Unravelling Barriers: Exploring Factors Limiting Girls’ Academic Attainment in Northern Ghana—A Case Study of Sissala West

Ruqy Sakyi-Nyarko ()
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Ruqy Sakyi-Nyarko: De Montfort University, Education Studies Division

Chapter Chapter 9 in African Feminist Girlhood Studies and Development, 2025, pp 167-190 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Using semi-structured interviews to collect data and employing narrative analysis, Sakyi-Nyarko’s work provides critically important clarification on factors affecting girls’ academic performance and the challenges they encounter in school. The findings reveal that while poverty plays a role in dampening girls’ education, the lack of economic resources is most negatively impactful because it operates with, and is compounded by, other factors such as patriarchal social systems, cultural practices and societal norms and expectations placed on girls. Focus on Ghana’s Sissala West, a district in the Upper West Region—one of the poorest regions in the country, the author draws attention to the fact that poverty alone is not enough to limit education since male and female students have very different outcomes despite equal levels of poverty. Using theories related to gender socialisation, social mobility, Sakyi-Nyarko presents girls as competent autonomous social actors and girlhood as culturally and socially constructed. The study boldly applies qualitative analysis based on the stories relayed by youth participants between the ages of 13 and 18, in Junior High School levels 1, 2 and 3.

Keywords: Academic performance; Femininity; Girl; Ghana; Masculinity; Secondary education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:gdechp:978-3-031-91561-1_9

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-91561-1_9

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