Ernest Senanu Dovlo, Accra – According to data on gender parity collected by Equal Measures 2030, in 2019, Ghana was 7th place for all sub-Saharan Africa on gender parity in education with a score of 61%.
This means Ghana has seen a rapid transformation and great improvement in girls’ access to education during the last decades.
Despite this feat, and having reached almost complete gender parity in enrollment in primary and secondary education in 2019, girls are still underrepresented in some subjects, and many still do not complete their education.
A UNESCO report estimates that one in ten girls in sub-Saharan Africa misses school during their menstrual period, which equals as much as twenty percent of a given school year.
In Ghana, available data indicates that 9 out of 10 girls regularly miss school during their periods. 44 to 54 percent of school girls in Northern Ghana for example use reusable clothes to collect menstrual blood due to lack of access and funds to buy disposable sanitary pads.
This report explores how period poverty is militating against the girl-child education campaign. It also discovered cases of teenage pregnancy among girls of school-going age in Breman in the Central Region and its surrounding communities. A development that is present in various rural communities in Ghana.
Head Teacher of the Breman Roman Catholic Basic School, Mr. Hayford Yamoah told this reporter that lack of access to sanitary pads is negatively impacting teaching and learning in his school.
He explained that aside from the development keeping girls out of school, some of them are also forced to trade sex for money in other to acquire sanitary pads.
This he said has resulted in several cases of teenage pregnancies among his students.
‘This situation has affected some of our pupils in the school. It is very difficult to tell the exact number of pupils who have been affected due to the nature of the issue under discussion,” Mr. Yamoah said.
He explained that the lack of proper sexual education in the face of the Ghanaian culture which prohibits free discussions on sexual-related issues makes the situation more difficult to control.
“This is due to the fact that in our Ghanaian culture when it comes to sex issues it is very difficult for people to open up but I can confidently report that we have two of them in JSH three who became pregnant and have delivered about seven and two months ago respectively. One of them has reported back to school and the other one is yet to report.”
“There were other two pupils from primary five and six who also became pregnant and stopped schooling last year. It will very difficult for me to provide their names due to the nature of the issue at hand.
The situation has resulted in the following challenges to the girl child in the school,” Mr. Yamoah said.
Back to School Programme
The government of Ghana is fashioning out a programme to enroll school drop-outs and children of school age into schools to help expand education to cover underprivileged children.
A Deputy Minister of Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, who disclosed this, said an estimated 450,000 children would benefit from the initiative. 30 per cent of them have never stepped in a classroom.
“We are poised to identify these children from poor households and hard-to-reach areas in many of our regions and reintegrate them into schools,” he said.
Under this initiative, one hundred and sixty-three teenage mothers who got pregnant when schools were closed as a result of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Bono Region, according to a report by the Daily Graphic have returned to continue their Senior High School education.
The report further indicates that a total of 308 pregnant mothers have been encouraged to stay in school with their pregnancies.
The Bono Regional Director of Education, Mrs. Ivy Asantewa Owusu, who disclosed this, explained further that 800 pupils at the basic level who dropped out of school during the COVID-19 break had also returned to school.
The Challenge
Despite the gains of the initiative, explanations by the Headmaster of the Breman Catholic Basic School, Mr. Hayford Yamoah suggest that the initiative does not eliminate factors challenging the smooth academic life of returned teenage mothers.
According to him, these teenage mothers are often late to school because “the girl child would have to take care of the baby by breastfeeding and washing. And as a result, come to school late.”
He added that “Sometimes they don’t also come to school at all. The reason is that the baby might be sick. The girl child’s concentration in class becomes low because she will be thinking as to whether the baby is crying or not. Sometimes babies are brought to the school premises for the mothers to breastfeed them.”
He further explained that teenage mothers or pregnant pupils who manage to return are forced to quit due to stigma. A development Mr. Yamoah says still militates against the girl child education campaign.
“Girls also drop out of school thinking that she might be laughed at when she brings the pregnancy to school. The above culminated with other factors hinder the girl child education in the community,” he said.
The Perspective of a Girl Child Coordinator
Girl Child Coordinator of the Abura Asebu Kwamankese District Assembly, Dinah Tetteh, in an interview with journalists on World Menstrual Hygiene Day this year said having visited schools in the District, it became conspicuously clear that the rampant cases of female absenteeism in schools is as a result of lack of access to sanitary pads.
“Having gone round the various schools in the District, there is one particular problem associated with them and that is girls absenting themselves from school when they are menstruating because they cannot get sanitary pads,”
“Others come to school and mistakenly stain themselves and if the teachers are not able to provide them with sanitary pads to take care of it, they have to go home. Meaning when they go home, they are not coming back and they will stay in the house till they are done with their cycle,” she said.
Period Tax
Madam Dinah Tetteh explained that the phenomenon is common due to the financial situation of their families.
“Some of these girls have to depend on men and we know the consequences. Teenage pregnancies and all that. We want to avoid that. So I will appeal if the taxes on the sanitary pads will be taken off, we will be very much grateful,” She said.
Campaigners in Ghana have been advocating for the removal of taxes on menstrual products. While some government representatives have spoken in favour of removing the tax, it remains and currently stands at 12,5% VAT, and 20% for import tax.
The Member of Parliament for the Ketu South constituency, Abla Dzifa Gomashie, is one of the advocates calling for the scrapping of taxes imposed on the importation of sanitary products into the country.
According to the MP, more Ghanaian girls are unable to afford sanitary towels when they menstruate due to the high cost of such products on the market.
Speaking at an event organized by her office in collaboration with the Ketu South Municipal Education Directorate to commemorate this year’s Menstrual Hygiene Day, the MP said it is disappointing that sanitary pads cost as high as GHS10 on the market.
She argued that “It is a basic human right that women worldwide are given the right materials to collect blood during this time, and that this material can be changed in total privacy. Access to culturally appropriate, high-quality menstrual supplies and safe private washing facilities are a necessity for every girl or woman who is menstruating.”
“It is disappointing to see sanitary towels being offered in the market for as high as GHS10. How does the ordinary Ghanaian deal with the high expense of sanitary towels, among other pressing needs?” she queried.
Taboos, Menstrual Shame, and Girls’ Education
A study on “Cultural Taboos, Menstrual Shame, and Girls’ Education: The Lived Experiences of Schoolgirls in Rural Ghana” by Helen Selorm Wohoyie of the HSE University, Russia, investigated lived experiences of basic school girls in Kyekyewere in the Upper Denkyira East Municipality of the Central Region
The findings indicate that despite the fact that all of the girls in this study value education mainly for extrinsic incentives such as passing exams and gaining good employment in the future, as evidenced by their dedication to studying, they reported difficulties. Menstruation was identified as the most significant barrier to girls’ school attendance, active participation in class and extracurricular activities.
This contradicts the findings of Blessing (2016), who discovered in his study conducted in urban Ghana that “menstruation had no significant impact on school attendance”. These contradictory findings highlight rural-urban socio-economic inequalities (Anlimachie, 2019) and the spillover effects of high rural poverty and poor education infrastructure in Ghana,” the study added.
Gender discrimination, stigmatisation and exclusion were experienced by the girls in this study on social, cultural, and institutional levels. The study discovered that girls who were “culturally restricted” by taboos during menstruation had a greater rate of menstruation-related school absenteeism as reported by Kumbeni et al., (2021) but contradicts findings of earlier Ghanaian studies that largely blamed girls’ infrequent attendance on school WASH infrastructure.
All participants observed the taboo of secrecy during menstruation, and the majority of the females were prohibited from crossing the Offin River. Menstruating girls in this study also faced discrimination at home, which included bans on cooking, fetching water for the male household members and touching the Quran (for participants whose fathers are Muslims). Studies undertaken in the Northern Region, such as Mohammed and Larsen- Reindorf (2020), had already reported this.
These cultural norms are further supported by the socio-economic standards in the community. For instance, girls’ proper menstrual hygiene maintenance (MHM) practices and ability to interact with teachers and classmates were found to be hampered by limited school resources such as the provision of sanitary pads and private changing rooms as demonstrated by findings from other areas of Ghana and elsewhere (see Blessing, 2016; Mohammed & Larsen- Reindorf, 2020; Kumbeni et al., 2021).
Again, the study discovered that girls were subjected to humiliating interpersonal treatment as a result of the misconception that females become dirty during menstruation.
The girls reported emotions of discomfort resulting from inadequate MHM in school coupled with embarrassment, and humiliation after being mocked predominantly by female schoolmates. As a result, girls often preferred to go home immediately or stay at home rather than attend school during their menstrual periods, a finding that aligns with a Zambian study conducted
Conclusion
Research suggests that Ghana is producing an average of 100,000 teenage mothers annually, an obstruction to achieving the SDG Target 4.1 which seeks to by 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes.
The successful implementation of the back-to-school campaign,
especially the re-enrolment of teenage mothers is key to Ghana achieving education SDGs by 2030.
Be that as it may, obstacles including the cost of sanitary pads and lack of access to the same will force more girls to depend on men who will sexually prey on them. This will continue to hamper the effectiveness of the campaign and militates against achieving SDG 4.
