Abstract

This study was designed to investigate the effects of household gender roles on the academic performance of secondary school girls in Buea. The objectives of this study were to; examine the effects of household gender roles on the academic performance of secondary school girls in the Buea Municipality, describe the demographic characteristics of respondents of this study, examine gender roles of girls in Buea and its effects on their academic performance, identify challenges faced by secondary school girls and to identify coping strategies for girls in secondary schools. The sample size was 60 female students in Bilingual Grammar School, Molyko, Buea from form one to Upper sixth.

A questionnaire was used in collecting data from the 60 female students. The general information obtained was that girls suffer from over household chores, poor toilet facilities in school, lack of female teacher role models, lack of self-esteem, cultural factors, and low income of family affecting the academic performance.

As a result, there is the need to create coping strategies like reduction and equal distribution on house chores between boys and girls, build sex-segregated toilets in order to enable girls to learn and get good academic performances. Also, families and teachers need to serve as a motivation to their girl children so as to mitigate the problem of girl’s poor performances.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background To The Study

Household gender roles are said to be among some of the barriers that affects the education of the girl child in school. In African societies, household activities are normally performed by female members of the family, while those related to outdoor are performed by male members of the family.

While this separation of activities may seem fair, the fact is, household activities are unscheduled and therefore, more time-consuming and tiring than those performed outside the house because outdoor activities are normally scheduled (Lydia Emmanuel, 2015).

According to Obany (2005:15), an educated female is likely to become; a more competent and knowledgeable mother, a more productive and better-paid worker, an informed citizen, a self-confident individual, and a skilled decision-maker. Thus, education does not limit them to the private sphere but empowers them to participate in the public and political sphere.

In the world, nearly a billion school-age children cannot read and write; 300 million school-age children are not in school. Two-thirds of those who cannot read and write are women, 60% of children not in school are girls. In Africa, for instance, girls’ primary enrolment accounts for only 57% of the school-age population, compared with 75% of boys (Adetunde and Akesina, 2008:338).

A contributing factor to mostly girls not being in school is the number of time females spend on domestic chores and other activities which reduces the time and energy they spend in schools; affecting their success (Namuddu, 1991 in Tesome, 2003).

According to a high-level political forum on sustainable development, the agenda 2030 for sustainable development goal number 4 saw a need for ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. They see education as an avenue for social mobility and reducing inequality, helping youths prepare for employment, and aim at promoting health and well-being.

Since 2015, progress has been made towards universal completing secondary schools. Data from 2013-2017 indicates that globally secondary school completion is 73percent. Despite the progress, 262million children and youths age 6 to 17 were still out of school in 2017. Out of 750million adults, two-thirds of whom are women remained illiterate in 2016.

The united nation population fund (UNFPA) has estimated that ensuring that both girls and boys attend school and perform well is a crucial part of reducing poverty and achieving sustainable development meaning men and women need to be equipped with knowledge and skills to contribute to their society but worldwide, there are still almost twice as many illiterate women as there are men. (AusAID, 2010).

Many researchers have long started the evaluation of the effects of household gender roles on the academic performance of secondary school girls.  For example, a study carried out in the Gambia highlights a range of domestic work such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, care of younger siblings, petty trading at home, in the markets, and on the street done by girls in the Gambia and other sub-Saharan African countries.

About 83% of these girls interviewed confirmed that they are asked to do the stated chores because it’s considered appropriate to their gender. The study highlights that the Gambian girl’s academic performance is poor because of these household gender roles (Haddy Njie et al, 2015).

The number of time females spend on domestic chores and other activities also reduces their time and energy spend in school thereby affecting their performance (Namuddu, 1991 in Tesome, (2003). A recent survey shows that there has been a substantial improvement in the school enrollment rate of Egyptian children. From 1988 to 1998, school enrollment of girls rose from 75% to 86%. Still, in 1998, 2.2million girls (37.7%) spent time on household chores and uncounted hours engaged in childcare (Zibani 2002).

This study shows that the conventional measures of labor force work often ignore a variety of child activities that could potentially jeopardize their school especially for girls who carry out a variety of domestic work for many hours each day (RaguiAssaadet al, 2010).

Cameroon is one of the countries committed to implementing universal primary and secondary education according to the recommendation of the United Nations for the twenty-first century. The realization of this is still farfetched from the goal as 70 percent of Cameroonian girls are still illiterate.

This is particularly visible in the North Region of Cameroon where more than 1 million girls between 10 to 19 years of age, representing 31.9 percent of all girls in the region are illiterate (UNESCO Institute of Statistics, 2016). The figures show that girls living in this region are less educated than boys as per the results of an August 2016 campaign (Mbia., 2016).

There is an urgent need to encourage more female students to pursue studies in science-related disciplines. This is even more visible as the society is becoming day after day more reliant on the exploits of science and technology thus creating the need for the involvement of more female students.

Throughout Cameroon, more boys than girls opt to study science subjects in secondary schools, with less than 30 percent of girls involved. Generally, a greater proportion of female students do perform poorly in these science subjects than compared to males and part reason for such effect is the influence of gender household chores on female students.

Mulugeta Detar, 2014 highlights in her study that the number of time females spend on house chores reduces their energy and time spent on schoolwork especially science-related subjects that require more time.

Cognizing all these challenges, this study is intended to investigate and identify the effects of household gender roles on the academic performance of a girl child. The study will be tried to show possible recommendations to mitigating this problem among secondary school girls in the Buea municipality. (Lydia Emmanuel, 2015)

1.2 Statement Of The Problem

Girls’ education is recognized as a critical pathway in promoting socio-economic and political development. Many studies have established that girls lag behind boys in academic performance mainly because of their ascribed gender roles and other challenges they face. This does not only deprive them of opportunities but also increases the gender gap at the work place, in salaries, and also in leadership.

Despite the efforts made to mitigate the gap between boys’ and girl’s academic performance, there is still a significant difference between boys’ and girls’ academic performance. The major factor identified as accountable for this gap is the burden of household gender roles of girls such as cooking, cleaning, care of siblings, carrying of water, farming, and petty trading which keeps them occupied, barely having enough time to study, review class lessons, and focus on assignments. Other factors include the motivation from family.

According to Sayer (1994), parents play a vital role in keeping their girl children out of school and or discouraging them from taking science-related subjects. Even when the family educates the girl child, boys and girls are enrolled in different domains, high paid jobs like doctors, engineers, and pilots related to the science field are considered appropriate for males while less paid jobs like secretaries, caregivers and cleaners requiring less knowledge on science are seen appropriate for a female since is considered as part of their gender role.

The importance of female role models is widely accepted as means of promoting greater gender equality especially in schools (UNESCO 2003). Although it the importance to promote role models such as female teachers as a strategy to encourage females’ education and academic performance, there is still a limited number of female role models in most secondary schools that can motivate female students to learn.

In addition to the aforementioned challenges resulting in girl’s poor academic performance is the home to school distance (Mulugeta, 2014), school learning environment (world bank, 2009) sexual harassment, and cultural factors.

This study therefore aims to access this gap in the literature. It will evaluate the effects of household gender roles on girl’s academic performance in secondary schools in the Buea Municipality.

1.3 Objectives Of The Study

1.3.1 Main Objective

The main objective of this study is to examine the effects of household gender roles on the academic performance of secondary school girls in the Buea municipality.

1.3.2 Specific Objectives

The specific objectives of the study are:

1. To identify demographic characteristics and examine the implications on respondents.
2. To examine gender roles of girls in the Buea municipality.
3. To identify the effects of gender roles on the academic performance of girls in schools.
4. To identify challenges faced by secondary school girls.
5. To identify coping strategies of secondary school girls.