The start of the Education for All (EFA) movement ushered in a new era in education, an era linked to research on issues such as "global governance" or the "world institutionalization of education". This global governance not only affects the way in which educational systems are influenced, it also involves how we view and define various issues within education. One of the major goals of the EFA movement, which has been accepted as part of the global consensus of "what works", is the focus on gender equality, and in particular on the role education can play in empowering women and girls. This article is an attempt to understand key issues related to gender and education, and in particular the objective is to provide a critical analysis of how the global consensus in relation to gender and empowerment can be understood in a local context. The data reported on here are from fieldwork conducted in Southern Sudan and South Africa, and in this article we attempt to shed light on the local realities in relation to global gender goals.