Rural Women’s Livelihoods, Literacies and Learning Strategies in Zambia: A Capabilities Approach

Zimba, John (2025) Rural Women’s Livelihoods, Literacies and Learning Strategies in Zambia: A Capabilities Approach. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

The thesis seeks to explore rural women's livelihoods and how they connect literacies and learning practices to contribute to gender justice and sustainable livelihoods. In Zambia, policy discourses on women’s literacy and learning reflect those of formal schooling system (deficit approach), which fail to account adequately for what people do with literacy in their everyday lives. Understanding literacy and learning as everyday social practices, shaping how individuals and communities make and sustain their livelihoods, is critical to human development as well as issues of gender justice and societal wellbeing.

The research is an ethnographic study shaped by a conceptual framework that situates literacy and development at the intersection of the social theories of literacy and the Capabilities Approach. It unravels women’s literacies and learning through their lived experiences. The study was conducted with 15 women participants over 9 months in an anonymised village in Eastern Province of Zambia. It also involved interviews with policymakers from government departments and practitioners from NGOs/companies. The study explored women’s literacy practices and meanings, social relations and power, and how learning influences their aspirations for livelihood security and gender justice.

Findings indicate that women pursue literacy practices and knowledges that are relevant to their livelihood activities in the social context in which they are situated and valued. These varying situational encounters include, for example, those at home, church, or in marketplaces. Women’s conceptualisation of literacy is shaped by what is defined by the school system (an autonomous model), while rich encounters they experience with texts in their everyday livelihoods go unrecognised. Conversely, being identified as literate does not affect women’s aspirations. Instead, accessibility to wider resources: material, social and cultural, influences women’s participation and aspirations to pursue a life they consider valuable. Women pursue literacy and learning mainly in the interest of collective wellbeing that reflects ubuntu rather than for self-achievement. Finally, literacies and knowledges that are valued in women’s livelihoods are embedded as social practices. Through situated literacy and learning practices, women develop wider capabilities that contribute to gender justice and wellbeing.

The study contributes new insights into literacy and learning and invites policymakers, researchers, and practitioners to consider the limitations of relying on a single theoretical narrative. It highlights the significance of prior learnt knowledges and informal skills in women’s sustainable livelihoods. However, many adult literacy policies and programmes ignore this aspect in favour of a predominantly deficit approach. The study challenges us to understand that adult literacy as a policy may differ from literacy in practice.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Education and Lifelong Learning
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	26 Mar 2026 09:20
Last Modified:	26 Mar 2026 09:20
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/102589
DOI:

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