2014 年 11 月 1 日国際シンポジウム「サステイナビリティとジェンダー」@国連大学
基調報告「持続可能な開発のための教育とジェンダー」スーヒョン・チョイ

Education for Sustainable Development and Gender:
The Nexus for the Future
持続可能な開発のための教育とジェンダー―未来へつなぐもの―
Soo-Hyang CHOI
Director, Division of Teaching, Learning and Content, Education Sector, UNESCO, Paris

スーヒョン・チョイ
ユネスコ教育局 教育・学習内容部長*****
Distinguished participants, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, It is my great honour to address you,the audience of the International Symposium titled “Sustainability and Gender.”Gender and sustainable development are the two topics of great importance in their own right.
My job here today is to explore together with you the crossroad where the two concepts interface witheach other in relation to education and what that crossroad may mean to us present in this meeting andalso to the other stakeholders of gender, sustainable development and education.
Before looking at the specific linkage between education for sustainable development (ESD) andgender, which is the focus of my speech, kindly allow me to touch upon the broad issue of gender andsustainable development.
Much has been said about the inextricable linkage between the two topics. If you type in their key
words on internet, you will receive a long list of articles and publications. And there are as manydifferent perspectives on their relation as the number of articles and publications on them.
Some people see the linkage between the two concepts more from the perspective of respecting
universal values and principles that need to be ensured in a sustainable society. A sustainable society
is to respect justice, human rights, equality, non-discrimination, non-violence, diversity and otherrelated universal principles of humanity. A society cannot be sustained if its members are subject toperpetual and systemic forces that do not warrant their rights to live with dignity as human beings,
fulfilling their potentials. From this rights-based perspective, gender inequality is one of theincompatible principles for a sustainable society and therefore it must be addressed for elimination.
Others focus more on the specific roles women can play, vis-à-vis their male counterparts of thesociety in ensuring sustainable development. For them, how women manage local natural resources in1

2014 年 11 月 1 日国際シンポジウム「サステイナビリティとジェンダー」@国連大学
基調報告「持続可能な開発のための教育とジェンダー」スーヒョン・チョイ

relation to their traditional roles in securing food, water and energy for cooking is an issue directly
related to sustainable development. Women’s participation in the unstable subsistence economy inmany developing countries is also a concern to address.
Women’s role in sustainable development can also be manifested in their reproduction andeducation processes for the next generation within their own households. Women can also build strongsocial networks within their communities and through those networks they can mobilise the forces tobring about necessary changes. They can play an important role in the collective management of risks
and vulnerability.
For these significant short and long-term impacts they can make on sustainable development
through their reproduction, production and social processes, women are often called agents of change.
Economists and likewise pundits talk about the costs that a society eventually has to pay if it does notinvest in the education and health care of its main agents of change.
Still others say that gender and sustainable development need to be addressed together closely,
because their linkage is in fact ignored or denied more often than not. Disadvantaged in access toeducation, women are more likely to become inadvertent victims of their hazardous environment, orinadvertent offenders creating a hazardous environment. They are more likely to become
disadvantaged by development.
Yet, their voices on their plights can be stereotyped and are not taken seriously. There arefundamental blockages for women to contribute to the building of a sustainable society, and thehampering biases come from the deep-seated values systems of the society on gender role. Womenneed to be empowered to raise voice and have their causes heard. Simple expansion of women’sparticipation in the society and its decision making processes is not enough. There have to be systemictransformations of their environments and the milliards of systems that constitute those environments.
Where does education come into play in this nexus of gender and sustainable development thatneed to be addressed as a matter of principle, for the valid pragmatism and/or as part of the criticaltheory?
Saving water and energy is not just a behavioral choice we can teach and force through educationand education only. Knowledge and information on why we need to manage our natural resources
more sensibly helps, but their impact on our actual behavior will be limited, if the overall systemic
environments that govern our daily lives are heavily dependent on the use of natural resources.

22014 年 11 月 1 日国際シンポジウム「サステイナビリティとジェンダー」@国連大学
基調報告「持続可能な開発のための教育とジェンダー」スーヒョン・チョイ

If education is needed for sustainable development, it is not just to deliver the knowledge andinformation about sustainable development. The ultimate purpose of education for sustainable
development is to cultivate the learners’ critical and systemic thinking, encouraging them to challenge
assumptions, values and predispositions underlying surface phenomena so as for them to find solutions
that are sustainable and that will bring about sustainable results.
Transformative pedagogy, thus, is not just a pedagogical tool for ESD. It itself is the purpose ofESD. Importantly, it is in this transformative pedagogy where ESD lends its inextricable linkages toother issues of the society, including gender inequality.
Incorporating gender issues in ESD courses would not be enough, if the learners are notchallenged to analyze and debate on not only the values, but also the institutional systems thatgenerate gender inequality. Highlighting the specific contributions women can make, vis-à-vis theirmale counterparts of the society, to sustainable development, runs the risk of acknowledging andperpetuating the stereotyped roles and responsibilities of different sexes.
If the ESD course on gender is based on transformative pedagogy, it will invite the learners tocheck on the underlying assumptions. If an ESD course on gender promotes transformative pedagogy,
it will pay attention not only to the contents of the course, but also to the environment in which thecourse is delivered. It will pose the question, for example, of whether the learners of both sexes aretreated equally and whether the teachers of both sexes are represented fairly.
One of the biggest challenges we face in building a sustainable society, addressing such criticalissues as gender inequality through and in education, is none other than education itself. For many
decades, education has been considered the crucial instrument for generating individual and nationalprosperity. Relevance of education has been spoken about mostly in the context of how education can
produce labor force that will meet the needs of the labor market. Emphasis has been on cognitive
learning and the skills that will help the learners to find jobs afterwards. Learning outcomes aremeasured and assessed. What is not measurable is not targeted.
Education systems that value their utility in generating individual and national wealth give little
room for the kind of education that is reflective and challenges the existing systems and values.
Education has pursued interests of individuals and individual communities and countries. Education’s
critical contribution to the wellbeing of the collectives, wellbeing of not just one individual, or one
individual country, but of the global community and of the humanity has not been addressedsufficiently.
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2014 年 11 月 1 日国際シンポジウム「サステイナビリティとジェンダー」@国連大学
基調報告「持続可能な開発のための教育とジェンダー」スーヒョン・チョイ

There is, however, a wind of change that is blowing. The current discourse on post-2015 turns
our attention, for the first time in decades, to the role of education in building a peaceful andsustainable world. Acquiring knowledge and skills to promote sustainable development is being
proposed as one of the targets for the education goal for post 2015. Also included in that target iseducation, among others, on sustainable lifestyles, gender equality, global citizenship, and culture’scontribution to sustainable development. Time has come to recognize the importance of education not
only that measures but also that matters.
This is a small change vis-à-vis what needs to be done, but a giant transition vis-à-vis what has
been the status quo. Education is recognized not only as a means for acquiring skills and knowledge,
but also as an essential tool for attaining wellbeing goals for the humanity. If gender and sustainable
development are indeed the issue that needs to be addressed seriously, their crossroad will thus be besthoused in education and education for sustainable development, of which ultimate purpose is totransform the systems of the society for sustainability.

Before I close, I would like to thank the organisers of this symposium, Ochanomizu University
and the United Nations University, for giving UNESCO the opportunity to address the audience.
I understand that during the symposium, the experiences of the people who were affected by theaccident of the nuclear power station in Fukushima will be reviewed as a case in point. There aremany lessons we can learn from such accidents. Most of all, I hope the vision of sustainable andequitable society will serve as a driving force for the people in pain and despair. They shall stand up
and face the challenges of today to build a better society and the future we all want.

I wish you all a very successful meeting.

Thank you.

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