Child marriage and education in the context of a global pandemic: Exploring the gendered implications of COVID-inspired school closures in Ghana

Abstract

This article aims to cast light on the negative but silent effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on girls' education and welfare in Ghana. Since the pandemic emerged in 2019, unprecedented changes have occurred in ordinary people's health, education and social life. As a response to the pandemic, governments globally implemented social distancing regimes, lockdowns and school closures to curtail the spread of the virus. While this approach did help in curtailing the spread of the pandemic, implementing lockdowns and school closures in Ghana had unintended consequences: they amplified gendered inequalities in access to education. Drawing on one-on-one semi-structured interviews with (i) 10 teachers and one head teacher, 13 parents of child brides, and 11 child brides (aged 15–19), and (ii) Focus group discussions (FGDs) with 15 community leaders in a rural Ghanaian setting (Mion), this article provides empirical evidence to show how the pandemic has disrupted the lives and education of 11 girls. In particular, school closures and rising poverty due to the pandemic led to increased child marriage. These 11 schoolgirls were seen as a burden by their parents, and, consequently, married off to older men as an adverse coping strategy. Furthermore, some of the girls themselves requested to be married, due to rising household chores occasioned by the school closures. Finally, the school closures also offered the community the justification to reactivate deeply held notions about the value of a girl's education as a basis for marrying them off.