Les filles sur le chemin de l’enseignement supérieur en Afrique subsaharienne : analyse de leurs trajectoires, représentations sociales de l’école et résilience à travers leurs récits biographiques

Schooling, education and training are a necessity as well as a constraint for the evolution of developing countries, because sustainable development requires access to modern and technological knowledge and culture. The aim of our research is to discover the factual experience of the schooling of girls in Sub-Saharan Africa, through an analysis of their biographical narratives.  This doctoral dissertation addresses three questions concerning the higher education of girls in Sub-Saharan Africa: (1) What trajectories do Sub-Saharan girls follow to become university students? (2) What role do Sub-Saharan girls' social representations and resilience play in attaining higher education? (3) On the basis of biographical narratives provided by Sub-Saharan girl university students, what factors, risk or protective, seem determinant to succeed in reaching higher education?   To answer these questions, we gathered a corpus of 23 biographical narratives. The content analysis of these narratives was carried out with the aid of Alceste, a software program for the analysis of textual data. Alceste processed each word in the 23 narratives, and then executed a factor analysis of these words. The advantage of this method is to allow the researcher to uncover hidden dimensions within the mass of data analyzed. Three classes of words emerged from this factor analysis. The three classes were cross-tabulated with the 23 respondents. The result of the cross-tabulation revealed three types of resilient girl university students, according to their schooling trajectory: the fighter, the assisted and the heiress.  On the basis of: (a) the girl students' narratives, (b) the three classes produced by software program Alceste, and (c) the cross-tabulations, we draw three typical portraits of the girl students. The trajectory of each type of student involves an interaction of various sociological and individual variables: socio-economic background, family environment, rural-urban context, age, obstacles, failures, grade repeatings, success.  The schooling of girls increases more rapidly in urban areas than in rural areas. For the fighters, schooling is experienced through sacrifice, suffering and helplessness. For the assisted, it moves forward thanks to contacts and timely networking. For the heiresses, it starts in early childhood and progresses rapidly. In their narratives, the informants use words that express disparities, variations, dynamics and detours in their schooling trajectories. Contexts, locations, events, age and family affect the trajectories in various ways. Common to all girls, though, is the motivation to attain higher education.  Early access to schooling, which is found in the cities rather than in rural areas, is among the protective factors that contribute most to the schooling of girls at the university level. Another factor of utmost importance is parents’ schooling: highly educated parents have better chances to see their daughters, heiresses, persevere in their studies. Among fighters and assisted, individual protective factors are decisive: with little or no financial means or familial support, these girls need to manage on their own and conceive novel solutions in order to overcome adversity. We note, in particular, the courage and battling spirit of the fighters, and the help and support provided by a network to the assisted. However, the effect of all these factors is not the same in the various familial, social and institutional contexts.   Beyond what we have shed light on concerning the fighters, the assisted and the heiresses, much remains to be discovered concerning the schooling and educational perseverance of girls in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since the Jomtien Conference in 1990, various mobilizations have borne fruit, as they facilitated girls’ access to school. Our research on girl university students in Sub-Saharan Africa shows that all of these girls display resilience and that the means and solutions to attain higher education are specific to each girl.

Keyphrases: Biographical narratives, educational inequality, educational trajectories, girls’schooling, higher education, protective factors, resilience, risk factors, social representations of school, Sub-Saharan Africa