| Summary: | Top to bottom initiatives are being exported to developing countries with the same
patterns and patriarchal structures that exist in the west. Since the 70´s and currently,
non formal education (NFE) programmes are being used by International Agencies,
NGOs and Governments to promote universal education and gender equality. These goals
have been approached from different political discourses along time, making NFE an
instrument characterised and defined in various ways. At present NFE appear as a
mechanism in the Millennium Development Goals Report and in the Educational Policy
in Ethiopia involving in theory the participation and empowerment of direct and indirect
beneficiaries.
In this context, this study looks at the power dynamics and gender relations that are
generated in a NFE programme in Ethiopia specifically an Alternative Basic education
centre, questioning the absence of theory in NFE programmes currently and its
consequence of not approaching education as an empowerment element or pragmatic
instrument to challenge the status quo. Through a gender analysis of various aspects of
the concrete programme we arrive to the theoretical discourse that embraces this new era
of post development.
In addition, this paper carries out an analysis of how the patterns of traditional gender
roles and power dynamics are systematically and institutionally repeated and not
challenged through non formal education.
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