Sally A. Nuamah: How Girls Achieve

Excerpt

Sally A. Nuamah’s How Girls Achieve utilizes a feminist lens as it evaluates the historical backgrounds of one of the most marginalized groups, low-income girls of color, and their unique experiences within the education systems of South Africa, the United States, and Ghana, which all possess a common goal: the achievement of gender equality. Specifically, Nuamah analyzes an array of negative elements evident within each of the independent education systems that are extremely harmful to girls and are therefore fueling the gender inequity between boys and girls. For example, the author focuses on the importance of safety protections, the implementation of feminist schools, the connection among achievement-oriented identities and net achievement, and the relationship between confidence and achievement and their effects on girls’ educational experiences. Notably, socio-demographics such as sex, gender, education, income, and race, place a substantial hindrance on girls’ educational achievement as a result of numerous intersecting elements. The majority of these factors that maintain a significant impact on girls’ achievement are easily overlooked by people of power, policymakers, school administrators, and society in general as a result of societal expectations surrounding gender roles and gender socialization as it pertains to education. …