Gender and education policy in Ghana: The impact of informal citizenship and informal labour markets on the formal education of girls

Gender has become a key determinant for access to formal education in Ghana. Ghana has a reputation for having an exemplary education policy on paper with free education for everyone; nevertheless the dropout rates are high. This is particularly true for girls who have higher dropout rates than boys. This paper suggests that we need to expand our understanding beyond an economic discourse and include a citizenship perspective to understand how girls' dropout rates from formal education are determined by girls' social and economic roles in the informal community. The paper suggests that we need to expand our understanding of gendered citizenship in developing countries to include informal aspects of societies such as informal communities and informal labour markets. These spheres are highly feminized. The division between a small male-dominated formal citizenship/formal labour market and a large female-dominated informal citizenship/informal labour market is however not limited to Ghana but is a wide-spread phenomenon in many developing countries.