“I have studied because I don’t want to have a life just like my mother’s”. Gender and Education in Cape Verde

Abstract

How can Anthropology contribute to an endogenous research agenda on gender studies in Cape Verde and/or among Cape Verdeans able to produce multiple readings avoiding the production of stable and confining categories such as “Cape Verdean woman” or “Cape Verdean man”? From the research work done among Cape Verdean women in Portugal who have traveled to “get a college degree” and with Cape Verdean women living in Cape Verde who did not have the chance of studying and acquiring the same academic capital highly valued by the Cape Verdean society, this article enhances the importance given to education by women as a central identity idiom in the building of different biographical histories. It argues that these biographical histories test the need for constructing a research agenda on gender whose central task must approach the research of different situational and contextualized strategic use of different native idioms – gender, class, ethnicity, etc. – which demand the adoption of pluralizing looks on what being a “Cape Verdean woman” means. Therefore, it contributes to the destandardization of the category “Cape Verdean woman” and the introduction of new issues to the recent research agenda on gender studies.

Key words: gender, education, female anthropology, gender studies, research agenda.