Strath Fem Seminar: Caste and Gender in Educational Policies in Sri Lanka

Join us for our third Strath Fem seminar this year as Dharshi Edwards, doctoral student at Strathclyde, speaks on Caste and Gender Silences in Educational and Curriculum Policies in Sri Lanka. As always, feel free to bring your lunch along - we look forward to seeing you there.

On the surface, caste appears to play a minimal and somewhat obscure role in both popular and academic discussions of Sri Lanka, reflecting a widespread normative disapproval that manifests in the denial of its contemporary social significance and its limited presence in public discourse. However, this perception is contradicted by a substantial body of research produced since independence, which has consistently highlighted the enduring influence of caste – referred to as Kulaya in Sinhalese and Sadi in Sri Lankan Tamil – across various social, political, and economic spheres. Despite this, caste studies in Sri Lankan remain fragmented, with research largely divided between studies on Tamil and Sinhalese communities rather than forming an integrated field of inquiry.

This study examines the intersection of caste and gender within Sri Lankan education, utilising a critical standpoint feminist approach and qualitative text analysis to explore how these structures shape access, power, and lived experiences in education spaces. It examines the importance of Critical Curriculum Caste Theory through an Itinerant Curriculum framework - pioneered by Paraskeva (2023) – in disestablishing caste dynamics; it excavates how caste is an “enclosed endogamous class,” system (Ambedkar, 2018). In doing so, the paper interrogates how dominant knowledge systems sustain caste and gender hierarchies and, conversely, how curriculum can serve as a site of transformation. The Itinerant curriculum offers a dynamic lens to challenge and disestablish entrenched social stratifications by foregrounding marginalised narratives and promoting epistemic justice. But situating education as a contested space where caste and gender power dynamics are both reproduced and resisted, this study contributes to a more nuanced and intersectional understanding of structural inequities in Sri Lankan education.

Keywords: Caste, Gender, Education, Critical Curriculum Caste Theory, Itinerant Curriculum, Feminist Theory, Power dynamics, Sri Lanka, Intersectionality

Dharshi is a 2nd year Doctorate student, researching the intersections of Caste, Gender, and Curriculum, within Sri Lankan Education policies. Supervised by Prof. Joao Paraskeva and Dr. David Lewin at the University of Strathclyde. She completed her MA in Education at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia.

Before beginning her doctoral studies, Dharshi built a wide-ranging career as an educator and pianist in Sri Lanka. Over the past 15 years, she has taught across school, tertiary, and professional learning context, contributing to music education, IT, Robotics, and teacher training programmes. Parallel to her work in education, she has maintained an active professional practice as a pianist and accompanist, collaborating with leading choirs in Sri Lanka.

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