Equal education for girls in Ghana: Analysis of representation of women in social studies textbooks and curriculum

Gender imbalance in education has become a worldwide concern, especially in developing countries. The UN, the World Bank, and other international organizations, over the past two decades, have intensified efforts to enhance girls' education. Among the other issues that affect girls' education is gender stereotyping in textbooks which is an international phenomenon. In the 1980s, the government of Ghana made a move to make the country middle income by 2020. As a result, the education for women and girls became one of the objectives of that economic plan and in 1997 a Girls' Education Unit was established to promote girls' education in the country.; My research investigated gender representation in social studies textbooks and taught curriculum in Ghana, using feminist approaches as underlying theory. The purposes of the study were to analyze how women are represented in social studies textbooks in the primary, junior secondary, and secondary schools and also to investigate teachers' perceptions about gender in the textbooks and the taught curriculum. The study was set in a qualitative paradigm but used both quantitative and qualitative techniques for data collection. Content analysis was used to analyze representation of women and men in 22 social studies textbooks. Questionnaires, focus group interviews, individual interviews were also used to solicit opinions of teachers (currently university students) and teacher educators about gender equality in the textbooks and the taught curriculum.; Findings from the textbook analysis suggest that overall representation of women in the textbooks is low. The inclusion of cultural practices and population issues in the new textbooks increased the representation of women in linguistic differences, one of the categories used for the content analysis. However, otherwise gender representation is still imbalanced and stereotypical. The data from the questionnaires and the interviews also suggests reasons for stereotypic representation of men and women in the textbooks and in the curriculum. Half of questionnaire respondents and most of those interviewed believe that imbalance of gender representation in textbooks and curriculum is the result of Ghanaian culture.