Girl Child

Cultural Expectation as a hindrance to Gender Equality: Ghanaian Girl-Child in Focus (Published)

Boys and Girls in less developed countries like Ghana face different levels of cultural expectations. Cultural expectation from a Ghanaian Girl-Child appears to be a hindrance to Gender equality – equality of intellectual resource. To ascertain the intensity of the effect of subjecting school girls in Ghana into ‘domestic slavery’ as they do the house chores alone at the expense of their time to study, the study looks at the extent to which cultural expectation relating to house chores stands as an impediment to Ghanaian Girl-chid basic education. The study employed both conflict and cognitive theories in explaining how societies make inequality inevitable and manage to categorise some members in the society into groups of subordinates and superiors. In relation to gender and how girls are supressed through their cultural expectations, the theories serve as the theoretical framework for the study. The study adopted a heuristic case study which afforded me the opportunity to dive into the extent to which girls’ education are affected by their cultural responsibility of doing the household chores, leaving the boys untouched. I used observation and interview guide in collecting the data. One of the main findings is that about 52% of the time available for the girl-child to revise her school notes (what is taught in school) goes into such responsibilities whilst her male counterpart gets almost 98% of his time for revision. Another significant point noted is that leaving the house chores into the hands of girls as the boys have freedom to revise their studies makes gender inequality persistence and durable. Thus, gender inequalities associated with intellectual skills will continue to be persistent and durable.

Keywords: Gender, Girl Child, cultural expectation, intellectual resources equality, revising-time loss.