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Ames’ research goals in this article are to discover the causes of educational exclusion of girls in rural Peru.  She hopes to understand and uncover the factors that prevent girls from having equal access.  She noticed that Peru was following regional trends for gender inequality in education, but she also saw that Peru has achieved gender equality in primary education, but not in secondary.  She wanted to look into this further.

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Why do girls not have equal access to education in rural Peru?  What is preventing girls from going to school?

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In order to complete this study, Ames decided to investigate in four different villages.  All were in rural villages, and the towns and schools differed by number of students, language, water supply, number of grades, and many other categories.  Ames conducted her study over one school year, and then went back the following year.  Her methodology was first to complete a census of the students at the school.  Then, using registration forms, she analyzed why some children did not attend school.  She used interviews with students and teachers to see why some students were not attending school, and she used observations to see if there were any underlying factors promoting exclusion.  She focused on students who attended irregularly, dropped out, or did not graduate and followed up with those students (Ames, 2006, pp. 2-4).

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Ames mentions several times that women are in subordinate positions in rural Peru.  For example, she stated, “these preconceptions reinforce male domination and exclude girls and women” (Ames, 2006, p. 15) and that “girls’ exclusion and drop-out from school have reinforced rural women’s subordinate status” (p. 13).  In this sense, it seems as those Ames’ ontology is that males hold the power and the privileges in society, and women are the ones who struggle.  She advocates on behalf of girls in her article, implying that women and girl empowerment and feminism are important to her, especially in situations where it seems as though they are oppressed.  This aligns her ontology closest to critical theory.

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The best fit paradigm position that Ames follows is the critical theory.  She clearly states that girls and women are known best for their domestic duties (Ames, 2006, p. 5), which has been maintained through historical, structural traditions, and the social structure over the years.  She sees inequality of gender in education as an injustice.  Her article includes her values of feminism and equal opportunity for both genders, and she hopes to be able to empower girls and women to be able to obtain the same rights.  She wants to advocate on behalf of rural women and girls and hopes that the Peruvian government focuses on them more in upcoming policies.

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Ames, Patricia. 2005.  "When Access is not Enough: Educational Exclusion of Rural Girls in Peru," in Sheila Aikman and Elaine Unterhalter, Eds. Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education. Oxfam GB.

Lincoln, Yvonna, Susan Lynham and Egon Guba. 2011. "Paradigmatic Controversies, Contradictions, and Emerging Confluences, Revisited," in Denzin and Lincoln, Eds. The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research. London: Sage

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Ames utilized high interaction with her study subjects.  She interviewed teachers and students, and followed up with many individual students on their attendance, grade incompletion, and drop outs.  She felt that in order to truly understand the inequality, she had to dive into the situations at the schools and observe and record any inferences to exclusion or oppression.  The critical theory of epistemology states that researchers believe that oppression can be changed through empowerment (Lincoln, Lynham, & Guba, 2011, p. 103).  Based off of Ames’ ontology, empowerment would make a different for girls in rural Peru.  She even argued, “A deeper reflection on the gender-biased preconceptions of all agents involved in the education effort is needed by educations, parents, and policy makers” (Ames, 2006, p. 15).  She feels that if everyone can be empowered to make a change in schools, in families, and in policy, then girls will not be as oppressed and can receive the quality education they deserve.