[01] Vincent Adzahlie-Mensah, Department of Social Studies Education, Faculty of Social Science Education, University of Education, Winneba, Ghana. [02] Isaac Eshun, Department of Social Studies Education, Faculty of Social Science Education, University of Education, Winneba, Ghana.

This paper examines the constitutive role of schooling in (re)producing patterns of sex-based gender interactions and identities that usually draw gender contours in wider society. Using the relational theory of human rights, this paper explored the characteristics of ‘being female’ in a Ghanaian Basic School by examining how school practices tend to sediment and promote male-female gender-authority based power relations in school. The research study was an in-depth case study of a rural basic (primary) school in the Central Region of Ghana. Purposive sampling was the main technique employed. The sample was composed of seven males and eight female schoolchildren aged between 9 and 15 years who had been in the school from primary class 1. Employing an ethnographic style approach, data were collected from schools through interviews and observations. Sequential interviews were also conducted with teachers. School and classroom activities were regularly observed during the fieldwork. The paper discussed how being female became gendered entry points for expressing power using data from interviews and school observation. It highlights how school practices encouraged sex-based dimorphic presentations that positioned girls as subjects to be watched during morning assembly and weaklings to be protected by boys. All the texts, from policies, interview transcripts to observation notes, were analysed using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The analysis examined how the corporeal dimensions of belonging together are implicated in the (re)production of stereotypic inferiorisation of females within the wider society instead of challenging and reconstructing them. We argued that females experience inferiorisation, as femaleness is associated with being short, being watched and exhibited in the performance of service functions. We call attention to the role of schools to halt in the reproduction of ideologies of female subordination. We suggested that educational institutions should be re-organised as agent of social change that is more beneficial - more proactive in challenging gender stratifications rather than reproducing them.

Femaleness, Human Rights, Inferiorisation, Relational Theory, Sex-Based Gender, School

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