Women and Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Power, opportunities, and constrains

This volume highlights stories about girls'/boys', women's education in sub-Saharan Africa. While it emphasizes girls' and women's multiple experiences and identities over boys' and men's, the gendered relations are crucial to our understanding and interpretation throughout the book. We look within a variety of countries and historical and cultural traditions to underline the importance of local, culturally conceptualised, historicized understandings. At the same time, we look at cross-country statistics to emphasize the importance of thinking globally and cross-nationally. Within the context of sub-Saharan Africa, a volume that looks at education must examine the strengths and varieties of children's and adults' educational experiences both in and of school settings. Women's health and nutrition training programs, adult literacy programs, and agricultural education and training are all important components of education within the African context. Similarly, apprenticeships within the home, community settings, religious schooling, and in-community rites that involve initiation ceremonies for adulthood all involve forms of education and training for a gendered division of labor and experience. Thus, education within the context of formal Western public or private schooling, while critical to the exploration of issues in this volume, is only one form of education that needs to be considered. The chapters in the book - on theories and policy of informal, nonformal, and formal education - all illustrate the terrain of important debates, the need for research and policy, and our call for more intensive discussion and action in the future. How are educational opportunities for children and adults in sub-Saharan Africa framed? To what extent do feminist theories that look for equitable policies of school access and outcomes for children omit discussion of patriarchal ideologies and oppression implicit in international as well as national policy?