Language Education as a tool for Empowering Women

Abstract

As education is the key to achieve women’s empowerment, language education can be the matrix of the actualisation of that empowerment on a global scale. After providing a theoretical framework on the connection between girls’ education and women’s empowerment, the first chapter will shine a spotlight on the specific ways in which girls’ and women’s education can transform the world. The second chapter will focus on the relationship between language learning and how gender issues can influence second/foreign language acquisition, providing evidence on how knowing more than one language can help empower women from a social and economic point of view. The third chapter will present the specific case of Nepalese women and how the English language is a tool for educational and socio-economic empowerment on a global scale. Since this thesis is not data driven, I will base my arguments on observations and the available research in this area. The ultimate goal of this thesis is to illustrate how theories of language learning relate to real-life situations and to show how second/foreign language education can be a tool for empowering women.