Education, capabilities and social justice

Abstract

The capability approach, as developed in the work of Amartya Sen, provides a very useful way to think about social justice and its particular component, gender equality in education. The capability approach is concerned with evaluating social policy, including education, without ignoring individual aspirations or dictating social bench marks. Sen’s work on capabilities developed out of a critical engagement with welfare economics. Therefore the article, firstly, introduces the reader to the capability approach’s template, secondly, employs this template to provide arguments for articulating gender equality and equity in education taking a critical stance towards the welfare economics based approach to evaluating social policy in education, thirdly, it also illustrates capabilities approach’s contribution to debates on social justice.