Abstract

This paper explores prevailing notions about gender, based on African realities, and their possible implications for the education of girls. Without ignoring the basic parameters articulated by European and American feminist movements, this paper takes the stand that an understanding of gender in the context of African realities is fundamentally connected to questions about the cultural identity, social experience, interests, and priorities of the purveyors of feminist knowledge or feminists positions across the African continent. The main goal is to render the concept of gender, and subsequently girl-child education, within an approach that is more realistic and consistent with the history of women vis-à-vis their station in present-day, postcolonial Africa.