Access and barriers to education for Ghanaian women and girls

As has been aptly stated in the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women (UN, 1995) in Beijing, the girl-child today is the woman of tomorrow. The skills, ideas, and energy of the girl-child are vital for full attainment of the goals of equality, development, and peace. For the girl-child to develop her full potential, she needs to be nurtured in an enabling environment, where her spiritual, intellectual, and material needs for survival, protection, and development are met and equal rights safeguarded. In the Ghanaian case, especially the limited education women receive could be detrimental to social development needs of women and girls, hence the focus of this paper, which add some important perspectives to the literature in the area. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.