivate Ami through the challenging academic moments. Similarly, Mari, a fifteen-year-old Spanish young woman with substantial child care and housework responsibilities at home, said:

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Sometimes I get so tired I don’t want to go school. But then I remember what happened to me [multiple incidences of beating and attempted sexual assault by close family members], and I want to know it will never happen again. I want to know I can take out my little sister [from any similar situation]. So, I go anyway and tell myself to stay awake . . . so I can get my diploma.

Mari pushed herself physically in order to attend school in a way that was uncommon among the young women. Her motivation, again, came from remembering the painful past and her desire to change the future for herself and her younger sister. For many of the young women, remembering events and their responses to events was a powerful motivator toward educational success. Notably, none of the three young women in the longitudinal study who experienced severe abuse and poverty were in the middle ground: two were among the highest school achievers and Jasmine among the lowest. In contrast to the other two young women who combined their momentous incentive with their ability to “pass” as middle-class “Spanish” girls, Jasmine had an additional challenge in San Andrés of skin-color and ethnic-based prejudice, since she was a dark-skinned Garifuna in a region that privileged lighter skin and Spanish ethnicity. She had difficulty securing harassment-free jobs to pay for her education due to her ethnicity in a way the other two did not. Her particular combinations of challenges may have been too overwhelming to overcome in order to meet her stated educational goals within five years, regardless of her subjective motivation.6

Witnessing the Abuse of Others The second, more common, variation of the education narrative involved young women who had not directly experienced what they would consider abuse but who had witnessed the abuse of mothers, aunts, siblings, or others. These young women reported being highly aware of abuse and wanting to avoid it in their future. Many also mentioned wanting to protect future children or help their friends or family in tough situations. Nelda, a fifteen-yearold Spanish working-class young woman, described this position when she was explaining to me the importance of education. Nelda: With education . . . with an education you can get a good job . . . Author: Is that important to you? Nelda: Yes. Author: Why? Nelda: Because then you don’t have to work a hard job . . . because then you have your own money. Author: Why is it good to have your own money? Nelda: Money? Well, because then you don’t have to do nothing nobody tells you.

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Author: Like what? Nelda: Well, like, like some men they hit their wife. Then when you have your own money, you can leave. You don’t have to get hit. When you have your money, you don’t have to take getting hit. So you need a good job for that. Author: Have you seen that? Someone get hit and have to stay? Nelda: Yes. . . .

Nelda explicitly tied her education and economic outcome to autonomy. For her, independence included being able to leave a situation where she could be “getting hit.” Over time, Nelda shared that she had seen two economically dependent aunts beaten by a husband and a boyfriend, something she never wanted to happen to her. Similarly, Laura, a sixteen-year-old Spanish young woman, had never experienced what she would consider maltreatment, though she felt it was all around her: Author: If you had to say right now in your life what’s most important to you, what would you say? Laura: My studies . . . I would like to continue studying. Author: So, why are your studies the most important thing? Laura: Because without that (pause), I could depend on myself, like, work, get a job and get my salary so that I could not depend on others, and only myself. That’s why I think it’s important. Author: What’s important about depending on yourself? Laura: Well, then you can maintain yourself and no one can take it away. No one can tell you what to do. Like my aunt had to stay with a man who beat her because she depended on him. I wouldn’t want that . . . it’s all around here. You see it, don’t you?

Laura valued independence and wanted to ensure it for herself. She completed postsecondary education and considers herself independent even though she is now married. In one case, Reina, a highly successful young woman who reported high levels of family support, saw her three-year-old niece in another part of the country being brutally treated by her brother-in-law. Without hesitation, this young woman made plans to take her niece away from the situation and support the girl herself. In reflecting on how she made these choices, she said, “See, now I have my education and my job, and I can help the little girl. I have enough money to help her, to raise her . . . I don’t have to worry about what my husband thinks about the cost, because I can do it with my paycheck.” For Reina, her education and paycheck were the routes to independence and to helping a girl whom she had only met once.

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The Awareness of Abuse Finally, and least frequent in this study, were those girls who had not experienced or witnessed abuse but who were aware that it was a common occurrence among women. Such young women had friends, relatives, or neighbors who spoke of abuse, or they read about it in the newspapers. These young women were more likely to use hypothetical, less emotionally charged language when they spoke. Alma, a Creole and Garifuna girl, fit into this category. Alma: I want my education first, most important. Author: Why? Alma: So I can get a good job . . . with computers . . . Then I have a good job and don’t have to depend on others. Author: Why is that important to you? Alma: I don’t want to have to depend on someone, like a man. Do you? No. Me neither. Sometimes, I know people have three abuse—physical, sexual, mental. I want none of those. Author: Have any of those things happened to you? Alma: No . . . my friends tell me stories. But they could . . . if I don’t have my education . . . If I ever got bad treated, I could leave with my job.

Alma had heard stories of various types of abuse and wanted “none of those.” In a similar form as the others, she reported wanting to rely on a good job with computers to ensure her independence and good treatment. She did not feel invulnerable to the bad treatment she had heard about, though she was in a long-term relationship that felt supportive and loving to her. By the end of the study, Alma had secured her computer job. A minority of girls did not explicitly link escape or avoidance of abuse with educational success, though no girl felt immune from possible abuse. After the first wave of data analysis, I asked the young women who did not mention abuse avoidance directly about the connection. Several agreed with the formulation and felt they could see that pattern if they examined their own and others’ lives. Others were more likely to feel that they could draw on their family of origin or other resources if they ever needed help. They did not feel that their individual earning potential was their only or best escape hatch. Consider my interaction with Sena, an eighteen-year-old Spanish and Mayan high school graduate: Author: Do you feel that that kind of situation [abusive spouse] could happen to you? Sena: Well, yes, it could . . . it could happen to anyone. Author: What do you think you would do if it did? Sena: If it did? . . . Um, I think I’d go to my mom for help. I think I’d live with them until I solved the problem.

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Feeling confident she could rely on her mom’s support and live with her parents if she ever needed to, Sena reports that she would seek their emotional and financial support before relying on her own educational and career success. Overwhelmingly, these young women identified the push factor toward educational achievement as escaping actual or potential maltreatment and the difficult circumstances they often witnessed in their mothers’ lives. Especially when circumstances challenged staying in school, young women frequently reported push factors related to wanting to escape current difficulties in explaining why they continued to persevere. Again, as a contrast, the cohort of boys in the ethnographic research did not report such a unified or strong push to avoid the futures of their fathers. Thus, the young women reported strongly charged push and pull factors throughout their educational pursuits. Such factors may be important in educational attainment in situations of upward mobility more generally and should be evaluated.

Other Motivations The young women in this study reported a range of other motivations for attending secondary school as well as the aforementioned formulation. However, none were as common, uniform, or reported as centrally as the education– good job–economic independence to avoid abuse motivational chain. Other reported motivations included pleasing parents, enjoying “seeing my friends,” becoming a “more educated” or “more knowledgeable” person, becoming a “better” overall person, needing the diploma for future education (which usually had another reason buried under it), getting a good job for other reasons (salary, stability, prestige, status, autonomy), or not having anything else to do except “get into trouble.” The participants also reported other reasons, mostly related to the acquisition of something or having to do with relationships, self-development, and future goals. A negative or avoidance reason was given several times by young women who thought they might “get into trouble” (usually meaning pregnancy, drugs, alcohol, or crime) if they weren’t in school. For any given young woman, her conscious motivations for attending school were likely a complicated mix of the aforementioned reasons and others.

Local Reflections on the Model of Education–Good Job–Independence to Avoid Abuse When I brought the finding of an abuse–secondary education link back to educators and administrators at SAHS, each person I spoke with corroborated the results. Although no one reported thinking about the situation in that explicit way before, it made intuitive sense to those who considered it. One administrator explained, “I never thought about it that way before, but now that you say it, I can see it . . . Yes, these girls want better lives, they won’t take bad treatment . . . like my niece [a student], I can see her feeling that way.” Key informant parents and slightly older women also agreed with the results 195


intuitively, though many were surprised how common I found the formulation, as open discussion of child abuse was rare at the time of this study. The data in this study supported the notion that, during this time period, topics like abuse or concern about abuse were taboo in personal conversations in San Andrés. Eighty percent of the young women interviewed said they had never spoken with others explicitly about this topic before our conversations. The young women also showed surprise when I explained in general terms that I was hearing similar things from other students. These young women reported similar experiences but did not seem to share them with each other and tended to report feeling alone in their experiences. Gossip was a major reason cited by young women who did not share their abuse-related educational plans. Young women felt strong reservations about discussion of such issues because: (1) they were concerned that disclosure of a bad situation could make it worse; (2) they worried about being blamed or stigmatized for the problems; (3) they had been told by their parents not to talk about it; and (4) they did not want to appear paranoid or man-hating. The young women who shared information with me reported feeling that I was a “safe” person to talk to because I was not embroiled in town gossip but had been established in the community and approved of by elders and gatekeepers. The young women had a history of watching me decline gossip opportunities, and they expressed trust in our relationships. When I reminded them that I would write about the issues for a wider audience, all expressed feeling comfortable with notions of confidentiality and felt “other people might learn from this” without knowing their individual identities. The current school counselor reports that young women remain concerned about discussing issues of abuse with their peers due to the aforementioned reasons, though she and others believe these conversations are increasingly common among adult women.

Continuing Changes in San Andrés, Belize While these data were collected between 1996 and 2001, the issue of prevention of gender-based maltreatment leading to educational success appears to remain relevant a decade later. A comparative study has not yet been conducted; however, the local school counselor, teachers, and young women themselves continue to report these patterns as issues in daily school life. It is interesting that these patterns persist despite increased public discussion of gender-based violence as found in the local and national media and even on Facebook postings. While some community leaders report that violence has increasingly moved out of the domestic sphere into more random acts of violence (highlighted by a recent string of deadly assaults on women), clinicians, teachers, medical professionals, and parents report that domestic violence continues to be a theme in women’s lives. The Women’s Department (2006) also has suggested that “for many Belizean women, domestic violence is an everyday reality,” confirming the practitioners’ beliefs that escaping and pre196


venting domestic violence remains a salient concern for many young women, especially those who are first-generation high school students. Given this, I suspect that a study run today would find that the problem of gender-based violence continues to be prevalent (Ministry of Health, 2004), even if it is not such a singularly clear theme. Increased local and national resources aimed at fighting domestic violence do offer hope for the future in San Andrés. Increasingly, there are positive female role models for success who open new actual and imaginative roles for girls (such as the first female town mayor). And several national initiatives have been implemented since these data were collected. For example, there is now a twenty-four-hour hotline for the prevention of child abuse. While the usage numbers are not particularly high, the hotline is being used daily and has included calls from San Andrés. Government groups and NGOs alike have been active in addressing Belizean policy to make it consistent with international standards on gender-based violence. In 2007, an updated domestic violence act was implemented with the intent of “signal[ing] a policy of zero tolerance for domestic violence” (Government of Belize, 2007). While few cases make it to court, there are now two practicing attorneys in the country who specialize in domestic violence, something almost unthinkable a decade earlier. Moreover, Belize now authorizes a regular Status of Gender-Based Violence Report through the Ministry of Health in conjunction with the Pan-American Health Organization, the World Health Organization, and the Centers for Disease Control. This report indicates that about one in three Belizean women have experienced domestic violence (Ministry of Health, 2004). While cultural indicators suggest that domestic violence is less tolerated and that more resources are available to girls and women, the problem remains significant in Belize, as it does in many other parts of the world. Given that girls have access to a wider variety of role models now, and that many deeply hold Never Leave Yourself as a crucial part of their personhood, it would be expected that the education–good job–economic independence to avoid abuse model would continue to be common. This model satisfies the ethnopsychological need to protect oneself. It functions to draw on some of the myriad values, particularly regarding gender roles, that girls are now exposed to from sources both inside and outside their cultural context in service of the self. It also relies on the socioeconomic demand of the still-growing tourism economy to find an outlet of education and employment to solve the problems of self-protection. Structural barriers to completion of this model, such as a lack of school availability or prohibitive costs, have been largely mitigated in San Andrés.

Conclusion and Implications In sum, young women in San Andrés, Belize, had both a push and a pull to complete secondary education. That is, they were pushed by actual or poten197


tial difficult experiences of abuse to want a high school diploma as a means to a good job and economic independence. In this way, they could remove or protect themselves or their children from abuse throughout their futures. At the same time, they were pulled by the attractive benefits of a diploma such as self-respect, status, and material benefits of a good job. As in neighboring regions where there are diminishing returns on primary education (Arnove, Franz, Mollis, & Torres, 1999), secondary education has become the access key to increased economic power for girls and women, a power young women in San Andrés were tapping into and continue to access to their advantage. The implications of this study are multilevel. Methodologically, this study is an example of the importance of examining subjective experiences and motivations of young people regarding their educational achievement. In addition to understanding structural analysis of school attendance and achievement around the world, detailed ethnographic case studies and self-report data allow us to understand the strong, shared subjective experiences shaping the extant larger patterns. This mode of inquiry is particularly helpful when looking at subregional variation left unexplained by macrostructural analysis and is especially important in our increasingly globalized world, where rapid change is common but variegated (e.g., Weisner & Lowe, 2005). Substantively, understanding the relationship of young people’s well-being and their academic achievement is an understudied area, though it is likely extremely important around the world (UNESCO, 2004). Mental health challenges are becoming our largest global disease burden, particularly during adolescence (Saraceno, 2003), indicating the urgency to actively examine such issues. Additionally, given the large proportion of girls and women around the world who experience gender-based maltreatment, understanding how this maltreatment affects their education—and is affected by it—is critical in understanding girls’ education and in creating supports to bolster education and well-being. Related, policies regarding girls’ education and freedom from violence remain critical (UNESCO, 2004; Wible, 2004). While national policy is crucial in setting tone and standards, local implementation and uptake of policies are also key. In this case, the head of the school was an advocate for these girls’ education and supported them with scholarships and policy changes, such as allowing pregnant girls back to school after the birth of their babies. Such local, salient support of girls’ education is difficult to mandate but is critical to outcomes. Investigating which policies make a real difference in the lives of young women and families from their own subjective perspectives through ethnographic and qualitative research is a key factor in building more effective policy (e.g., Duncan, Huston, & Weisner, 2007). Finally, building on girls’ own preexisting strengths—in this case, a strong ethnopsychology of self-protection and self-care—is a compelling direction in which to move in our attempts to create effective programs and scaffolds for female education. Although intention and ascribed motivation do not necessarily lead to action, the majority of young women studied met their educational goals over time. I 198


can never assess for certain whether these young women attained their goals for the subjective reasons they thought they did or for other reasons. However, since a five-year history of these young women’s self-reported motivations and observed behaviors match, in context of established structural factors related to their education, evidence is overwhelming that their own beliefs about their educational success played a role in it. Previously, only investigations of girls’ educational psychology in first world countries have examined such subjective, psychocultural factors. By attending to such potent factors among girls in developing nations, we gain an opportunity to help further their education by supporting their subjective and ethnopsychological strengths. Fortunately, for the young women on the crest of the wave of demographic, economic, and ideological transition in Belize, their educational success is indeed continuing to change the future of gender, power, safety, and education.

Notes 1. I use a pseudonym for this city name. 2. If we consider that during the time of this study the population of San Andrés grew by about 3,000 people from 4,500 to 7,500 (Roberts, 2000), and that about 25 percent of the population was between five and fourteen years old, inclusive of end ages (Roberts, 2000), that would indicate approximately 750 youth between these ages. If we divide total youth by age cohorts, we get approximately seventy-five youth per age over five years (1996–2000). If we are optimistic and assume 80 percent take and pass the BNSE, that would send forty-eight additional students to the high school at the average entering age of fourteen by the year 2000 strictly due to immigration. 3. Belize is known to be a particularly multicultural society. The locally salient term for group differences is “ethnicity,” not “race,” and multiple groups appear to be of the same race according to U.S. racial categories. In fact, there are profound differences among the groups, with various groups holding differential power by region of the country. The “Spanish,” or Mestizo, people are descended from a mix of Mayans and Spaniards who fled the Mexican caste wars in the 1840s and settled in the north, west, and northern cayes of what is now called Belize. The Creoles are descended from a mix of African slaves brought to the area in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by British colonists in the area. The Garifuna (also called Garinagu or Black Caribs) are descended from West African slaves who survived a seventeenth-century shipwreck off the coast of St. Vincent. They intermarried with the indigenous people of St. Vincent and were resettled numerous times until they settled in Honduras and British Honduras (now Belize). Three Mayan groups also live throughout the country. A number of other groups have also immigrated to Belize in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries due to its favorable immigration laws and relatively peaceful status. 4. Marianisma is a gendered ethnopsychology most commonly found in Mexico and other areas in Latin America where women value modeling themselves after traits of the Virgin Mary. The traits that are most highly valued are self-sacrifice in order to care for children and obedience to and anticipation of the needs of men who hold machismo roles of providing for and protecting the family. See Sequiera (2009) for a full discussion. 5. Since 2004, elementary school teachers have received a manual on the topic of girls and self-esteem to help reduce cultural gender bias (Women’s Department, 2004). 6. While Belize is often cited as having some of the best race and ethnic relations in the world, there are still hierarchies based on ethnicity throughout the country. These hier-

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archies are highly regional and are unusually variable by region—no group dominates everywhere. In San Andrés, historically the Spanish held power, with other groups migrating to the area more recently due to the economic opportunity. Especially when combined with poverty, ethnic-based prejudice against the Garifuna in particular remained in several institutions, including service-sector employment at the time of this study.

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My deep appreciation goes to the principal, teachers, and students at SAHS for allowing me to learn from you at school and in the community. Thanks to Bob LeVine, Anne Becker, Annie Rogers, Rebecca Lester, Jill Korbin, and editors at the Harvard Educational Review for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Thanks also to the Spencer Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Foundation for Psychocultural Research, and Case Western Reserve University for supporting various parts of the research and writing of this work.

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