Authored By: Realeboha Ditshwane
University of the Witwatersrand
I. Introduction
The idea of choice often carries the assumption of freedom. Society frequently portrays individuals as autonomous agents capable of determining their own futures through personal decisions and determination. However, reality is often far more complex. Many choices are made within conditions already shaped by poverty, social expectations, historical inequalities, and structural limitations. What appears to be a decision between autonomy and security may not be a genuine choice at all, but rather a negotiation between competing forms of constraint. Through engaging with the works of Sen, Crenshaw, and O’Hearn, this article argues that individual experiences cannot be understood through single explanations because systems of power, social location, and structural conditions profoundly influence both the choices available to people and the costs attached to those choices.
II. Seeing the Structure Up Close
In 2024, I travelled to Lesotho to visit some of my relatives, whom I occasionally see. During my visit, I found myself reflecting on something people often say: that one can never truly understand another person’s struggles until one experiences them personally or at least witnesses them closely. I had spent most of my life in a different environment and had not spent much time in rural areas. The contrast between my reality and that of many people living there was striking. One evening, while speaking to my younger cousin Nthabeleng, who often confides in me and is deeply curious about education and expanding her knowledge, she mentioned something that stayed with me. She told me that many girls in the area had been dropping out of school. When I asked her why, she simply responded that many wanted to get married. At the time, she did not expand further, perhaps because of her age, but as I looked around at the broader circumstances in the village, I realised that the issue was likely more complex than a simple desire for marriage.
This immediately reminded me of Crenshaw’s argument regarding intersectionality — people’s realities are shaped by overlapping conditions and identities.1 This means that social experiences cannot be understood through a single explanation. People’s lives are shaped by multiple and overlapping conditions such as gender, class, economic status, geographical location, race, language, family circumstances, and access to resources.2 These factors do not operate separately but interact with one another to produce different realities.3
III. The Surface Interpretation and Structural Realities
At first glance, one might assume that these girls are freely choosing marriage over education. Marriage may appear to offer immediate security, financial relief, and a sense of stability in contexts where resources are scarce. In rural communities marked by poverty and limited opportunities, education may seem uncertain, while marriage appears to offer a more immediate form of survival. However, when viewed through the lens of Sen’s work, this “choice” begins to look less like autonomy and more like a search for security and survival.4
Many families in these communities experience significant financial hardship, limiting educational opportunities and making long-term academic aspirations difficult to sustain. Under such conditions, marriage can appear to offer stability, financial support, and relief from economic uncertainty. In this sense, marriage becomes associated with security, while education and personal independence become uncertain paths with no guaranteed outcomes.
However, this interpretation risks oversimplifying the situation by treating individual decisions as isolated from the conditions that produce them.5 It assumes autonomy without examining whether meaningful alternatives truly exist. More often than not, the security being sought is limited and unstable.6 In areas where employment opportunities are scarce and economic hardship is widespread, many potential husbands may themselves struggle financially. As a result, marriage may simply shift dependence rather than eliminate hardship. A girl who leaves school may become economically dependent on her husband while also losing opportunities to gain qualifications that could provide long-term independence. Should future opportunities arise, such as scholarships or employment prospects, she may find herself disadvantaged due to limited educational attainment.
On the other hand, choosing education and delaying marriage does not necessarily guarantee freedom or autonomy either. Structural barriers continue to exist.7 Even if schools and universities are formally available, access to education is not meaningful if individuals lack the resources necessary to benefit from it.8 A person may technically have the right to education, but rights become difficult to exercise when poverty, limited opportunities, and social pressures remain present.9 This reflects Sen’s argument that freedom requires capabilities, not merely formal rights.10 Gender interacts with poverty, geography, and access to resources.11 A rural girl does not experience “choice” in the same way as an urban girl with access to better schooling and financial support. Although they may share the same gender, their social positions create different forms of vulnerability and different possibilities for choice. Therefore, social experiences cannot be reduced to one explanation because individuals occupy different social locations that shape the opportunities and barriers they encounter.
Moreover, it is risky to focus too heavily on individual capabilities without sufficiently examining larger structural forces.12 O’Hearn would argue that the issue is not simply whether schools exist or whether people are given opportunities.13 Rather, the deeper question concerns the historical and systemic conditions that continue to shape inequality.14 Poverty, limited economic opportunities, and structural disadvantage cannot be separated from wider social and economic systems.15 Consequently, the problem cannot be solved simply by creating schools if broader systems continue to limit people’s ability to benefit from them.16
IV. Final Remarks: Rethinking Freedom
Taken together, these perspectives reveal that what initially appears to be a personal choice between security and autonomy is often not a genuine choice at all. Many girls are placed in situations where every available path carries sacrifice. One path may offer immediate security but create future dependence, while another may promise independence but remain obstructed by poverty and systemic barriers. The dilemma is therefore not simply about choosing freedom or choosing security; it is about navigating systems that restrict both.
In a nutshell, what initially appeared to be a simple choice between marriage and education revealed itself to be something far more complex. The experiences shared by my cousin challenged the assumption that people freely choose their circumstances. Sen demonstrates that freedom requires meaningful capabilities,17 Crenshaw reveals that social realities are shaped by intersecting forms of disadvantage,18 and O’Hearn reminds us that these inequalities are sustained by broader systems and histories.19 Together, they expose a difficult reality: many people are not choosing between freedom and security, but between different forms of limitation. Perhaps the real question is not why individuals make certain choices, but whether society has created conditions where meaningful choice is possible in the first place.
Notes
Kimberlé Crenshaw, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Colour, 1241, 1241 (1991).
Crenshaw, supra note 1, at 1241.
Id.
Amartya Sen, More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing, The New York Review of Books (Dec. 20, 1990).
Denis O’Hearn, Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom: 10 Years Later, at 9–10 (2009).
Id.
O’Hearn, supra note 5, at 12.
Sen, supra note 4, at 4.
Id.
Id.
Crenshaw, supra note 1, at 1244.
O’Hearn, supra note 5, at 13.
Id.
Id.
Crenshaw, supra note 1, at 1251.
O’Hearn, supra note 5, at 13.
O’Hearn, supra note 5, at 11.
Crenshaw, supra note 1, at 1248.
O’Hearn, supra note 5, at 12.
Reference(S):
Articles
K Crenshaw ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Colour’ (1991) 1241–1299.
Amartya Sen ‘More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing’ (1990) The New York Review of Books.
O’Hearn ‘Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom: 10 Years Later’ (2009) 9–15.
