Schooling and domestic transitions: shifting gender relations and female agency in rural Ghana and India

Abstract

Transitions to adulthood are usually defined by markers such as leaving school, starting a first job, leaving the parental home, forming a first union, marrying and having a first child. Youth policy remains strongly influenced by these linear transitions, and by the metaphor of a ‘pathway’ from school to work and adulthood, taking little account of poverty, and the significance of micro-social changes within personal relations, which in many rural cultures have considerable importance in transitions to adulthood.

This paper utilises data on social and human outcomes of schooling, collected under the RECOUP programme of research in the north of Ghana and India. Micro-reconstructions of gender roles/relations associated with communication, autonomy and decision-making are shown to have subtle implications for the transformation of young people's lives. The findings suggest that education may have unexpected and often complicating effects on ‘domestic transitions’, particularly on the private/intimate spheres of gender relations. Transition studies need to reconsider how independent action is framed within strong patriarchal cultures.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Elizabeth Musah and Edward Salifu for their contribution to the Ghanaian RECOUP project.

Notes

See Martine Corijn, http://www-les-lundis.ined.fr/Abstracts/martinecorijnEN.html.

Northern Ghana still has the fewest number of girl children attaining and completing upper primary school across Ghana. Fewer northern Dagomba girls reach junior high school and beyond compared to any other cohort in the country.