Emotions

After the participants have expressed their thoughts regarding the impediments the home and social environment pose to the education of females, I also asked how they feel

184 about the impediments they were alluding to. Their comments suggest anger and frustration:

They really annoy me, but I just close my eyes to them (ibid).

I don't feel fine about it because it's not good (SP12, female, Architecture).

I don't like it. I really dislike it. I don't like people who look down, do sexes up like, differentiating between boys and girls and what a boy can do and what a girl can do (SP13, female, Medicine).

OK sometimes it's annoying. I don't really agree to that so sometimes we have some petty quarrels at home, yeah. And I'm trying to tell them that it's not always have to be like the female, female, female; the guys too can also do, yet still they don't understand so, I just take it like that. (SP1, female, Sociology & Social Work)

SP7’s sounds rather fatalistic about the situation:

Well, it's natural, it's meant to happen but I think its somehow; although it may not, it may seem unfair, but I think that's how we were made to (SP7, female, Business Administration).

On the issue of the impediments to women’s education from social controls, perceptions and practices, particularly at the HE level, all the female participants indicated that they want the status quo to change, recommending transformative remedies through behavioural changes:

No, they should be educated, because if you make such a statement I know you are an ignorant person because no educated person will tell you that whatever I do I will end up in the kitchen, do you get me? Gone are the days when the highest position you can get to in an office is a secretary, gone are those days! Now we have women who are running their own companies, so if people are still thinking this way, I think maybe they would have to be educated, they would have to be like enlightened about what women can do when they are put in such positions. (SP11, female, Engineering)

I think with time they will change, right now they don't get it, they don't understand.

When you try to tell them they think you are being disrespectful. So I think with time they will get to understand. (SP1, female, Sociology & Social Work)

You can't change the way people think especially when they are all grown-ups, but if we could correct this from childhood especially when you are in school…I can't say I will go and stand somewhere and challenge it but any small thing I can do at the corner… (SP13, female, Medicine)

The concerns expressed by the participants, particularly, with regard to marriage do not diverge markedly from some previous research on the subject. Some contend that in the 1950s and 1960s most women in the United States for instance, were drawn to HE largely, to better their prospects of marrying a husband with a HE qualification; and that about 57% of women graduates married before or within a year of graduation. However, in the succeeding years the career dimension of HE displaced the marital dimension for women enrolling in HE, and by the 1980s the marriage promotion aspect of HE for women rather

185 started assuming a marriage-inhibiting tendencies (Goldin, 1995; Jacobs, 1996; Solomon 1985). As a developing country with a relatively low female enrolment in HE, the findings from this study suggests developments in Ghana following a similar trajectory.

Figure 10: Marital Status of Women Graduates in Ghana, 2010

Source: Author’s construct based on Table 25, GSS (2013: 100,101).

Figure 10 representing the latest population census data, clearly shows that urban women have higher educational attainment than their rural counterparts, which is predictable due to the low number of rural girls who persist to the HE level. It further shows that the number of women who have attained a bachelor’s degree and have never married to be thrice as much as that of their counterparts who have married. Although the same holds for the postgraduate degree holders the gap is not as marked as that of the bachelor category. This could be due to the fact that a good number of women enrol in postgraduate programmes after marriage, potentially, to avoid the risk of being unmarried due to the high educational attainment, as some female participants hinted. It is however, bothersome that the number of the never married postgraduates exceed those married, confirming the concerns expressed by participants like SP3 and SP17. This position is reinforced by the fact that in the Ghanaian context, a woman with a postgraduate degree may be considered ‘overdue’ for marriage, and particularly so, due to the low throughput for graduate degrees in the HEIs.

It should also be noted, that in the Ghanaian context the bride price (dowry) paid by men to the family of the woman before the marriage is consummated is often indexed to the educational attainment of the prospective bride. Thus, a woman with an upper secondary qualification as her highest educational attainment, would have a lower bride price relative to another with a HE qualification. The dowry also tends to be more expensive for an urban woman relative to her rural counterpart. Expensive dowries also make most men delay the marital process, since they more or less have to be financially sound to

Urban Rural Total Urban Rural Total

Never Married Married

Bachelor 114325 12564 126889 38471 4291 42762

Postgraduate 15190 1470 16660 9941 942 10883

0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000 140000

Graduates