The impact is not gender neutral. Gender inequalities in access to educations predate the conflict. With the Nuba Mountains being a traditional society, girls tend to be more disadvantaged in regard to schooling.
Water is a big problem for us. If I use too much water to bathe my children, my husband might beat me or make me go back to get more water. If I don’t use it and have dirty children, my husband might say ‘You are an irresponsible wife’ and abandon me or find someone else. So I’m trapped. 13 The ability to educate children has also been strained. Education became a growing priority for both boys and girls within Nuba communities before the conflict. With the onset of the conflict, education of children generally has become difficult. Nonetheless, women are continuing to push for it: “Without me pushing for school, my husband would never have thought of it as important.” 14 Women viewed the loss of an ability to send their children to school as not only bad for Nuba culture and progress but indicative of a failure to meet their responsibilities and a source of strain on them: “We have an entire group of
children with no education at all. Even if the war ends tomorrow, we still have no educated generation to build up with.” 15 Even so, the impact is not gender neutral. Gender inequalities in access to education predate the conflict. With the Nuba Mountains being a traditional society, girls tend to be more disadvantaged in regard to schooling. An increasing number of girls attended school prior to the conflict, but the onset of conflict, and the scarcity that has come with it, has led to de-prioritisation of girls’ education. In the words of one woman: Before, girls and boys and all children could go to school equally. Now we are forced to pick the ones to educate, if any at all, and the ones to keep at home. Because girls have more responsibilities at home, they are usually left out of classes. 16 Women, however, viewed this as problematic: “We have to pretend that we are happy to have one boy in school, even as the girls remain uneducated.” 17 One reason for this insistence on education is that this has a protective effect on girls. In the words of one interviewee: “Very simply, if a girl is in school she won’t get married. If she isn’t in school she will consider the option [of marriage].” 18 As noted above, traditional roles have been re-engineered in times of conflict to
19